The North Narthex

2011-11-03T18:30:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I met up with my parents in our hometown. We spent a few days visiting various relatives. One day, I asked my mom if we could stop by the Roman Catholic church where I was baptized as a 16-day-old infant. I’d always wanted to see the font where, like Archbishop Michael Ramsey said “my Christian life began.”

We went up to the church, and, not surprisingly, found it locked. After hunting around, we found the secretary who graciously let us in to look around. We wandered around for a while, trying to find the illusive baptismal font. Finally, I said to my mother, “Look at that! I know I wasn’t baptized in that!”

My baptism took place in early 1965, long before the liturgical revolution that changed the way we look at baptism. An explanation of that liturgical movement would be a whole other blog in and of itself, but suffice it to say that many traditional catholic churches made a move in the seventies to go back to the practices of the early church – baptism at the Easter Vigil and full immersion among them. The current baptismal font really looked a lot like a spa tub.

“Well, the old font has to be around here somewhere,” I told my mom. We looked and looked and finally went back to find the secretary. She was outside talking with a parishioner. When we asked our question they looked at each other with one of those “uh-oh” kind of looks.

“Is it in the garage?” asked the parishioner.

“Yes, I think so,” replied the secretary.

“Garage?” I asked.

“A while back, one of the priests had the old altar taken down and the marble turned into that “jacuzzi” in the church. He wasn’t very popular.”

Clearly these two ladies were long-time, maybe even life-long members who’d seen lots of priest come and go. So I asked, cautiously, if it would be possible to go to the garage to “where my Christian life began.”
Oh sure, they said, and took us back into the building. On the parking lot side, there was a large 4-car garage. The secretary opened the doors for light and then pointed to a dark corner, behind a lot of debris. My heart sank. There, in a corner, behind a lot of junk, covered with dust and cobwebs, was the font were it all started for me. I managed to swallow the comments that came to mind, and exchanging a few glances with my mother, asked the secretary if she thought the priest would want to sell it. I left my name and phone number, but haven’t heard anything. That might be a good thing, because when I got back into the car, it began to dawn on me that it would be awfully hard to move a big hunk of marble and I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I would do with it if I had it.

When this quest started I had planned to take a picture of the font and hang it in my office above my ordination certificates as an object lesson that baptism is more important than ordination. I hope you have heard that before. If not, let me say it again: baptism is more important that ordination. We are born as creatures. Baptism is what makes us Daughters and Sons of God. Baptism is what seals us as Christ’s own forever. Baptism is our fishing license in the Kingdom of God.
Baptism is, as appropriate to this time of year, what makes us saints. A saint isn’t a person who was better at being a Christian than anyone else. A saint is a person who has been justified by Christ, whose sins have been forgiven in the waters of baptism and who has been adopted into the family of God. Sure, there are people we call Saint with a capital S: St. Margaret, St. Stephen, St. Andrew, to name a few. But contrary to what you may have been taught, All Saint’s Day isn’t about just the capital S Saints. It’s “For all the Saints.” Have you ever noticed the tune name at the bottom of the page of that great hymn? Ralph Vaughn Williams titled the tune Sine Nomine: without name. Or, witness my other favorite All Saints’ Day hymn:

They lived not only in ages past,

there are hundreds of thousands still,

the world is bright with the joyous saints

who love to do Jesus’ will.

you can meet them in school

or in lanes or at sea,

in church or in trains,

or in shops, or at tea,

for the saints of God are just folk like me,

and I mean to be one too.

Although I’m still disappointed about my baptismal font, I know I need to get over it. Being married isn’t about just that moment of standing in front of the altar. It’s about living in what author Gail Godwin calls “the grace of daily obligation.” It’s about shooting for the mark of being faithful to another to the best of one’s ability, and seeking the good of the other above one’s one. Likewise being baptized, i.e. being a saint, means living in the “grace of daily obligation” to God. We are called to try, to the best of our ability to love God with our whole heart and to try to do God’s will in the world. That’s what being a saint is all about. And I mean to be one too!

2011-10-05T18:00:00.001-05:00

It always tickles me to see how very young children behave before, during, and after receiving “the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.” Little-bitty children who can’t talk yet reach out their hands, clearly knowing that I’m bringing them something very special. At our early service a couple of years ago, we had a young child, not quite two, who would sneak out of the pew before I was done with the prayer of consecration. He'd come over to the side of the altar area and quietly stand in front of the communion rail, hands outstretched, waiting for me to finish. Like the other children, he knew, in some way or another, that what he was participating in is special and that it has something to do with being loved.

One of my favorite memories of giving communion to a small child, is of a little girl in my last parish named Mackensie. She was the first baby I ever baptised. We didn't know it at the time, but she was born profoundly deaf. I was with her parents in the recovery room after she had her first cochlear implant. She was two years old at the time, and when she woke up after her surgery, I had the great blessing of being there when she heard her parents' voices for the first time. I also was there when she was in church the first time after her surgery. That first church service that she could hear just happened to be our St. Andrew's Day celebration, and it included bagpipes!

It was rare that I ever saw Mackensie without a huge, joyful grin on her face, and that was how she always approached the communion rail. When I put the host in her hands, she wouldn’t say the customary "amen" or even "thank you" the way some children do. Silently, she would start pointing vigorously at the person next to her at the rail. At first, I thought it was just that she wanted to make sure her daddy got the bread of heaven too, but then I noticed that she did the same thing, even when someone she didn't know very well was on her left. No matter who it was, she was always eager and concerned that her neighbor get to have communion too. Clearly she wanted her neighbor to share in something that gave her so much joy.

