Dear People of Christ Church,
Last Sunday in my sermon, I was thinking with you about how in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was trying to bring his listeners somewhere. He wasn't just teaching, he was preaching. Our selection was not the nice and warm parts we associate with the Sermon on the Mount-instead of blessing, we heard him use shocking language about cutting off hands and plucking out eyes that cause us to sin: more maniacal dictator than savior. In doing the work of interpretation, we can hear that Jesus is offering a sermon, not an instruction manual for sound living. These wild words speak to imagination, not obedience. Jesus is telling the people to imagine, really imagine, to know that it's possible to be free from sin. It's not as simple as plucking out an eye, it's not even as simple as declaring that Jesus is our Lord and Savior. Instead, it's possible by God's grace, in resurrection and love. As Christians we learn that is a reality beyond sin and brokenness. Whatever shame or violence or hatred we are stuck in, there is a way out.
Jesus uses shocking language because his listeners, like us, need a little prod to pay attention. I recently came across a wonderful book review of Alexandra Horowicz's On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes. Realizing how city living had dulled her senses, Horowicz took eleven different walks around her neighborhood, trying to share the perspective of her companions-various "experts" from her dog, to her toddler, to a geologist and a font specialist. Her walk with a blind acquaintance is one of the most evocative.
Some of our obliviousness is a survival strategy; if my mind judged the new burger special at Wendy's to be as important as whether or not a car was turning into the street in front of me, I wouldn't live very long. I want to listen to the person in front of me talking about her family, not the sound of traffic outside, and I would be a bad priest if I didn't were putting my attention elsewhere. The problem comes when we get cagey in our selection; where our ignor-ance is willful or inflicts pain, where we don't see because we just don't want to deal.
Horowicz writes,
Right now, you are missing the vast majority of what is happening around you. You are missing the events unfolding in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. By marshaling your attention to these words, helpfully framed in a distinct border of white, you are ignoring an unthinkably large amount of information that continues to bombard all of your senses: the hum of the fluorescent lights, the ambient noise in a large room, the places your chair presses against your legs or back, your tongue touching the roof of your mouth, the tension you are holding in your shoulders or jaw, the map of the cool and warm places on your body, the constant hum of traffic or a distant lawn-mower, the blurred view of your own shoulders and torso in your peripheral vision, a chirp of a bug or whine of a kitchen appliance.
This awareness of our unawareness has particular theological significance. I wonder about what would have happened between Michael Dunn and Jordan Davis if they could have seen each other more clearly, untethered by racism or anger; protesters and police in the Ukraine; or Pussy Riot and Vladimir Putin in Russia. On a personal and global scale, we need a wider lens.
This Sunday, we welcome Allison Reynolds- Berry, a community organizer from REACH to tell us about their "Say Hi" campaign (read more below). Small actions like knowing our neighbors and actually seeing each other make for a safer, and stronger, community. Violence at home is an isolating experience, but when people are connected to each other, it can be easier to leave an abusive situation. How can we see our neighbors, our near ones, more clearly? How can we see the work of God around us more profoundly? Where are we not looking, and what can we see?
Blessings,
Sara+
Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, as I was talking with you in my sermon on Sunday, I'm still thinking about the interplay of church as organization and church as people. The buzzword in church circles is "missional"-the focus is on how we are living the mission of God, not on how we organize ourselves or how we provide a service (we are not like manicurists or exterminators, for example, though we do emphasize service to the world). It's hard not to fall into a consumerist way of relating. Our contemporary culture just uses that language; it's convenient. Who is our market? How can we promote our message to resonate with them? How are we meeting the needs of our funders? What balance of challenge and inspiration, happy music and solemn music, will please our patrons?
We do need to be accountable, and the opinions of those who gather do matter, but we are the church because God has a mission in the world, not because we want to strengthen our organization or please ourselves. The sacraments are food for our souls and we come because we are hungry, but we also believe that feeding that particular hunger makes us attuned to other kinds of hunger in the world. We are healed at the altar and reminded of our deep worthiness as children of God so we can go out in the world and join in God's work of healing others. That's mission-that's church as body, not church as service provider. We want a strong organization to serve the mission, but the organization is not the mission.
