Bel and the Tenderloin

I don't usually put papers up, or projects, but this has been referred to or I have been told it inspired something, so I thought I would make it available.


Cross Cultural Ministry Project - March 6, 2010


What is our theology of food? We talk a lot, or I at least hear a lot, that we are the people of the table. I expect that what we are trying to express is that our emphasis is on the incarnation and on the abundant life. Table fellowship is certainly older than Christianity. We bring our Jewish heritage forward in the rituals and materials of our feasting. What makes Christian meals different is the practicing of the radical table fellowship practiced by Jesus and preserved for us in the Gospels. This fellowship has always been hard for us, as Paul’s letters testify. Times, I am sad to report, have not much changed. We often fail in our attempts to practice the abundant, generous and equitable table manners of Jesus Christ. We have a hard time letting go of our dignity and fear so that Christ can shine through us. The plain old truth is when we exchange food with each other we are almost always exchanging some power as well. And power is sometimes, often times, harder for us to give over than some day old bread, or even a sip of Eucharistic wine.
While I was in the Tenderloin neighborhood doing ethnographic studies and looking for God’s presence for a cross-cultural ministry class, my group started each day with bible study. We used a bible study method that isn’t very popular, and when I karaoke with my friends, we call it suicide – flip open the book, drop your finger to the page, and go from there. I am a firm believer in 2 Timothy 3:16 that says, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” I wouldn’t use this method for a Sunday sermon, but interestingly, no one is going to use the passage we found either, since it isn’t in the lectionary, and I had no idea it was even in the middle of my bible. We flipped to a book called Bel and the Dragon, which is the 14th chapter of the book of Daniel, which is found in the Apocrypha and is part of the early Greek copies of the New Testament.
This is the super short version. Babylonians worshiped a god they called Bel. Bel ate 12 bushels of flour, 40 sheep and 6 measures of wine every day. Daniel wouldn’t worship Bel and the king wanted to know why. When Daniel said he only worshiped the living God, the king scoffed and said, of course Bel is alive, look at all the food he eats every day. So the king made a bet with the priests, if the food was gone the next morning, as usual, the king would get rid of the annoying Daniel, but if the food were still on the altar, the king would kill all the priests and banish all their families. There were 40 priests with their families working at this temple. Now, Daniel was very annoying because he was very clever and he sprinkled flour all over the floor of the temple before the king sealed the door. The priests didn’t know. So, when they went through the secret passage to eat all the food, they left footprints in the flour that gave them away.
Now I have a lot of sympathy for the priests in this story. I am fairly sure that priest-ing has never been a really lucrative career choice. I can imagine that every one knew that the priests and their families, after Bel had consumed the essence of the sacrifice, ate the offering to Bel. I can imagine how during a famine or some other crisis, the priests would start telling people that Bel himself was actually eating the physical sacrifice. A little white lie, to create a more powerful and more comforting god, would be lying for the best of reasons. And then the slippery slope starts. Who knows how long this idea of Bel eating the physical food had been going around? Long enough that a king believed it. Long enough that the priests didn’t know how to tell the truth. Long enough that Bel is one powerful god and he gets fed every day.
So, this is what I am thinking about while I walk through the Tenderloin. Who or what is Bel in this place? Some of you may not know anything about the Tenderloin. It is a neighborhood in San Francisco, about 1/3 of a square mile and about 25,000 people live there. Now, San Francisco is a dense place for America, but the average for the whole city is only 16,500 per square mile. 25,000 people in 1/3 of a square mile means there are about 71,200 people per square mile in the Tenderloin. San Francisco is also a really expensive city. The median household income in the city is 74,000 dollars a year. It is $26,000 in the Tenderloin. As you might imagine, it is pretty hard to get that many people, who make that little money, into 1/3 of a square mile. The overwhelming preponderance of housing is something called a Single Resident Occupancy hotel, or SRO for short. That means what it sounds like, a hotel room, with a hot plate and a mini fridge.
The really interesting thing about an SRO is that the federal government does not consider people living in them to be housed. This means they are still technically homeless, and the federal government gives money to states and cities based on the number of homeless that live there. This is a sort of supplement with the idea that if there are a lot of homeless, there aren’t a lot of jobs, but that the cities will be providing services to all these people anyway. It shares the burden among all of us, and that is good and fair.
A lot of people find themselves homeless because their jobs are eliminated due to manufacturing improvements, due to moving the job offshore, and due to economic downturns. The elderly can easily find themselves homeless .Another really heartbreaking fact is that the mentally ill are disproportionately represented in the homeless population. These are vets with PTSD, people with dissociative disorders, and people with chronic disorders. Most of these people qualify to receive some sort of economic assistance; unemployment insurance, Social Security, and for the mentally ill and physically handicapped, Social Security Disability Income, or SSDI. There are many non-profit agencies in San Francisco that help people qualify for some sort of assistance. These compassionate people work very hard helping people get off the streets and many, if not most, find an affordable home in an SRO in the Tenderloin.
Right here is where I want to recall to your attention that the federal government doesn’t consider these homes, and the city of San Francisco collects these federal funds in addition to rent, often from Social Security checks. This might be OK. Federal funds supplement the purchase of old hotels in the neighborhood, pay for developers to bring them up to earthquake codes and the city, as owners of the buildings, can regulate the rents so that people can afford to keep their rooms.
But I wonder if this isn’t how the priests felt about Bel? A lot of people are supported by this system. Politicians make reputations on their ability to say that they house the homeless. Contractors, developers, government officials, and non-profit employees find meaningful work and their families are fed. The owners of buildings receive a payment for their buildings rather than a bill for bringing it up to code. The city itself receives guaranteed income- from two sources. I know from talking to people who live in the Tenderloin that San Francisco has a reputation as far away as Connecticut as a place where a person without a home or a job can find some dignity and a place to call their own. It seems that feeding Bel benefits a lot of people. If something does a lot of good, can it be bad?
The Tenderloin sounds pretty good on paper. It sounds a little crowded but sleeping indoors during a downpour is not to be sneezed at. But what it is like to live somewhere is not the same as the tourist brochure or the website lead us to believe. What about the people who do live there? As you might imagine, given all the single rooms, most of the residents of the Tenderloin are single. They tend to be in their mid-thirties, although seeing older people is not uncommon. Seeing families is uncommon, yet there are enough families that about 10 years ago the city built a school. The school primarily serves children of immigrants, who do not speak English when they start school, and the building houses a lot of services oriented towards immigrant families. On average, San Francisco has one car per household and in the Tenderloin this raises to one car per five households. Most people in the Tenderloin ride the bus to work and their commute is about 20 to 30 minutes. This might sound idyllic to some of us. We talk a lot about living where we work and building environmentally sustainable neighborhoods. We talk a lot about the good that come from density, the preservation of resources, especially reducing our carbon footprints. I suspect that many of us have an image of a neighborhood in mind when I say all these things. That probably isn’t this neighborhood. In the Tenderloin, there are no grocery stores, no drug stores, no movie theaters, no bookstores, no restaurants, and no coffee shops. There are very few streetlights and no public parks. The streets are a drug market at night and buses do not go through this neighborhood, they go around.
Maybe about now, you are thinking all sorts of things. Maybe you are thinking that this is tragic. Maybe you are wondering why anyone would want to live in San Francisco, especially if they don’t have a good job. That is what I am wondering. You are certainly wondering things I haven’t even thought of. Chances are you are thinking this stuff is all too big to do anything about. Chances are, you are actually wondering what any of this has to do with church.
As it turns out, churches play a key role in the economy of the Tenderloin. Remember those numbers about income? Rent in the Tenderloin is about 40% cheaper than the average rent in San Francisco, but it is for a single room with a hot plate and a mini fridge. The average apartment in San Francisco has a kitchen, and most likely, a bedroom. Median income in the Tenderloin is 60% less than the median income for the whole city. Most people live and work pretty close to the Tenderloin and there are no restaurants or grocery stores in the neighborhood.
