Marsh Chapel Sermon Archive

I’m very happy to be back with you at Marsh Chapel, and greetings to you also who are listening on the radio. Our theme this summer is the Beloved Community, so it’s a little funny to begin with a story about a hermit, but that is what I’m going to do. This story comes from my favorite religious psychologists, the desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century. It’s called “The Angry Brother and the Water Jug.”

“A brother was a [monk in a monastery] and was often moved to anger so he said to himself, ‘I will leave and go live by myself, and, because I won’t have anything to do with anyone and will be at peace, my passion will cease.’ So he left and lived in a cave by himself. One day he filled a small jug with water and put it on the ground and all of a sudden it fell over. He picked it up and filled it a second time and again it fell over. Then he filled it a third time and it fell over. Enraged, he grabbed hold of the jug and broke it. When he came to himself, he knew he had been mocked by the [Evil One] and said, ‘I’ve left and gone to live by myself, and even here, I’ve been defeated. Therefore, I will return to the [monastery]. There needs to be struggle and patient endurance and God’s help everywhere.’ And he got up, and returned.” [Tim Vivian, ed. Becoming Fire: Through the Year with the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Cistercian Publications, 2008, p. 190-191]

The desert fathers and mothers were a quirky bunch, but I love them. With just a few words and a few key details, their stories express so much about the human quest to know the divine. Brevity and clarity. Would that preachers had these gifts as well! But they elude so many of us in the pulpit.

The monk in this story thinks at first that his brothers are getting in the way of his spiritual development. He has a quick temper, and in community he has a lot of other people to exercise it on. Much better, the thinks, to live alone, with no annoying fellow monks around. Then he’ll make some real progress. Of course he realizes, after he smashes the innocent water-jug, that it is not his fellow monks who are the problem, but himself. Community, he’s come to understand, is not a stumbling block after all: it is a training ground, a school of virtues, a school of love.

This is a sermon in two parts: the first is about Christian community, and why we should bother with it. And the second part names three qualities of beloved communities as I see them.

When Jesus in John’s gospel talks about beloved community, he uses the word “abide.” Jesus says in John 15, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”

“Abide” is now archaic; except for the movie The Big Lebowski. We don’t say, “Abide here in the car while I run into Starbucks.” (pause) “Abide by the law” is one of the only current uses of the word. Some other contemporary translations of the Bible use “remain in my love” instead. But there is reason to retain “abide” apart from the poetry of it. None of the synonyms for “abide” fully capture the state of being that Jesus is describing. It can mean “remain,” or “stay,” but it also has shades of waiting and expectance, waiting in this state of love until Jesus comes again, to “dwell,” (another archaic word) in Christ’s love. Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, translates this verse as “Make yourself at home in my love.” He is connecting “abide” to another word to which it is related, “abode.” (The place where you abide.)

God welcomes us into God’s love, and this love is our shelter. But Jesus, in asking his disciples to abide in his love and to keep his commandment to love one another, is using a poetic word to ask them to do something extremely difficult. The abode that he is inviting them in to has many other guests all trying to make themselves at home as well.

To abide in Christ’s love requires something from us. It is not just a cozy meeting of like-minded individuals. It is hard work. All of us trying to make ourselves at home in God’s love; we bump elbows sometimes.

That is part of the appeal of being what is commonly called “spiritual but not religious.” Or as it is sometimes abbreviated, SBNR. One can be SBNR without any kind of community. Or, SBNR community can be fluid and without much accountability, like a yoga class. One advantage of finding God in watching a sunset, or on a mountaintop, instead of at church is that, well, you don’t have to deal with anyone else on the mountaintop! It’s just you and the view.

But the story of the Angry Brother and the Water Jug challenges the SBNR view of things. “There needs to be struggle and patient endurance and God’s help everywhere.” Getting away from it all spiritually will only get us so far.

Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets. Actually I think of her as my former employer, since I used to work as a docent in her house when I was in college in Western Mass. She famously wrote, “Some keep the Sabbath going to church/I keep it staying at home/With a bobolink for a chorister/And an orchard for a dome.” Beautiful lines. Deeply true for her, since she loved nature with all her heart, and really hated going to church. Actually if there had been radio church in Dickinson’s day, I think she probably would have tuned in, if only for the hymns.

Every summer for the past 15 years, I have gone to a retreat center where I can look out on a meadow and hear lots of birds, maybe even a bobolink or two, and that time apart is very important to the health of my soul. That time of awe and wonder in God’s creation has given me many wonderful gifts. But it can’t give me everything I need. The peace of the meadow refreshes me, but only for a while, until I’m stuck in traffic again. The bobolink, with its peaceful chirping, can help to give me some clarity about the parts of my life where I am falling short. But the opportunities to actually do that work of inner change require leaving the meadow. Because, in order to grow into the full stature of our exemplar, Jesus, “There needs to be struggle and patient endurance and God’s help everywhere.”

Patient endurance is a good synonym for “abiding.” “Patiently endure in my love.” “Hang in there in my love.” It’s a process.

The New York Times pundit David Brooks in some columns and in his book The Road to Character says this:

It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

[David Brooks, The Moral Bucket List, The New York Times, April 11, 2015]

We Christians might call eulogy virtues “the fruit of the Spirit,” from Paul’s list in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I’m a parish priest. What I hope we are on our best days at my parish, Grace Episcopal Church, Newton Corner, is a School for Eulogy Virtues. We are all students, and Jesus is our teacher. It’s a funny kind of school, since no one ever graduates. We don’t graduate, but we do grow. It’s an organic curriculum, the Jesus-following life.