Understanding ourselves as a gathered body instead of a corporation frees us in a really particular way. This is what Simon and Andrew learned when they started fishing for people-it's God's mission, not theirs, and they're free to succeed or fail, as long as they're listening. The question for us is how to listen. Listen to our city, to where we are called to be in ministry. Listen to each other, to how we can help each other hear the call of God in our lives. When you coach your kid's sport's team, that's part of God's call for you. When you stand on the Common for the peace vigil, that's part of God's call for you. When you watch your grandkids after school, it's God's call.We don't just live out our call as Christians within these four walls.
I wrote two weeks ago about the small group model we are considering for Lent education, beginning on Tuesday, March 11. It's beginning to be a bit more fleshed out, and we've settled on reading the book The Restoration Project by Christopher Martin, whom I met at a conference last year. Martin uses the restoration of Leonardo DaVinci's painting, the Last Supper, as a metaphor for how we can be restored to the image of God, and how our parishes can be home bases for transformation of the self as well as the world. The theological model he uses is based on the steps of humility set out by St Benedict in his Rule of Life. Christopher is a priest and a father of two, so at the same time as the method is steeped in Christian tradition and monasticism, it's also very practical and tied to the life of ordinary people living now. The hope in beginning these smaller groups is to be able to support one another in all the different ways we live out our callings as Christians, as well as to know each other on a deeper level.
As she has generously done for the last two years, Erin Jensen will coordinate children's education with a mix of Godly Play and other projects. Everyone is welcome to come for dinner at 6pm, and then the first education portion for children and adults will be from 6:40 to 7:30, with our simple meditative Eucharist at 7:30. What's different this year is that there will be a second group that will convene with the same content after the service, so if you can't make it as early as 6 you can still participate, joining at the Eucharist at 7:30 or just the group beginning at 8. If there is interest, there would also be a daytime group, so please let us know if that works better for you. Contact Anna Jones with questions. If the groups are successful, they may continue beyond Lent, but we'll start for five weeks to begin with. Sign up for a copy of the book here.
thanks and peace,
Sara+
Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, I'm mulling over all things episcopal: episcopal in the sense of "Episcopal," as in, our church, and "episcopal," in the sense of "related to things relating to bishops." (Greek episcopos=overseer=bishop). The slate of bishop candidates in our diocese was released in January, and during February, candidates who join the slate by petition (those who have gathered the correct mix of clergy and lay delegate signatures across our diocese) are being background checked and will be announced in March. It won't just be those five from the nominating committee! This week also saw the release of the bishops' slate in the suffragan (assisting) election in Maryland. All the candidates were women, which was at the same time entirely troubling and entirely great.
I recently read Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, a corporate manifesto for professional women to focus harder on their careers and reject the things that (she sees) hold them back. Sandberg's point is that, too often, women undermine themselves in subtle ways, and before they know it, have lost the opportunities that would have been available to them had they only "leaned in" further to their work. We don't ask for raises, we don't speak up, we let our spouses get away with leaving too much childcare to us. Sandberg's book has been well-criticized by many different corners, first and foremost because she is talking to such a narrow segment of the population, a relatively un-diversified group of people who are already leaps and bounds more privileged than most Americans, nevermind women or men on a global scale. What's more troubling about the book is that there's nothing about all the structural inequality that leads women to get stuck in their careers, or never to start them at all. If you couldn't go to college because you got a part time job at CVS to take care of your family, there's not a lot of room for "leaning" anywhere before you fall over.
Since I read the book, I've been thinking a lot about how it does and doesn't translate in the Christian life. The Gospel doesn't measure our worth by our salaries or the size of our office, so why should we chase after those things? Well, our Gospel for this Sunday does say something about not hiding your light under a bushel, and I think that can go for our secular work as well as for our faith in God.
But Maryland, oh, Maryland. If I was a little disappointed to see just one woman on the slate in Massachusetts, it was so much worse to see all those women on the list. This is the definition of a double bind: in a circumstance in which the outcome you want (women bishops) is sure, why would you not want to have it be certain? Because it just points to how stuck we already are, that either there is an assumption that a woman would never get elected unless running against only women, or that just being female is a job requirement. This is the structural change that Sheryl Sandberg doesn't get and that we in the church don't do a great job with either.
