Sometimes the simplest toys are best

Who knew that cat food cans are great building blocks? 
J was about a year in this pic and S was 4 1/2.

Job satisfaction

I started out thinking that this post would be called "I love my job," but that is not always true.

Heck, for most of us, jobs are ways we make money to support families, friends, and ourselves.  If we are really lucky, however, there is some point at which we can say that the "love my job" (or even "enjoy my job") moments outweigh the "hate my job" moments. 

But for myself, I am surprised to realize, in reflection, how those moments have morphed and changed over the years.  The same repetitive tasks that I hated at one point in my job became refuges of peace and quiet and meditation when my parents became ill and we careened from one health care crisis to another, as I say.  Honestly, the whole job became a refuge, because although it was more often than not wild and crazy, it was a predictable wild and crazy.  A controllable wild and crazy.  And my life caring for parents was a never-ending roller-coaster of unpredictable wild and crazy.

Today the very thing which I thought I'd love about being a priest, some flexibility, is often a problem. My calendar is a wreck, and I despair at the time it takes to manage it!  But being able to be flexible enough to sit and listen to the elder who drops in and, I suspect, has no one to listen to him, is a gift.  Yes, it's all in the perspective. 

I think it is a gift to have a moment to think about the jobs and vocations we do have:  there is usually something positive there. Making a difference, making a good product, making a good living are all important positives.

And if there is nothing positive AT ALL, maybe it's time to talk to God about next steps. 

Because we've always done it that way!

I remarked in the sermon yesterday that the famous last words of the church* are

BECAUSE WE'VE ALWAYS DONE IT THAT WAY!

or variously, BECAUSE WE'VE NEVER DONE IT THAT WAY!

An astute member of the congregation reminded me of this story:

A man watched his wife prepare the country ham for their Christmas dinner.  First she cut off one end, and then the other, and then placed the large center in the pan.  The two ends were included, wedged in, just no longer attached.

He asked her why she did that.  "Because my mother did it that way!"

A call to mother ensued.  "Why did you do that?" "Because my mother always did it that way!"

Finally, the call the Grandma.  "Why did you cut the ends off the ham?"
"I don't know about the others, but my pan was too small to hold the whole ham."

Let those who have ears listen.  


*And I mean any church, but of course, if the shoe fits, Episcopalians, wear it!

The sermon for September 2: the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

 I have to issue a disclaimer here.  I am occasionally hard on Pharisees, and often they deserve it. 

 But if we examine their actions, often we find them no worse than ours.  They observed distinctive practices, such as kosher food and circumcision, that helped the nation of Israel to maintain its identity as God's people in a world that tempted them to worship their neighbors' gods. These traditions, which come into question in this text, grew out of a need to maintain their religious identity. 

 The Jewish law, called the Torah, while quite detailed, leaves room for interpretation in many situations. The Pharisees, out of a desire to obey God, established rules to clarify the law in those situations.  As time passed, these rules hardened into a surrogate law that Jewish leaders regarded as equal to scripture. 

 They lost sight of the line between God's law and their opinions.

 Both before and after this particular lesson, Jesus has been about the countryside doing good works and miracles. But the Pharisees instead focus on nitpicking about the ways of the law.

 Ritual cleanliness has nothing to do with hygiene. Pharisaic handwashing involved the use of only a small amount of water poured over the hands to wash away ritual defilement, such as that caused by touching an unclean object or person (i.e., a bodily discharge such as blood, a dead body, a leper, or a Gentile).  While most of us would want to wash our hands for hygienic purposes in many of these circumstances, for example, if we came in contact with blood, the manner in which ritual handwashing was done offers no hygienic benefit. 

 Have you ever heard the story of the cat in the temple? 

 Somewhere long ago, in the East, a wise man sat in the front of the village temple, teaching his apprentices and the local villagers the tenets of their religion. But prowling around the grounds of the temple was a yowling tomcat, repeatedly drowning out his words.  Finally, the holy teacher asked his disciples to tie up the cat to one of the pillars at the back of the temple. They did so, and while the cat was still noisy, the disruption was in the background and he was able to go on teaching. 

 And three hundred years later, in an honored tradition in the same village temple, students of that religion and followers of that teacher still tied cats to the temple pillars.  And no one knew why.