Isn’t that really what stewardship is all about? Sharing what comes to us from God (everything does) with the world around us? Fortunately for Mackensie, three-year-olds aren’t too preoccupied with the kinds of things that drag us down as grown-ups. But basic needs are important to kids, as is getting a share of what everyone else is getting. What made Mackensie’s response remarkable is that before she would partake of her own share, she wanted to be sure the person next to her had something too. My prayer for the Mackensies of this world, is that they keep that generous spirit as they grow older. My prayer for myself is that I become less preoccupied with having enough for myself, and more focused on what I can share with others.

O Lord, giver of life and source of freedom, we know that all we have received is from your hand. Gracious and loving Father, you call us to be stewards of your abundance, the caretakers of all you have entrusted to us. Help us to always use your gifts wisely and teach us to share them joyfully and generously. Send the Holy Spirit to work through us, bringing your message to those we serve. May our faithful stewardship bear witness to the love of Jesus Christ in our lives. We pray with grateful hearts, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

2011-09-15T14:56:00.000-05:00

Not long ago, a one of the young people who joined us recently said “I had no idea there was a church like this. I wish I’d known about this a lot sooner!” Like many of you, I’m not a cradle Episcopalian. Two-thirds of Episcopalians are adult converts. I joined the Episcopal Church right out of college, almost 25 years ago. I spent most of my college career visiting churches with friends, but never found one that had the right combination of ancient traditions and intellectual freedom.

I actually could have come into the Episcopal Church sooner. I remember sitting at a stoplight one evening, at the beginning of my senior year, looking over at a smallish gothic church with one of those square Norman tours. The west window was lit up from the inside. It was really beautiful. I looked at the sign and thought to myself “Episcopal....hmmm...that’s like Anglican. I’m an Anglophile. Maybe I should go there?” But by time the light changed, I’d decided that that was a really dumb reason to join a church, and crossed it off my list.

About a year later, one of my friends in the German House began attending the same church. Every Sunday Mark would come home and tell me about it. “You really should come,” he always said. Finally, one day I did.

Initially, I was pretty intimidated because the rector was a very traditional Anglo-catholic. That church still has its altar against the wall, and the priest still presides with his back to the people. Despite the high threshold, I quickly fell in love with the place. The combination of the words of the Book of Common Prayer, the beautiful music, and a liturgy that was full of meaning and tied to the earliest practices of the Christian church was thrilling. This was a church where we got to have Eucharist and take the Bible seriously. This was a church where people were both proud of their heritage and good at poking fun at themselves.

I soon found that I’d walked into a church that not just tolerated but encouraged people to think on their own about issues. No one there was about to tell me that drinking, dancing, or card playing was going to earn me a ticket to hell. In fact, drinking, dancing, and card playing happened at church! No one was going to push me to profess that the earth was made in seven 24-hour days. Gay people actually came to church and were treated like everyone else. In a university town, this was the church that scientists and professors attended.

At first, it was a little strange to be in a church where I wasn’t being handed a list of rules. But eventually I figured out that the church did shape our thinking through the liturgy, preaching and Christian formation. However, instead of spelling everything out, we were being influenced by Big Picture ideas like these:

- God created the world and saw that it was good, so we start from a “glass-half-full” view of the world.

- Every person is made in the image and likeness of God and deserves our respect and love.

- God loves each of us more than we can ask or imagine.

- We have a responsibility through our baptismal ministry to make to make the world a better place when and where we can.

- God gave us minds to think, hearts to love, and hands to serve, and he means for us to use them.

- We can refer to God as “she” if that works better for us. No one is going to burst into flames.

- There are no outcasts in the Episcopal Church (especially meaningful during the early years of AIDS).

Listening to people who are glad to have found us makes me wonder if we are doing a good job of letting our own young people know why this church, this crazy wonderful Episcopal Church, is worth loving? Are we telling our children why this was our choice, why it’s meaningful for us, and why we hope it will be for them too? Are we explaining to them that climbing walls and skate parks and coffee shops in church are cool ideas but that at the end of the day it’s those big picture ideas that are going to give meaningful shape to our lives?

If you wonder too, and wonder how to communicate that, I commend to you to small books, 101 Reasons to be Episcopalian and Those Episkopols. 101 Reasons comes from a website where Louie Crew has invited people to send in their reasons. At this point, there are over 500 reasons. The most popular reason? “God loves you, and there is not a thing you can do to change that.” - The Rev. Tom VanCulin, Honolulu.

2011-08-12T17:25:00.001-05:00

What do the movies Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, and the t.v. show The Vicar of Dibley have in common? They all feature the song Love is All Around. Maybe you’ve heard this goofy love song:
I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
Love is all around
and so the feeling grows.

Every time I hear that song, it reminds me of two things. This first is bread making. Back when I was in college in the 80’s, I decided to learn to make bread, and I bought a couple of books on the subject. The first book, Mary’s Bread Basket and Soup Kettle, was very simple and straight forward, and I still have it (incidentally, Mary was a famous Tulsan). The other book, Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, was extremely technical - not to mention California groovy. To this day, I still remember one recipe that did not call for packaged yeast or any other commercial leavening agent. Making the bread was a three-day process, because the yeast for the recipe was “wild yeast” (no, I’m not making this up). Apparently, the air around us is filled with wild yeast, and if the right conditions are set up, the dough mixture will avail itself of this wild yeast and it will rise without any other help.

