Senior Sermon

This is the showcase sermon. It should be up on the CDSP website for at least a little while, but as of yet, I don't know how to access it.


Sometimes, there are no words. Sometimes, there is nothing to say. Sometimes, we need to just sit down, be still and know that there is God.
Yet, this seems to be impossible for the average human. When something catastrophic happens, we engage in a cacophony of words – who, what, why, when, where, become vitally important. The answers don’t have to be helpful, sometimes they don’t even have to be true, but we need to hear them all the same.
For it seems the less we know, the less control we feel, the more we need to fill the world with our presence, with our words. Now, lest you think I am advocating for pure silence, this constant checking in does two very important things for us –
First, it tells us that we exist.
Second, it tells us that someone else is witness to our existence. Humans don’t work very well without other humans and perhaps this is especially true in crisis. We do not like to feel alone.
Not only do we direct this feedback loop to other humans, we humans direct it to God as well. Because when we aren’t sure of ourselves, of our own existence or place in existence, we get very concerned that God might be confused as well. We need to make sure that God remembers us – hears us – finds us. Our prayers get louder and longer and more public. They build into forms, and we name them. Litany, Lamentation, Thanksgivings and Prayers of the People. We call to God, over and over again. We get so busy calling out our existence, that we forget the second part, we forget to listen for the response.
It is because of this forgetfulness that Jesus gently rebukes us in today’s Gospel.
Do not heap up empty phrases.
Your many words will not get you heard.
It turns out more is not better. Because God knows what we need before we even ask.


This can be incredibly hard to believe, because no one else seems to know what we need before we even ask. Chances are your teachers and students don’t know what you need. Your parents and partners don’t know. Employees and employers don’t. Your children don’t. Your friends don’t.
You know it’s ok that I can’t read your mind. And, I know you can’t read mine. As humans, we have invented all sorts of ways to communicate with each other, to acknowledge each other’s existence, to help fulfill each other’s needs.
It is not just with each other that we use these tools. We translate these communication strategies to our prayer lives as well. So, not only do our prayers get complicated, how we deliver them does too. We pray in church, we pray in houses, we pray in cars and classrooms and shopping malls and on beaches, trains and airplanes. We use song, dance, beads, bells and candles. We use bracelets and poetry and labyrinths.


The ways in which we make ourselves known to God, and do so visibly to other humans, is probably infinite. And I suspect that most of the time, we get that all important second step, that acknowledgement, from the humans who witness our prayers.
This is where we must ask ourselves,
are we praying so others can see us, affirm us,
or are we seeking that response from God?
If the answer is God, then you can save your empty phrases for your resume. You can save your heaps of words for your children. God does not need them. God already knows what you need, even before you do.
If you pray a litany or a lamentation or a thanksgiving or a prayers of the people, remember what it is for. Remember whom it is for. More often than not, we pray these prayers for ourselves. We pray these prayers for the first part. We pray these prayers to know that we exist.
But do not forget the second part.
When looking for a response from God, less is more. When we seek confirmation that God is aware of our existence, our prayer posture needs to be one of listening.
And a prayer for listening is the prayer that Jesus gives us. Listen.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours. Now, and forever. Amen.
It’s all there. The work, the reason, the plea, the good and bad and ugly that we bring before God, it all fits in here. And it is just enough. So that the rest of our prayer can be the second part, the listening to God, who knows what we need before we ask. Who answers our plea for recognition even before we finish the Amen.
As you pray the rest of this service, this day, this season, pray for the second part. Pray you hear the answering acknowledgement of your existence, in love, in peace, in joy and even in your sorrow. There will be time for action. There is much to do. But first, there is time to pray. Pray for the second part.

March 1, 2011

Musings on the GOE's from an email


The further I unfold into who God desires me to be, the more I know that desire is not to be an academic. I speak the truth of broken things, and I hold up the mirror gently, if persistently, so we can see those things broken in ourselves, our community, our society. And I speak of God's love for broken things, and the yearnings of reconciling and peace. I speak of the joy, thanksgiving and salvation that comes from letting go of fear. And I speak the truth that all of God's creation participates in this, and that in our baptism, we seek to live our lives especially and intentionally as beacons of God's reconciliation and peace. 

But I don't speak any of that in particularly fast or academic or theoretical ways. And I speak almost nothing in 3 hours. (I've nearly spent three hours responding to this email as it is.) 

My scores were all 1's and 2's. I haven't gone back and read what I specifically wrote down. I meet with my spiritual director on Friday, and I have committed myself to re-reading my papers before I go. But I stand by what I remember writing, or intended to write, some historical and factual inaccuracies aside. And the experience of thinking through the questions was God filled, even if reading the results wasn't. 

All that said, I recognize that I have failed the shibboleth. And I have no idea what, if anything, that means. I am not even sure that I want to pass it, for all that it implies the priesthood supplies the church with independent and external experts. I think I can imagine a time or place where that model would be beneficial (when people took ships to England to acquire an education, and all the resources they may ever have at their disposal were the SPCK books in their trunk). But I don't understand the world to work that way anymore, and I don't understand our ecclesiology to ask that of us, lay or ordained.