In the information age, we spend vast amounts of time and energy getting computers to connect.
But my question is: what does it take to get people to connect?
In one of her 'vampire chronicles,' Anne Rice called this a culture of "frenzied isolation." That's a phrase so apt, and so delicious, that I've adopted it as my own. And every time I say it out loud in a group of people, heads nod. We are busy. Not just busy, crazy-busy. Too busy to take time for our families, much less our neighbors.
So what does it mean that I've now joined a ring called "Blogging Episcopalians?" There are over 200 members. I spent an hour or so looking over the list of sites before joining the ring, and the vast majority are like the vast majority of Episcopalians I know: thoughtful. Deep. Insightful. Faithful. You could spend a whole day reading blogs on that list, and it would be a day well spent.
But am I adding to the problem? One more voice in the cacophany?
My current solution is, as with many things in the faith: to hold it in tension and let it stay there. My need to be in real, physical community, in tension with the reality that many of us today perceive a significant part of our lives through the lens of membership in a community that is present in all places and none.
10 March, 2006
09 March, 2006
would you like to dance?
Based on these Bible readings.
I want to talk to you for a minute about dancing.
My wife and I have recently started learning a new dance. Lindy hop, specifically. A relatively new couple in the parish, Jeff and Aimee, teach dance, and throw regular Friday-night dances in a dance studio just south of here. They were the ones who did the recent workshop here in the parish hall. And if we ask them nicely, we might get them to do it again once in a while. Now, for those of you who don’t know us that well yet, my wife and I love to dance. She’s been my dance partner longer than she’s been my wife, and we spent a significant amount of our courtship on one dance floor or another.
Learning a new dance is an interesting thing. Coming to it as dancers who know other steps, there are some similarities. Some are basic things like rhythm, counting, dancing with a partner, one of you leading and the other following. Some of the patterns are similar, too. There are underarm turns, hand changes, spins, that sort of thing.
But there are also some differences. The basic step, the thing you learn first, is eight beats of music instead of six. The style, the feel, is subtly different from other kinds of swing, and dramatically different from classical ballroom dancing. There are things in our muscle memory that have to be unlearned. Things that once worked now don’t.
Thankfully, we’re at the delightful stage of laughing with each other over little things like blown leads and my mysterious inability to count to eight. We have a community of regular dancers helping and encouraging us, and all of us are learning together, at our own speeds.
* * * * * * * * * *
Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, God spoke these words, in the mouth of the prophet Isaiah:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
These were words first spoken, or written, we don’t really know which came first, after the nation of Israel had been defeated by the Babylonians, and many of the people had been carried off into exile in Babylon. And there, in exile, they asked themselves, has God abandoned us? How can we be God’s people if we can’t go to the temple? How can we be God’s people if we don’t have a king? How can we be God’s people if we’re not our own nation?
And God said: fear not. Don’t worry about the former things. I am still with you. I am still your God. You are still my people. See, I am doing a new thing. Are you paying attention? Can you see it? I will show you a new way to live.
Five hundred years later, as we hear in today’s reading from the gospel of Mark, four people carry a paralyzed man on a mat, bringing him to Jesus, and lay him at Jesus’ feet. The crowd watches, and waits. Everyone knows what they want. Everyone knows what, presumably, the paralyzed man wants. He wants to be healed. He wants to walk. Everyone waits, holding their breath, for Jesus to heal him.
But that’s not what Jesus does. He says, instead, your sins are forgiven.
There are scribes in the crowd, teachers of the law. Keepers of the tradition. Interpreters of the scripture. And they say “hey, you can’t do that!”
Now, I think most Episcopalians would make good scribes. (even better Pharisees) And that’s not meant to be derogatory. We’re keepers of tradition. We’re teachers. We know how things should be done. We worship using an ancient liturgy, using a pattern that has not significantly changed for centuries. We respect the wisdom of the spiritual masters of faith. We even know how we like our music, don’t we?
So the scribes question Jesus. Hey, you can’t do that! No one can forgive sins but God. That’s not your place. But Jesus responds: God is doing a new thing. Are you paying attention? Can you see it?
Oh, and you? Get up. You’re free.
Walk.
Dance.
Live.