This was really brought home to me our first day in the Tenderloin. In the morning, we met at a Burger King at 8th and Market. I ordered a small coffee and a four-piece Cinna-bun. I got 8 oz of coffee and 4 one inch diameter white flour, very processed cinnamon bun. I paid $3.35 for this. At the end of the day, we had circled back to the same corner. Across a busy street from Burger King, between two police officers, on the corner and past a security guard at the door was the street entrance to a Starbucks in a hotel lobby. I ordered a 12 oz coffee and an apple cranberry bran muffin so large I had to share it. This cost me $3.36. It is important to know that the price difference between organic, local and fresh food and food that is processed and chemically enhanced is mere pennies. Food costs the same, no matter the quality, and that price is linked to the real necessity of a $9.79 minimum wage. Churches feed the Tenderloin for the price of standing quietly in line for half an hour or more. Oh, and no cutting to stand in line with your friends to eat with them.
Glide Memorial Church (Methodist) serves over 850,000 meals a year, three times a day: 364 days a year. Twenty-seven people have full time employment with the meal program alone. Glide has a foundation and many corporate and political sponsors. Although the line was long, the security guards were scary, the path from the front door - down stairs and dismal hallways to the dining room proved confusing, and volunteers and employees did not eat with us, I did feel a glimmer of that table fellowship of Jesus. The staff seemed to know many people, and given the reputation of the church, I expect that many parishioners were among the diners.
St. Anthony’s Church (Catholic) serves nearly one million meals a year. They serve lunch only, although you may have as many lunch trays as you wish. There are a lot of volunteers at St. Anthony’s; in the dining room they blend into the food queue, alternating with guests. Although at first glance it seemed that they were eating with the rest of us, they were in fact providing trays of “seconds” to those who raised their hand. A faint smile or hello was the limits of my interactions with the staff and volunteers. The diners had livelier conversation at St. Anthony’s than Glide in my impression, however, that could have been due to my own participation.
Here is the number that boggles the mind. One million, eight hundred and fifty thousand meals a year. Even if I divide that by 365 days in a year and assume two meals per person, that is 2,500 people a day. That is roughly as much as 2 people eat in one year. This is an industry. To gather that much food, prepare and distribute it, and clean up the mess after, is a huge undertaking. It is no wonder that both Glide and St. Anthony’s have spun this ministry off from the work of the church and put it under the guidance of foundations. It makes sense that the city would put low-income housing in this area. It makes sense that there are no grocery stores and restaurants. Not only could the residents in the neighborhood not afford to support them, they couldn’t compete with the quantity or even the quality of the meal programs. And these programs, all these volunteers are making a huge difference in the Tenderloin, offering a place for genuine community and the difference between life and death. But I can’t help wondering about Bel. The marginally housed, the homeless, the unemployed are all eating, just like those priests and those families were eating in Babylon; but what god is really being served?
I completely understand and I support the work of these foundations. I definitely appreciated the meals that they served me. And I admire the huge undertaking this represents; addressing hunger in the big and systematic way that it presents itself in the Tenderloin. There is a lot that we can do to support that work. But these foundations, even if churches started them, even if they are run and partially funded by churches, aren’t churches. Even if they are doing it for the right reasons, for the best reasons, I think they are still serving Bel.
Jesus fed the 5,000. All four Gospels tell the story, which says something about how important this event was to the self-understanding of the early Christian community. The story is not told, despite its miraculous qualities, as Jesus doing something for people that he does not partake in as well. There is something very important about breaking bread together. Something expansive happens when we break bread together in the name of Jesus Christ, something evocative of the memory of this miracle. And Jesus ate with sinners. Jesus ate with us. And how we do this has mattered since the beginning. And it has been hard since the actual event.
The meal, with all its human appetites, is the thing. It is awesome to worship with people, but it can be a lot easier to share a pew with someone for an hour than to share a meal with them for an hour. After all, we are getting a lot of positive reinforcement to share the pew, from the pulpit, from the altar, from the hymnal and the prayers. And if the person sitting next to us is particularly difficult and not a family member, we can even think to ourselves, at least I don’t have to have lunch with them. But even if I did have lunch with them, it would be my choice, my food. I am not giving away any of my power, my dignity, to do so. But of course, Jesus was all about us giving up our power, all about us getting over our dignity.
In addition to our being Christians, we are more specifically Episcopalians. And I’ve noticed something about Episcopalians. We are really good at the big stuff – think of ERD. We are really good at asking our government officials what they are doing for neighborhoods, our neighborhoods and neighborhoods like the Tenderloin. We are really good at asking how money is invested in the neighborhood; when will we zone a space, clear a space, support a space, for a grocery store, for a park? A really important way we can do that is to advocate for the homeless, asking hard questions, tossing wrenches into systems like the one found in San Francisco, asking what their back up plan is when the federal government closes this particular loophole. It can be an amazing spiritual practice for us to do this work in the world and a witness when we claim our Christianity when we do it.
But we are also Episcopalians. We like small projects. We like to practice what my mother calls, “put your money where your mouth is.” It just isn’t enough to talk about it. We want to do the really radical work of table fellowship. We want to be Jesus’ body in the world. And we are really good at it. I think of it as the difference between feeding and eating. When I merely feed my kids, I feel underappreciated. But when I cook food for my children and for me, and I eat with them, we tell each other about our day, we learn from each other, we learn about each other. We are changed. We are loved. We are heard.
It isn’t enough to cook for people, to feed people, from a distance, whether that distance is from our checkbooks or from the kitchen side of the meal line. We have to eat with people, too. And in a place like San Francisco, where the homeless are both unemployed and a vital part of the economy, it’s really important to do, and really hard not to get scared. It’s easy to get scared. We mostly like to hang out with people like ourselves because we don’t have to work as hard. We have mostly the same expectations of each other. But when we are with people who aren’t like us, the initial discomfort is harder. On the other side, however, is a place to sit in the kingdom of heaven, right in our parish hall.
And it isn’t just our personal discomfort. Especially in a place like San Francisco, it is easy to get caught in a trap of our own success. Word gets out when God draws near. Moses can tell you, it’s pretty frightening to trust God, especially when God draws near. It becomes really easy to give into the fear of success, to withdraw from the connection, to make up some rules to contain the chaos. I was in a lovely parish once, where the containment had gotten so chaotic in it’s own right, that they fed the homeless, huddled to one side of the room, then sat down to eat together after everyone else had left. They carefully saved some food for themselves and saved themselves for each other.
I’ll admit, I was really angry. A great righteous anger, because the fear of this parish had gotten between them and the experience they were seeking, between them and God. I was angry because they missed the point. That didn’t last long, however, because I ended up spending quite a bit of time outside with a girl who had come to lunch with her dog. The dog couldn’t come in, and wouldn’t stay outside alone. So she and I sat on a bench, and tried to get that dog to eat. Neither of us owned the food. Neither of us was trying to fix the other, just get that pretty dog to eat. And at the end of that meal, she wasn’t some street punk, and I wasn’t some middle-aged soccer mom. We were Dawn and Heather, and we both loved dogs. And that was enough for that day. That was enough for the kingdom of heaven to be visible, for just that half an hour.
When Jesus said we were bringing about the kingdom of God that is what he was talking about. Most of the time, when we do the big stuff, when we throw a wrench in the system or throw some flour on the floor, as important as that see how God is using it to jamb up the powers that be. And that can be disheartening. So we have this other work, too. Work that is like finding the last cookie in the cookie jar; a little surprise, a little sweet just for us. gives us an instant glimpse of the greater good we are working towards.
When I look at the enormity of the problem, and the scandalous solution, I get afraid. I just want to give up. While I was walking the streets and eating my meals in the Tenderloin, I talked to some homeless people. I listened to a woman from Connecticut, who had run out of unemployment benefits and still couldn’t find a job, so she came here. I talked with a Vietnam vet, who did everything he was told was right, and when the steel industry collapsed, came out here because he heard there was a job. Fifteen years and no job later he wanted me to know if God was punishing him for killing those kids in Vietnam. And someone else, who thought I was going into ministry so I could afford to drive a Cadillac. I got so profoundly, hopelessly sad that some of these people had no one who loved them, who knew where they were, who cared enough or were even able to call them home. But then I had that little time with Dawn, and I realized that those were the very moments that we are given so that we can do the big work, throw the wrench, make the moment for God to work metanoia on the whole world. I think that all of this, the wrenches and the shared meals, are how we express the theology of food, of table fellowship, that marks us not as not just spiritual and not just religious, but Christian. I think it’s important that each and every one of us knows when we are feeding Bel and when we are feeding each other. I think it’s even more important that we throw flour on the floor, throw wrenches, and topple Bel, so that we can bring about the kingdom of heaven in our very midst.