I think the reason why I still remember this obscure method of bread making is because of the notion of wild yeast being all around us. It reminds me of God’s grace (as does the song I mentioned). Remember, the catechism’s definition of grace is “God’s favor towards us, undeserved and unearned.” Grace is all around us. It’s there whether we choose to accept it or not. But if we do choose, all we have to do is have an open heart and pray. God wants the best for us, although we don’t always understand what that is. That’s what we mean when we talk about being blessed. But part of being blessed is hopefulness: expecting that, if we are faithful and trust in God, we are and will be blessed.

Living in our post-modern, post-Christendom era, it seems that hope and faith are often in short supply. In my last parish we had a business owner, who, when discussing church finance, was always expectant of the graciousness of God (not nearly as common an attitude in northern Illinois as in Tulsa). Someone else once remarked “Is that how she runs the business?” Well, as it turns out, the answer is a resounding yes. This person, despite living in an age of skepticism, had seen the power and grace of God at work in the world about us. This person understands that we are an Easter people.

As a church, if we are going to more than just barely survive, if we want to thrive, we must focus on being an Easter people, a resurrection people. Kennon Callahan’s book, Ten Keys to an Effective Church, has been a classic for a while now. In it, Callahan says this:

(the Christian message)… begins in fresh, new ways with the open tomb, the risen Lord, and new life in Christ. The disciples thought they had placed their hopes on a sinking ship when Christ’s body was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb. With the resurrection, they discovered anew that they were part of a winning cause.

The Gospel writers knew the end of the story. In fact, they saw the end as a new beginning. Because they knew of Christ’s resurrection, they traced back from the resurrection to tell of the incarnation, life, and death of Christ. It is quite clear that the Christian community that gathered during that first century lived with an abiding confidence in a risen Lord. It is as a result of their acceptance of the risen Lord that we understand what took place on Golgotha.

Christ invites you to live as a risen person. Christ invites you to new life. Christ invites you to live life at its fullest and best…Christ’s death on the cross is an act of generosity and grace. Yes, it is an amazing sacrifice. And yes, in even larger and richer ways, Christ’s death on the cross reveals the generosity and graciousness of God’s love. This grace is even more fully advanced with our risen Lord.

I am encouraging you to have a theology of resurrection as well as a theology of the cross. I am suggesting that you invite people to their risen life in Christ…Help them focus on the meaning of the open tomb, the risen Lord, the new life in Christ, and the winning cause of God’s mission on this planet.

Grace is, indeed, all around us. Our task is to make sure that the conditions are right for God’s grace to work in and through us. What are those conditions? Prayer, hope and faith make for a good start. Those things aren’t as hard as they sound. We don’t have to be perfect or proficient, we only have to be willing to try, even in the face of skepticism. After all, we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain!

2011-07-03T17:14:00.010-05:00

A couple of years ago, I went on a tour of Italy. I saw some wonderful things: a 900-year-old baptistery in Pisa, a basilica in San Gimignano that has an amazing series of floor to ceiling frescoes depicting stories from the Old and New Testaments along the wall of the nave, and the relics of several saints, including the tombs of St Francis and St. Clare. I even got to see the Pope and the t.v. travel show host and writer Rick Steves.

As wonderful as all of these things wer, for me, one of the more significant moments of the trip was getting to have a conversation with our travel guide about the state of the Church in Italy. In a nutshell, like all Europeans (except, notably, the Poles) Italians don’t go to church anymore. Remo was an excellent guide – very knowledgable without being dry, and he was able to field all sorts of questions. So one day, I asked him if I could speak to him privately about the Church in Italy. I knew what he had to say might upset some of our traveling companions who might not already know something about the subject.

Remo, who is a little older than I, explained to me that much of what is happening is that the people are tired of double-standards and corruption, but even more so, they’re tired of a church that has no relevancy for them. The Church has a lot of rules about things that seem focused on non-essentials. Like so many other Europeans, they also are tired of having to be forced to pay tax to support the Church, although they now have the opportunity to designate the tax to go towards other charitable causes. Most European governments still support the Church through taxes.

None of this surprised me. I’ve heard similar things from young Germans. The Good News of God in Christ isn’t getting heard anymore. Since they don’t have a compelling, life-changing, hope-building reason to go to Church, they don’t go. Period. My father and I walked into a church in the small village we were staying in last time we were in Germany. As we walked down the center aisle, I noticed about a dozen chair cushions, the likes of which you would have on your kitchen or patio chairs, scattered on the pews. I elbowed my dad, pointed, and said “that’s a bad sign.” He said, “you mean the pews are uncomfortable?” and I said, “no, I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of how many people still attend this church!” If it’s possible to stake out your spot permanently with your own cushion, then there must not be too many people vying for a place to sit. I hate to have to say it, but unless something significant happens, I’m pretty sure that most of the churches I have visited in Germany, Austria, and Italy, are just one generation away from not having anyone worshipping in them at all, unless they come to worship art.

Not long ago, I was talking to a bishop about the state of Christianity in Europe. He told me that whatever the trends are in Europe, they usually happen here eventually, but that it doesn't have to be that way. As much as I feel badly that all those parish churches which used to be the heart of every town and village across Europe are largely empty today, I understand that the real tragedy is not empty buildings but millions of hearts and minds that do not know the light of Christ. Even here in America, younger generations are becoming increasingly unchurched. It's no longer possible to assume that young people know even the most central stories of our faith.