And Jesus, our teacher, says, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Stay close, Jesus says. That’s how you become more like me.

The best grapes are produced closest to the vine, where the nutrients are. That’s why the branches are pruned, so they don’t get too long. Long branches ramble away from the vine, and produce small and sour grapes.

So spiritually, we want to stay close to our energy source. Otherwise, we are just putting our sour grapes out there, into a world that has enough sourness and bitterness already.

How do we do this? How do we abide in Christ’s love, staying close to our energy source? In my tradition, the Episcopal Church, we take the vows of our baptismal covenant as the blueprint for abiding. The first set of questions is about our Christian beliefs, but then there are questions about how we are to live our lives.

“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”

“Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?”

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” This is not easy stuff, by the way.

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

And the answer to all of these questions is, “I will, with God’s help.” Because, there needs to be struggle and patient endurance and God’s help everywhere. We answer these questions not only with our lips, but with our lives, every day. And of course we fail at them all the time, and ask God’s forgiveness, and begin again. That’s part of abiding, too—the grace of always beginning again.

Very few of us are cut out to be spiritual hermits. In community we learn from each other, and we learn about ourselves. We abide. At my parish, our abiding usually involves food, and lots of it. Abiding and constant snacks go quite well together, actually. (pause)

Jesus uses the image of vines and branches. Branches tend to be all tangled up with each other. There’s a messiness in that. Many of us would prefer it if Jesus had used houseplants as his model, each one of us in our own little self-enclosed pot. But we’re not houseplants; we’re vine branches, tangled, woven together, and sometimes in each other’s way.

Beloved communities are examples of mutual abiding. They are also places of radical welcome. That is why the story we heard from Acts, of Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch, is a story of the Beloved Community to me. Two people in the middle of nowhere—not much of a community, on the surface. But nevertheless, a story of how we come to abide in God’s love, and one that that Christians are made, not born. Following Christ is a process of becoming. This story is from the early days after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, when the disciples are learning to listen for the Holy Spirit guiding them. And Philip hears the Spirit telling him to head south on the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza. Holy Spirit as GPS. The text says, “This is a wilderness road.” And as he walks along this road, he comes upon the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official in charge of the Queen’s treasury. Philip hears the Eunuch reading from the scroll of Isaiah, since these are the days when everyone read aloud. And he says, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And the Eunuch says, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” This story reminds us that the Bible was just as confusing then as it is today. And it reminds us too that the Church has always been struggling with issues of sexuality and race and culture. After all, being a eunuch was hardly a lifestyle choice promoted by ancient Judaism. The eunuch had been at the Temple in Jerusalem to worship; but he likely would not have made it past the outer gates, because of his sexual difference. He was a proselyte, or maybe what was called a God-fearer, a Gentile who was attracted to Judaism, but for cultural or ethnic reasons did not convert. In any case, he had made a very long journey to sit in the outer courtyards of the Temple. A person of great importance in his country, he would remain a second-class citizen in the Jewish faith. And yet a hunger to know the God of Israel drew him over many miles to Jerusalem.

Philip joins him in the chariot, and they continue on together, as Philip opens the scriptures to him, and tells him about Jesus, and about baptism, and about adoption as God’s children through Christ.

When they pass by some water, the Eunuch says, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

And so the wilderness road becomes a place of beloved community, of radical inclusivity. The eunuch goes home, no longer on the outside looking in, but a part of the whole, a member of the body of Christ.

Philip doesn’t just welcome him; he forms him in faith. He interprets the scriptures to him. He listens to him. He answers his questions and addresses his confusion. In all of this he is led by the Spirit.

Philip walks the wilderness road, but he brings all the resources of his faith with him. He is open to the Spirit and its surprises—but it is the practices that he has cultivated in synagogue and with Jesus and the disciples, of prayer, of scripture reading, of discernment—that’s what he has to offer.

We are in a moment, as people of faith, when we are called to walk the wilderness road. We are called to reach out and walk alongside new people, in new places, and to be open and adaptable in ways not imaginable before. But we won’t be very effective in all this, if we leave the resources of our tradition behind us. We won’t be effective out in the wilderness if we have left behind the practices of prayer and scripture reading and worship and discernment that nourished us within the walls of our churches. We won’t succeed with the new technology, as rapidly as it evolves, if we also don’t remain plugged in to the “old school” technology: of relationships and showing up for each other in authentic ways. We won’t succeed as faith-based activists, if we are not also faith-based contemplativists, always listening for the Spirit’s guidance. Philip’s witness to the eunuch teaches us this.

So Beloved Community is about abiding, with God and with each other, in Jesus’ name. And Beloved Community is about radical welcome, taking the tools we’ve learned in our sanctuaries, and carrying them out to the Wilderness Road.

And there’s one more thing: Beloved Community is about what we will not abide.

Martin Luther King Jr., graduate of this university, spoke about the Beloved Community as the outcome, the end result, of nonviolence. It is the fruit that grows out of this good soil.

So inherent in the Beloved Community is a continuing stance against violence and oppression in all forms. The epistle reading from 1 John reminds us of this: “We love because he first loved us. Those who say ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

Today is the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I hope to God that we are on the verge of a new Civil Rights movement in this country. There are things that we cannot abide, if we want to be the Beloved Community. If we dare to proclaim that we follow Jesus. We live in a complicated world. But there are three things that should not be complicated for us in the church. There are three things that are really no-brainers for us to get behind as American Christians of any stripe, for us to march for, and to demonstrate for, to be a force for change. Three things about which there is no excuse for our silence; we simply cannot abide them.