December 14 and 20, 2010

Dear friends,

I am meeting with Canon --, the director of Vocations for the
Diocese of Oregon, on Thursday the 16th. We will be meeting to talk
about what I need to do in order to get to Vocations Conference this
May.

It has been a long road, with many hurdles, some of my own making, to
get to this beginning. At one time or another, you have taken the time
to listen to my hopes and dreams and woes and worries. I am blessed to
have so many people willing to take some time to encourage me on this
journey, sometimes with a much-needed kick in the pants.

If you find a moment on Thursday to send up some love, I am sure it
will come back to me.

If you find you have nothing else to do during the first week of
January, I will be taking the General Ordination Exams and any
requests for a miracle at that time would also be greatly appreciated.


Blessings this Advent season. The Lord is almost here.


Dear friends,

Thursday went fantastic. What i really needed was for someone in that
office to say, I want to move forward with you. And, to be completely
honest, I wasn't ready to move forward before, but I couldn't have
done the work I needed to do at home anyway. Of course, that said, the
bishop and canon think it is really weird that the vocations director
wouldn't accept any paperwork from me before I went to school, even if
I didn't go to vocations conference, but we are going to just sort it
out.

And then I came back, and finished my last paper, and celebrated
--- 13th birthday over many days and in many ways...
... and Christmas pageants and I haven't actually had a
chance until today to sit down and let people know. I just about
blanketed my email contact list...

I am not worrying about the GOE's, because when I realized the worst
thing that could happen is that I would have to form a study group and
talk with them about it, well, that would be my preference in any
case, so it became a bit of a win/win.

And we had another completely awesome and totally different pageant
this year. I even had a good time, once I remembered that Christmas
pageants are why I am doing all the work, and not the other way
around.

I hope that your Christmas celebrations are unrolling in a fantastic fashion.

Love and Kisses in the name of the Baby Jesus!

RCL I - Christmas 2010 (for homiletics)

I know it's not Christmas, but this was my last sermon for homiletics, and was pretty awesome. The gospel it is based on is Luke 2:1-14(15-20).