* * * * * * * * * *
One of the holy places in the world for me is a little church on the top of a hill in the middle of San Francisco. It’s called St. Gregory of Nyssa, and if you’ve heard of them it’s because they’ve become famous for their style of worship. They are, in some ways, a quintessential urban San Francisco congregation. They serve really good coffee, they have an active homeless ministry, they’re active in all the social justice concerns of the city. And they do some odd things. The architecture is odd, there are painted icons all over the ceiling, they have two rectors. I used to call them “St. Gregory the weirdo.”
We lived out there a few years ago, and some friends came to visit over Easter weekend. And they convinced us, well, no, dragged us kicking and screaming is a better phrase, to go to the great vigil at St. Gregory’s. You have to realize that the great vigil of Easter is my favorite day of the year. And I didn’t give it up lightly, but I really loved the people who were visiting, and so we went.
Now you might think, after I’d grown up attending Baptist and Methodist and Lutheran and Mormon and jump-for Jesus Pentecostal and Catholic and other various flavors of churches, that I might run out of ways to think, “no, I’m sorry, that’s just too weird, church just can’t be done that way.” But I found one more way to make we wonder what the heck was going on.
It was packed. Sardine-can packed. So bad that one of us got claustrophobic for a while and had to step outside. The room where they celebrate Eucharist together is about as big as the altar area here. Icons painted all over the ceiling, icons of dancing saints. There was incense. And I mean, lots of incense. Great billowing clouds of incense. Not an instrument in the building, expect a handful of Tibetan prayer bells, and the voices of the congregation. And, at Eucharist, they sang. In parts. And... danced. Around the table.
Each person had their right hand on the shoulder of the person next to them, and their left hand holding a service book with the music. The steps were simple. Right, left, right, back. Right, cross behind left, right, back. And, like all new people to the congregation, I was trying to read music and remember steps and not step on somebody and not kick somebody.
It sounds chaotic. And it was. It sounds awful. Definitely out of the box. Sounds quite un-Episcopalian. But you know what else it was? Glorious. As in, the glory of God made manifest. I know, because I’ve tried to describe it before, that it’s something I can’t capture in words. And I know that many of you are like me, wouldn’t go to do something like that unless one of your favorite people on God’s green earth came and begged you to go like my friend Jason did to me.
And I looked around with new eyes. And I saw the members of the church feeding the hungry. And sheltering the homeless. And caring for and grieving with and praying for the thousands and thousands dying of AIDS in the city.
And I said, "God is doing a new thing. And I wasn't paying attention at first."
* * * * * * * * * *
The early spiritual masters of the eastern orthodox church described the nature of God, who we typically affirm as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as an eternal dance, a relationship of movement and interaction in mutual love, honor, respect, and joy. In John’s gospel, Jesus prays that the disciples, that we, might be one as Jesus and the Father are one, that we might be in him as he is in the father, inviting all of us, all of creation, into the great dance of joy that God wills for all creation. In this understanding, some of us ‘sin,’ deliberately step out of the dance, corrupting its rhythm, crashing into other dancers, pushing and shoving and stomping on feet. Then, in Christ Jesus, God enters creation to restore the beauty again, to teach us the new steps, to call us back to an ever-widening dance of joy that includes all of creation.
It is into this great dance that we are called. And each new age means that we need new steps. The basic patterns will be the same, but, like us learning the Lindy hop, the dance will be different enough that we’ll have to pay attention, unlearn old habits, and learn new ones. There are things in our muscle memory that have to be unlearned. Things that once worked now don’t.
Because as people join the dance, the dance changes. As the music of the age changes, the dance changes, in subtle ways, still with the same beauty and order, but with new steps and new style to fit the new day.
And that’s okay. Because God leads. And it is God who invites us to dance.
(Today is the feast day of St. Gregory of Nyssa.)
I want to talk to you for a minute about dancing.
My wife and I have recently started learning a new dance. Lindy hop, specifically. A relatively new couple in the parish, Jeff and Aimee, teach dance, and throw regular Friday-night dances in a dance studio just south of here. They were the ones who did the recent workshop here in the parish hall. And if we ask them nicely, we might get them to do it again once in a while. Now, for those of you who don’t know us that well yet, my wife and I love to dance. She’s been my dance partner longer than she’s been my wife, and we spent a significant amount of our courtship on one dance floor or another.
