Monday, September 14, 2015
In memory of my father; 5 years later
Five
years ago today, on the Feast of the Holy Cross, my father died. Here is a
photo of him in 2002 doing what he loved most—metal detecting. He is triumphantly
holding an 1892 silver dollar he had just found. I sure do miss him, and is
absence in my life is an ache that just does not seem to end. Here also is a
poem from my book, That Word (2014), which hopefully says in a better way
anything I could say otherwise:
Commendation
Take
from him
whatever
stains
even
Communion
and
devotion
can’t
undo.
And
let him
rise
up—
if
not today
one
day soon—
from
the ashes
we
placed
so
carefully into
the
dark recess
of
the earth
and
left there
where
the rain’s soaking
and
the snow’s run-off
and
the heat of high noon
cannot
reach him
anymore.
Let
him rise up
from
here
more
beautiful
than
he is
in
those dreams
from
which I myself
rise
and stumble
toward
a
slightly
overcast
dawn.
From That Word
Copyright © 2014
published by North Star Press
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Dedication Sunday
1 Peter 2.1-5,
+ Seven
years ago tomorrow—September 14, 2008—I sat down with the congregation of St.
Stephen’s to be interviewed to be their new Priest-in-Charge. On that Sunday,
for that congregational meeting, we had 25 people in church, which was just
above the Average Sunday Attendance of 24. Our church membership on that Sunday
in 2008 was 55 members. We actually have
well over the total membership number then this morning here in church.
At that meeting, I sat down to
answer questions about what I would do as Priest-in-Charge of St. Stephen’s. I
remember one of the questions I was asked was: “Do you call before you make a
visit or do you just show up?”
I said, “I always call and make an
appointment first.”
Which seemed to be the right answer.
At the end of the meeting, I then
asked the congregation a question. I asked, “If you agree to have me, what do
you want as a congregation? What are your goals?”
There was some very serious thought before
someone offered, “We want to grow.” And someone else added, “We want families.”
And someone else, “And children.”
And I said, “We all can do those
things together.”
Well, here we are, almost exactly
seven years later. Today is of course Dedication Sunday—this Sunday in which we
celebrate and remind ourselves who we are and where we’ve been. It’s also a
kind of a State of the Union today. It important to look at where we are right
now, at this time.
So, where are we, on this Dedication
Sunday in 2015? Well, in comparison to where we were seven years, we look at
the numbers: Our membership, as of today, with our 19 new members, two earlier new
members and a few people that have
172
(we were 153 last year)
And that was even with the loss of
four long-time members this year to death, as well as a few people who have been
added to the inactive list. Those we
lost to death this year were:
Rick Holbrook
Sharon Brekke
Pat Butler
and Georgia Patneaude
Those deaths were hard on all of
us. Coming as they did in rapid
succession—we lost both Sharon and Pat in one day—there was a moment of maybe
slight despair. The fact is, we are going
to lose parishioners to death, or to inactivity, or they will move away, or
whatever. But that is what being a
congregation means. Of course, numbers are
numbers. We can delight and rejoice in those numbers. We can proudly hold those numbers and gauge
where we are with those numbers.
But ultimately numbers and numbers.
Numbers change. Numbers are faceless and person-less ultimately. What matters
here is much more than numbers.
What matters here is what we do and
how we do it and why we do it. What matters here is what are we doing to make
this world better, to making the Kingdom of God more and more of a reality in
this world. It’s important for us on
this Dedication Sunday to be reminded of those things that make us a bit
different than other congregations. I
don’t mean that in a smug, self-congratulatory way. Celebrating our growth and all the things God
has granted to us does not allow us to be arrogant or full of ourselves. It is
a time to be humble and to humbly thank God for these many, wonderful
things. And it is important to examine ourselves in a
humble way, a way in which we all find ourselves grateful to God and to each
other for bringing us here, to this place, in this time and in this wonderful,
holy moment.
As followers
of Jesus, we have found something in this congregation that we haven’t
necessarily found elsewhere—at least in this particular way. For us, who call ourselves members of St.
Stephen’s, we know that something unique and wonderful is happening here and has
been happening for some time—fifty-nine years, in fact. And all we can do in the face of that
happening is give thank God and to continue to do what we are called to do as
followers of Jesus. And we do those things well.
For example, our radical hospitality
to those who come to us. Our amazing
sense of welcoming all people as beloved and accepted children of God within
this congregation—no matter who they are or what they are. Our commitment to service beyond these walls. Our commitment to the sacraments and to the
Word. Our strong sense that our
collective lives as followers of Jesus are centered on the celebration each
week of the Holy Eucharist and the hearing of the Word of God in scripture.
These are all things that make us
who we are as a congregation here at St. Stephen’s. And they are things that, together, are,
sadly, rare in many churches. This is
why people are finding us. This is why
people are seeking us out.