First: systemic racism, especially against African Americans and people of color. I believe the church is especially called to stand up to systemic racism as it is expressed in our public schools and in our criminal justice and prison systems. There are special opportunities for the witness of the church there.

Next, the peculiar institution of American gun violence. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, it is this way nowhere else in the world. This epidemic, combined with the epidemic of racism in our land—you read the papers too. You know. It has to stop. We have unique opportunities as people of faith to witness against gun violence, and for peace. To change the laws. To change our culture. So many lives needlessly ripped away. But perfect love casts out fear.

Third, the destruction of the environment. It’s right there in Genesis: this world, this created order, is good, and sacred. Time is running out. We have abused our position as stewards of the earth. Jesus called us to lives of simplicity and generosity, to live in harmony with each other, resisting the forces of greed and waste.

We serve the God of love and life. In these three areas, the shadow of death is creeping over us. We serve the God of reconciliation, of resurrection, of re-creation.

There needs to be struggle and patient endurance and God’s help everywhere. And God’s help is everywhere. Indeed, that is the only way we can hope to have any impact on these issues at all. The only way. Struggle and patient endurance and calling on God’s help. That is the stuff of abiding. May God bless us, and empower us to live out this calling, together, and in Christ’s name. Amen.

–The Rev. Dr. Regina L. Walton, Rector, Grace Church, Newton, MA

Gracenewton.org

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posted in Guest Preachers on 08.9.2015 at 11:00 am

Sunday
July 26

The Beloved Community in a Wild and Crazy World!

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 12:15-21

The text is not available for this sermon.

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posted in Guest Preachers on 07.26.2015 at 11:00 am

Sunday
July 19

The Beloved Community of a Wild and Crazy God!

By Marsh Chapel

Matthew 24:36-44

The text is not available for this sermon.

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posted in Guest Preachers on 07.19.2015 at 11:00 am

Sunday
June 28

The Unimportance of being Earnest

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 5:21-43

The text is not available for this sermon.

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posted in Guest Preachers on 06.28.2015 at 11:00 am

Sunday
February 22

Hope in the Wilderness

By Marsh Chapel

Mark 1:9-15

-Reverend Liz Douglass, Chapel Associate for LGBTQ & UCC Ministry

A Prayer for Boston from the Reverend James Martin, Jesuit priest, author, and editor: Almighty God, who made the green grass on the Fenway, the blue waters of Dorchester Bay and the tan sands on the Cape, we have a simple prayer: Enough with the snow already. Whatever mysterious point you're making about endurance, or patience or your own awesome power, we get it: we've endured, we're plenty patient and we get that you can do the snow thing. And we know that you know the old joke (since you know everything) about how if the Pilgrims landed in Florida first this part of the country would never have been settled, ha ha, but we love it here. We love the spring, especially on Boston Common. We love the Fall, especially in the suburbs. And we love the summer, especially on Cape Cod, on Cape Anne and on the South Shore. We love all those beautiful parts of your world. But we've had it with the snow. I mean, have you looked out my window? So we'd like to ask you to stop sending us the snow. And, just to be clear, when we say snow we also mean freezing rain, sleet, black ice, any kind of flurries and that new creation of yours thundersnow, We promise we'll be good during Lent, we'll be kind to one another, and won't ask for another thing, at least until the Red Sox start to play. Amen.

You and I may have offered some variation of that prayer to God in the last month, especially last week when the weather prohibited us from meeting here in person. Last Sunday I worshipped from my home office, on the second floor of my house that overlooks the street. Wind wailing, snow blowing, I wrapped my blanket a little more tightly around me as I heard the steam heat rattling through the radiator, in sync with the wind whipping the windows in front of me. Across the street a neighbor opened her window and slowly stretched out a broom to knock down heavy and thick icicles from the gutters, fearful of the prolonged strain on the house’s structure. Perhaps for many of you, the roads to 735 Commonwealth Avenue were impassable, the routine journey to worship in the presence of a known community too risky to attempt. Perhaps you too, sat, listened, and worshipped from your armchair, the melodic voices of the choir competing with the shrill wind and thundering snow plows. Perhaps you also found comfort in the familiar voices, hymns, and word despite the white wilderness engulfing you.

In Boston this winter we have endured our own kind of wilderness. Pummeled with storm after storm, snow rising to unbelievable heights, commuting whether by foot, car, bike or public transit nearly impossible, Bostonians somehow manage to continue onward day after day, week after week. Two weeks ago on a Monday morning, my partner and I headed to the driveway yet again to shovel. I started to pile the snow on the already higher than me snow piles on either side of the driveway, and I suddenly stopped, exacerbated and said, “This isn’t going to work. There’s just no more room.” Finally I decided to take the snow, one shovel load at a time, and carry it across the street to a smaller snowbank. It took us double the time, but slow and steady was the only way to go at this point. Here in Boston, we’ve needed to be a little more creative, a little more patient, a little more flexible, and a little more forgiving in order to brave these long winter days and nights. We chip, chip, chip away at the icy block at the end of the driveway strongly built by the snow plow because we know we will make it out of the white wilderness soon. Our hope rests in the promise of new life, warmth, sunshine, and green grass. Our hope rests in the promise of spring. You and I in Boston are insiders to this journey, and through a shared wilderness to find a common hope, we as Bostonians make the long trek together.

