Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

I preached this morning at my former home parish (where I still have deep roots and Tim continues to attend). The response to my sermon was so overwhelming that I thought I would share it here.There were a lot of moist eyes in the congregation, and I admit that I choked up a couple of times as I spoke, but at least I now know that one can weep from the pulpit and survive.

12.16.2012

St. Peter’s in the Great Valley

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Philippians 4:4-7

Luke 3:7-18

This is not the sermon I had planned to preach today. I had a witty, thought-provoking sermon filled with great amounts of Yale Divinity School erudition to share with you. But that was before. That was before a young man with guns slaughtered 20 children with crayons. It was before this one in a long litany of national tragedies where innocents are murdered for no other reason than that, though they had every reason to believe that they were in the right place, they were actually in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was before people I know and love were practically at each other’s throats over gun control or separation of church and state or the absence of God from schools, as grief expressed itself in anger and judgment because to argue over politics or religion is really so much easier than sitting with the questions: why? how?       

So I returned to the readings for today to see if I could come up with something helpful to say on this 3^rd Sunday of Advent, something to say that would let us gathered here feel more deeply God’s presence in our darkness. And what did I find? 

The prophet Zephaniah proclaims:

Rejoice and exult with all your heart,

O daughter Jerusalem!

The LORD has taken away the judgments against you,

he has turned away your enemies.

The apostle Paul exclaims:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. 

And Luke tells us of John the Baptist:

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.          

Rejoice? Proclaim Good News? Where does one even begin to proclaim Good News in the midst of such grief and loss? When I reread the lectionary for today, I wondered: why can’t I preach on John’s text that says, “Jesus wept,” or Matthew’s, “A cry was heard in Ramah…Rachel weeps for her children?” And then I prayed, a lot. And then I remembered.

The prophet Zephaniah was a contemporary of Jeremiah, and life was not exactly pleasant for them. The northern kingdom of Israel had fallen a century before and they could see on the horizon that Judah was about to undergo the same fate. An invasion from the north threatened to wipe them out, and after a long recitation of woes upon the people, Zephaniah then says what we heard this morning – yes, all these bad things are going to happen, but don’t be afraid. God will not abandon you and will bring you home. So sing aloud and rejoice. God is here, even in this darkness.

And Paul? He was in prison when he wrote his letter to the church in Philippi. In his lifetime, Paul had been beaten, tortured, shipwrecked, and imprisoned, yet he could still write some of the most beautiful words in all of scripture:

 

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 

And what about John the Baptist who did nothing but go around yelling at everyone? Notice, though, that John did not go into Jerusalem to call people names. No, he’s the hairy, smelly dude living in the beat-up Volkswagen bus down by the river. To get yelled at by John the Baptist, you have to go to him!

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to find this guy. Why would anybody?

Well, I think you would have to be pretty desperate, wouldn’t you? When the world feels turned upside down, tragedy strikes an elementary school, and none of it makes any sense. That’s the kind of desperation that might lead us into the wilderness to find someone like John.

It’s the kind of desperation that puts us on our knees and makes us realize that nothing that we have - power or possessions or privilege or prestige – none of it will protect us from sadness and sorrow, from tragedy and failure any more than it will make us happy or carefree or keep our children safe or our marriages together or health strong.

When we’ve hit rock bottom, that’s when we go down to the river to hear crazy John shout at us. But don’t forget: Luke says that it’s Good News. No, it doesn’t sound like good news, this business about throwing the chaff in the unquenchable fire, but what John is announcing is that the Messiah has finally the come. The long-hoped-for savior of Israel. This is why these desperate people have come out here to be insulted and criticized. Messiah. The Anointed One. He will make all things right, but we need to be ready, and in order to be ready, we have to make some changes. And John is going to tell us what we have to do.

