Dear People of Christ Church,
A week later, I'm still mentally reeling a little in the wake of the murder of Waltham High student Tyler Zanco last week. I didn't know him or his family, but something about the murder of a teenager-a child, really-feels like it demands our attention. My son Isaiah turns seven on Saturday-where will he be when he's 17?
In my sermon on Sunday I was thinking with you about the murder of Jorge Fuentes, a parishioner at St Stephen's in the South End, who came up through the ranks of the B-Ready afterschool program and the B-Safe summer camp program we volunteer with. It was in response to his death that our diocese kicked off the "B Peace" program to work against violence in Boston. Last year we participated in the Mother's Day Walk for Peace, which we'll join again this year. The Mother's Day Walk, too, was founded in memory of a child who died-Louis Brown, whose mother started the Peace Institute in his memory. Louis Brown Peace Institute has partnered with the Harvard School of Public Health in their Peace Zone Curriculum for middle and high school youth They hold the Walk as an annual fundraiser for their work in in peace education and support for survivors of violence. In our diocese, along with support of the walk, the other aspects of the B Peace program are summer jobs for youth and anti-gun work, which has particular resonance with the news coming out this week about one of the alleged perpetrators of last week's murder.
In this whole bundle of complication and grief, it's hard to know how to respond. Whatever the circumstances, wherever it happens, it's still tragic. Spiritually, it feels like it comes back to that question the lawyer asks Jesus when he's trying to test him-"Who is my neighbor?" We all know how that ends-we become neighbors when we are in community with each other, when we help, when we provide for each others' needs. Neighborliness isn't about being part of the same group-on an ordinary day, the traveler in the story and the Samaritan wouldn't have had anything to do with each other at all-they both would have wanted it that way! We aren't just neighbors because we are, literally, near ones. Tyler, Jorge, the families who come for diapers, or food, those who wait for the bus outside-these are all "near ones," but how can we actually become neighbors?
That's the invitation of the Gospel. I don't immediately know the answer to how we live into the call to be neighbors-it's always different. Events like the Mother's Day walk appeal to me as a way to act-like "Ashes to Go," for me they fall into the "make the right mistakes" column-it may not fix everything, but it is something. We still need to do more to support our teenagers and make our neighborhoods safe. We still need to do more to get outside of our four walls and share our faith. But we can do this.
Blessings,
Sara+
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Thursday, March 20, 2014
A sacrifice of thanksgiving
Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, I'm still mulling over what it means to "do" Lent-what offering could we possibly make, what could possibly be meaningful to God? One idea from Scripture that has struck me particularly forcefully lately is a line we heard from Psalm 50 from our Tuesday Eucharist:
For every wild animal of the forest is mine... 'If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.
And again, the prophet Isaiah on Ash Wednesday-we don't really quite know how to honor God. On that day, we hear that God chooses a fast of justice-making, not just a fast of abstinence. God wants service to the oppressed, not liturgies and ritual.
Psalm 69 says something like this, too:
I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify God with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.
We don't offer sacrifices of animals anymore, but that doesn't mean this comparison has nothing for us. As I wrote in this space last week, there is something "to" giving things up, not so much for stopping that particular behavior, but to make us more mindful of what we might experience without it. On another level, though, somehow it can feel more 'worthy" to do things that are hard. Making a sacrifice of just "thanksgiving" somehow doesn't seem like it would be enough. (note that I'm not even getting into all the theology about Jesus' sacrifice-for sure it's linked, but let's leave it off the table for now)
But, but, but. What if we took seriously the idea that we can offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving? What if gratitude to God could shape us more and more in God's image? What if offering thanks actually is hard because it's so simple? Or if we were really thankful for the fact of our own lives, maybe we'd spend more of them doing the work of God? Thanksgiving for gift of life is something that everyone-of every circumstance-can offer. Gratitude to God for life isn't about the stuff of our life-not about your house or your car or lack thereof. It's about understanding that it's not that you would have nothing if not for God, it's that you would be nothing. Let me say that again: it's not about having nothing if not for God, it's about not being in the first place. And that's quite a paradigm shift.