 "The tendency that Jesus criticizes in the Pharisees and scribes appears in most religious groups. People come to hold on to merely human traditions as if they were divinely revealed." [1]   

 The Pharisees knew why they did what they did – they had rules that said they did these things to honor God and to keep their religion pure – but they had lost the sense of what God had called the people to do.  Instead they substituted their own rules and opinions.  

 That’s where Corban comes from. Under the law as interpreted in Jesus’ time, the religious scholars had made a determination that in the interests of charity, a person could dedicate a portion of all their possessions to God.  And what you gave “to God” could be what you would otherwise use for supporting your parents in old age. 

 “Gee, Mom and Dad, you know the commandment about honoring you?  Well, I have!  I have given all your support to God!  Isn’t that wonderful!? 

 Huh?  How am I going to support you in your old age?  Well, I don’t know.  It’s not my problem anymore.”

 Corban was a legal dodge, a legal commandment dodge, you might say.  A legal way to avoid the obligation laid on you by the Commandments. 

 It was not only legal, but encouraged by the religious authorities,because of course, they were the ones who benefited from this legal commandment dodge.  Anything dedicated to God ended up in their hands.

 The problem is that both concepts – honoring God and honoring parents – have been honored in the breach, you might say. 

 The Pharisees had so corrupted valid laws from God as to make them unrecognizable.  Corban was a scandal in Jesus’ time because elderly people were left destitute by their children.

 Jesus tells us the story of the Good Samaritan to make a similar point.  The priest and the Levite passed by the injured man because he was bleeding and therefore unclean.  And they would not have enough time to ritually purify themselves before worship.  So, instead of offering comfort to someone injured, they walked right on by.

 And the law that God had given them,to honor and respect other human beings as fellow creatures of God,fell victim to ritual purity requirements. 

 That was what concerned Jesus.  And it should concern us.

 Ritual actions or their lack, do not make one pure and they don’t make one impure.  Eating with Gentiles did not and does not affect your status with God, nor did whether or not you had handled a dead body recently.  And certainly, whether or not you washed before you ate was not as critical as the Pharisees would have you believe. 

 In an interesting turn, Jesus is doing exactly what he accuses the Pharisees of doing:  changing the rules. But Jesus has changed the rules to refocus them:  your religious actions, what we call piety, are not what is important. What is important is your behavior in light of God’s commandments.  Your uncleanness comes from your own heart, not from any external source.   

 The Pharisees, rather than look for some teaching that will guide them to live a better life,

focus on a pious action of human origin. 

 Instead of looking to the words of hope and encouragement that Jesus has been offering to those who hear him,

they are looking for ways to tie cats to temple pillars. 

 I opened with a disclaimer because this is where the Pharisees start to seem quite a bit like us.

 If you asked one of them why they washed their hands that way, I bet they’d reply, “Because we have always done it that way.”

 Okay, Episcopalians, are those some words that sound familiar?

 Because we have always done it that way? 

 Because we have done it that way without thinking about it? 

 We need to be very careful that we know that what we are doing serves to honor God’s commandments – and not our own preferences.

 That’s not always easy to know.  And sometimes the questions need to be asked over and over again.

 When your elderly mother is hooked up to machines that keep her alive and you know that she would not want that, the relationship between commandment to honor human life and the commandment to honor one’s parents can seem pretty hard to figure out sometimes. 

 When a child of eleven is raped by a family friend and ends up pregnant, where does the command to not kill stand between her baby and her own body that is not physically mature enough to bear a child?

 And with apologies to Augustine of Hippo and St. Thomas Aquinas,in a religion with a commandment to not kill, and a savior who tells us to turn the other cheek, is there really such a thing as a ‘just war?’

 This Gospel is not intended to render us helpless, but to make us see a true problem, the challenge before us as people of faith. 

 Because it is not always easy to know the way that God would have us live out the commandments. 

 Despite what some would have you believe,following Christ is not always slam-dunk easy.

 What we do require, at the center of our being, is for God to create a new heart in us.  And this needs to happen, not one time only, but continually.

 Over and over again the transforming grace of Christ must find a home in us, help us understand those difficult places where justice and mercy and commandments all seem to collide. 

 Along with the Pharisees, we have to be set free from our own opinions and speculations, and become susceptible to the transforming work of God at work around and within us. 