We have an imperative. Everything in our faith as Christians calls us to share the good news of God in Christ. When Remo told me about the issues that young Italians had with the Church, I was able to say, "It doesn't have to be that way. Let me tell you about my church." It was good news. It was the Good News. And when I got done, he asked for my business card...

Entertaining Angels

2011-06-04T10:37:00.002-05:00

A couple of years ago, we began hanging icons on the wall behind the altar. They are changed seasonally. In the summer, beginning with Trinity Sunday, we hang up an icon that shows three angels sitting around a table. It is a copy of what is called the "Rublev Icon." It was "written" (icons are written, not painted) in the 15th century by Andrei Rublev. It's a scene from our Old Testament lesson the past Sunday. In it, God, in three persons, visits Abraham and Sarah when they are encamped at the Oaks of Mamre. It is at this point that God tells them the Sarah will, despite her advanced years, have a child before a year has passed.

It's clearly a story about faith and hope and doubt, but it's also a story about hospitality. According to the custom of the desert, Abraham welcomes the strangers as guests. He promises them water to wash their feet and bread, but delivers a lavish feast. But in Rublev's icon, there is more to the hospitality story than what Abraham delivers.

When you look at the icon and see how the three angels (a very thinly veiled reference to the Trinity) incline their heads and a physically present to each other, it's clear that there is hospitality happening among the members of the Trinity. St. Augustine wrote in On the Trinity, that love is the energy that passes from the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. That divine love is, in fact, the Holy Spirit and the basis of all creation. As ones who are created in the image and likeness of God, we are called to live in that divine love.

All of this got me to thinking about what goes on sometimes in churches, not just St. Dunstan's, but most churches. We often become compartmentalized in our own small groups, seeing ourselves as our own entity rather than members of one body. At one of our vestry retreats, we did a Bible Study on I Corinthians 12: 12-26. The key verse in this passage about how we are all members of one body is the verse that says "The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’"

To paraphrase, 'the choir cannot say to the property committee, 'I have no need of you', nor again the altar guild to the outreach committee, 'I have no need of you.' The important thing that we all need to remember is that we are members of one body -- the Body of Christ, and that we are all called together build God's kingdom. Although we may have individual goals and interests, our common goal is what is most important, and if we are not working together then whatever we are doing is just plain not working.

A couple of us were talking the other day about how it takes, literally, all kinds to be a church: artsy people and detail people, big picture people and focused people, physical people and thinking people, and on and on. And of course, there are people who have more than one kind of gift. We need all of the gifts that our people have to offer if we serious about being the Church. We need to be both willing to offer our own gifts and gracious about the gifts that others bring.

When we are graciously inclined towards one another, open and present to what each brings to the table, we truly are living in the divine love that spoke the world into being. And that's the kind of transformational love that changes the world.

By the Mark

2011-05-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

from Sunday's Gospel John 20:19-31

Like most of you, I get way too much junk mail. The only mail I got yesterday was three pieces of junk mail. Ironically, all three of them said “ESCAPE” across the front in large letters. The first one offered to help me escape by installing a backyard spa. The second suggested that the perfect escape is to be found on a Mediterranean cruise. The final piece of mail was a bit anti-climactic after the idea of a port of call on the Côte d'azur. It offered the perfect early summer get-a-way to....Branson.

We all probably spend a lot more time thinking up ways to escape what’s going on in our lives than we realize. I imagine that, as they cowered in the upper room, escape was on the minds the disciples during that evening of the first day of the week. I imagine that escape was at the top of Thomas’ list.

Thomas gets a bad rap, when you think about it. Thomas was more of a pragmatist than a doubter. He was a plain-spoken straight-shooter. When Jesus decided to return to Judea to raise Lazarus – right in the back yard of the hostile authorities, Thomas was the one to say, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” What happened on that hill on Friday was exactly what Thomas expected.

We don’t know why Thomas wasn’t with his friends when Jesus appeared to them. Maybe he was out checking on the rest of Jesus’ followers. Maybe he was fetching some food. Maybe he was so heartbroken that he couldn’t stand to be around anyone else.

What I find most curious is that seeing Jesus himself, in the flesh, wasn’t going to be enough for Thomas. To be convinced he needed to touch the marks of the nails in Jesus' hands and the spear wound in Jesus’ side.

Every time I hear this passage, it reminds me of a song from Gillian Welch’s first album Revival. Welch is a singer-songwriter whose style combines Appalachian music, Bluegrass, and Americana. She was a co-producer and singer on the O Brother where Art Thou? soundtrack and had a cameo in the film.

When I cross over

I will shout and sing

I will know my savior

By the mark where the nails have been

By the sign upon his precious skin

I will know my savior when I come to him

By the mark where the nails have been

The Holy Wounds of Christ have been a popular theme of devotion at various times in Christian history. Many altars, including ours, have five crosses incised in the top representing the wounds. Saints like Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis and Clare, and Julian of Norwich composed devotions and prayers about the wounds. I’ve often wondered if this devotion had something to do with living in a time of plague, pestilence, war and famine. Perhaps focusing on the wounds of Christ somehow helped people face their own troubles.

It’s out of this tradition that the writings of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th century German nun, came. Her meditations on the passion were the basis of Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. I saw that movie when it came out, but I’ve never wanted to see it again, except for one scene. I realize the violence is probably much more realistic that what is shown in traditional “Jesus movies,” but it is really hard to take.