As outsiders in Mark’s gospel today, we see from beyond the moment at hand. We are provided a glimpse into a very personal account of Jesus’ baptism – a voice from heaven projecting, the Spirit descending, and Jesus emerging. Mother, son, and Spirit – the Trinity comes together for one snapshot moment breaking through the daily life on the river banks of the Jordan as if the world stood still for one quiet, perfect moment. Jesus saw the heavens torn open; Jesus felt the Spirit fall down upon him; and Jesus heard his mother’s voice from above. Nowhere does Mark say others witnessed Jesus’ personal encounters with the spirit and God. Instead, Jesus’ baptismal experience was uniquely his own, and whatever happened in the brief moment between Jesus and the Spirit following his baptism, we don’t know except to simply say, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”

Mark’s wilderness is described in one short sentence in which an almost comical scene is set up. Jesus is with Satan, the wild beasts, and angels. It’s as if the red horned devil is sitting on his left shoulder and the white haloed angel on his right, both tugging at the human desires and impulses tucked deeply within the heart. The devil whispers maliciously in Jesus’ ear, “ Nothing you can do will make a difference; you have a good life with a good family, so why would you risk that security and stability; nobody will listen to you; be comfortable and let someone else take this on.” The angel letting out a long sigh simply repeats the familiar words to Jesus, “You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Comical images aside, something resonates deeply within us when we think of being God’s beloved with whom she is well pleased. These words echo the Genesis account of being created in God’s own image and the psalmist’s poetic prayer, who knew himself to be “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God. Each of us yearns for God’s love, desires to feel valued, and desperately seeks hope, the hope only found in God.

As outsiders, we don’t know the rainy wilderness through which the prophet Noah journeyed to dry land. Like Jesus, he spent forty days away from the familiar. In a wilderness of water and rain, claustrophobia and confusion, darkness and despair Noah chose to put his trust in God despite the ridicule from those who scoffed at his building a gigantic arc. Noah clung to hope and endured the wilderness that eventually ended with a new promise of peace from God symbolized by the vibrant rainbow that stretched from generation to generation for all of humankind, all animals, and all plant life over the entire earth. The covenant initiated by God in Genesis reached far and wide to the re-establishment of that same covenant through Jesus Christ from wilderness to wilderness, from Genesis to Gospel, from Noah to Jesus, from prophet to good news incarnate, faithful to constant, hopeful to hope filled, and pioneer to leader.

Sarah Kate Ellis, a modern day pioneer and President of GLAAD with two A’s, a queer rights organization, recently asked, “Where are the hearts and minds of Americans?” Her question stemmed from the recent marriage equality victories in opposition to the increasing hostility towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender folk, especially by prominent political and religious figures. Ellis’ hope is that marriage is looked at as “the benchmark and not just the finish line,” since laws, while good and necessary, don’t change attitudes or biases. After several polls geared toward answering her question about Americans’ hearts and minds, the responses were troubling. About a third of respondents said they would feel unsettled if their child’s physician or teacher identified as LGB or T, and they would also feel uncomfortable seeing same sex couples holding hands. Almost half said they would be uncomfortable bringing a child to a same sex wedding. Even more disheartening, a public Religion Research Institute survey from a little over a year ago found that over half of respondents claimed sex between two men or two women is morally wrong. Understandably polls are an imperfect science for data collection, but looking beyond the flaws, it’s evident the hearts and minds of many Americans aren’t in sync with their queer sisters and brothers.

With more and more states declaring the unconstitutionality of banning lesbians and gays from marriage equality, it is no surprise a strong and harsh backlash is upon us. Alabama recently rejoiced in the most recent triumph of justice in which the Supreme Court chose not to block a ruling by a federal judge who recently declared the Alabama’s marriage restrictions as unconstitutional. Sadly, not all those in Alabama joined in the celebration. In angry defiance, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the State Supreme Court chose to defy federal law by commanding authorities to block the marriages, determined to resist marriage equality for all of Alabama’s citizens and encourage discrimination. His actions have caused confusion and chaos for authorities and those seeking marriage, essentially dividing the state between those in favor and those against. In response, Nicholas Kristoff in his New York Times opinion column recently asked “Do Judge Moore and other conservative Christians think that when God made gays and lesbians fall achingly in love with each other, God screwed up?”

How vast is the wilderness, how long, how wide, how deep that causes us to wonder if God screwed up, made a mistake, or regrets a part of her creation. Even though you and I may know that we are God’s beloved, let us not forget the deeply personal journeys of many, where the glimmer of hope is too often dimmed by the heavy burdens of oppression and discrimination, by injustice and hate, by ex-communication and abandonment. Communal or personal the wildernesses seem unending and blinding, weary individuals pushing onward with silent cries of “help” meant for any who might listen or be willing to hear.

Asking for help is a needed practice. It’s too often portrayed as giving in or showing weakness. In a society where we are taught to be strong and independent, help isn’t a word that comes naturally to us. Yet, everyone needs help sometimes, like a woman who emailed me last week. In one of her classes, a quiz was given in order to discover what implicit biases each person might have. Pleased, she didn’t discover too much bias towards several groups of people, but results relating to one group in particular concerned her. The bias she held towards LGBT folk worried her since she firmly believes in being full of Christ’s love and expressing that love to all people equally. In an attempt to confront her biases and learn more about a community in which she hasn’t been immersed or knows very little, she reached out to me for help. Her heartfelt honesty in writing and pushing the send button for this email combined with her self-reflective humility brought about a renewed and needed hope deep inside of me. If one person could swiftly attempt to change biases in order to love more truly as God loves, who’s to say we all can’t take the time and energy for probing self-reflection as well.