So give whatever you can-obviously. Give your money, give your time, give your abstinence from whatever it is you're giving up. But remember, too, as winter turns to spring, the pleasure of oxygen drawn deeply into lungs, the strength of tiny crocuses coming up from underground. Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, for your life and for all there is.
Blessings,
Sara+
This week, I'm still mulling over what it means to "do" Lent-what offering could we possibly make, what could possibly be meaningful to God? One idea from Scripture that has struck me particularly forcefully lately is a line we heard from Psalm 50 from our Tuesday Eucharist:
For every wild animal of the forest is mine... 'If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.
And again, the prophet Isaiah on Ash Wednesday-we don't really quite know how to honor God. On that day, we hear that God chooses a fast of justice-making, not just a fast of abstinence. God wants service to the oppressed, not liturgies and ritual.
Psalm 69 says something like this, too:
I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify God with thanksgiving. This will please the Lord more than an ox or a bull with horns and hoofs.
We don't offer sacrifices of animals anymore, but that doesn't mean this comparison has nothing for us. As I wrote in this space last week, there is something "to" giving things up, not so much for stopping that particular behavior, but to make us more mindful of what we might experience without it. On another level, though, somehow it can feel more 'worthy" to do things that are hard. Making a sacrifice of just "thanksgiving" somehow doesn't seem like it would be enough. (note that I'm not even getting into all the theology about Jesus' sacrifice-for sure it's linked, but let's leave it off the table for now)
But, but, but. What if we took seriously the idea that we can offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving? What if gratitude to God could shape us more and more in God's image? What if offering thanks actually is hard because it's so simple? Or if we were really thankful for the fact of our own lives, maybe we'd spend more of them doing the work of God? Thanksgiving for gift of life is something that everyone-of every circumstance-can offer. Gratitude to God for life isn't about the stuff of our life-not about your house or your car or lack thereof. It's about understanding that it's not that you would have nothing if not for God, it's that you would be nothing. Let me say that again: it's not about having nothing if not for God, it's about not being in the first place. And that's quite a paradigm shift.
So give whatever you can-obviously. Give your money, give your time, give your abstinence from whatever it is you're giving up. But remember, too, as winter turns to spring, the pleasure of oxygen drawn deeply into lungs, the strength of tiny crocuses coming up from underground. Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, for your life and for all there is.
Blessings,
Sara+
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Praying as you can
Dear People of Christ Church,
One week in, I hope you've been able to enter into Lent in a peaceable way. I almost wrote offering hopes for a "good start" to Lent, which sounds like it's a race or something we're trying to accomplish, which it's not, exactly. But we are going somewhere.
So what is it? This time of year, I often remember Dorothy Day's desire in her work in creating the Catholic Worker Houses-she said she wanted to create a society in which it was easy to be good. I think Lent is a time when we try to take on practices that make it easier to be close to God; of course we're not distant from God at other times of year, but in Lent we're invited to a certain sense of quiet intimacy with our Creator that the dynamism of Easter or the long days of summer Pentecost don't exactly share. A colleague's wife, Joy Howard has written about the traditional Lenten practices of giving alms, praying, and fasting. She recasts them as "three C's"--compassion, connection, and clarity.
Compassion: we give to others because we are moved by the Spirit of God and see Christ in them. Compassion is different from pity-compassion moves us to respond to the needs of others, whereas pity keeps them at arm's length, separated from us. Pitying "the poor" makes "them" different, not "our kind." Being compassionate, though, allows God to move through my heart in action, not just words.
Connection: we pray. We pray to be more deeply connected to God, and we pray to be conncted to each other. We had some wonderful conversations in our Lent groups this week (you can still join!) about how we are made in the image of God-and how it can be hard to remember that. In prayer, we remember who we are-beloved children of God. That opens our hearts to each other (see: compassion) and allows us to respond with grace. The 2014 www.prayworshipserve.org challenge invites us to give 20 minutes a day to prayer, one hour a week to going to church, and four hours a month to service. If you can't pray for 20 minutes, what about ten?