The one scene that I’ve always wanted to see again comes at the very end of the movie. As the camera pans away from Mary, kneeling in the mud, cradling the bloodied and broken body of her son, the screen suddenly goes black. Then there’s a loud, scraping noise, and you realize that it’s the stone rolling away. Light comes into the tomb, then linen wrappings settle onto the stone as if someone’s just step out of them, and then you see Jesus from the shoulders up. He’s as whole and sound and beautiful as he was before his torture and crucifixion. He closes his eyes, opens them, and then steps out into the light. As he does, the camera pans down to his hand at his side. There, right there, is a perfect mark of a nail. It’s healed, but it’s very much still there – a permanent part of his resurrected body

It’s significant that Jesus carried the marks of his suffering and death, his wounds, into the Resurrection. The promise of the Resurrection is not that we won’t be wounded. The promise of the resurrection is that we will be healed. The promise of the resurrection is that our wounds will be transformed.

Healing can begin now. All of us have been wounded, and most of us are afraid to look on those wounds. It’s not unlike the ordeal of the bandaid. You remember. When you were a child, a bandaid could make it all better. Even if there was no blood, no broken skin, we wanted to have a bandaid when we fell down.

If there were blood, the second worst thing your mother could say, after a couple of days, was “let’s look under the bandaid and see how it’s doing.” And the very worst thing she could say was “We better leave the bandaid off and let some air get to it.” Nooooooooo! But of course, mom was right. At a certain stage, the only way the wound would get better would be if we let some air and light get to it.

The wounds that we carry around with us, the unseen ones that come from living, are like that. At some point they’ll only get better if we let some air and light in. The idea of facing those wounds can be very frightening because it involves acknowledging our pain. But there are people who are ready to help us, to be our companions on the way. And above all, there is Christ our brother, who has lived our life, who has walked through this beautiful, wild, wounded world and who knows the pain and suffering we’ve known, and then some. Never again do we need to face those wounds alone.

By the mark where the nails have been

By the sign upon his precious skin

I will know my savior when I come to him

By the mark where the nails have been.

from Revival - Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, BMI 1996

In the Kingdom of God, love wins

2011-04-05T15:40:00.001-05:00

Ralph was the youngest of eleven children. Born when his mother was forty-six and and her next youngest child was four, he was an "oops" baby. His family wasn't wealthy, but they were well-off. His father was a very successful building contractor in a bustling coal mining town. Ralph's dad always had projects going. One of them, the Sesser Opera House, is on the national register of historic places.

Even with so many mouths to feed, Ralph's family had a comfortable life. Everyone doted on the baby of the family. Ralph was a very bright boy, destined to be
the first person in his family to go to college. But everything changed the year he turned thirteen.

Given the nature of his business, Ralph's dad owed money for all the building materials that had been ordered for the projects he was working on. When the buildings were completed, he would pay for the bricks and lumber. The year Ralph turned thirteen, the stock market crashed. Overnight, building came to a complete halt. Ralph's father had no hope of paying back any of his bills and loans. He was bankrupt. By the end of November, he had died of pneumonia, and probably of a broken heart as well. By then, the older children were grown and launched into their adult lives, but Ralph and his mother were destitute.

Ralph sometimes talked about one of the people his dad was indebted to, a local businessman who probably had ties to the mafia. This man came to Ralph's mother and told her that her husband was a good man, and she didn't owe him anything. One person who did insist on being repaid, however, was Ralph's uncle. Uncle John insisted on being paid back as soon as possible.

That would be bad enough, but there's more to the story, something that Ralph carried around all of his life. He shared it with me when he was in his mid-eighties. Shortly before I went to seminary, he told me he had something important to ask me.

"Do you think you'll recognize people in heaven?" he wanted to know. I said I didn't know and he went on "Because if you can recognize people in heaven, and someone you love isn't there, how could heaven be a happy place?" After some coaxing, I was able to get him to tell me why he was asking about it.

It turned out that when he was thirteen, at his father's funeral, his Uncle John told him that his father wasn't going to heaven. Uncle John was a devout Baptist. Ralph's dad was not. Ralph's mother was an Anglican who attended the Methodist Church. I don't know whether Ralph's dad went with her or not. But he wasn't a Baptist. And he was thought kindly of by a minor Mafioso. And he died in debt.

Looking at Ralph at that moment, I saw a boy who was heartbroken because he'd just lost his dad. I saw a boy who, a few years later, would have to borrow a jacket, shirt and tie from the high school janitor to have his senior picture taken. I saw a young man who was admitted to college but couldn't afford to go. I saw a man who had been carrying around a world of hurt for over seventy years. I told him that I believed heaven is a happy place, and that if there were anyone he wasn't going to see there, it was most likely his Uncle John.

For almost two thousand years, there have been Christians who have felt the need to "keep score." One of the favorite tactics of the Church has been to use heaven as a carrot and hell as a 2x4. Partly, I think this is due to human nature - the ugly side of it. At our ugliest, we like being in the in-crowd. For us to be insiders, some people have to be outsiders. Or so we think. Another problem with human nature is that we can't begin to comprehend the grace of God. We can't begin to understand how much God loves us. People like to quote the Letter to James and say that "God is love," but I fear that many of them have no idea, earthly or heavenly, what that means.