Learning a new dance is an interesting thing. Coming to it as dancers who know other steps, there are some similarities. Some are basic things like rhythm, counting, dancing with a partner, one of you leading and the other following. Some of the patterns are similar, too. There are underarm turns, hand changes, spins, that sort of thing.
But there are also some differences. The basic step, the thing you learn first, is eight beats of music instead of six. The style, the feel, is subtly different from other kinds of swing, and dramatically different from classical ballroom dancing. There are things in our muscle memory that have to be unlearned. Things that once worked now don’t.
Thankfully, we’re at the delightful stage of laughing with each other over little things like blown leads and my mysterious inability to count to eight. We have a community of regular dancers helping and encouraging us, and all of us are learning together, at our own speeds.
* * * * * * * * * *
Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, God spoke these words, in the mouth of the prophet Isaiah:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
These were words first spoken, or written, we don’t really know which came first, after the nation of Israel had been defeated by the Babylonians, and many of the people had been carried off into exile in Babylon. And there, in exile, they asked themselves, has God abandoned us? How can we be God’s people if we can’t go to the temple? How can we be God’s people if we don’t have a king? How can we be God’s people if we’re not our own nation?
And God said: fear not. Don’t worry about the former things. I am still with you. I am still your God. You are still my people. See, I am doing a new thing. Are you paying attention? Can you see it? I will show you a new way to live.
Five hundred years later, as we hear in today’s reading from the gospel of Mark, four people carry a paralyzed man on a mat, bringing him to Jesus, and lay him at Jesus’ feet. The crowd watches, and waits. Everyone knows what they want. Everyone knows what, presumably, the paralyzed man wants. He wants to be healed. He wants to walk. Everyone waits, holding their breath, for Jesus to heal him.
But that’s not what Jesus does. He says, instead, your sins are forgiven.
There are scribes in the crowd, teachers of the law. Keepers of the tradition. Interpreters of the scripture. And they say “hey, you can’t do that!”
Now, I think most Episcopalians would make good scribes. (even better Pharisees) And that’s not meant to be derogatory. We’re keepers of tradition. We’re teachers. We know how things should be done. We worship using an ancient liturgy, using a pattern that has not significantly changed for centuries. We respect the wisdom of the spiritual masters of faith. We even know how we like our music, don’t we?
So the scribes question Jesus. Hey, you can’t do that! No one can forgive sins but God. That’s not your place. But Jesus responds: God is doing a new thing. Are you paying attention? Can you see it?
Oh, and you? Get up. You’re free.
Walk.
Dance.
Live.
* * * * * * * * * *
One of the holy places in the world for me is a little church on the top of a hill in the middle of San Francisco. It’s called St. Gregory of Nyssa, and if you’ve heard of them it’s because they’ve become famous for their style of worship. They are, in some ways, a quintessential urban San Francisco congregation. They serve really good coffee, they have an active homeless ministry, they’re active in all the social justice concerns of the city. And they do some odd things. The architecture is odd, there are painted icons all over the ceiling, they have two rectors. I used to call them “St. Gregory the weirdo.”
We lived out there a few years ago, and some friends came to visit over Easter weekend. And they convinced us, well, no, dragged us kicking and screaming is a better phrase, to go to the great vigil at St. Gregory’s. You have to realize that the great vigil of Easter is my favorite day of the year. And I didn’t give it up lightly, but I really loved the people who were visiting, and so we went.
Now you might think, after I’d grown up attending Baptist and Methodist and Lutheran and Mormon and jump-for Jesus Pentecostal and Catholic and other various flavors of churches, that I might run out of ways to think, “no, I’m sorry, that’s just too weird, church just can’t be done that way.” But I found one more way to make we wonder what the heck was going on.
It was packed. Sardine-can packed. So bad that one of us got claustrophobic for a while and had to step outside. The room where they celebrate Eucharist together is about as big as the altar area here. Icons painted all over the ceiling, icons of dancing saints. There was incense. And I mean, lots of incense. Great billowing clouds of incense. Not an instrument in the building, expect a handful of Tibetan prayer bells, and the voices of the congregation. And, at Eucharist, they sang. In parts. And... danced. Around the table.
Each person had their right hand on the shoulder of the person next to them, and their left hand holding a service book with the music. The steps were simple. Right, left, right, back. Right, cross behind left, right, back. And, like all new people to the congregation, I was trying to read music and remember steps and not step on somebody and not kick somebody.