The charge in baptism is to "respect the dignity of every human being," which includes working for inclusion of all people's skills, on every level, at all times. We need men and women toget her in our sacraments, men and women together in the choir, men and women on the altar guild, menand women and all those in between who don't identify with either, to listen for God's call in their lives. That, as the Prophet Isaiah says in our reading for this Sunday, the fast that God chooses. That is God's desire for the church. What can we do here at Christ Church to share ministry more effectively? Where are you called to stop hiding your light?
Blessings,
Sara+
PS: See a piece on my blog that this is based on & some conversation about it on the church website Episcopal Cafe.
Dear People of Christ Church,
Thanks to everyone who stayed for our annual meeting last week; we had 45 in attendance, the best so far. Jerome, Jennifer, Sarah, James, Salom, Kristin, Courney, Joane, and Pam all signed our member book: welcome, Christ Churchers! We also had some very good conversation in small groups clustered around various points of our mission. From putting out the compost bin that's been languishing in the basement for a year to adding more variety in opportunities for education and community building, we are excited for what 2014 will bring.
One of the things I'm particularly passionate about for 2014 is looking to how we can build a stronger community at Christ Church, both for newcomers and for longtime members. As we grow closer to each other, we also grow closer to God. As we are more grounded in our love of God and God's love for us, we're more able to share with those in need and be generous with our lives. The Gospel really is good news; it's good news that we're loved beyond our imagining. It's good news we can always be forgiven and start again, good news that cruelty and violence don't win.
One of the themes that came up in the annual meeting was also the importance of having different opportunities for coming together; our usual education pattern during Advent and Lent of 6-7:30 or 8 might be best with people with little kids, but anything before 8pm might be too hard for others. The vestry began talking about how to connect people to each other and to the parish last year in the "action reflection" group model. We focused on what we were doing at church-both as a collective and as individuals-- and how we could do what we do better. Both in those conversations and at the annual meeting, it's occurred to me that we actually don't have a lot of time for parishioners to spend time "setting the course" for what we do as a parish. The vestry does a lot of that work, and I do a lot of that work, but we need to do more to make that accessible to everyone and get people talking.
A linked idea, which is successful in churches of all kinds, is the idea of small group ministry. A group of around ten people gathers together in a home or at church or a coffee shop, either for a defined number of meeting times or in an open ended model. There are lots of models-groups can focused on Bible study, or book groups, or prayer groups, or seniors' groups, or parents' groups, or intentionally intergenerational groups-and I hope that over the next few weeks before Lent we can be talking about if something like this might work for us. We've always had the ONE meeting time for education in Advent and Lent, but what if we opened it up wider? What if we had three different opportunities for Lent? What if we had five? Coffee hour is a great way to meet people, but it can also be an introvert's nightmare.
Moving into Lent (Ash Wednesday is in five weeks), I'm thinking of sort of a "Lenten lab" for experimentation; if we can try it for forty days, maybe we'll want to continue. Anna Jones is going to be heading up this effort on behalf of the vestry; she'll have some one on one conversations with people, and if you have ideas please be in touch with us both. I'm also intrigued by the Restoration Project model of small discipleship groups, so check that out as well. They have a great "Lenten Challenge" of 20-1-4 where participants are invited to commit to pray for 20 minutes a day, worship one hour a week, and serve for four hours a month (More at PrayWorshipServe). Whatever we do, please know how grateful I am for each of you and the spiritual life we share at Christ Church.
Blessings,
Sara+
Dear People of Christ Church,
This week, I'm sending along my part for the annual report--please take a minute to read the whole document here. Our annual meeting is after church this Sunday. We'll elect new vestry members, welcoming Michael Mailman and Pam Hopkins for three-year terms and Sarah Staley on as clerk. Jonathan leaves as senior warden and Victoria steps up; Sasha Killewald will take the junior warden while Chris continues as treasurer, and Christine Dutt stays on vestry to finish out Sasha's initial term. Andrea Shirley will join our deanery representation contingent and also stand as convention alternate, along with Chris Jensen. Thanks to all of them! The other part of our meeting will be to have some conversation about our vision for our parish. Parishioners will be invited to talk in groups about what they hope to see for the future and how we're doing right now. Finally, new members will be invited to sign our membership book, with some signatures stretching back to the 1890's! Child care will be provided--please come! Chloe Jensen will be leading a rainbow loom activity and other adult supervision will be in our Godly Play room.