Lent is meant to be a time for self-reflection and humility. With Ash Wednesday behind us, our Lenten journey has begun, as we follow Jesus into the wilderness, fight temptation, listen for God’s quiet voice, remember we are beloved, and seek hope. We, too, fight temptations like Jesus – the red devil pulling at our human desires and the white angel tugging at the Spirit’s convictions placed on our hearts. Lent is no different than any other season in this regard – temptations always abound, wildernesses come and go, and the snow falls every winter. Yet Lent is unique in that it offers space carved out specifically for repentance, humility, and hope. Lent is a time in which folks take on a practice or give up a bad habit in order to be more reflective, penitent, forgiving, and mindful of Jesus’ journey to the cross for our sake. In the still quiet place what will you find? In the hushed silence to what is God calling you to do?

Looking back to Sarah Kate Ellis, the pioneer who is concerned with the hearts and minds of Americans, we recognize the hope she seeks, anticipates, and offers. Though discouraging poll results, hurtful words thrown back and forth between religious leaders, hateful votes and bills approved by politicians, and continual violence, Ellis, encouraged by the progress the country has made, has a vision for what more good awaits. What is her solution to changing the poll results and reaching hearts and minds other than waiting, through the passing of time? She wants to see more from the people who are wholly comfortable with gays to be more open about it, and in her words, to be more “evangelical” about it. Share the good news with others; be more open about the truth; and be the hope that marginalized communities so desperately need. It is interesting and noteworthy that Ellis uses the term “evangelical” - a word with Christian roots, that is associated with zeal and passion in proclaiming the good news of the gospel and the hope that’s found there.

In true evangelical fashion Jesus emerged from the wilderness, proclaiming good news: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark’s gospel offers no transition from the wilderness to the proclamation showing an urgency to Jesus’ ministry. From quiet solitude to boisterous community, Jesus hit the ground running. Triumphantly he fled the wilderness, escaping the temptations and loneliness to live out the hope he knew to be true inside of himself. From personal to public Jesus took what he experienced at his baptism to enter the wilderness with humility and vulnerability and finally emerged to proclaim good news, offer renewed hope, and challenge the broken and destructive cycles around him.

While we can’t enter Jesus’ own personal wilderness, this Lenten season is a time to reflect on what wildernesses are around us through which we are wandering as insiders, those wildernesses that to us are deeply personal. We are reminded of our mortality, sinfulness, and humanity as we hear once again that we are dust and will return to dust. Symbolizing repentance on Ash Wednesday, the ashes stay with us through the day on our foreheads, a public display of the personal conviction. These ashes stay with us the forty days of Lent – not visibly for all to see, but instead they are marked on our hearts. The Lenten journey is only what we make of it if embraced as a time of self reflection, humility, and penitence. The choice is ours whether to set aside quiet solitude during these next forty days. In the still quiet place what will you find? When the heart is opened to God, to what will you be called to do?

The temptation for all of us is to ignore the call to serve, to stand, to speak out, to challenge, to step out of our boundaries, and to help those in need. The temptation is to believe God screwed up. The temptation is to leave others stranded in the wilderness especially those with which we are outsiders, not offering a hand or the time to better understand another’s struggles. The temptation is to keep our biases tucked away without working to let them go. The temptation is to not ask for help or hear the cries from others. The temptation is to lose hope or deny others hope. The temptation is to believe the lies that we are not beloved or to tell those lies to others with whom God is so very well pleased. The temptation is to temper the gospel, squash the good news, and put out the fires of the evangelical pioneers.

The wilderness is a place where we can take stock of our hearts and minds, choosing either to seek hope or despair. Whether to find solace in indifference or determination. Deciding to be a little more creative for the good of all people or only a few. Allowing ourselves to be flexible in our thinking or rigid in our narrow beliefs. Asking for help, offering help, or denying help. Are you the one lending a hand, or a shovel, or a snowblower for the neighbor in need this winter? Are you reaching out and using your voice for those marginalized, those wandering in the desert? The wilderness has different meanings for different people yet we are all seeking the same hope in God fulfilled by Christ.

When faced with a choice, Jesus chose to accept the calling from God to offer his life to others and God in the service of those around him. May we be mindful of his journey to the cross this Lenten season and may we seek hope in the wilderness. As God’s beloved may we proclaim the hope of Christ through the wilderness. May our prayer be this Lenten season, to align our hearts and minds to that of God’s loving will in the service of others. Amen.

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posted in Guest Preachers on 02.22.2015 at 11:00 am

Sunday
January 18

The Embodiment of Goodness

By Marsh Chapel

John 1:43-51

- The Rev. Dr. Peter J. Paris, Walter G. Muelder Visiting Professor of Social Ethics, Boston University School of Theology

Many of you will remember the stories about Jesus calling his twelve disciples to follow him. As reported in this morning’s gospel reading, Philip was so impressed with meeting Jesus and being asked to join his movement that he did what any one of us would have done. In a very excited manner, he passed the word onto another namely Nathaniel saying, “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

Nathaniel was not immediately impressed but responded skeptically saying, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” It was a prejudiced question because the answer is implied in the question. Philip seemingly ignored the question and simply responded by saying, “Come and see,” clearly implying that after meeting Jesus he would change his mind. And, accordingly, that is what happened. Soon after meeting Jesus, Nathaniel confessed that he was the son of God; the King of Israel. Meeting the man himself had purged him of all his prejudices.