It sounds chaotic. And it was. It sounds awful. Definitely out of the box. Sounds quite un-Episcopalian. But you know what else it was? Glorious. As in, the glory of God made manifest. I know, because I’ve tried to describe it before, that it’s something I can’t capture in words. And I know that many of you are like me, wouldn’t go to do something like that unless one of your favorite people on God’s green earth came and begged you to go like my friend Jason did to me.
And I looked around with new eyes. And I saw the members of the church feeding the hungry. And sheltering the homeless. And caring for and grieving with and praying for the thousands and thousands dying of AIDS in the city.
And I said, "God is doing a new thing. And I wasn't paying attention at first."
* * * * * * * * * *
The early spiritual masters of the eastern orthodox church described the nature of God, who we typically affirm as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as an eternal dance, a relationship of movement and interaction in mutual love, honor, respect, and joy. In John’s gospel, Jesus prays that the disciples, that we, might be one as Jesus and the Father are one, that we might be in him as he is in the father, inviting all of us, all of creation, into the great dance of joy that God wills for all creation. In this understanding, some of us ‘sin,’ deliberately step out of the dance, corrupting its rhythm, crashing into other dancers, pushing and shoving and stomping on feet. Then, in Christ Jesus, God enters creation to restore the beauty again, to teach us the new steps, to call us back to an ever-widening dance of joy that includes all of creation.
It is into this great dance that we are called. And each new age means that we need new steps. The basic patterns will be the same, but, like us learning the Lindy hop, the dance will be different enough that we’ll have to pay attention, unlearn old habits, and learn new ones. There are things in our muscle memory that have to be unlearned. Things that once worked now don’t.
Because as people join the dance, the dance changes. As the music of the age changes, the dance changes, in subtle ways, still with the same beauty and order, but with new steps and new style to fit the new day.
And that’s okay. Because God leads. And it is God who invites us to dance.
(Today is the feast day of St. Gregory of Nyssa.)
07 March, 2006
never let anyone else cut your grass
I once heard a bit of advice from an old Lutheran pastor: never let anyone else cut your grass.
Once a week, maybe even on Sunday afternoon, mow it yourself, and edge. Trim around the trees and flowerbeds. Then sit on your porch, crack open a cold beverage, and just gaze at your lawn in all of its ordered splendor. And say, "I have accomplished something. It is done. I did it. I am proud of it. And now I can rest."
I laughed at the time. It was supposed to be funny, after all. But a joke with a ring of truth. There's precious little in this vocation that has the satisfaction of a job done. Most of it is seeds sown, or plants watered, or ground tilled.
To continue the metaphor, what we're about to do during our lenten series, starting tomorrow night, is fertillizing. Fertilizer smells bad, and too much can be dangerous, and it can be combined with other ingredients to create death and destruction. We're doing the sometimes dangerous work of examining and questioning something absolutely vital to the Christian story.
Tonight, my version of cutting grass was changing the oil in my truck. Insides cleaned and wiped down, outside washed, oil and filter changed, used oil stored in sealed container for delivery to recycling station. Tools cleaned and put away.
And then I just stood there in the driveway, in the dusk, gazing at the car.
Maybe the old man had a point.
Once a week, maybe even on Sunday afternoon, mow it yourself, and edge. Trim around the trees and flowerbeds. Then sit on your porch, crack open a cold beverage, and just gaze at your lawn in all of its ordered splendor. And say, "I have accomplished something. It is done. I did it. I am proud of it. And now I can rest."
I laughed at the time. It was supposed to be funny, after all. But a joke with a ring of truth. There's precious little in this vocation that has the satisfaction of a job done. Most of it is seeds sown, or plants watered, or ground tilled.
To continue the metaphor, what we're about to do during our lenten series, starting tomorrow night, is fertillizing. Fertilizer smells bad, and too much can be dangerous, and it can be combined with other ingredients to create death and destruction. We're doing the sometimes dangerous work of examining and questioning something absolutely vital to the Christian story.
Tonight, my version of cutting grass was changing the oil in my truck. Insides cleaned and wiped down, outside washed, oil and filter changed, used oil stored in sealed container for delivery to recycling station. Tools cleaned and put away.
And then I just stood there in the driveway, in the dusk, gazing at the car.