Here's my report:
Each year when I sit down to write this report-now my ninth-I am continually grateful for all the things that God is doing in our midst here at Christ Church. I'm always also struck by how these reports can be at once arbitrary (why remember x? What if y were more important?) and deeply meaningful, in that the change of the year is a time to pause and pay attention. And anybody reading this probably knows that I never pass up an opportunity to remind myself to pay attention.
Even as this year has seemed to be an ordinary one, with no new huge undertakings (just the ongoing huge projects!), in terms of my leadership here, it's been an important time. When I came back from sabbatical in late 2012, I endeavored to meet one on one with everyone in the parish (also, of course, my door is always open). Those meetings made space to share joy as well as grief, with a good dose of surprise and wonder thrown in. It felt important to begin the post-sabbatical chapter of our work together anew, and I came out of those meetings feeling more invigorated and more inspired by what God is doing in all of our lives. I also begin 2014 profoundly grateful for the leadership and support over the years of Jonathan Duce. Jonathan has been a warden for more than half of my time at Christ Church. He lead us through the articulation of mission and vision, through my transition from priest in charge to rector, has overseen our building work from the historic preservation of our tower to the use of capital campaign funds to investigate the tower in the first place and to make our first floor restroom handicap accessible. With a deep longing for God and love for God's people and God's church, his faithfulness and trust have been an anchor and inspiration.
As I was thinking about all the things we did this year, I continue also to be thankful for the newness that our community seeks to be open to. This past year we added an additional Stations of the Cross service for children on Good Friday with our friends at First Lutheran. Leading into Lent, we braved snow and our shyness with bringing Ash Wednesday prayers to the Commuter Rail station. We blessed backpacks in September, we heard different languages spoken in Church on Pentecost, tackled hard questions about death and dying at our conversation about end of life decisions in June. We were blessed to welcome the Rev. Elise Feyerherm as non-stipendiary priest associate (and choir member). This spirit of adventure and experimentation is so important to our sense of vibrancy as well as centeredness. Our safety and security does not lie in having everything stay the same, but in God's neverending love for us. We are always growing. The next thing we try might succeed or fail, but we experiment with a sense of openness to where the Spirit can take us. This is God's church, not ours, and that gives us a freedom to try and fail, fall and get up, to pray and wait for answers.
For 2014, my hope is that we build even more on these strengths. How can each parishioner be lead more deeply into their vocation in the service of God in this community? How can we strengthen the bonds between us? How can we foster excellence in the way we lead worship, reach out to our city, nurture our children? Asking these and so many questions, I'm grateful for our journey together.
Blessings,
Sara+
Dear People of Christ Church,
At long last, the slate for candidates for bishop for the Diocese of Massachusetts has been released. Our own Sasha Killewald was a member of the discernment committee that worked on compiling the slate, so thank you, Sasha, for all of your hard work! Candidates can also be nominated by petition process, described here, which closes January 31. (For an overview, read the Boston Globe article.) Our diocese spans churches large and small, mostly within the boundaries of Rt 495 and East into the Cape. Our current bishop, Tom Shaw, has served for twenty years. He's a monk (literally-he's a brother of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge). Open meetings will be held around the diocese March 14-19 for us to meet the candidates and ask questions. Rev. Holly Antolini is our dean here in the Alewife deanery, so we know her a bit better, as well as Rev. Sam Rodman, who works at the diocese with the Together Now Collaborative Campaign. Canonically resident clergy in the diocese will vote at a special convention on April 5, and each parish has two lay delegates as well-the same who attend Diocesan Convention each fall, in our case Mike Balulescu and Jonathan Duce, elected at the annual meeting. Voting members vote "by orders" (clergy in one pool and lay in the other) and the candidate with a majority of votes on the same ballot from both is the winner-occasionally bishops are elected on the first ballot, but usually it takes a few.