Now, we can rightly assume that many asked a similar question when they first heard about Martin Luther King, Jr. who came out of the racially segregated ghetto in Atlanta known as “Sweet Auburn.” Can anything good come out of Sweet Auburn? Or more generally, can anything good come out of America’s black ghettoes? The most convincing response is, “Come and see.”

I first heard Martin Luther King, Jr. speak in 1959 in Athens, Ohio at the founding meeting of the National Christian Student Federation of North America. He was then only thirty years old and already known internationally for his successful leadership in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That conference became a launching pad for students as they entered the decade-long struggles for moral transformation in the churches, universities, and the military industrial complex symbolized by the War in Vietnam. It was a tumultuous period to say the least. Needless to say, I was happy to be part of that generation where most of us seemed to view ourselves as agents of social change.

Many asked the question then “can anything good come out of a coalition of Christian and secular students allied with the civil rights struggles of black Americans, guided by the inspiration of Martin Luther King, Jr., the spiritual music of ancestral African slaves, and the theme song of uncertain origins, “We Shall Overcome.” The only answer then and now was, “come and see.”

Clearly, the good in history is always ambiguous. What is good for some is not good for all. The legal, social, and political progress of the Civil Rights Movement fifty years ago, was good for the growth of the black middle class but not good for those millions of blacks who were left behind to stagnate in the isolated cauldrons of the nation’s inner cities. There they are identified collectively as social pariahs. They comprise disproportionate numbers of the homeless and jobless, drug addicts and dealers, armed criminal gangs who kill and abuse one another as a way of life. Many rightly view our inner cities as war zones where no one trusts anyone and very limited resources are made available to heal the social and psychological pathologies that flourish in that environment.

Tragically, both the residents and the law enforcement officers view each other as irreconcilable enemies. That mutual disrespect has led to widespread killings of unarmed blacks by the police which in turn has given rise to a new social protest movement inspired by such tragic symbols of defeat such as “Hands up; don’t shoot;” “I can’t breathe;” and such novel practices as “die-ins.” The names and images of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner Tamir Rice, and Akai Gurley have become the embodied symbols of this movement’s protest against the police,. Yet, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s twitter lists 76 unarmed blacks who were killed in police custody between 1999 and 2014. That list includes nine black women. Hopefully, such names as Sharisse Francis of NY, Shantel Davis of Brooklyn, Aiyana Jones of Detroit, Tarika Wilson of Lima, Ohio, Miriam Carey of Washington, D.C. and more will gain public visibility alongside their brothers.

Let me hasten to say that numerous moral issues attend these cases of alleged police violence that cry out for public redress. Needless to say, perhaps, much needs to be done to transform an assumed war zone into a civil space of mutual respect and trust between police and citizens. In my judgment, that can only be done by eradicating poverty in our inner cities and cleansing those urban spaces of stigma. Ending poverty was one of the unmet goals Martin Luther King, Jr. set for his first March on Washington in 1963 as well as the second March on Washington that he was planning at the time of his assassination.

Long before Martin Luther King, Jr. was called to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, blacks had viewed racial discrimination and segregation as a moral, social, legal, economic, political, and spiritual problem that required a comprehensive approach for its solution. Thus, the combined force of his moral insight, academic knowledge, theological wisdom and rhetorical skill combined to convince many that the depth and breadth of the problem constituted a malignancy that would surely destroy the nation itself if it were left unchecked.

The residue of that same problem remains deeply embedded in this nation’s fabric and wholly confirmed by the experiences of all African Americans regardless of our wealth, power or social standing. We all know that we are perceived as actual or potential threats to white America’s psychological ethos that forces it into a permanent posture of self-defense.

Now, truly good actions need to be interpreted so as to reveal their moral, political and spiritual significance. That is what Dr. King did so well and why his words have become such an enduring global treasure. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Our present situation longs for a similar interpreter. Those who claim that we have no need for such are grossly mistaken.

Clearly, the cause of our present problems is the same as those Dr. King confronted. Alas, effective cures have not been found for every malignancy whether biological or social.

Clearly, all who shun the spiritual dimension of the struggle for racial justice fail to understand the depth of the problem we face. It is a problem deeply rooted in our nation’s spirit: one that laws alone cannot solve; that days of service alone cannot correct; that protests alone cannot cure; that education alone cannot heal; that incarceration alone cannot repair; that jobs alone cannot restore; that wars on drugs alone cannot eradicate.

As with every spiritual problem the answer lies in bringing the human spirit into conformity with the spirit of God who alone is able to usher in a new world order; one shaped by the universal principles of love and justice the embodiment of which constitutes what is truly good. Those who have seen its embodiment must do what Philip told Nathaniel to do: “Come and see.” Such a prophet is greatly needed in our day. Martin Luther King, Jr. embodied that goodness fifty years ago. Let us pray for the coming of a new embodiment of that much needed goodness in our day.

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posted in Guest Preachers on 01.18.2015 at 11:00 am

Click here to hear the full service.

Sunday
August 17

The Grown-Ups of God vs. Mustard Seed Faith

By Marsh Chapel

Genesis 26:12-18

Psalm 84

Luke 18:15-17

Click here to hear the sermon only.