 I think there are two basic requirements to knowing what it is that God is asking of us, each and every day.

 The second (yes, the second!) is to discernment in community. 

 Together, we can look at the tough questions of where justice and mercy lie, and struggle with them. And the struggle to find where the lines of justice and mercy lie is much easier when we do it as a community of faith.  We will each bring our various gifts to the table and together seek God’s will for us, both as a community and individually.

 But the first and most important requirement is something that we may not think about often enough. We must be emptied of ourselves. 

 We must let go of human-made rules to be enabled to hear God’s word to us.

 We must let go of everything except Jesus Christ.

 Sometimes our insight into Scripture can be enhanced by hearing a story from another source.  Or another story. 

 There once was a teacher of Zen Buddhism in Japan, named Nan-in.  It seems that one day, Nan-in received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.  Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.  The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. "It is overflowing!  No more will go in!"

 "Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations.  How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"  [2]

 How can Jesus Christ show us the Way, the Truth and the Life unless we first empty our own cup?  

 When our hearts and minds are free of rules about handwashing AND emptied of ourselves,

 then we will be able to hear and know the words of justice and mercy which Christ speaks to us.

---

[1] Williamson, Lamar Jr., Interpretation:  Mark.  133.

[2] The story of Nan-in comes from by Sermonwriter Dick Donovan, in his proper 17B email of 8/17/06. 

Taking a risk - to find out what's on the other side

Coming home from Williamsburg on Thursday, I saw the most amazing thing on US58.  Right there on the dashed line between the two west-bound lanes was a turtle, head stuck WAAAAY out, crossing the road.  All I could do was pray that he'd both make it across the rest of the west-bound lanes, and then across the median and across the east-bound lanes as well.

I couldn't help but be amazed.  I almost stopped and moved him, but then sometimes those turtles don't like being moved.  I also realized that I was as much at risk of an 18-wheeler as he was.

But I was thinking about that turtle - all the way home and often since.  I know a turtle doesn't have courage, as you and I do, but what does it take for a creature which prefers woods to be called to move across a hot patch of asphalt, with no idea of what might be next?

What I kept thinking was that sometimes we have to be the turtles, and take that first step in faith and hope, knowing that there are cars, trucks, and the occasional predator bird just waiting for us.

But what's also waiting for us is what is on the other side of the road - and we'll never know what it might be unless we take the first step.

The sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 6, 2012

The Collect:  Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know your Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lessons:  Acts 8:26-40    Psalm 22:24-30 Page 611, BCP   1 John 4:7-21      John 15:1-8

The usual caveat:  I format my sermons for preaching, and sometimes the written version is a little off for reading.  I also write sermons only as a guide, so I deviate and adlib quite frequently.  But this is what I wrote.

Let’s begin this sermon with a test.   Actually, a survey.  Raise your hand if you have used the word abide in your conversation during the last week.   Anybody?  How about the last month?  The last year?

I would bet that most of us have never used the word abide in regular conversation at any time in our lives.  It’s not only a word that isn’t commonly used, it’s a word with a meaning that’s hard to put our fingers on.

The dictionary says, remain, continue, stay, to have one’s abode or dwelling with.  When it’s used without an object, it can mean to tolerate, endure, or await.

And I would suggest that abide means all of those things for us.   Abide is like a stew word.   Composed of various ingredients that don’t necessarily sound so appealing when taken separately, but which meld together to form something delicious, and nourishing.

And there’s often some flavor you can’t quite put a name to.

What’s the point of our abiding with Jesus? What does it mean for us to remain with or continue with him?

It all comes down to fruit.

I had two professors in seminary who were quite different.  One was very pastoral, and his pastor’s heart meant that whenever the seminary was without a dean, the university made him the acting dean.  The only reason he didn’t become dean was that he was a Lutheran in an Episcopal seminary!  Don Armentrout is a nationally known historian of the Episcopal church, and I know that those he taught learned much more than history from him. 

The second professor is an ethicist, a former Roman Catholic priest, trained in very traditional models of philosophy and ethics.   And if ever there was someone to push your buttons, he’s it.  Not because he likes to push buttons, but because he knows that in examining how your buttons are pushed, you learn a great deal about yourself and your beliefs, the ones you acknowledge and the ones you know nothing about.  A good friend of mine who had him years before I did said that being in Joe Monti’s classes was like being at the receiving end of a fire hose.