Maybe the old man had a point.
04 March, 2006
through Him who strengthens me
from today's daily office readings: Philippians 4:13
"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" is a great phrase. I had it on the back of a T-shirt in high school. And the way I was taught it as a Bible-school memory verse, it meant:
* with God I can do anything.
* I can overcome any obstacle
* I can defeat any enemy
* I can achieve anything I set my mind to
* with enough hard work, and if I live according to the modern purity rules, I can succeed.
I look back at that Sunday school class and think: how very American. Local boy makes good, overcomes obstacles. Just me and my God, and that's all I need. Cue the stirring music, and I'll be off to slay some dragons....
But, as one of my favorite seminary professors said, the key to interpreting Biblical texts is context, context, context.
In Philippians 4, Paul is basically saying to that early church, 'oh, you wanted to send me some money, but couldn't? Well, that's sweet of you. But I don't really need it. I've learned to be content in whatever situation I find myself.'
Not quite diametrically opposed, but that sure is different.
"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" is a great phrase. I had it on the back of a T-shirt in high school. And the way I was taught it as a Bible-school memory verse, it meant:
* with God I can do anything.
* I can overcome any obstacle
* I can defeat any enemy
* I can achieve anything I set my mind to
* with enough hard work, and if I live according to the modern purity rules, I can succeed.
I look back at that Sunday school class and think: how very American. Local boy makes good, overcomes obstacles. Just me and my God, and that's all I need. Cue the stirring music, and I'll be off to slay some dragons....
But, as one of my favorite seminary professors said, the key to interpreting Biblical texts is context, context, context.
In Philippians 4, Paul is basically saying to that early church, 'oh, you wanted to send me some money, but couldn't? Well, that's sweet of you. But I don't really need it. I've learned to be content in whatever situation I find myself.'
Not quite diametrically opposed, but that sure is different.
03 March, 2006
well, yeah. But it's for the kids.
I heard the Holy Spirit speak today. The exact words were: "Well, yeah. But it's for the kids."
The church we attend (or serve) has an preschool and elementary school as our biggest ministry. Church schools are a good thing in general, and I don't think so just because I'm the product of a church elementary school. But sometimes, indeed more often than we might like, the church/school relationship isn't happy. You hear muttered phrases like "those people" who are taking up "OUR space." Across the country, last time I checked into statistics, something like 5% of school parents are also members of the church that runs the school.
Schools and churches are, in some ways, fundamentally different communities, with different goals. Schools are about learning: math, reading, science, music. They're very structured. Churches, on the other hand, sometimes function with little to no structure whatsoever. Churches are about reconciliation, repentance, covenant relationships, worship. Christian Education is a fundamental part of what churches do, but not the signal purpose of the community.
It's all too easy for that relationship to be like two ships passing in the night, since the two rarely share the same space at the same time.
But, I'm happy to say, not here. We threw a gala fundraiser tonight. You know the drill: auction items, dinner, a little entertainment (in this case, the auctioneer himself). You have to do fundraisers, because church schools do not and should not make any significant profit.
And church familes came. By the tableful. And gave lots of money to the school.
I overheard the same conversation at least five times.
Mary: did you bid on anything?
Joe: we bid on [basketball tickets/handprint art/bottles of wine/etc]
Mary: Oh, that was you? That's a lot of money for [what you bought].
Joe: Well, yeah. But it's for the kids.
The church we attend (or serve) has an preschool and elementary school as our biggest ministry. Church schools are a good thing in general, and I don't think so just because I'm the product of a church elementary school. But sometimes, indeed more often than we might like, the church/school relationship isn't happy. You hear muttered phrases like "those people" who are taking up "OUR space." Across the country, last time I checked into statistics, something like 5% of school parents are also members of the church that runs the school.
Schools and churches are, in some ways, fundamentally different communities, with different goals. Schools are about learning: math, reading, science, music. They're very structured. Churches, on the other hand, sometimes function with little to no structure whatsoever. Churches are about reconciliation, repentance, covenant relationships, worship. Christian Education is a fundamental part of what churches do, but not the signal purpose of the community.
It's all too easy for that relationship to be like two ships passing in the night, since the two rarely share the same space at the same time.
But, I'm happy to say, not here. We threw a gala fundraiser tonight. You know the drill: auction items, dinner, a little entertainment (in this case, the auctioneer himself). You have to do fundraisers, because church schools do not and should not make any significant profit.
