I don't think this makes much sense as a sermon, but it is the notes I put in my pocket for a sermon that, like the rest of the family service at St. John's, requires full participation from everyone in order to make happen. There is something beyond satisfying to share the scriptures with people who have not already made up their minds about what it says and how they feel about it, and who want to have a conversation.
What are Rules?
ordering for life
how to live
best practices
Example – Rules for crossing the street
under 10?
10-20?
over 20?
Rules get more nuanced as we get older. We can make more decisions based on our experience once we have some experience, but when we don’t have a lot of experience, we have something like this service – we help each other with what comes next.
God has rules for us too.
Jesus – 2 rules (love God, love our neighbors as ourselves)
Moses-10 rules (love God, no false idols, honor mother and father, don’t covet what our neighbors has, etc)
Leviticus – book in the Hebrew Testament, the Older Books in the bible. It is full of rules, and like the crossing the street rules that we make for kids under 10, they can seem excessive or so particular that we can’t see how they actual relate to either Moses’ rules or Jesus’ rules. The section from Leviticus that is in our lectionary today is about lies and stealing.
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God.”
I admit, I am not a farmer, so really, to explain don’t lie or steal in this way doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. So, there’s more…
“You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD.
“You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD.
“You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
God gives something that my mom didn’t when she gave me all those specific rules about crossing the street – God tells us why.
“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.”
We are holy. Just like God is holy. Like Jane says in Godly Play about holy people. They come close to God and God comes close to them. Holy is what we are because we are God’s people. We don’t ever have to wonder about that. God does love us. And in some sense, we have God right inside us, just like the whole world has something of God in it. But, we aren’t God, and we don’t always know what the right thing to do is. So, just like our 9am service, we tell each other what comes next, and we help each other do the things God asks so that we can act in holy ways, as God made us. Sometimes, we need really really specific directions, like Leviticus, and sometimes we can carry a shorthand list, and sometimes, when we get some experience, we can just carry around Jesus’ two rules, and we are able to be holy and act holy more often than not. But until then, it is good that we have each other and we have the rules, the best practices of holy people who have come before, to help us along the way.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
January 29 and February 1, 2011
For the record - there was only one meeting, hardly regular, and the committee wasn't formed for 3 months after I got there, and met 4 times, a total of 3 hours, when it ended, and was a series of cold interviews, much like the GOE's that I failed, now that I think of it.
Dear Heather,
Sorry to be so long in replying to your emails about this. Christmas was a gloriously full time, and for the past few weeks I've been dealing with some minor but all-consuming ...
I had a good conversation with --- this week and I have a clear sense of a path forward, assuming you plan to return to Portland post-graduation. --- believes, and I concur, that you need to start a formal discernment process toward postulancy that looks exactly like it would for someone who hadn't already been to seminary. I believe she reiterated to you, what you and I and others have talked about as well, that going to seminary on one's own doesn't change our diocesan process.
I would like you to spend the next few months enjoying post-GOE CDSP and the end of what I believe has been a rich and growth-filled time for you. Then I hope you will come back to --- and let us begin with a parish-based discernment committee to work with you as the first step in the process toward postulancy (possibly) and toward discerning and celebrating God's call, whatever that call may be (certainly). If it is helpful to you to gather with members of your former committee as a way to support and bless you as you begin a new process, there is nothing wrong with that, but your official discernment committee would be parish-based. As such, I don't see any value to you or to the process to begin that parish-based process long-distance, prior to graduation.
--- believes that such a discernment process, which I hope would happen in tandem with developing some good visible ministries at ----, providing the whole parish (now about 70-80 strong!) opportunities to get to know your many gifts, along with regular meetings with me, should take at least six months. At the end of that time, if I and the discernment committee and you jointly discern a call to ordination, you would begin the process of paperwork, recommendation letters, psychological exams, etc. If the community discernment process continues in that direction, the circle of discernment would then expand to include the Bishop and Commission on Ministry at a future vocations conference, and probably a CPE experience.
I know that this process may not be the one you've hoped for, but it is a way forward that ---and I agree on. It is based, however, on the assumption with which I began this email, that you will be coming back to Portland after graduation. If that is not the case, I would be happy to talk with you to explore other options, but those options would not include beginning an ordination process here at ---.
I wish you many blessings in your own discernment and I look forward to catching up soon.
Faithfully,
---
Dear --- and ---,
I am profoundly grateful for this email. A deep sense of rightness settled on me as I read it and it resonates as the best way forward to me as well. As I told --- when we met in December, my discernment committee helped me find my way to school, and this time has been fruitful and what it needed to be. However, I do not feel that my discernment committee was an adequate exploration into a call to ordained ministry and I look forward to returning to ---- in the summer and exploring and integrating these last few years of my life into the life of the community and seeing where God might be calling me in the future.
Thank you both for the thoughtfulness you have offered me in the last few months. Classes start for me tomorrow, and has been the case for 2.5 years, I will quickly be subsumed in books and papers. While I never feel that school has all the time it needs, I am comforted to know that discernment does.
blessings,
heather lee
I am profoundly grateful for this email. A deep sense of rightness settled on me as I read it and it resonates as the best way forward to me as well. As I told --- when we met in December, my discernment committee helped me find my way to school, and this time has been fruitful and what it needed to be. However, I do not feel that my discernment committee was an adequate exploration into a call to ordained ministry and I look forward to returning to ---- in the summer and exploring and integrating these last few years of my life into the life of the community and seeing where God might be calling me in the future.
Thank you both for the thoughtfulness you have offered me in the last few months. Classes start for me tomorrow, and has been the case for 2.5 years, I will quickly be subsumed in books and papers. While I never feel that school has all the time it needs, I am comforted to know that discernment does.
blessings,
heather lee
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Post GOE Blues
A newsletter article for one of my supporting parishes. January26, 2011
When jazz musicians talk about the blues, they don’t mean the doldrums or depression, but a realistic and persevering sense of hope, even when the reason for hope seems unlikely. My pervading hope comes from Christ, and the face of God revealed to me. Much of my work here has been coming to conscious and complete understanding that God loves me only as myself, not for what I can do or who I know or where I can go. Only me.
The GOE’s were an interesting experience. I am unsure what I was intended to get out of these tests. It seems is the intended outcome is to ensure that I, individually, know enough information to lead a congregation. My understanding of God and of the church of God is such a contextual and communal experience that I hope I never get confused into thinking that my education sets me above the gathered community. I hope it never confuses me into thinking that it can replace the essential loved experience of my relationship with the one who made me.
I have been to speak with Canon ---. She and I are working towards gathering all my paperwork so that I can attend Vocations Conference in May. This really means that I am doing a lot of work and she is happily helping me with the snags and questions that come up. On one hand, I am going at the process a bit backwards, on the other hand, given the time and effort and patience required to walk this path of discernment, it isn’t unique to go around the long way, either.
In this journey, prayer has surrounded me, and I know that Holy Spirit and St. David’s have been part of that. I am grateful and appreciative of the many people who have remembered me when I was not always able to remember myself. It turns out I am able to be both ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ and ‘out of sight, out of mind’ at the same time. So while I long for home and the sort of people I know and love there, I get caught up in the ever-present deadlines and concerns of the day. I look forward to the end of school, in some measure, because I will be back with people and their real concerns, and no longer speculating wildly on the uses of this or that aspect of schooling.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
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!
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!
Monday, December 6, 2010
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.
“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.
Friday, December 3, 2010
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
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
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