The Holy Spirit dwells here. I have
heard so many people who come in those doors say to me, “Yes, we feel it! We
feel that Spirit dwelling here.” That Spirit is here, permeating these pews,
these walls, but most of all, permeating us. That Spirit is here dwelling
within us.
As we all know—as we all strive and
continue to work to make the Kingdom of God a reality in our midst—it is not
easy to do anything we have done together as a congregation. It has
not been easy to get to this point in our collective lives here at St.
Stephen’s. There have been set-backs. There
have been trip-ups. There have been frustrations. But, that’s all part of the journey.
We, as followers of Jesus and more
specifically, as members of St. Stephen’s, are called here to be, in the words
of St. Peter from our epistle this morning, “living stones.” We are called to
be living stones—living stones that can be built into a true spiritual home, a
royal priesthood of not just believers but do-ers. We are called here at St. Stephen’s to
proclaim all that God has done for us here and in our lives. We, as living stones, are called to be building
up a new church. We are, by our very
existence, showing that something is about to change. The Church—capital C—the larger Church—is
changing.
That Church that was a close-minded
ivory tower of repressive views regarding such issues as misogyny and
homophobia and special privilege, is dying rapidly. And we all know it. We are all sensing it. God is letting us know that a Church built on
anything other than love and acceptance is not the Church of Christ.
Essentially that dying Church turned
away from the Gospel of Jesus. That
Church turned away from Jesus, who commanded his followers to love and love
radically and to accept and accept radically.
We are the prophets to the larger
Church. We are the ones who are saying,
THIS is the future of the Church. We are
the living stones building up that new Church.
Royce today in baptism is being
commissioned and called to be a living stone in the Church. All of us, by our
baptisms, were and are commissioned to do the same thing. We are called to be the Church—a Church in
which love and acceptance prevail. This
is the Church in which Jesus’ message of love and acceptance is held up and
lived out. This is the Church that is
striving pave the way for that Kingdom of God in which radical love and full-acceptance
reigns, to break through into our midst
It is not
easy to do. It is daunting. And it is frightening at times.
But those words of St. Peter are
ringing in our ears. You are God’s people. You are receiving mercy. And we are
turn are sharing that mercy with others.
So, let us be those living stones
building up a new and powerful church. Let us,
on this Dedication Sunday, do what we have been doing for 59 years. Let us embody that Jesus whom we follow. Let us continue to spread that Gospel of all-encompassing,
all-embracing love and acceptance in all we do here.
The future
for us is bright. It is unlimited. But we have to make it a reality. We have to strive forward. We have to labor on. We have to break down those barriers of
hatred, and fear and isolation and marginalization so that Christ’s Kingdom can
bloom in our midst.
We see it
happening, here at St. Stephen’s. We see
what the future of St. Stephen’s and the larger Church really is. We see it when
we live into that calling of Jesus.
So, let us be living, breathing,
strong stones. That is the future. And,
let me tell you, it is glorious.
Now, as we celebrate and move
forward into that future, I’d like to invite Royce and his family to come forward…
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Sunday, September 6, 2015
15 Pentecost
September 6, 2015
Mark 7.24-37
+ A week
from tomorrow, I will be commemorating a hard anniversary. It will be the fifth
anniversary of my father’s death. Five years. It’s been a long, hard five
years. Many of you have traveled with me on this journey. I thank you for your patience.
Now, some of you might remember my
father. And the last thing anyone who knew my father would have guessed about
him was that he could get angry at times. Not angry in the conventional sense. Not
anger like I preached about last week when I talked about how angry I get when
I drive a car. He got angry in the way that I called last week “righteous
anger.” He would get angry at things he saw as wrong.
One of the first times I ever heard
of this anger in my father was one time, many times years ago, when I was
headed to the South. My father was not a fan of “The South.” He lived there at
a time when things were a bit crazy there. In the early 1960s, when my father
was working for the Air Force, he was stationed in two places in the South—Tampa,
Florida and Greensboro, North Carolina.
I could never understand why. I LOVE
Tampa. And every visit I’ve ever made it to North Carolina has been wonderful. But
of course I wasn’t visiting them in 1961 either.
When I pressed my father about why he
disliked these places, he told me of the prejudice and racism he saw firsthand
those places. He shared the story of how, as he and a group of friends were walking
along the street, in Greensboro, one of the guys in his group made a pair of
black men walk in the gutter while they passed. My father was shocked by this. But
he said, “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. I had never seen
anything like that in my life and didn’t know how to react.” But it stuck with
him and he soon found himself resenting the “friend” who did it and refused to
do anything with him again.
Also, while in Greensboro, he saw
the lunch counter sit-ins, and saw white people pouring sugar on the
protesters’ heads. Again, he said, he
didn’t know what to do.