In my sermon on March 27, I talked about this. The Gospel passage was on the woman at the well. She was an outsider whose life was completely transformed after her encounter with Jesus. In my sermon, I also talked about a fierce controversy going on among evangelicals and fundamentalists in this country. This controversy went into high gear a couple of weeks ago with the publication of Love Wins by Rob Bell.

Rob Bell is forty years old. He pastors the 10,000 member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He's been attracting a lot of attention in recent years, because of the message of love, grace, and the Kingdom of God that he's been preaching. Not all of it has been positive attention. A lot of haters out there are accusing him of not being a real evangelical, much less a real Christian. Apparently, he's overturning a pretty large number of apple carts. I'm in the middle of reading his book. When I'm done, I'll post some more.

True, kind, necessary?

2011-03-22T17:22:00.004-05:00

Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord, and guard the door of my lips; let not my heart incline to any evil thing. - Psalm 141:3

.I could not stand Doug. He was loud, socially inept, and just plain obnoxious. My friends couldn’t stand him either. I’m sure we didn’t hide our feelings very well. I’m pretty sure we didn’t try. He was often the topic of conversation when we got together. We could rant for what seemed like hours on end about how much he bugged us. In a way, we relished being able to dislike him so much, and we fed off each other.

You might think this went on in jr. high or high school. I’m embarrassed to admit that no, we were well into our late twenties at the time, and, worse than that, it went on at church. Twenty years later I’m ashamed that I ever thought that was okay.

The other day, I told someone that one of the differences about my life before and after ordination was that I thought I could get away with the aforementioned behavior. Back then I thought that I was my own person, and that I could run around in the ugliness hampster wheel as much as I wanted.

As a priest, loving everyone is in my job description. It’s part of my ordination vows: Will you undertake to be a faithful pastor to all whom you are called to serve, laboring together with them and with your fellow ministers to build up the family of God (emphasis mine)? Deacons and bishops make similar promises in their respective vows too. That little three letter word “all” encompasses not just some or even most. It’s an ever-expanding circle. If Doug walked into St. Dunstan’s next Sunday, it most certainly would include him. Getting ordained didn’t make me an angel (most people figured that out a long time ago) but it did make me take things like that seriously. I’m not perfect at it, I mess up a lot, but I keep trying, and I’ve found the more I work at it, the easier it becomes. In fact, the more I work at it, the less work it becomes. Really.

So here’s the irony: In truth, in all my life I have never been my own person. By virtue of my baptism, I’ve been marked as Christ’s own for ever. Not only that, by our baptisms we’re all ordained into a life of ministry in Christ, and the vows we make include this: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? So I never really was free to, as the kids say these days, hate on Doug. It’s part of our fallen human nature to enjoy being stinky, but it’s not part of our calling as children of God.

So how do we be human and be kind? There are ways to help us learn not to be stinky, or hateful, or unkind. One way which I find myself coming back to over and over again is this: before we say something about someone else, or think ugly thoughts, we can ask ourselves: “Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?”

I didn’t come up with this idea myself. These three questions have been around for ages. They’re attributed to many different sources, including Socrates, Quakers, and Buddhists. It was mentioned recently in a Wall Street Journal article: “Before You Gossip, Ask Yourself This ...”by Jeffrey Zaslow. The article talks about the efforts some adults are making to help young people learn how to communicate in ways that are kind and compassionate, especially in this age of Facebook and My Space. In his article he relates this story:

I've never forgotten a letter I once received from a reader, who told me about going to a dance when she was a teen. "My mother was waiting for me when I came home," she wrote. "But instead of telling her I had a great time, I regaled her with a scathing description of some incredible nerd who'd tried to dance with me. In essence, I said that this guy had a lot of nerve to expect anyone to dance with a person as weird and ugly as he was.

"When I finished my tirade, my mom said, 'You know, this boy you find ugly and weird is some mother's pride and joy. She waited for him to come home, just like I waited for you, hoping to hear he'd had a nice time at the dance. But when he came home, she saw his face, she knew someone hurt him, and it broke her heart. So the next time a boy asks you to dance, before you turn him down or make fun of him, just remember: Every boy is some mother's son.' "

Not only is every boy some mother’s son, but everyone we encounter is a child of God, even the ones who may get on our nerves or irritate us. It’s human nature to get annoyed, but next time it happens to you, take a moment to ask God to help you be kind and compassionate, patient and understanding. God knows we need help with these things, but by the act of regularly asking for it, we help keep our minds on the right side of the Golden Rule. And next time you’re tempted to say or think something ugly about someone else, ask yourself: “Is it kind, is it true, is it necessary?”

Visitors Expected?

2010-07-12T10:31:00.005-05:00

It’s pretty common to see church signs that say “visitors welcome.” At my last parish we had one of those “The Episcopal Church welcomes you.” Underneath the main part of the sign hung a smaller sign that said “visitors expected.” The problem was that, even though visitors in our small town were few and far between, we weren’t very well prepared for them.

I remember my initial foray into the Episcopal Church. I was in my early twenties.. One of my college friends told me that he had found a church he really liked. Mark was one of my roommates in the German House and every Sunday he pestered me to go with him. Finally, on the second Sunday of Advent in 1987, I looked up from the New York Times crossword puzzle, saw him come downstairs in his coat and tie, and decided that the time had come to go to church.