And church familes came. By the tableful. And gave lots of money to the school.
I overheard the same conversation at least five times.
Mary: did you bid on anything?
Joe: we bid on [basketball tickets/handprint art/bottles of wine/etc]
Mary: Oh, that was you? That's a lot of money for [what you bought].
Joe: Well, yeah. But it's for the kids.
02 March, 2006
it looks like I think I'm Jesus
Saturday night, as I was doing my usual pace-the-floor, mutter-to-myself, bite-my-nails routine, my beloved pointed out to me that I've never, not once, liked a sermon I'm about to give.
Hmm. Pause. blink. try to remember one....
nope.
It seems that I've fallen into the trap of thinking I'm Jesus. Hmm, this ditch looks familiar. I've been here before.
Sometimes you end up in the ditch even when you know it's there. In CPE, trying to learn to be a hospital chaplain, I got myself into this funny cycle. I would go to 'classes' in the morning, and then see patients in the afternoon, after lunch and until 5 in the afternoon. Then I started staying later. Then a little later than that. Then I started working through lunch.
I was assigned to a floor, two wings, probably twenty or thirty beds, plus a huge outpatient clinic. The routine was pretty clear: get list of inpatients on my floor, go up to the floor, check in with the nursing staff, then go knock on the doors of the new patients. Introduce myself, see if they wanted anything, pray with them if they asked. Go back outside. note visit on chart. repeat. Go see people I'd seen in previous days. repeat.
twenty beds might not seem like much. But think about the length of the last meaningful conversation you had. An hour? half that? There were people who were only there for a day or two, undergoing treatment or procedures, and if I didn't hurry I wouldn't see them at all. So I stayed, later and later. It was the day I walked out of the hospital and it was all the way to full dark that was the beginning of the epiphany.
I went for a long walk and had a talk with God. And here's what God said: hey, buddy, you're in my chair.
I'd started thinking that I had to see every patient, had to pray with each one, or they wouldn't be healed. Or wouldn't feel good, at least. If you asked me if that's what I was doing, I'd say no, of course not. But then I stepped back and reviewed where my feet and hands had been for a month, and I realized that I thought I was Jesus.
it was actually funny, in a way. I did manage to laugh at myself. later.
So now, here I am, the first-year preacher. Never satisfied with a sermon text. Spending more and more time preparing. Constantly thinking about the next sermon. Devouring preaching textbooks with a ravenous, unsatisfied hunger.
Hmm...this ditch sure does look familiar.
Hmm. Pause. blink. try to remember one....
nope.
It seems that I've fallen into the trap of thinking I'm Jesus. Hmm, this ditch looks familiar. I've been here before.
Sometimes you end up in the ditch even when you know it's there. In CPE, trying to learn to be a hospital chaplain, I got myself into this funny cycle. I would go to 'classes' in the morning, and then see patients in the afternoon, after lunch and until 5 in the afternoon. Then I started staying later. Then a little later than that. Then I started working through lunch.
I was assigned to a floor, two wings, probably twenty or thirty beds, plus a huge outpatient clinic. The routine was pretty clear: get list of inpatients on my floor, go up to the floor, check in with the nursing staff, then go knock on the doors of the new patients. Introduce myself, see if they wanted anything, pray with them if they asked. Go back outside. note visit on chart. repeat. Go see people I'd seen in previous days. repeat.
twenty beds might not seem like much. But think about the length of the last meaningful conversation you had. An hour? half that? There were people who were only there for a day or two, undergoing treatment or procedures, and if I didn't hurry I wouldn't see them at all. So I stayed, later and later. It was the day I walked out of the hospital and it was all the way to full dark that was the beginning of the epiphany.
I went for a long walk and had a talk with God. And here's what God said: hey, buddy, you're in my chair.
I'd started thinking that I had to see every patient, had to pray with each one, or they wouldn't be healed. Or wouldn't feel good, at least. If you asked me if that's what I was doing, I'd say no, of course not. But then I stepped back and reviewed where my feet and hands had been for a month, and I realized that I thought I was Jesus.
it was actually funny, in a way. I did manage to laugh at myself. later.