“Do not be afraid.”
A stranger walks up to you and says, do not be afraid.
Luckily, that doesn’t happen to me very often. Because on a cold dark night, I think that just might be an invitation to be very, very afraid.

Still, this is Jesus’ birth announcement, and God is using a tried and true method to communicate with us. And if the method seems suspect, well, so do the recipients. Who are these shepherds? More importantly, who do they know? Who can they tell?

No. Shepherds are not classy,
they aren’t glamorous, and they don’t attend parties with movers and shakers. God couldn’t have chosen more ordinary people to be the first to hear the news.

In fact, this birth announcement is our first clue that Jesus is here to show us a different way. Because this isn’t about glamorous movers and shakers. It’s about a baby. And everyone knows babies are no fun at cocktail parties.

Now, an angel might be. An angel seems to us a powerful being, maybe a creature with wings and halos and even an ethereal glow. Yes, I am sure that an angel could tell anyone, anything, that God wanted known. An angel like that could surely get the message to the right person.

Yet, lots of times, when God sends an angel, it has no wings, no glowing face, no face at all. It’s an idea in our heads that we can be so much more than we think we are capable of. Kinder, more loving, stronger, braver, more just, more outspoken on the behalf of others, more compassionate. Things we wish we could be, if we were, perhaps, a different person.

And even though we know, with absolute certainty, that we can’t possibly change, we step out and we try anyway. Sometimes, like those shepherds we think, ‘let’s go see if this is real.’ Sometimes we can do this, because we imagine the stakes are low. We think, oh, what’s the worst that can happen? No one will notice? That’s not so bad.

For the shepherds, it meant a walk back into town, and maybe a warm beverage on a cold night.

So they get to the inn, and sure enough, there is the sign, just like the angel said. There is a baby in a food trough in a courtyard. Which is just so unexpected that it must be a sign, and it must be true. Low stakes, it seemed, for the shepherds. Yet, it has glorious results for us all.

And it was not just the shepherds that had their faith affirmed that night. Mary has had the same experience as the shepherds. Almost a year ago, an angel came to her and said, do not be afraid. You will have a son, and name him Jesus, and he will be God’s son.
No pressure.

So, the angel gave Mary a sign. The unlikely sign that her elderly cousin would be pregnant for the first time. God being born at all is so inconceivable that Mary is given a sign that is also inconceivable.

Pregnancy is not a low stakes proposition. Not much was asked of the shepherds to confirm their faith. Just a walk, just what they could do. Mary’s faith was so great, she was able, on the strength of that angel’s sign, to go through a pregnancy and a birth.

Mary was able to listen to that angel, unafraid, and believe that angel and be something more than she could have ever imagined for herself.

It wasn’t just the shepherds whose faith was strengthened on that night in Bethlehem. Imagine how Mary must have felt to hear from a stranger that same message she herself had heard so many months before. Because, to hear someone else, someone who is not an angel, affirm our longing and truth is perhaps more powerful than anything we are told by a mythical creature.

I think that may be why, in the unfolding of creation, God sent us a child. God came among us, encased and embraced in the same flesh as us, so that when God said, ‘I love you’ it carried all the weight of our actual experience. Love for us is sticky and messy and complicated. We learn it by touch and through hormones and confuse it with other motivations. But it’s in the middle of that mess that we find the thing we know to be love.

This is our gift, this Christmas day.
Right in the middle of our busy, messy lives, Jesus shows us exactly how to move beyond the mess, and offers us the pure experience of God’s love in the way best suited to our understanding. As a child, as a parent, as a random bystander. We are all enfolded into the story of Emmanuel, God with us. Like the shepherds, we can all share the ‘good news of great joy for all people.’ We can all listen for an angel, and be something more than we ever thought we could be.

December 3, 2010

And after this - epic fail. Made more wonderful since I lost the answers and comments in a hard drive crash. Suffice to say - I failed every test. And was amazingly supportive and helped several people pass their make up exams. 


Dear Ms. Heather  Lee ,

Congratulations! Bishop Michael Hanley has nominated you to take the 2011 General Ordination Examination as one step in your process toward ordination in The Episcopal Church. The General Board of Examining Chaplains will administer the GOE electronically and you will have to log onto the GBEC website at www.episcopalgbec.org to obtain vital information about the GOE and how and when to take it.

Therefore you MUST log onto www.episcopalgbec.org IMMEDIATELY, using the “Candidates” link (on the left of the top menu bar) and the following:

Log On ID: 
Password: 

When logging on the first time, change your password to one you can remember.  You cannot access vital information or take the GOE without it!

After you log on and change your password, please read the Candidates Welcome Letter for VITAL information about the GOE such as:
        • dates and times
        • its evaluation
        • what happens afterwards

Also read General Instructions about:
        • how to access and take the GOE

Finally, take some time to familiarize yourself with the website and its links, which should answer all of your GOE-related questions.

If you still have questions, please feel free to contact us at email or phone number.


Faithfully yours,

---
Executive Director & GOE Administrator

Advent 1 @ St. John's

this is the sermon i offered at the 8 and 10 am services at St. John's, Ross, CA. 9am is a different sort of service and the sermon was also about advent, but in the main, correlated the waiting of advent to pregnancy. there are no notes, and it wasn't recorded, so you will just have to take Aulden's word for it, that it was awesome.


Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work or watch or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your loves sake, Amen.

I don’t quite know why Advent makes that prayer come to mind, but every year, it does. Perhaps it is because Advent is when we watch. We watch for Jesus. We pay extra attention to our longing for a messiah.

Longing is an ordinary human action.

Our readings today speak of longing. We long for a time when our needs are met with abundance, when we don’t have to fight over scarcity anymore. Isaiah tells us about this.
We long for a place where God rules and justice prevails and peace is our birthright. The psalms speak to this.
We long for a time when we can be taken away from all our troubles. Jesus hears his disciples talking among themselves about this.

It is really normal to long for the end of fighting and struggling and misunderstandings. And it is really normal to cope with all the difficulties of life by ignoring as much of the strife as we can. It really is normal to wait for God to take care of the big stuff especially when we feel we are just getting by.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work or watch or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.

Sometimes, prayer is all we can do. Sometimes, giving the job to God is as much as we can manage, and this prayer carries that hidden desire. Do these things, because we don’t think we can. Jesus certainly teaches us how to pray, and tells us to pray often. But that isn’t all he tells us.

