A new ministry at Christ Church

This week I’d like to use this column to invite you into a new ministry that is in formation here at Christ Church. First, I’d like to share a passage of Scripture with you.

Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family you did it to me.” (Matthew 34-40)

This passage reminds us that when we take action for justice and mercy for each other, we are being just and merciful to the face of Christ in each other—something we promise in our baptismal covenant, as we promise to “Seek and serve Christ in all persons.” Christ Church has a number of parishioners who have difficulty coming to church, who would love to have a visit from a fellow Christ Church-er. Would you be willing to visit with someone? We’ll begin with a short training on Saturday, June 28, from 9 to 11. We’ll talk about the spirituality of the ministry, as well as some practical instruction. One aspect of this ministry will be bringing communion to homebound persons. Those who desire can become certified Eucharistic visitors, so they would be able to bring the sacrament with them on their visits (If you’d prefer not to, that’s OK)

As a priest, I do good amount of pastoral visiting (of course no pastor ever gets to as many visits as he or she hopes to), and I’m always struck by how welcoming and enriching these visits are for me. In ministry it is a cliché to say that the minister is actually the one being ministered to, but it’s still frequently true. People have such deep wisdom to share with each other, and it’s so rare that we actually sit down just to listen to another person. Please let me know if you’d like to join this ministry, or if you’d like to have someone come to visit you.

Sabbath

Last Sunday, one of our texts was from the Book of Genesis.

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation (Genesis 2:4)

God rested. As God rested, so we, too, are invited into rest.

At Christ Church, things are winding down for the summer. We had our last Tuesday evening Eucharist and class last night, and this Sunday we’ll have one 9 AM service instead of both 8 and 10. The choir and Sunday School will go on break until fall, too.

Why do we do this? Most churches do some kind of reduced schedule over the summer, but it’s still a good question. It’s not as though God goes on vacation. God does, I guess, in the sense that God is also with us on our vacations, and so God will be found hiking and going to art museums when we do. There are some concrete reasons for the change—since people do go on vacation, attendance goes down in the summer. Having everyone all together for worship gives us more people to celebrate with at once. It’s also true that it can get pretty warm in the church, and it’s cooler at 9 than it is at 10.

But there’s another reason, too. I think we need a Sabbath, even at church, to help us all slow down a little. Our Sunday school teachers work so hard, and our choir practices so diligently, and, yes, I’ll admit that I do look forward to just having one service to lead as well. Worship is beautiful, and worship can help us escape the sometimes relentless pace of contemporary life, but if we lose our sense of mindfulness, church can become just one more commitment. We need a time where everything gets a little simplified, where we can take a break and recharge for the activities that will come soon enough.

Rabbi Abraham Heschel talks about the Sabbath as the sanctification of time. The created world is good, but it is not eternal. Only time is called “holy” in creation—not the waters, or the birds, or even human beings. We enter into holiness in time, not space.

Heschel writes. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation, from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

As the days get longer and the weather warmer, it feels like all creation is inviting us out to reconnect with God, to sit for a moment with that mystery and enjoy the creatureliness of our selves, like tender green shoots turning toward the sun.

So now put down your calendar.

Put down your cell phone.

Turn off the computer.

And now go outside to play.

Sabbath (6 21 07)

This post is from June of 2007, but like today's piece, it's also about Sabbath so I thought I'd post it here.

A blessed first day of summer to you!

After the solstice, our days start getting shorter and we begin the long journey toward the dark days of December, when winter officially begins and the light begins to come again. On a day like today, though, those cold, dark New England nights that start at 4:30 pm seem impossibly distant. But for now, it’s summer, and our paces slow and we rest and play.

Play is important—just look at any baby, and you can see that their play is the way they learn. Isaiah can reach for a toy, now—something he couldn’t have done three weeks ago, when his little hands just groped wildly in the air. And play is important for us, to unhinge from anxiety and stress and recover ourselves. Rest is important, too, maybe even more so. It’s not slacking, or laziness, but part of our calling as spiritual beings. The New Zealand prayer book translates psalm 127 like this: “It is but lost labor that we haste to rise up early, and so late take rest, and eat the bread of anxiety. For those beloved of God are given gifts even while they sleep.”

Gifts from God, even as you sleep!

But our Christian tradition has lost sight of the importance of Sabbath. We are so intent in our culture on being productive, on having something to show for ourselves. “Empty hands are the devil’s playground,” our grandmothers taught us. But it’s only with empty hands that we can accept what God has to give us.