I have to admit that I was very intimidated on my first visit. The church we went to was seriously old-school Anglo-catholic. We didn’t have any incense that Sunday, but the rector wore a zucchetto (beanie), and the altar was against the wall. It was a beautiful church, but there was a lot to get used to. Eventually I started going to church on Wednesdays as well as Sundays. Easter came early that year, so I spent everyday of the last week of March in church, morning and evening.

Something interesting happened between that 2nd Sunday of Advent and the following Easter. Although I attended church there for months, not a soul spoke to me, aside from the rector. No one spoke to me until the reception after the Easter Vigil. That’s when a lady backed up and stepped on my foot, and then she had to speak to me. She and the lady with her ended up befriending me, and eventually were my confirmation sponsors. If Joan had not stepped on my foot, I probably wouldn’t be an Episcopalian, because God (and I do mean Him) only knows how much longer it would have taken for someone to notice that they had a visitor. It wasn’t that these folks were snobs or especially bashful, they were just wrapped up in their own affairs and in visiting with their friends.
Even though most churches, including St. Dunstan’s, has official ushers and often greeters too, greeting is something that we all need to be doing. My sense is that St. D’s is a friendly church, but since I’m the rector, I don’t have to wait anymore for someone to step on my foot before they’ll talk to me.

Studies show that most people take several weeks to decide to visit a church, and most of them decide within the first ten minutes whether they’ll return. We can also be pretty certain, that unless a visitor has spent time in a liturgical church, our liturgy can be confusing and intimidating. It’s wonderful when once it becomes familiar, but it comes with a big learning curve. It’s a little easier when a church (like ours) has it’s liturgy fully printed in the bulletin. But it still can be intimidating.

That leads me to suggest some ways that we can help visitors feel expected. Most of these ideas came to me because of my own awful experience. Because our hymnal contains both “’s-numbered” and regular hymns, it can be confusing. If you see someone standing near you who seems confused, find the right page for them, and hand them your hymnal. I used to do that all the time, and it was always appreciated. If someone comes and sits down next to you, make eye contact and smile. During the peace, greet them warmly.
Before or after the service, when there’s time for a longer greeting, if you don’t think you’ve ever seen them before, say something like “Hi, I’m Mary Ann. Have we met?” That way. if they are a long time member and go to the other service, you won’t be embarrassed. Be sure that someone gives them a gift bag or visitor’s pack. After church invite them to coffee hour. If they come to the service with children, offer to show them the nursery and Sunday School, and let them know about whatever books and materials are available for kids (St. D’s has a low table with books and coloring supplies in the back of the church). If you are in a hurry, introduce them to someone else who might be able to help. I used to make a point to invite strangers to coffee hour, chat with them for a while, and then introduce them to people with whom they had something in common. I realize that many Episcopalians are introverts, but again, it’s always acceptable to introduce them to someone more outgoing. Who knows, you may find yourself sponsoring somone for confirmation someday!

Gaudete? Really!?!

2009-12-23T23:15:00.001-06:00

It's Advent again. Advent began on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. In the sermon that day, I talked about how disorienting a transatlantic flight can be. You start out at home, fly 10-12 hours, and end up half-way around the world and seven hours ahead of the people you left behind. At least when flying across country, you can look down and see things that you imagine are familiar. In the day time you might see a patchwork of fields or a mountain range and think, "that's Iowa" or "that's Colorado," but when you fly over the ocean, there is no topography, no familiar terrain. And when you land, you have to keep reminding yourself that while you're eating lunch, the folks at home are just waking up.

It's interesting to watch how airline passengers deal with the time change. Some people change their watches as soon as they sit down. Others wait for take-off. The ones who are reluctant to deal with change wait until they land. And even some who try to change with every time zone.

The time change that is Advent is disorienting too. For centuries, the church has been saying "Wait," but every year, the marketplace begins celebrating earlier and earlier. On Halloween this year, I heard two local radio stations playing Christmas music round the clock - that adds up two months of Christmas music.

It's said that familiarity breeds contempt. I don't know that overexposure will lead to contempt for Christmas, but like overexposure to the elements, it can leave us numb and unfeeling. The main focii today seem to be spending and nostalgia. The marketplace wants us to spend more and more, and it's hoped that nostalgia will induce us to do so. Instead of worshipping the newborn king, we'll be worshipping our memory of that Red Ryder BB Gun or a sled named "Rosebud."

But those of us in liturgical churches find ourselves in the season of Advent, at least while we're inside the walls of our worship spaces. Advent is not so much as season of penitance as it is a season of solemn waiting and preparation. But John the Baptist doesn't always play by those rules. The last of the prophets, Johnnie B. shouts that we're all a brood of vipers. The irony is that this happens on Gaudete Sunday, the Sunday when we light the pink candle on the Advent wreath. Gaudete is Latin for rejoice. Meanwhile John hurls insults and threats. It's all a little disorienting.

The prophets that came before John were speaking to a disoriented people. The people of Israel were the people of the covenant. God promised to make them a great nation. But they kept wandering away from God. Renigging on the deal with God, over and over, Israel was eventually led away into captivity, into the disorientation of slavery. The people who had been asked to set their lives to Kairos, God's time, found themselves in the Babylonian time zone.

As our Eucharistic prayer says, again and again God sent the prophets to call us back. And eventually, when that didn't work, God sent his son. But even as we prepare for our holy rememberance of the breaking of God's kingdom into the world, we look to the future when that Kingdom will be fulfilled. Again, all a little disorienting.