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.

The gospel today is part of a series of teachings that Jesus offers his disciples, having just led them out of the temple, where he was pretty hard on the Pharisees for following the letter of the law and not the spirit. The letter of the law was keeping the Pharisees comfortable under Roman rule, but it wasn’t doing much for the rest of the Israelites.

So he has taken his disciples out of Jerusalem and he is trying to make it really clear to them
that who he is and
what he is here to do
is not what they think.

Because they thought Jesus was here to set up a government that would make everything good and just and fair, and take care of all the problems they didn’t want to think about. They are thinking that Jesus is going to make a place for them by kicking out the Romans and then the world will be perfect because they will be able to abdicate their responsibilities to Jesus.

That is what the disciples are hoping and thinking. But Jesus is telling his disciples and telling us, that we can’t abdicate our responsibility. We can’t assume that someone else is going to come and make things better, because we don’t know when that day will come. The kingdom of God isn’t what they thought it would be. The kingdom of God isn’t a government. We are the kingdom of God.

And while we don’t get to abdicate responsibility, we don’t have to go it alone. Jesus, over and over again, in his ministry, showed the disciples what to do, and promises that he will be with us.

Here at St. John’s we are part of that same story. We stand alongside the Israelites of Isaiah’s day, and the disciples of Jesus’ earthly ministry. We stand alongside our grandparents and parents and children and grandchildren in the continual unfolding of the kingdom of God. And in Advent we share in the hope and longing for peace in the world.

There are as many ways to share in the watching and working and weeping of the world as there are people. One of the ways is by making a house where all God’s people are welcome. As this is the last Sunday of the stewardship campaign, I am obliged to tell you that money helps make that happen. And I can tell you that the ownership you feel for having made even the smallest of pledges is greater than the guilt you might imagine over the size of that pledge.

And another way to share in that work is with your time and your talent. One of the ways I am doing that this year is directing the Christmas pageant. I am going to be spending some of my time bringing our children into this sanctuary, and some of my talent giving them the confidence to come in and teach us what it means for God to be with us.

I think Christmas pageants are important. Because the Christmas pageant is one of those few times when we let our children teach us what it means to be Christians.

And as I think about this community, and the ways in which we, like the people who followed Jesus during his human ministry, struggle with what it means to be like Jesus. It occurs to me that as a community, we have one line in the pageant. We have one response when the children come to us and look for shelter and warmth and a place to be safe with a new baby. We say ‘no room.’

During Advent, I think of the faith of Mary and Joseph, looking for a place to sleep, a place of peace, a place to give birth to the Son of Man. I think of all the longing I feel for a messiah to come. And I get really busy with all the traditions and responsibilities and think, I don’t have room for one more thing in my life.

But I wonder about that innkeeper, who had no room. I wonder if he was praying something like this prayer, when the knock came to his door. I wonder if it changed his mind.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work or watch or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous, and all for your loves sake, Amen.

Christ the King - YrC

homiletics sermon, so really early, except this is the day I preached it.

Father, we thank you for the strength, the endurance, the patience, and the joy that enables us to share in the inheritance of the saints and be present to the kingdom of your beloved Son. Amen.

Today’s readings are from the last Sunday in the church calendar. The lectionary calls today Christ the King. However, unless our parish happens to be named Christ the King, we are unlikely to celebrate this in any particular way.

In truth, most of us are enjoying one last minute of calm before our lives are overrun with holiday parties, family gatherings, shopping and wrapping extravaganzas and just a general over consumption of everything. Each year we produce – collectively and individually – a great pile of lists of what we have accomplished that in more or less implied ways, identify what we hope to do differently next year.
Today, in this minute of calm, we can see that all this activity is pointing to something. It is pointing to our desires to be part of a community, to be loved, to be more than a worker in a job. I think the mere fact that we pile so much onto the last month of the year testifies to the importance we give to the end and the beginnings that follows.

So I find it a bit ironic that for Christians, at least liturgically and lectionary minded Christians, today is the end of the year. Today is the day we bring into sharp focus the now and the not yet of the kingdom of God.

Our readings today are shot through with images of kingdoms; kingdoms of safety and justice and righteousness. God lifts up good shepherds, good kings, good nations. Finally, God lifts up a son.

Colossians tells us, “For in Jesus, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself ALL things, whether on earth or in heaven by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

Some of these images are clearly, for us, in the past. I haven’t needed a shepherd lately; I am pretty squarely in the democracy camp. But there is something about that cross, that reconciliation that is ongoing, that is even now. It keeps working for us – as a literal image and as an ongoing action.

The now of God’s reconciliation is as present for me, a sinner, as it was for the thief on the cross next to Jesus. In that critical moment of Jesus’ ministry, the thief begs him. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” he replies. The thief believes that the kingdom is in the future, yet Jesus reminds us that it is also today.

Like the thief, we, in our Christian journeys partake in this ongoing moment. Sometimes it’s flashy and instantaneous, sometimes it gently unfolds, and sometimes it’s as graceless as a sticky clutch. But the reconciling of all things, in heaven and on earth, always happens. It is always, somehow, this moment.

This moment is both now and not yet.

It is now because we are here, in the presence of each other, in the presence of the table, in the midst of the Word. We are reminded in Colossians that all things were created in and through Christ. “He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church.” Here we sit; the church, the very body of Christ. The hands and feet and elbows and knees of the continuing reconciliation of all things. It is now.

And it is not yet.

Because in the midst of the lists and calendars and plans and parties and even a dentist appointment or two, we clearly see that the world is not reconciled to God. The world is clearly not at peace with itself. There are wars being fought, right now. There are clean up crews for hurricanes and earthquakes working as we speak. The world is not a kingdom of safety and justice and righteousness.

And yet, here we are, now, knowing that we are so beloved that God took on the flesh of a human so that we would feel that love without any boundaries.

Right now, between the end and the beginning of another year, we have this moment to compile our own lists and our own longings, for the now and not yet.

When did I act as the hands of Christ in the world?
How many moments did I use to reconcile rather than divide?
Can I reach for the not yet?
Can I live, even for a minute, in the moment of Paradise that Jesus promises even the guilty prisoner?
What can I do differently, now and not yet?