We “eat the bread of anxiety;” the psalm cites it as an intentional act. We get caught up and forget that we choose the way we live our lives. Even in our “time off,” we go shopping, we consume things we don’t need. We want, at the end of the day, to say that we did something. But what would it be like if you just didn’t do anything? If you put aside all the things that people expect of you, that you expect from yourself, all those needs and random wants? What if you came before God with empty hands and a silent mind and just prayed for them to be filled with God’s quiet and love?

Important, too, is how your Sabbath impacts those around you. The meaning of Sabbath is rigorously outlined in the Old Testament for the Jews to follow—Sabbath is part of the law. But the implications of Sabbath aren’t just for the Jews. They are commanded not to work, not just for themselves but so that their slaves and their animals also don’t work. Sabbath extends outward from one person through to the community. “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.” (Exodus 23: 12) Of course, we are reading now in Galatians about how Christ came to take us out from under the law. How much more readily does God receive our rest when it’s given freely, rather than commanded? Take a moment and give God the gift of your rest, and see how your receive God’s grace in return.

From May 15: Presence and Pain

Again, this week, I find myself in a place of lament.

As I picked my son, Isaiah, up at daycare yesterday NPR broadcast a story of a family finding out that their 2 year old and elderly parents had died in the collapse of their apartment building. (see link below) The story began by introducing us to the couple, and told of the woman leaving for work at a department store leaving her son with his grandparents. The baby cried and wanted to come along, but she left him, and minutes later the earthquake struck. It’s every parent’s nightmare—“I should have brought him with me!”—come vividly and terribly true. The NPR host spoke with them as the excavation equipment began working, and they hoped against hope to find the boy. Finally, a rescue worker brought the news that they had found the bodies of an elderly man cradling a small boy, with an older woman right beside. The couple dissolved in tears, and as I drove, Isaiah staring contently out the window, I did, too—all of the frustration of the day dissolved away. I was with that woman who had lost her child.

I had been late to get Isaiah—I rode my bike to church but discovered as I was leaving that the tire was completely flat, so I set off to walk home—just over 2 miles, to retrieve the car and pick him up. On the walk, I’d been hurried and occupied, but also startlingly aware (as I had also been riding my bike that morning and the day before) at how little I actually perceive as I go about my day. Driving, I am so intent on speed—getting through the next stop light, getting in the correct lane to go fast, fast, fast. Time in the car is wasted time, the reasoning goes, and so I want to minimize the waste. Logical, right?

The thing is that time in the car isn’t wasted time—there is no wasted time. The only wasted time is time that we spend spiritually being somewhere else. The only waste is our absence from our own lives. Slowing down by riding my bike or walking allowed me to perceive what I’ve always “seen,” but never noticed.

We so frequently don’t engage with what’s around us. News on the radio of bombs going off in faraway places, of disasters and terror, don’t touch us. We go about hurrying, on to the next task before having completed the last. Hearing about that couple in China who had lost their baby, I was put in mind of all of the people who have lost children and parents both in China and in Myanmar and places of desperation all over the globe and close to home. I’ve listened to all the reports of thousands dead, but wasn’t able to actually hear it until I was invited into the story of a single family. I was able to be present in a way that had escaped me before, just as my unexpected walk home from work helped me to see what I never do.

It’s a deeper truth than just “stopping to smell the roses” (lilacs in this case). Being a Christian is about being present both to the pleasure as well as the pain that is all around us. Being a Christian is about being open to God, and God is to be found in the depth of the present. As I walked past the lilacs and wisteria on Bacon Street yesterday afternoon, God seemed everywhere. As I cried for that family in China, God, too, came near. The challenge of the Christian life is to be willing to bear witness to all that life offers us. We all have ears to hear—will we have the courage?

Lament for Myanmar

This week, as perhaps you are, I’ve been feeling stunned about what’s going on in Myanmar, also known as Burma. Cyclone Nargis, with winds of up to 120 miles per hour, swept through the country last Saturday. The preliminary estimate of 25,000 dead could actually be closer to 100,000 people. The UN estimates that 1 million people could be left homeless. Last September, the world’s attention turned to the area when the government violently suppressed pro-democracy protests by Buddhist monks. Now, the government is only slowly permitting humanitarian aid to enter the country, but many aid workers are still unable to secure visas even as the disaster mounts.

Now, as with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as with the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean 2004, we simply cannot understand why things like this happen. We try to explain, of course. Both here and abroad, we can point to the inadequacy of human response, and political and environmental factors that caused the disaster in the first place. Human activity causes climate change, which in turn impacts water temperature, which in turn makes for more severe hurricanes. Political systems fail, self-interest clouds the judgment of those in charge, and leaders make bad choices. But none of our explanations suffice. At the bottom of those questions, we’re still trying to understand why God would create a world in which such things happen. They are “natural” disasters—but why are they natural?