So now, here I am, the first-year preacher. Never satisfied with a sermon text. Spending more and more time preparing. Constantly thinking about the next sermon. Devouring preaching textbooks with a ravenous, unsatisfied hunger.
Hmm...this ditch sure does look familiar.
01 March, 2006
Remember that you are dust
Herr, lehre doch mich
dass ein Ende mit mir haben muss
und mein Leben ein Ziel hat
und ich davon muss.
Roughly translated:
Lord, teach me to know that all things have an end. And that I will also have an end.
So begins the third movement of Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem, one of the first major choral works I learned as a young musician.
Today is Ash Wednesday. Today, those same somber opening lines are our prayer. Today, we consider the truth of our own mortality.
We live in a culture that has a curious love/hate relationship with death. The evening news, each and every day, reports death and destruction, the more brutal and bizarre the better. But most other places our culture wants to hide the reality of death. Funeral parlors make our loved ones look as if they’re peacefully sleeping. When someone dies in a hospital, they’re taken out using the back service elevator. At funerals, the casket is usually beautifully polished wood, and a sheet of green Astroturf covers the newly-dug earth from the grave, and we leave before the earth is replaced, if not before the casket is lowered into the ground.
One of my seminary professors had the idea that we should come to funerals in blue jeans, carrying a shovel in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other. We should all take turns filling in the grave, because at funerals everybody desperately wants something to do, but there is nothing that can be done. And then we should all go get rip-roaring drunk and tell stories and celebrate the life of the one we’ve just buried.
I told you when I got here that I would always try to tell you the truth from this pulpit. So here’s your bit of truth for the day: we are all of us, every one, going to die. Our bodies will stop working the way they work now, in all of that wonderful complicated mysteriousness, and we will decay, and eventually, sooner or later, the stuff that we are now will crumble to dust.
So what of that?
Well, I’d like to share with you two lessons that I learned from a large group of people who had a certain perspective on death.
While I was at seminary, I did a course called “Clinical Pastoral Education,” CPE for short, in which I was more or less a hospital chaplain intern for the summer. I did my rotation at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I spent a whole summer talking to people who had been warned by their physicians that they had a short time to live.
The first thing to take away from those conversations were that the patients I saw didn’t concern themselves with small things. It’s almost cliché that knowing you’re going to die means that you tend to focus on the important things. In fact, there’s a country western song out right now about the guy who’s diagnosed with cancer and goes skydiving and decides to be nicer and all those sorts of things.
But many of the patients I saw told me something you might not expect. And that was that knowing that they had only a limited time to live gave them freedom that they didn’t think they had before. Freedom to speak to those they loved, when they had been silent for too long. Freedom to take actions that they had always wanted to or needed to do, but had put off for another day. Freedom to redraw the map of their lives, how they spent their time, what they were willing to put up with.
And that leads us to the second thing; I hope thinking about our mortality will give us a renewed sense of urgency.
This past weekend, at diocesan council, we had some prayer time before each session would begin. At one of those sessions, the bishop read the necrology, the names of people from our diocese who had died in the last year. Well, right at that moment, I had stepped off the floor, and as the necrology was being read I was way in the back of the room, out by the entrance to the hall. And I realized, as the bishop read the names, that standing there next to me was a friend, someone I’ve known for several years now. That friend has been diagnosed with cancer, and I’ll admit that it was a little bit of a shock to realize that next year, the name of the person standing next to me might be on the list.
It is with those things in mind: our own mortality, and hopefully a sense of seeking the important things in life with a certain urgency, that, in the words of the prayer book, I call you to a holy Lent. Holy in the sense of set apart. A period of time, a season, set apart for a purpose, for sober, solemn reflection on who we are as God’s people, and what we are about.
At Easter, we celebrate God’s great victory over death, we celebrate our adoption as God’s children, we celebrate that we are set free and redeemed and sent out to do God’s work in the world. At Easter, we celebrate the resurrection. Yes, we are dust. Yes, we will die. That’s true. But it’s also true that nothing is destroyed in death that God cannot and will not resurrect.
I urge you to make this a season of reflection and rededication.
Not a season of self-denial for the sake of strengthening your own will, though that’s a good thing in its own way.
Not a season of doing without something so that it will taste all the sweeter on Easter for its absence during Lent, though that’s true too.
But instead, like the cancer patients I talked to, a time to take an honest look in the mirror. A time to acknowledge our own sinfulness, our own faults and limitations, and in that honesty find strength.