Tomorrow I start baking for the holidays. I start mailing holiday cards to people I don’t see very often. I begin rehearsals for the Christmas pageant. Tomorrow is a whirlwind.
Today.
Today is the day I will be in Paradise.

Audacity

The Gospel should be self evident from the sermon, but William Carey is a possibility in the Holy Women, Holy Men (Holy Smokes this is a lot of commemorations) trials to replace LFF.


“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

When’s the last time you moved a mountain?
How big was it?
How exciting was it?
Who did you tell?

William Carey moved a mountain. William Carey was born in 1761 in Paulerspury England, also known as the middle of nowhere, the place the Industrial Revolution forgot. His parents were weavers, they apprenticed him to a shoemaker, and he married the shoemaker’s daughter.

How in the world did he end up founding the Baptist Missionary Society? How in the world did he end up in India?
How in the world did he translate the Gospel into Sanskrit and Bengali and found a printing press that published in 44 languages or dialect of India?

“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”
William Carey lived his life by this. William Carey moved a mountain. William Carey knew why he was a Christian and what he was going to do about it.

The father in our gospel today is someone else who wasn’t going to let a mountain get in his way. His boy was going to be healed, no matter how big a mountain he had to move. He heard about Jesus’ ministry and that the Apostles were able to do the same, and off he went. And when the Apostle’s couldn’t do it. Did he go home? No, he pushed his way right through the crowd to Jesus and said, Have mercy. I tried going to your disciples but they couldn’t cure him. Have mercy.

Not only is he so gutsy as to walk up to Jesus himself, he complains about the quality of service. And still, Jesus heals his boy.

William Carey called this: Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.

Jesus calls this faith the size of a mustard seed. When I compare a mustard seed, to a mountain, I realize that the operative word here is audacious. Possibly even obnoxious.

The kind of faith we are asked to have is not based on probability or likelihood or reasonableness.
It is something far removed from confidence, because it doesn’t come from our own abilities. In fact, it is so contrary to our own abilities that it takes a complete lack of embarrassment in order to live into it. Because if we are going to move a mountain, metaphorically or literally, our faith is going to look utterly ridiculous to someone who doesn’t have that sort of faith.

Are you prepared to act like a fool for Christ?

Because the apostles weren’t. When they asked Jesus why they couldn’t cure that epileptic boy, he told them, you don’t have enough faith.

I am guessing, the disciples had gotten a little confident. Cast out a couple of demons, move a bit of a molehill, and we all start thinking, hey, look what I can do.
But if I am doing it, faith isn’t.

Doubts.
Details.
Disbelief.

All of these can shake our confidence. If we aren’t careful, they will shake our faith, too.

Faith the size of a mustard seed can move a mountain. That isn’t very much faith. I think we don’t need to have Jesus himself lay hands on us to have faith the size of a mustard seed. I think I could have faith the size of a mustard seed. I think you could, too.

But a mountain. Really? Jesus isn’t just fooling around. He really means for us to move mountains.

And if we aren’t very good at it, we aren’t alone.
Jesus doesn’t just rebuke the apostles for not having enough faith; he rebukes an entire generation. “Faithless and perverse” he calls them. “How much longer must I put up with you?”

But if we want to be good at it, we can’t let embarrassment stop us.

William Carey didn’t. It seems William Carey wasn’t ever embarrassed, even if we, hundreds of years later, might wish to be embarrassed by him. The pamphlet he wrote in 1792, it was called “An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens.” That same year, he co-founded a missionary society, the “Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen.” In 1793, he and another missionary were on a boat for India. Seven years later, they baptized their first convert.

There is a lot of faith in those 7 years. Because when all the missionaries that get sent to you die, and when wife has a nervous breakdown, and your child dies from dysentery and your printing press burns down and the East India Company doesn’t want you there, you know you are sitting on some mountain.

“Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

How many of us are living that kind of faith?
How many of us are an embarrassment to our family and friends?
How many of us are moving mountains?

“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”

Sabbath - 8/19/2010 Proper 19 Yr C - RCL

(I do believe I have finally found the "offensive" sermon that Sara mentioned when we last spoke.)
Here is the email that I used to forward her a copy.

Sara,

Thank you for letting me preach. Now that more people have had a chance to meet me and my family, I will send some updates from time to time for the e-notes. And I will let you know about my meetings with the diocese when they start happening. If not sooner, I will see you at diocesan convention.

Blessings,
heather lee

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord. Amen. 

About 10 years ago, I came back to church. When I told family and friends about this, I got all sorts of responses. A strong theme seemed to emerge. Christians can’t do an awful lot, and they can’t do anything on Sunday.

“Can you say that word?”

“Aren’t you supposed to pray before you eat?”

“Well, it was on a Sunday, and I know you only go to church on the Sabbath.”

To be fair, the church told me plenty of things about how to fit in and what we didn’t do on the Sabbath as well.

“We will seat you between the collect and the first lesson.”

“Acolytes cannot wear flip flops and their shirts must never show above their vestments.”

Please come back tomorrow, the person who handles our assistance program is not here on Sunday.”

All of these examples speak to our assumptions about the Sabbath. One I expect every one of us shares is – Go to church on Sunday morning. And as glad as I am to see all of you, it doesn’t really answer the Sabbath’s most pertinent question.

Why are we here?

The gospel lesson this morning offers two explanations for why we are here and what the Sabbath is all about.

In it, we find Jesus teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. This is something he doesn’t do very often. It’s sort of like being a guest preacher in church on a Sunday. And in comes a woman who is not really socially acceptable. Maybe she comes every Sunday, sneaking into the back pew and leaving early. Maybe she just came because she heard Jesus was going to be there. And Jesus, who isn’t a regular, who isn’t doing his regular Sabbath routine, notices her. He notices a woman, a woman who is in pain, and he is moved by his compassion for her suffering to walk right up to her and heal her. “Be healed, be forgiven, be loved.”

And she was.

And maybe she started dancing and clapping her hands and singing.

And maybe she wanted to join the vestry and the altar guild and the healing ministry team and all those other things we say we want to happen for a visitor in our church on a Sunday morning.

I want that. I have been relieved from suffering on a Sunday morning and I want everyone to feel that at least once in their lives.

But I have been coming to church for a long time now, and I think I know how that synagogue leader feels, too.

I’ve been exhausted at the end of a very long week and just wanted some peace and quiet – someplace to pray where I don’t have to think to hard about it.