I’m thrilled to be back among you this morning at Marsh Chapel, and I want to thank Dean Hill for the invitation to, in his words, “bat clean up” in this summer’s national preaching series. I’ve had a chance to listen to the fine sermons that have been preached in this series, and they are available on the Marsh Chapel website for you as well.

I must say, though, the last time I preached here, I was a lot less nervous in preparing my sermon, because I really had no idea just how many people listened to this broadcast. But then the following week people kept coming up to me or emailing and saying, “Hey, I heard you on the radio!” In fact I’ve learned that there are people out there right now listening who went to church this morning and heard one sermon already, and now they’re listening to another service on their way home. If that describes you, I just want to say, “Wow.” That’s like what the Puritans did, two sermons on a Sunday. It’s wonderful to think of what an eclectic Communion of Saints this service brings together over the airwaves; God bless you all.

The theme for this series has been “The Gospel and Emerging Adults.” That’s a category used to refer to younger adults, 18 to 29 years of age, or sometimes more generously 18 to 35. Sometimes even beyond that, though I feel like by the time you hit 40, you’ve emerged, for better or worse.

So the preachers in this series have reflected on many important virtues and values: on wonder, wisdom, simplicity, silence, hospitality, and how these relate to ministry with emerging adults. This morning I want to go in a bit of a different direction, and talk about how the church understands young adults. This topic has some urgency, as so-called emerging adults are leaving the church in record numbers, a phenomena sometimes called “the rise of the nones,” N-O-N-E-S, those who do not identify with any particular faith. This is a fast-growing group and includes a third of all Americans under thirty.

But “emerging adults” emerge from somewhere; I actually want to go back even further and meditate on how the church understands emerging emerging adults: what we usually call “children.” I want to suggest that many of us who are followers of Christ, despite our best intentions and our desire to welcome children, youth, and young adults into faith and into our churches, have a flawed paradigm of spiritual development. And this flawed understanding is helping to bring about the opposite of what we desire, namely, young adults abandoning the church in record numbers. (pause.)

A few weeks ago my family was vacationing in Maine, and I decided to do something that many of my parishioners do all the time, but that I, as an Episcopal priest serving a church, don’t get to do very often: go to church and sit in the pew with my children. My husband and son decided to sleep in, but I found a church nearby and went with my three-year-old daughter, Cecily. We brought a small backpack full of My Little Ponies to aid Cecily’s worship experience. She was very excited to go.

But the people who were already in the pew when we arrived seemed . . . less excited to see her. No one said anything, but when we sat down, their mouths were set in the stiff lines of those who must endure. We were in the back, so there was room to unpack the ponies. The usher brought us another box of books and crayons. Cecily had a great time at church. She liked the hymns, she loved the stained glass windows. We stood in the back in the aisle for Communion so she could see the priest consecrating the elements. She noticed the paschal candle, and the font where babies are baptized. She was so eager to receive Communion, that she suggested we cut to the front of the line. When I said that we needed to wait our turn, she complimented some people near us on how patiently they were waiting. She talked about Jesus, in her best stage whisper (which, admittedly, is not great as whispers go). Cecily was worshipping in her way.

But we didn’t get much of a welcome. At the end, the other people in our pew left as quickly as possible. No one really spoke to us, and I felt how I imagine the parents of many young children feel at the end of a service, like we had “pulled something off” or “gotten through the service.” Like airplanes and fancy restaurants, worship at church is one place parents of young children can feel acute anxiety, as if we’ve brought our kids somewhere that they don’t really belong.

Today’s gospel reading from Luke tells us, “People were bringing even infants to Jesus that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to do it.” Parents wanted their children to experience Jesus’ blessing. They wanted to bring them close to the presence of God. But the disciples decided to act like bodyguards, and send them away. There are two reasons this passage is surprising to me: first, because, think of all the other kinds of people who were permitted open access to Jesus: reviled tax collectors and prostitutes, lepers, people possessed by demons. But really, no babies? What were the disciples afraid they would do? And the second surprising thing: these are the disciples, not the Pharisees. These are the people who have left everything to follow Jesus, to align themselves with his message. These are the people who love Jesus the most—and yet they totally misinterpret what response best expresses the kingdom he is preaching about.

Jesus tells the disciples to “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them or hinder them, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” And then he adds, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”

This story appears in three of the four gospels; it is a cornerstone of Jesus’ teaching. A passage in the gospel of Matthew contains an even more pointed warning: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (pause.)

Now, the Bible doesn’t contain any stories or references to the Grown-Ups of God. They don’t exist! We are all, always and forever, children of God. The disciples didn’t understand this. But understanding this is key to following the way of Jesus. The Greek word for “change” that Jesus uses in Matthew also means to turn or to convert, to make a dramatic change of direction. “Unless you convert and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I’ve observed that many of us today who follow Jesus don’t have proper perspective of the faith lives of children. Pretty much all churches I know of say they welcome children and families with young children—in fact, these families are highly sought-after, since a church full of children is taken as a sign of health for the future. But we must ask ourselves: are we valuing children for what they represent, especially in terms of institutional vitality, or are we valuing them because of who they are, and what we can learn from them? Are we welcoming children, but not honoring them and the unique contributions they make? Are we truly considering them as spiritual equals, and full members of the church, with real, meaningful and regular opportunities to worship, to learn, and to serve?