Herbert O'Driscoll writes about this season of expectation:

Advent is a season when Christians prepare to recall something that happened long ago. But why go on recalling a memory? Because this particular memory is of something or someone who by entering past time changed the meaning of time and gave us a new way of thinking about the future. This memory on which Christian faith is founded (in this seaon the birth of Jesus Christ) creates for us the hope of a time when what we saw come true in him (ultimate love and the capacity to conquer death) is what we will see come true for the whole creation. That is the mystery and the hope, the dream if you will, which the whole season of Advent expresses. Its scriptures, its psalms, its hymns, its homilies or sermons are all trying to express at least of facet of this hope.

Ironically, what the world needs is not nostaligia but hope. In fact, maybe all this nostaligia is simply reflecting a yearning for a time when we did feel hope. For those of us who try to keep Advent, the running theme during the darkest days of the year, during the coldest months, is hope. Hope that tells us that, indeed, the Word was made flesh and dwellt among us, and dwells among us still.

Note: The second image is of Salisbury Cathedral during their Festival of Advent Lessons and Carols.

Even at the Grave

2009-11-12T17:00:00.022-06:00

I have had a lot of inquiries about funerals lately. We had the funeral of a long-time, much loved parishioner recently, and I'm sure that's what started everyone thinking about the topic. Maybe I imagined it, but I also sensed some surprise at what the funeral was like. I think our Episcopal funerals often take us by surprise, no matter how many we've been to before, because they are so unlike what we are conditioned to expect at a funeral.

In the Book of Common Prayer, we have instructions throughout that are printed in a small, italicized font. Called rubrics, because originally they were printed in red, they, like all of our prayerbook, give an indication of what we believe. Lex orandi, lex credendi - the law of prayer is the law of belief - holds true not just for the words we use in worship but for the instructions about how we worship.

In my home parish, before a funeral began, the priest would stand at the back of the church and read the rubrics on page 507:

The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we too, shall be raised.

The liturgy, therefore, is characterized by joy, in the certainty that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ

Jesus our Lord."

This joy, however, does not make human grief unchristian. The very love we have for each other in Christ brings deep sorrow when we are parted by death. Jesus himself wept at the grave of his friend. So, while we rejoice that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord, we sorrow in sympathy with those who mourn.

It wasn't until I went to seminary that I figured out that these words weren't actually part of the liturgy. But I know why he felt compelled to read them to the congregation. Those words express perfectly how we view death and why we conduct our funerals the way we do.

The comments I get from people following one of our funerals are always positive. I try not to take those comments personally, because I know the truth. The music we choose, the flowers we have, the words of the homilist, all these things contribute to the overall experience of the service, and those choices are important, but what really sets the tone for us, what really makes all the difference in the world, are the words of the Book of Common Prayer. It's really hard to mess up a funeral with the magnificent theological statement made by the liturgy.

What seperates this liturgy from others is the emphasis on Easter. Our hope, and the hope of all who die in the Lord, is the hope of the resurrection. That's the reason why we celebrate individual saints' days on the day of their death rather than on the day they were born. Our funeral day is also our Easter day, and when I read the words of the Burial Office, I try to read it the way I read the Easter liturgy. I read it like I believe it, because I do.

"All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!"

(note: if you would like to see the liturgy mentioned in this post, go to www.bcponline.org, and click on "pastoral offices" and then "Burial of the Dead, Rite Two")

Coming Home

2009-10-20T22:56:00.002-05:00

Some of us have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to come home to Christ. If you've been in the Church all of your life, or if you've been in it for a long time, it's sometimes hard to understand or remember just how much it means to come in from the cold. The absolute WORST nightmare I ever experienced was about being seperated from God. I have no idea how this train of thought got into my head, but one night when I was in college, living in the German House, I woke up screaming bloody-murder. In my dream, I was lying in bed, and my room was dark, but I could see everything in the room from the light coming in from the street. I looked up at the ceiling, and a large net was falling slowly over the bed. Somehow I understood that as soon as the net touched my bed, I would cease to exist in the mind of God, utterly and completely. Before the net hit me, I woke up screaming, and my housemates came running. I was so upset that they thought someone had tried to break into my room through the window. A couple of minutes passed before I was able to calm down enough to realize that I'd been dreaming.

Of course I had things backwards, we always exist in the mind of God, but allowing him to be present to us is a choice. How much we acknowledge God's presence is a choice as well. But not everyone realizes that they have a choice to know God, or if they do, they may have stumbling blocks that keep them from making that choice. Sadly, most people who have not chosen God have no idea just how cold it is on the outside. It's not until they come in from the cold that they realize what they've been missing all along.

So I wonder, if we came to church one Sunday on a cold winter's day, and found someone sitting outside, underdressed and shivering, would we not invite them in to sit by the fire (yes St. D's has a fireplace) and give them something warm to drink? When they warmed up, would we not invite them to come to Communion? Would we not try to find them a coat to wear when they went back outside? I'm sure we would, that's what people do at St. D's.

If we aren't inviting the people who don't know God, or who have been hurt by religion, inside to join us, aren't we just as guilty of neglect as we would be if we left that shivering person outside? The number of unchurched and post-churched people around us is growing exponentially. We may feel tempted not to worry about it because worrying about it feels like we are passing judgement on someone's salvation, but that's a red herring. The work of salvation is up to God. We can rest in that one. But as St. Teresa said, we are Christ's body, his hands and feet and eyes and ears here on earth. We are the ones who are called to bring others to him, to bring them in from the cold.