I’ve been annoyed by contemporary music during a Rite 1 service.

I’ve been angry at God for the ability of an outsider to see and to fix things that I can’t see or I can’t fix.

I’ve been laughed at and shamed for being totally wrong.

And I’ve noticed this happens in the gospels a lot. We do the right thing and Jesus tells up we have it totally wrong.

Jesus doesn’t do this because the Pharisees and the synagogue leaders are bad people. He does it because they are, in fact, hypocrites. They have forgotten that there is a WHY WE ARE HERE to go with the HOW WE DO THINGS.

Jesus isn’t mad at them for keeping the Sabbath, he is angry because they have forgotten why we have one.

Now, I am fairly certain that in my library at seminary there is a right answer for the question ‘Why is there a Sabbath?’ Unfortunately, I left all those books in Berkeley. But that’s ok, because I think Isaiah gives us the answer.

“If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your OWN interests on my holy day,” says the Lord, “then you shall take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.”

Which sounds to me like perspective. The Sabbath offers us perspective. It reminds us that we are lovers of God and why we are followers of Christ all the other days of the week. Which is the exact opposite of a break from being lovers of God and followers of Christ. And we have a choice of what to do with that perspective. We can apologize for the last six days, or we can get some perspective in preparation for the next six days.

We can practice Sabbath through our fear. As the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, we can be like Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai – too scared to climb the mountain, too afraid to be vulnerable before God and accept God’s miraculous healing. We can learn to be complacent about the things we cannot change.

Or we can watch out for the things we can. Instead of cowering at the base of Mt. Sinai, we can climb Mt. Zion. We can be like the woman, stooped over but willing to take a chance. We can be like the crowd, witnessing a miraculous change in the life of our neighbor. We can be like Jesus, empowered to reach out and heal all that is within our power to heal. Mt. Zion, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, has a party going on. And it sounds like a marvelous place to gain perspective.

It sounds like a place, where maybe there is dancing and clapping and singing and all those things we say we want to happen on a Sunday morning.

July 8, 2010

A meeting and commentary

the magical words were achieved. in fact more magical words than i expected.

"i am trying to figure out how i can help you."
"the bishop told me that you asked to make an appointment with him and i think that is a good idea" the rest was "although --- is leaving and so things will probably be on hiatus for awhile.' which i already knew and expected.

so do i know what is happening next. no, still no. but i am hopeful that after i meet with the bishop he will have some idea of how i might take steps to wander back on the beaten path.

what i really want to put on facebook, because it is hilarious. i was talking to --- about the panic disorder, and she said that was good and to keep it up because i come across, when i get that way, as fragile and narcissistic. I may or may not feel fragile, but I never feel narcissistic. I think that the fact that I am pretty disinterested in this and sort of look at the whole thing as a bug in a jar is good. But between this interview and the strides I am making with --- at school-I may be able to move beyond this after all.

Reply

That's awesome.

Oakland is starting to burn, I think I am going to go watch.

Holy Wednesday

On the night he was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, “Take, eat: this is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.”

In a few minutes, we are going to break the bread, as we have done for 2000 years. In this chapel, we repeat this ritual 5 times a week, in most Episcopal churches, once a week, in some other churches, monthly, or quarterly or yearly, but this remembrance is our remembrance. It is to remind us of this concrete event between Jesus and his disciples. It points us to the events we will commemorate in full over the next three days.

We read about this last meal today, but I expect tomorrow is when most of us will more fully celebrate it. The rituals are prescribed but the forms will vary. Tomorrow, the brave among us will strip off one or more shoes and socks, and let someone in our parish, good friend or stranger, wash our feet, and then we too, will turn and do the same for another good friend or stranger. Tomorrow, we will celebrate the last meal around an altar, around a Seder table, around a dinner table. Tomorrow we will celebrate, even if somberly, because we all know what will happen over the following three days.

But that is tomorrow. Tomorrow is a world away, a lifetime away. Today is still a day in our regular lives. Tomorrow, we will read both the beginning and the end of this story, but today, we have Judas.

Who will betray you, Jesus?

"It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish." So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "Do quickly what you are going to do."

John doesn’t offer an account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper. Other gospel writers do that. But we, and I expect even John’s audience already know that this is what is going on. We already know that this bread is Christ. That this oil is blessing. John presents us with this little vignette of Jesus offering himself to his own betrayer. And what are we to do with it? With Judas?



When I learned this story as a child, Judas was the villain, I imagined him as a Vaudeville villain – pointy waxed moustache and striped pants. I heard in this story; ‘Judas was born bad’, ‘he was always evil’, and ‘Jesus kept him around because he needed a fall guy’. As you can imagine, I never noticed the Eucharistic imagery in this part of the story.

Besides archetypal anti-hero, what do we even know about Judas? We know he was an apostle. We know he was reasonably responsible – after all, he carried around the money. We know that he was the guy who brought the authorities to Jesus. After that, there is a lot of speculation, and the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles and some of the Gnostic literature offer a lot of different tales, which mainly tell us that people were really trying to work out what it meant for Judas to be an apostle and a bad guy.

Judas was not just anyone. He was not just one of the seventy or one of the crowd. Judas was, as I said, the guy who was in charge of the money. And Judas was an Apostle before he brought the authorities to the garden, and he was an Apostle after Jesus was crucified. I think that it is important for us to remember, that Judas did not lose his Apostle-ship because of his sins, because Satan entered into him, to use the language of the Gospel.

We don’t either.

How often do we do things that seem like the lesser of two evils, or the best possible solution to an impossible situation, or sometimes, I know it was wrong, and I just did it anyway, because I wanted to. Sometimes, the money is too good to pass up.

How often do we stand in the communion line, waiting to receive the piece of bread, the drink of wine, the blessing of oil, and think about balancing the checkbook, or think the person in front of us could have used confession before coming up here, or, Lord have mercy, when is this service going to be over, I have stuff to do; I have a paper to write, I have a committee meeting to plan for, I have a doctors appointment to schedule; I have something clearly more urgent than staying awake just one hour in Gethsemane, more important than staying focused for a 45 minutes chapel service.

How very, very often, Satan enters into me, when I am standing in the communion line. And if this isn’t embarrassing enough, Jesus dips that bread, hands it to me, and tells me, “do quickly what you are going to do.”