John Westerhoff wrote a wonderful book many years ago called Will Our Children Have Faith, that I highly recommend to you. He had a term for what I’m talking about. He said that in order to transmit and sustain faith, there must be “Shared experience, storytelling, celebration, action, and reflection between and among [what he called] equal faithing selves.” Equal faithing selves. (p. 89)

Children don’t want to know about God. They want to know God. That is a line from Jerome Berryman, the developer of a method of Christian education called Godly Play, which is based on Montessori educational practices. Children don’t need Grown-Ups of God acting as mediators to the divine. They need companions on their journey. They don’t need ministry for them, but ministry with them, that includes them fully. Children want to learn, children want to serve, at church and in the world, and children want to worship. However, adults often act towards young people in church as if children don’t want any of these things, and in fact are incapable of anything but a poor imitation of them. (pause.)

There was a little boy named Joel in a previous parish where I served, and when he was three, his mother began to let him help her usher at church. Or, rather, I think, Joel insisted that he be allowed to help usher. He loved greeting people and handing out bulletins. He never once dropped the offering plate. He saw a place where he could serve, and he did serve. His mother, Emily, taught him how. One Sunday, Emily told me that during the week he had been misbehaving in a store, and she said to him, “Joel, if you don’t calm down right now, I’m not going to let you usher with me on Sunday!” And that did the trick instantly.

Faith is taught, and faith is caught. Emily knew that. The Greek word that the early church used for teaching is “catechesis,” like catechism. Catechesis literally means echoing, echoing back. But for our children to be able to echo back, that means they have to be within earshot. That means they have to be alongside us, worshipping, learning, serving.

John Westerhoff, in Will Our Children Have Faith, writes about how in the last fifty or so years, the church did something it had never done before, in its whole history: it began separating children out of the main congregation, putting them out of earshot. The larger culture changed, with the generations becoming more separate from each other, and the church, for the most part, changed along with the culture. But it wasn’t always so. (pause.)

Of course, Jesus didn’t say just to include children, to honor them, to welcome them: he tells us to convert and become like them! To receive the kingdom of God as they would! To learn from them; to echo them in our lives of faith. What can this mean?

First of all, it means humility. In the ancient world, there was no romanticizing of children as paragons of purity or innocence. Children had no status; they were the lowest in the pecking order. Children are aware of their own vulnerability. They trust and rely on those who care for them. We are called to have this same kind of trust and dependence on God. We are called to be humble in heart. We can learn this from children.

Second, awe and wonder. Children revel in the newness of everything around them, in the natural world, in new experiences, in beauty, in friendship. My son said to me yesterday, “Look at this awesome drop of milk sliding down the side of my cup.” Children recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary. We can learn this, or re-learn this, from children, and our souls can grow in wonder and gratitude and appreciation for the lives we’ve been given, and the world in which we live.

More virtues: curiosity: knowing that we don’t know, and wanting to know more. The ability to give oneself over to joy, and to mystery, and to silliness and fun. All these things we can learn from the children in our midst—but they have to be in our midst.

And this brings us back, by the long road, to “emerging adults.” I am not a sociologist, though there are some fine sociological studies of why so many young adults are leaving church after college and not coming back. But here is my hunch, which is backed up by some of these studies: young adults are leaving the church, in part because: they were never really invited into a full life of faith as children. They were not really given authentic opportunities to worship, to learn, and to serve. They were not immersed in the stories of our faith, and told that these stories were about them. Instead they were told to be quiet during church, given coloring worksheets, and asked to put some pennies in a cardboard box during Lent. They were given a sanitized gospel, like one of the toddler children’s bibles we have at home, where every story ends before anything bad happens: so Adam and Eve are happy in the Garden, and Joseph gets to keep his beautiful coat, and baby Moses sleeps in a basket. The end. No sadness, no pain. But no redemption, either. They were given a kiddie-sized faith, without the language of death and resurrection, and new beginnings out of calamity. And so if calamity ever happened to them, faith had nothing to say about it. No wonder they lost interest.

I’ve noticed over the years how the church takes an interest in adolescents that it never had in children. After all, adolescents can reason abstractly. They are somewhat better at sitting still. They can go on service projects and mission trips. They are on their way to becoming a Grown-Up of God.

But by then, it is usually too late. They have been out of earshot too long. All those best years of echoing back the faith are past, and of course the desire for closeness with adults has waned with this new developmental stage.

But there is a new paradigm of faith formation. Which is really an old paradigm, from the parables of Jesus. Jesus tells two of his pithiest parables about a mustard seed: the first one says, if you have faith like a mustard seed, you can move mountains. The second one says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds that grows into the largest of shrubs. (I always like the anti-climax there—the largest of shrubs!)

With Jesus, humility always wins the day. This is why children are the best receivers of the kingdom. Faith like a mustard seed: the smallest amount of faith, is still faith! The faith contained in the smallest of people, is still faith! And it can grow and flourish continually. This is truly good news, not just for youngsters, but for us oldsters, who are still trying to figure out who we are in God.

We are not called to be mediators or gatekeepers to the youngest among us. We are called to be fellow pilgrims who learn from each other. That means spending time together, learning together, listening to each other, serving together, wondering together, worshipping together, young and old. It’s not always easy. It takes practice and patience, this echoing and echoing back, this sharing, this mutuality. But this is how, together, we receive the kingdom of God, as children of God, still growing, wherever we are on the path—with or without My Little Ponies in the pew. In God’s name, Amen.

~The Rev. Dr. Regina L. Walton

posted in Guest Preachers on 08.17.2014 at 11:00 am