The readings for Ash Wednesday are here
dass ein Ende mit mir haben muss
und mein Leben ein Ziel hat
und ich davon muss.
Roughly translated:
Lord, teach me to know that all things have an end. And that I will also have an end.
So begins the third movement of Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem, one of the first major choral works I learned as a young musician.
Today is Ash Wednesday. Today, those same somber opening lines are our prayer. Today, we consider the truth of our own mortality.
We live in a culture that has a curious love/hate relationship with death. The evening news, each and every day, reports death and destruction, the more brutal and bizarre the better. But most other places our culture wants to hide the reality of death. Funeral parlors make our loved ones look as if they’re peacefully sleeping. When someone dies in a hospital, they’re taken out using the back service elevator. At funerals, the casket is usually beautifully polished wood, and a sheet of green Astroturf covers the newly-dug earth from the grave, and we leave before the earth is replaced, if not before the casket is lowered into the ground.
One of my seminary professors had the idea that we should come to funerals in blue jeans, carrying a shovel in one hand and a bottle of scotch in the other. We should all take turns filling in the grave, because at funerals everybody desperately wants something to do, but there is nothing that can be done. And then we should all go get rip-roaring drunk and tell stories and celebrate the life of the one we’ve just buried.
I told you when I got here that I would always try to tell you the truth from this pulpit. So here’s your bit of truth for the day: we are all of us, every one, going to die. Our bodies will stop working the way they work now, in all of that wonderful complicated mysteriousness, and we will decay, and eventually, sooner or later, the stuff that we are now will crumble to dust.
So what of that?
Well, I’d like to share with you two lessons that I learned from a large group of people who had a certain perspective on death.
While I was at seminary, I did a course called “Clinical Pastoral Education,” CPE for short, in which I was more or less a hospital chaplain intern for the summer. I did my rotation at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I spent a whole summer talking to people who had been warned by their physicians that they had a short time to live.
The first thing to take away from those conversations were that the patients I saw didn’t concern themselves with small things. It’s almost cliché that knowing you’re going to die means that you tend to focus on the important things. In fact, there’s a country western song out right now about the guy who’s diagnosed with cancer and goes skydiving and decides to be nicer and all those sorts of things.
But many of the patients I saw told me something you might not expect. And that was that knowing that they had only a limited time to live gave them freedom that they didn’t think they had before. Freedom to speak to those they loved, when they had been silent for too long. Freedom to take actions that they had always wanted to or needed to do, but had put off for another day. Freedom to redraw the map of their lives, how they spent their time, what they were willing to put up with.
And that leads us to the second thing; I hope thinking about our mortality will give us a renewed sense of urgency.
This past weekend, at diocesan council, we had some prayer time before each session would begin. At one of those sessions, the bishop read the necrology, the names of people from our diocese who had died in the last year. Well, right at that moment, I had stepped off the floor, and as the necrology was being read I was way in the back of the room, out by the entrance to the hall. And I realized, as the bishop read the names, that standing there next to me was a friend, someone I’ve known for several years now. That friend has been diagnosed with cancer, and I’ll admit that it was a little bit of a shock to realize that next year, the name of the person standing next to me might be on the list.
It is with those things in mind: our own mortality, and hopefully a sense of seeking the important things in life with a certain urgency, that, in the words of the prayer book, I call you to a holy Lent. Holy in the sense of set apart. A period of time, a season, set apart for a purpose, for sober, solemn reflection on who we are as God’s people, and what we are about.
At Easter, we celebrate God’s great victory over death, we celebrate our adoption as God’s children, we celebrate that we are set free and redeemed and sent out to do God’s work in the world. At Easter, we celebrate the resurrection. Yes, we are dust. Yes, we will die. That’s true. But it’s also true that nothing is destroyed in death that God cannot and will not resurrect.
I urge you to make this a season of reflection and rededication.
Not a season of self-denial for the sake of strengthening your own will, though that’s a good thing in its own way.
Not a season of doing without something so that it will taste all the sweeter on Easter for its absence during Lent, though that’s true too.
But instead, like the cancer patients I talked to, a time to take an honest look in the mirror. A time to acknowledge our own sinfulness, our own faults and limitations, and in that honesty find strength.
The readings for Ash Wednesday are here
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