Jesus knows, even as he is uniting himself to us, to become one with him and his purpose, that we are going to fail, that we are going to get impatient and forgetful and vengeful and make our choices based on such enlightened principles as, it seemed like a good idea at the time. It is not just our best that Christ asks that we bring; it is also our worst.

Jesus knows the good and the bad that I bring to this body of Christ called the Church. Jesus knows that I am doing my best, even when my best doesn’t even impress me. Even so, Jesus knows that my intentions count, so I need to keep coming back, yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly or even daily, to the table. Jesus offered Judas bread, on the night he was betrayed, offers me bread, on this morning when I betray him. Knowing full well that betrayal will happen, Jesus dips the bread and hands it over.

Tomorrow, we set into motion the crucifixion. Tomorrow, we wash some feet, we eat a meal, strip an altar and retell the institution of the miracle we celebrate today. Tomorrow we prepare to remember the really big corporate sin that God used to turn the world upside down. Today, we remember the little sins, the every day sins, the I don’t wanna sins, the sins of omission, the not really that bad sins, the sins of good intentions. Today, is a day like any other day, and there are a lot more today’s in the year than tomorrows. Today, is the day we have sinned against God, in thought word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. Today, we receive the bread and the injunction to "Do quickly what you are going to do."

And like Judas, tomorrow, we will be back.

Greiving

this is probably best described as the underbelly of the ordination process, and I am probably doing damage to my own possibilities in posting it, but it is a pretty accurate summary of what the last year has felt like. Things are looking up, life is feeling good.

I recently received an email from Donna Anderson wondering what ever happened to me. And I very much appreciate the poke, because I have thought of you all often and felt ashamed that I did not know how to say what was in my heart. But know that no matter the failure on my part to communicate, I continue to know that I am supported by you.

This has been a difficult year. Perhaps not the most difficult of my life, but certainly the most difficult since the Lord called and I answered. School has been a great deal more difficult as an adult than it was as a child. I find I have less patience and ability to sit still for long hours, or to study things I when I cannot readily discern the value. School has been harder on my family than all my ministry, school volunteering and part time jobs combined. I find that the demands of 24-7 availability are far less strenuous than consistently showing up, on time, pencil ready. I have so much more sympathy for children. I want to work harder for a saner work ethic in this country. I continue to show up for class on time. But it is hard, especially by the end of the semester.

It has been a difficult, sometimes frightening, year to follow the Lord. This time last year, we were unsure that my husband would have a job come January; his entire department was laid off, except for him. Had we stayed in Oregon, or returned, my husband would be unemployed. The company he was working for in Salem is now in bankruptcy. Still, it has been awkward, to be in seminary, pursuing ordained ministry, yet not to be a Postulant. It has been a year of learning that “blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17.7-8) The trees in my mind are those around Seaside, root balls in the air, after the flooding a few years back. Yet still I trust, although our bishop resigned; although my parish priest retired. And as Advent approached this year, I began to see that although this tree thought there was a drought (thought perhaps there was no support), I was, all the same, bearing fruit.

A couple of things happen in the second year of seminary. One, you have a few papers under your belt, so when the instructor says “two, 10-12 page papers, Turabian style, with bibliography,” you know what it means. Two, you embark on a year (or two) of field placement; an internship in a parish somewhere in the diocese. Last spring, I looked at a few parishes, chose and was accepted at a large parish in a wealthy bedroom community in Marin, County. And I will admit to doing something very theologically unsound. I made a deal with God. I said, ‘God, if this doesn’t work out – and it won’t, because I in fact teach people about power and privilege and how they need to let go of it– I will know that I wasn’t really supposed to be ordained and I will just finish school and move to L.A. and go work at Kaleidoscope Institute with Eric Law.’ Making deals with God is a bad idea, He has a way of making an 'either-or' into a 'both-and.'

My field education parish has been amazing. I have been working in family ministry, something I knew I would be horrible at. I have been helping lead multi-generational worship without any paper, books or bulletins, which I knew was a terrible idea. I have been working in a team, when I knew I was better as a solo leader. (And I have been letting my family do their own dishes and laundry and cooking, which I knew they could not do.) So many things I knew, and in knowing, was sure that everything would go so horribly that I could get out of this calling. How awesome a God we have; not only can He turn failings into strengths, he can turn outright denial into success. I have fallen in love with this amazing and faithful and generous parish and they have embraced me and trusted me with their most precious gift – their children. (And their Christmas pageant, which was an amazing success by every measure, especially the tingle that says the Holy Spirit hangs heavily in this place.) My field ed parish has given me the face of God, up close and shining, telling me that this is the work that has been given me to do, and my sadness, my confusion, my feeling that God is not there, only overwhelm me when I forget my work. It is my job right now to write academic papers, because even if I couldn’t tell last spring why I needed a class to break apart the Gospel in technical details and a class to apply literary criticism to the Old Testament, or worst of all, to memorize those maps in the back of my bible; every Sunday from 10-11 am, I sit with a group of 10 and 11 year olds and break open their Godly Play education with several translations of the bible and some maps and lots and lots of discussion of all those things that had me rolling my eyes or just plain crying last spring. They eat it up. They ask for more. They are so excited to learn that all those stories came from our living Scripture, and what we know about the birth of those same stories. I changed my class schedule for spring, just to learn more academics, because now I see how it fits.

This Advent has been the best advent(ure) of my life. I have often used the crucifixion and resurrection in my work with the anti-racism commission to talk about power. I have never really connected to the Advent cycle and Christmas. This year has been completely different. Right now, my life is not a cycle of receiving and releasing power; my life is about becoming a wholly new thing. Heather, the mother, wife, church volunteer, pta member or friend has been a faithful follower of God, but God has asked for a different commitment, a commitment that my sponsoring parishes and fellow commission members and field ed parish and discernment committee have affirmed. God is asking that I commit to holding sacred space, sharing it and shaping it, so everyone can find His up close and shining face; 10 year olds, 2 year olds and their parents, grandparents, friends who slept over on Saturday and family visiting from out of town and people new to the church, new to the area, and new to God. This is sacred space I have always held, was surprised to learn I was holding, was amazed that God and people considered it a gift. I am a spider who weaves a web; I am a waiter with an extra chair for the table; I am an innkeeper with some space in the stable.