The scale of global inequality, too, is mindboggling. We Americans are anticipating our “free” cash from the government, encouraged to buy things to spur on the consumer economy. In Burma, a representative from the American embassy has said that there are no nails in the capital city. How do you go about recovering from a natural disaster with no nails? When you have to ship in just a simple chainsaw from neighboring countries?

I don’t have any answers today—all any of us can do is pray, listen, learn, give what we can. I think there is something holy in offering witness to tragedy—certainly, try to improve the situation—but also simply open ourselves to the grief of others. Lament is as strong a Biblical tradition as repentance. Many of the psalms are psalms of lament, telling stories of pain and suffering of sackcloth and ashes. The psalmist writes in vivid imagery, “I have become like a vulture in the wilderness, like an owl among the ruins…I have eaten ashes for bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.” The book of Lamentations tells the story of the perceived rejection of Israel, but ends with hopeful lines of faith in God. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’

There is hope, but it’s an active hope—we are called to do what we can, and to trust that life can come from the ashes. We cannot know why these things happen. But we can know that God is never absent from those in pain. So today, I invite you to pray in hope. For Myanmar/Burma, and for us. For wise leaders and diplomatic solutions to crises all around the world. Let us pray for our own hearts, too, that we have the courage to be open to others’ pain and to give what we can to alleviate their suffering.

For more on the Anglican response to the disaster, visit http://www.er-d.org

God's Transforming Grace (From May 1)

This morning, we celebrated a funeral service for Dottie Wessell. Dottie donated the statue of St Francis here at Christ Church in memory of her son, who died when he was 30 after being infected with rabies when working in Africa. Dottie hadn’t been in regular attendance here for some time, but I met her 2 years ago when I was visiting someone at the former Waltham hospital, where she’d volunteered for 35 years. We exchanged greetings that day, but I only got a chance to start getting to know her in the last few months, as she was dying.

I always find funerals to be so moving (whether I knew the person or not) because there is a sameness in the way we all remember each other. Our grief almost becomes a sacrament of our love for the person we’ve lost—an outward sign of an invisible grace. This morning at her funeral, we heard several eulogies, people choking back tears remembering her. They spoke of her love for her children, and laughed as they remembered how she’d been stubborn and strong-willed, and not a little set in her ways.

The most moving remembrance, though, wasn’t given by her niece, or her daughter. It was given by a man whom she’d come to know only in the last few years of her life. Dan worked at Waltham hospital, and he and Dottie got to know each other. He was half her age, but they struck up an incredible and deep friendship. One day, Dottie showed Dan a picture of her son, Kevin, who had died. The similarity was eerie. Dottie told me that she felt that God had sent Dan to her, to be another son to her, since she had lost her beloved Kevin. As he spoke to the congregation this morning, Dan talked about how Dottie had wanted to see the magnolia blooming one last time. She didn’t make it out of bed to see, but he took pictures of her garden and showed them to her. Dan shared these positive memories, but he also told a story of a harder time. Dan is gay, and he spoke of how afraid he was of telling her. I think everyone in the church cried as he told the story of taking her out to dinner and mojitos, laughing as he tried to convince this 78 year old dyed in the wool Irish woman to try a Cuban cocktail. “She was always worried about what people would think—did she like younger men, or did I like older women!?” He said that when he told he was gay, she exclaimed, “Why would such a thing happen to such a wonderful young man?!”

Whatever prejudice Dottie had grown up with, she loved Dan, and so she came to love Dan’s partner, Mario, and love the life they built together. She came to see that being gay wasn’t a tragedy that befell him, but just part of who he was. He was still the same person who called her on the phone and could talk for hours. He was still the same person she’d come to love. When I went to visit Dottie, she showed me a framed picture of Dan and Mario and said that she hoped she’d be able to attend their wedding next fall.

Dottie will miss their wedding, but it is sure that she lives on in them, in that unconditional love she showed. I do believe that God sent her Dan to be a comfort in her lonely last days, but it wasn’t just comfort—it was transformation. It was the Holy Spirit, whirling in through each of their lives, bringing them life and joy. The Holy Spirit never leaves us the way we were—we are always transformed nearer and nearer into the image of God in which we were all created.

The preacher at the funeral this morning was the Rev. Marya DeCarlen, Dan and Mario’s priest from their church in Groveland. She talked about how at a time like this, our grief is a sacrament of our love for the person who has died—it is an outward sign of the invisible, inward grace of that relationship. We mourn because we love. Our sadness can be as much a gift as the ways we enjoyed each other in life. The Eucharist wasn’t the only way we knew God this morning. In hearing the story of Dan and Dottie’s unlikely friendship, we were all invited into the live-giving grace of God’s transforming love. Pray that we may each be as open to that grace as she was.