In Tampa, he and a group of friends
attempted to enter a bar. Because one of
his friends was Native American, the bar tender refused to serve him and told
him to get out. This time, my father got so angry, he raised a huff, and was
himself thrown out of the bar.
He was then stationed in Texas and as
he was driving from Tampa to Dallas, he passed through New Orleans, where he
witnessed another lunch counter sit-in with unpleasant results.
To his dying day, those incidents
haunted my father. When he would see those events reenacted in movies (I
remember going to see Mississippi Burning
with him), he would tense up and become very uncomfortable.
And he would to say: “I should’ve done
more.”
This past week, the Presiding Bishop
of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, issued a letter. In it she called
on Episcopal congregations to participate in “Confession, Repentance, and
Commitment to end Racism Sunday.” Which is today.
Now I think such a Sunday is an important
Sunday. And I’m disappointed that we were not given more time prepare and build
up such an important Sunday. But the
intention is right.
As followers of Jesus, this is what
we should be doing in response to the racism we find in the world. Hopefully,
one day, we will not feel like my father. Hopefully we not come to a point in
our lives when we realize we should’ve done more to stop racism. And yes, it is
noble and wonderful to have a Sunday wherein we all get together, admit to the
terrible things people have done and to promise to end it.
But…ultimate we must actually be doing
something in our own lives. We ourselves, as individuals, must be actively
trying to make changes. And unless we do, one such Sunday on occasion is not
going to ultimately do much. This is not
an issue we do on one Sunday of the year. This is not something we only do when
there is a tragedy like the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
If it is, then we’re really not doing much. If that is all we’re doing, then,
let me tell you, there will be a day when it will happen again and we will say
to ourselves and our loved ones, “I should’ve done more.”
For us, as followers of Jesus, as
people who are striving to live out the promises of the Baptismal Covenant, we
don’t get to make that excuse. For us, we ARE doing this—all the time.
For us, we are like the deaf man in
our gospel reading for today. Racism and our response to it is like being that
deaf man. The easier thing to do is to
allow our ears to be plugged when we experience such inequality in our lives.
It is so much easier to walk around not really
hearing. Because when we really hear, we
must look around and see. When we really
hear, we must react. When we really
hear, we can no longer be complacent. When
we no longer have a speech impediment, we must actually speak out.
Well, Jesus is touching our ears and our tongues. As followers of Jesus, we don’t get to be deaf and
have speech impediments when it comes to issues like racism. We, as followers of Jesus, as people who strive
to live out the Baptismal Covenant, we can’t be like deaf people, but we must
be like people whose hearing has been restored.
The Presiding Bishop, in her letter,
cites a resolution made at our General Convention:
“The
Church understands and affirms that the call to pray and act for racial
reconciliation is integral to our witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to
our living into the demands of our Baptismal Covenant,”
It IS integral to our witness of the
Gospel and our living out of the Baptismal Covenant. Our Baptismal Covenant,
which you can find beginning on Page 304 of the Book of Common Prayer, is clear
and emphatic about issues like this. On
page 305, the last question asked of us is,
“Will you strive for justice and peace
among all people, and respect the worth and dignity of every human person.”
To which we respond, “I will, with
God’s help.”
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people? Justice.
Righteousness. Just treatment. Among all people. Will you respect the worth and dignity of
every human person? The WORTH and DIGNITY of every one. Not just the nice ones.
Not just the ones who are easy to like.
But everyone. The person who bugs
us. The person who irritates us. The person who we innately just don’t like. Your
priest….
Everyone.
And we respond with, “I will, with
God’s help.”
We can’t do these things without God’s
help. But with God’s help, we are able. That
means that we must strive to do these things ALL the time, not just on one
particular Sunday of the year. That means living it out in our daily lives, in
our minute to minute, hour to hour lives. That means we don’t just get to have
our hearing and speech restored to us on one occasion, but then we get to go back
and be deaf and speechless the rest of the time. It means respecting the worth
and dignity of all people, all the time. It means actively working and
proclaiming and speaking out for peace and justice for all people all the time.
And for us who do this, we know what
it feels like when we fail to do this, or when we see others blatantly deny
people of justice and dignity.
When we do, we ask forgiveness of
our God, of those we have wronged and we speak out when we see others doing it.
This is a daily, moment to moment issue
in our lives as Christians.
So, let us allow Jesus to touch our
ears so we can truly hear. Let us allow Jesus to touch our tongue so we can
truly speak out. Let us be a follower of Jesus with all our senses of justice
and peace. Let us work hard, not just here in church, not just now on this particular Sunday, but all the time, for the worth and dignity of all human beings. When we
do that, that is truly when the Kingdom of God comes in our midst and is uniquely present.
Let us pray.
Grant, O God, that
your holy and life-giving Spirit may so move every human heart and especially
the hearts of the people of this land, that barriers which divide us may
crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our divisions being
healed, we may live in justice and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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