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.

post colonialism, like racism, is a forgotten agenda

I think it is hard for us to remember that the version of the Gospel that we in North America ascribe to in the mainline churches is not a standard or accepted version of the Gospel. We have taken a story, written for the oppressed and molded it to fit our desire to do good while remaining the oppressor.

The Gospel doesn't ask the oppressor to do anything at all for the oppressed. It asks only that the oppressor become one of the oppressed. (Give away all your possessions and come follow me, not start a soup kitchen on Saturday afternoons.) It is the oppressed who are asked to do good to each other in Jesus' name.

If there is any fault in the Anglican ideal (and anyone you ask will have a different idea of what it is, being Anglicanism) it is that it remains trapped in the founding ideal that England ought/need only have one church, neither catholic or reformed. In a post colonial world this translates into a confederation where each nation/culture/confederation of like minded possess the monopoly on Christianity in that local or grouping. We do a lot of ecumenism in a lot of places, and we even engage in some international Anglican crossover, but we persist in believing that location makes right, and that it supercedes common identity.

We are to be forgiven, however, as those two competing ideas are both foundational to Anglicanism. It isn't who gets ordained or what theology that divides us, it is, really, simply, do we believe we are a local church with a preference for ecumenical relations with other churches or are we a global church within various cultural contexts. I suppose it depends on whether you think postmodernism is dead or alive.

Something no one seems to be talking about and that I am wildly interested in is post-Colonial relations between the Anglican remains around the world. We are really busy especially in America funding MDGs in the second and third world but through the Gospel lens that Jesus came to ask the rich to take care of the poor. That is still colonialism, even if you wrap pretty .07 percent ribbons around it, even if you let the people in those countries tear themselves apart in the name of democratic freedom. Mission is the work of the church but giving up all you have and following Christ is how you become the church in order to do the mission.


(Been reading again. Liberation theology and Eric Law and post convention blogs of all stripes.)

June 24, 2009

How is my call shaping itself now that I am in school?

School has perhaps only made me more committed to the work I do on the anti racism commission. School has made me more keenly aware of just how stacked the deck is against people who do not fit a very narrow model of behavior.

Example: Overheard in the cafeteria between the admissions officer and a student. “We have someone from the Gulf Coast looking at the school today.” To which the student replied, “Great, that will really add to our diversity.” I don’t even know what to do with that. School is overwhelmingly white and middle class. I am really glad that John and Ellen introduced us to gin and tonics before we got there because we are pretty outclassed in the socializing department.

Altogether, I still feel called to the sacraments. I still feel called to facilitate radical welcome and communication between people. I summed this up for a fellow student the other day in this way, so I will just share that. We in the church are pretty guilty of having a relationship with God that happens 2/3 up the nave. Which in a decent sized church means you have to step on a lot of people in your reach for God. Jesus called us to have a relationship with God that is about 2 feet in front of us, placing another individual right at arms length. I really feel called to bring about that change in distance in people’s lives.

A very wise mentor said to me awhile back that I need to look at those places where I am most angry and most raw in order to find my ministry. And I am most angry in the way that we are so unintentional in our welcome to people. We say inclusive, but that is really, especially in the Bay Area a code word for gblt friendly. I am, but not at the expense of all the other people who make church.  

Why I am a Christian

I am a Christian for no other reason than one day, in an intellectual stupor, I realized that the breathing, the eating, the shitting, the birthing and the dying were the most important parts of life. And I realized that some dude not only already figured that out, but went on to lead a revolution to that effect 2000 years ago. An entire institution built up around that idea - an idea that is so dangerous to power that an institution was necessary to bottle it up and take away it's power. Ironically, the institution is the very means of preserving and protecting that dangerous truth so that people like me can keep discovering it anew.

Greeting and Hospitality

The very best reason to have your church members wear nametags is so that the ushers can remind people to wear then. When the response is, I don't have a nametag, you have identified a new member without the direct and rude question "Do you belong here?" name tags should also be quasi permanent so that peoples affiliations within the church can be printed as well. Then, while looking at nametags, new people also get a sense of what we are about.

Find the balance between Sunday is for Christians, for us, but strangers will always be present. First, respect that they are strangers. Assuming that someone who has never been to your house before will be perfectly comfortable and know where the bathroom and the knife drawer is, is silly. Don't expect that church is self explainatory. A handler, wrangler, guest services associate/host, call it what you will available for each new person or family that comes in. Take them around, offer them a primer on the particularities of your service. Remember, no one reads signs, thus they are very important.

Primers. A customary for the laity, can include basic catechumanate material FAQ's about the specific building and community, all sorts of things. Rather than reinventing a full service customary for each service, let your actual members worship rather than read. Some things are simply meant to be memorized. The more you read along in church the less you listen. Listening activates a totally different part of the brain. Listening in church is like practicing for life.

Cultural Relativism

It occurs to me that we taught cultural relativism to the first culture to truly experience globalism. Can we wonder, then, at the increasing fractionalism/factionalism rather than the "buy a world a coke" phenomenon we were hoping for?