Two very different men, both just recently retired, and honestly, two very different kinds of fruit.

Don’s pastoral nature challenged us all obliquely.  Joe’s confrontational ways challenged us head on.  Over the course of 3 years, both took engineers and doctors and lawyers and salesmen and therapists and artists and Army non-coms and Air Force pilots  and helped us become priests and pastors for the church.

Folks like Don and Joe are part of the process of pruning us, I think.

You know the folks in your life who have challenged you.  Challenged your beliefs. Challenged your lifestyle.  Challenged you to define who you are and who you are not.

And finally, challenged you to be more than you are, to become more.  

Unfortunately, when we think of pruning, we think of wholesale whacking off of branches and limbs.  Sometimes it is that, but more often pruning is a very selective kind of process.  Find the point where the dead wood means the live wood and cut there, not too much into the live wood.  Consider the shape of the plant and what it can support, and gently trim off the parts that can no longer be maintained, or that won’t contribute to future growth.

I am reminded of the true nature of pruning each spring when somebody whacks another crepe myrtle.  You see them all around here, the crepe myrtles which have become crepe murders.  Whacked again. Someone has taken off huge branches, actually stems, of 2-3 inches in diameter.   And the forms that result this time of year have knobbly joints where the new growth emerges.  They are functional as crepe myrtles, but certainly not beautiful.  To borrow a phrase, they are not all that they could be. 

And then I recall watching Charlie Easton prune our crepe myrtles here at St. Timothy’s, several years ago.  Not a pair of scissors or loppers in his hands, he approached them individually and using just his fingers, carefully examined each branch, and gently took it back to new growth, growth that could support those sweeping branches of beautiful stems.  Charlie has the hands of someone who works outside and loves it.  He also has the hands of a nurturer, who brings new health and growth to those around him.  His crepe myrtles are beautiful things.

When Jesus speaks of abiding in him, one of the pieces of that is knowing that we will be pruned.  Not that we might be, but that we will be.  But our formation as the followers of Christ is much more subtle than going after the plant with our shears and doing it in one instant.

Instead our formation, our shaping in Christ, is gentle.   It’s not done obliquely, just head on.  But if we allow ourselves, we are gently reshaped in the way we should go.  Scraggly bushes and vines are subtly reformed in the image of Christ.  Not a one-time event, or a sudden event, but rather a life-long process.

John Wesley called it the process of sanctification.   And that’s what abiding really is.  Not at all what the dictionary says.  Allowing ourselves to be reshaped constantly.  To be challenged in the shape we are in and to be re-formed.   And to know that the pruning that will reshape us comes from many sources, not just from the Lord.

To be re-formed, day by day, month-by-month.  Abiding in the true vine.  And the truth of it, I believe, is that that kind of re-formation and re-shaping takes place only in Christ.  In the body of Christ, in the Body we call the church.

Jesus speaks these words about being the vine to his disciples as part of what is known as the Farewell Discourses.  In a little bit of time travel, here in our time, after Easter, we go back to the days before his crucifixion.  To the time when he prepared his disciples to be without his physical presence among them.

This is how you will survive, he says to them.  This is how you will not only survive, but thrive.  You will not be a lone branch on a vine, or a tree. You will not live your life alone or without companionship. You will live your life in me, and in the company of others who believe in me.

And only then will you truly live your life.   Only then will you live life to bear fruit. Fruit that will forever and truly change the world.  Abide in me.

it's time

We're working on a new website at St. Timothy's and one of the things that has to happen is there to be a link to my sermons.  I've hesitated to publish them or send them out because 1) I format them in a way that works for my preaching style, but doesn't work well for reading and therefore requires reformatting and 2) the whole process of publishing them seems somehow, well, like putting myself forward.  I have no issue at all with folks taking them on Sundays, and indeed, invite folks to do so.  And I'm not ashamed or embarrassed about what I write or say.  


It's just that I was raised in a household where we were expected to not call attention to ourselves.  And this whole idea of publishing for the whole world to see (although I know that maybe, what 3 people will see this?) takes me back to that place.  


I guess I have to get it over, don't I?  And that's what we all have to do.  Get over how we were raised, and get over ourselves.  After all, it's to the glory of God.  That is what we do.