We could probably argue all day about whether the choice of the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts is the most important choice of the year or the least important; institutional church politics are not exactly a thrill a minute. It is interesting, though, to think about the next steps for the diocese as we at Christ Church are perched at our annual meeting coming up in ten days. We're compiling the annual report, which is available online in its current form. Limited paper copies will be available this Sunday in advance of the meeting on 1/26, but please download it online if you're able to instead.
Looking back at 2013, we've also done some pretty amazing things. We concluded the Waltham CPA Historic Preservation-funded portion of our tower restoration. We emerged re-energized from the sabbatical time, an important time for me as rector and, I think, for you as a congregation to re-engage in ministry. We've welcomed a raft of new members, and grown our ranks of lay Eucharistic ministers, readers, and choristers (we can be particularly thankful that six of the new members who joined in 2013 are part of the choir!). We did new things, built on the old, and said goodbye to Amanda Gee, the Christie and August Families, and others who left Waltham. David, our organist, started a bell choir. We engaged a new, more open process for vestry nominations that will continue in 2014. There were deaths and births and Life just goes.
Through it all, there will be a bishop, there will be a rector, and there will be Christians of all kinds. Whatever the configuration of our diocese or our parish, the Spirit will be with us all. On Sunday, in my sermon I was sharing some background about the early church; what a change it was to understand that
absolutely everyone, without exception, could be part of it. What a change, too, for that community to discover that the Messiah John announced wasn't going to sweep in and set everything on fire with a big show of muscle. Instead, Jesus went to be baptized, to begin his ministry with the power of God's love and solidarity. Reconciliation doesn't come through force and dominance. That's the kind of church we need to be, and the kind of leaders we need. Let's pray to be open to what God will do.
Blessings,
Sara+
Dear People of Christ Church,
Happy Epiphany, and happy 2014.
The liturgical season of Epiphany starts with the feast celebrating the Magi from the East bringing their gifts to Jesus (they're in the Gospel of Matthew; the Gospel of Luke gives us the shepherds and the manger). An epiphany is a revelation; something that hadn't been visible suddenly is. We often talk about epiphany as sudden realization; you go through life day in and day out doing the same things, and BANG, suddenly you see things differently. It's a good holiday for the new year; we often make resolutions, planning somehow to improve ourselves or do things differently.
I recently had the somewhat sobering experience of running into an old journal of mine from years ago. My life circumstances 15 years ago were 100% different from now-I wasn't a priest, a mother, or a spouse, which 99% of my tasks now relate to. And what did I want to "fix" about myself? I wanted to try to be more present to where I was in the moment (check). I wanted to feel less stressed, by planning my time better (check). I wanted to meditate more (check. But now I'd add prayer to that). Get more exercise (check). So much for making any progress!
The Epiphany in this, though, isn't that I've always been bad at these things and always will be. The Epiphany for me in this is that, even though I my think that I "should" do more beneficial stuff of all kinds, even with my perceived failure, God has steadfastly been with me throughout all of this. Jesus has shown up day after day with me in new challenges and new days and all manner of newness that has come in 9 years of priesting and almost 7 years of parenting. Maybe the Epiphany can be to trust God and trust myself, and put a little less energy into self-criticism, which doesn't exactly inspire transformation.
The First Sunday after Epiphany always gives us the baptism of Jesus-he emerges out of the water and hears a voice that he is God's beloved, God's chosen. When we baptize, we go right there with God. We're beloved, we're chosen. It can just take a while to realize just how much it applies to us. Transformation comes from love, not guilt. The heavens didn't open with God saying "This is my son, Jesus. He has great potential if only he'd try a little harder."
Through the season of Epiphany, we load up on all of the assurances of God's work in the world, all of those stories of revelation through Jesus' ministry of healing, reconciling, and leading people into God's ways of peace and justice.
UCC pastor (and spouse of our occasional sub priest, Anne Minton) Mary Luti puts it this way:
Starfire, dream-clouds, baby's flesh, garments of light, kings on their knees and disciples on their faces-in Epiphany we learn, again, to see, to listen, to worship, and to be called; for discipleship (we know, but too soon forget in our drive to be useful and productive) is as much about being spoken to as it is about speaking, as much about adoring as serving, as much about perceiving as doing, as much about being found as searching. Discipleship is born in awe, it arises from encounter, it is a consequence of worship.
See you Sunday!
Blessings,
Sara+