Clarity: we fast. You don't have to give something up for Lent, but if you were to, what could it be? Think beyond the usual stalwarts of chocolate and alcohol. What about excess noise? What about shopping for stuff you might not need? What about gossip or complaining? Is there anything that would help you simplify or look more clearly at your life? My Lenten discipline for the last three years has been fairly minor, in that I give up the radio in the car. I'm an NPR junkie with a 20-30 minute drive to work, so taking that extra sound out of my life has created 40-60 extra minutes of silence in my day. There's nothing wrong with knowing what's going on in the world-it's really important!-but to spend some extra time witnessing the chaos and noise of my chattering brain is always kind of sobering, an effect that usually lasts for a while even after I happily return to Bob Oakes in the morning.
I'm a big fan of the phrase "Pray as you can, not as you can't"-don't spend too much time regretting what you think isn't possible. But don't take it as an excuse that your life doesn't permit you to do one BIG thing to get you off the hook of doing the little things you can.
Here are a few other resources:
The Daily Office online: also a podcast.
Hear Scripture and the ancient prayers of the church. Pray together with others knowing that they hear and say the same words, whether or not you're in the same room. (it's in the Book of Common Prayer, too-you can even do it without a screen!) Also check out our local monastery, SSJE, and their Give us a Word series.
How's your charitable giving? Is your pledge to church really where it could be? Could you add some extra giving to a community charity like the Community Day Center or the Waltham Family School?
Blessings,
Sara+
One week in, I hope you've been able to enter into Lent in a peaceable way. I almost wrote offering hopes for a "good start" to Lent, which sounds like it's a race or something we're trying to accomplish, which it's not, exactly. But we are going somewhere.
So what is it? This time of year, I often remember Dorothy Day's desire in her work in creating the Catholic Worker Houses-she said she wanted to create a society in which it was easy to be good. I think Lent is a time when we try to take on practices that make it easier to be close to God; of course we're not distant from God at other times of year, but in Lent we're invited to a certain sense of quiet intimacy with our Creator that the dynamism of Easter or the long days of summer Pentecost don't exactly share. A colleague's wife, Joy Howard has written about the traditional Lenten practices of giving alms, praying, and fasting. She recasts them as "three C's"--compassion, connection, and clarity.
Compassion: we give to others because we are moved by the Spirit of God and see Christ in them. Compassion is different from pity-compassion moves us to respond to the needs of others, whereas pity keeps them at arm's length, separated from us. Pitying "the poor" makes "them" different, not "our kind." Being compassionate, though, allows God to move through my heart in action, not just words.
Connection: we pray. We pray to be more deeply connected to God, and we pray to be conncted to each other. We had some wonderful conversations in our Lent groups this week (you can still join!) about how we are made in the image of God-and how it can be hard to remember that. In prayer, we remember who we are-beloved children of God. That opens our hearts to each other (see: compassion) and allows us to respond with grace. The 2014 www.prayworshipserve.org challenge invites us to give 20 minutes a day to prayer, one hour a week to going to church, and four hours a month to service. If you can't pray for 20 minutes, what about ten?
Clarity: we fast. You don't have to give something up for Lent, but if you were to, what could it be? Think beyond the usual stalwarts of chocolate and alcohol. What about excess noise? What about shopping for stuff you might not need? What about gossip or complaining? Is there anything that would help you simplify or look more clearly at your life? My Lenten discipline for the last three years has been fairly minor, in that I give up the radio in the car. I'm an NPR junkie with a 20-30 minute drive to work, so taking that extra sound out of my life has created 40-60 extra minutes of silence in my day. There's nothing wrong with knowing what's going on in the world-it's really important!-but to spend some extra time witnessing the chaos and noise of my chattering brain is always kind of sobering, an effect that usually lasts for a while even after I happily return to Bob Oakes in the morning.
I'm a big fan of the phrase "Pray as you can, not as you can't"-don't spend too much time regretting what you think isn't possible. But don't take it as an excuse that your life doesn't permit you to do one BIG thing to get you off the hook of doing the little things you can.
Here are a few other resources:
The Daily Office online: also a podcast.
Hear Scripture and the ancient prayers of the church. Pray together with others knowing that they hear and say the same words, whether or not you're in the same room. (it's in the Book of Common Prayer, too-you can even do it without a screen!) Also check out our local monastery, SSJE, and their Give us a Word series.
How's your charitable giving? Is your pledge to church really where it could be? Could you add some extra giving to a community charity like the Community Day Center or the Waltham Family School?
Blessings,
Sara+
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