            Repent. Repent. Repentance is not about beating ourselves up. It’s about turning around. When nothing makes sense and whatever is going on in our lives and the world around us seems upside down, turn around.  Turn away from our broken selves and turn toward a new way of being. “One who is more powerful than I is coming.” Turn toward that one.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

          Archbishop Desmond Tutu, no stranger to tragedy and suffering, included a litany in his African Prayer Book, part of which says:

When will we ever learn, when will they ever learn?
Oh when will we ever learn that you intended us for Shalom,
for wholeness, for peace,
For fellowship, for togetherness, for brotherhood,
For sisterhood, for family?
When will we ever learn that you created us
As your children
As members of one family
Your family
The human family— Created us for linking arms
To express our common humanity.
God, my Father, I am filled with anguish and puzzlement
Why,oh God, is there so much suffering, such needless suffering
Iam dumbfounded and I am bewildered
And in agony
This is the world
You loved so much that for it
You gave your only begotten Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ,to hang
From the cross, done to death
Love nearly overwhelmed by hate
Light nearly extinguished by darkness
Life nearly destroyed by death
But not quite
For love vanquished hate
For life overcame death, there
Light overwhelmed Darkness, there
And we can live with hope

          You may have noticed that we lit a pink candle today. It’s gaudete Sunday – a Latin word that means "rejoice." It comes from the tradition of the introit, or sung prelude, on the 3^rd Sunday of Advent being gaudete in Domino semper – rejoice in the Lord always. There’s that word again. Rejoice.

The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything. Go on. Go down to the river and get yelled at. It may be hard to hear, but our very lives depend on it. Even in the darkness of the past three days, we can turn toward the light that we know is coming.    

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus.

Turn around. Our savior draws near.

On politics and grief

Four years ago, late on election eve, my phone rang.

"Hey, Ma. You watchin' this?"

"Yes, I am," I said through a quickly developing lump in my throat.

"I can't believe it's really happening."

"Me either, Seth. Me either."

And then we sat in silence, he in Brooklyn and me in Downingtown, and watched as the newly elected president of the United States and his family walked around a Chicago stage to rock-star-caliber cheering, and, still holding our phones to our ears, we listened to a soaring acceptance speech from a person of color, an attribute which I was not sure I would ever see in my lifetime.

I had intended to write today about the end of a bitter and divisive campaign season and all those people whom I love and admire for whom the election results turned out to be disappointing and even devastating.

I had intended to write today about the promise of last night's acceptance speech which was hopeful and inclusive and even exhortatory - we can all do better, and we can all do better working together rather than pushing others away.

I had intended to write today about the graceful concession speech by Governor Romney, encouraging his supporters to put people before politics and offering his prayers for the re-elected president.

I had intended to write today about my disappointments in this administration over the past four years: drone strikes, Guantanamo, rendition of prisoners, lack of attention to the environment and the Mideast peace process and the structures which keep people in poverty. It's a long list.

I had intended to write today about my hopes that someday health care reform will adequately address the needs of the addicted, depressed, and mentally ill.

And that's when this became about that phone call on a November evening four years ago. Because this year, Seth is not here to pick up the phone and call me to talk politics or sports or theater or music or love or anything else. Because he died by suicide barely three months later.

So today, I'm remembering a mostly-silent phone conversation that  began (as they all did) with

"Hey, Ma."

My South African adventure

I've been in Cape Town for nearly three weeks now, and it's almost time to go home. At dinner tonight, the six of us living in the Burnley Lodge were beginning to feel the approaching separation, having bonded so closely in the intimate sharing and vulnerability we've experienced through the Institute for Healing of Memories (IHOM). It's been our own little United Nations, with England, India, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and the US gathered around the breakfast and dinner table each day. The rest of our workshop group includes South Africa, Zimbabwe, and a South African expat living in the US, and I love them all, but there is a special bond between those of us here at this location. I'm feeling quite melancholy about the very real possibility that I may never see these friends again. We've exchanged Skype addresses and are Facebook friends (at least some of us), but our world is so large and leisure time and money for international travel is not so easy to come by. I suppose I'll have to leave this up to God's good provision.

I would not even know where to begin to describe the experiences of this training in "Healing Individual and Collective Wounds," which includes facilitation training in the Healing of Memories workshops for which IHOM is known. We all experienced one of those workshops, spending three days on Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 of his 28 years imprisonment. My room there was a former cell for common criminals, bars intact on windows and door. In our training, we've had presentations on all manner of trauma from the apartheid era and beyond, including war and unrest in South Africa's neighboring countries. One of our eleven participants is a former political prisoner on Robben Island (serving 11 of 15 years). One lives in one of the townships that surround Cape Town where blacks and coloreds were forcibly relocated under apartheid rule. Some of these townships stretch for as the eye can see, houses of scrap metal and other salvaged materials, electricity self-wired leading to fire hazard conditions, too hot in summer and too cold in winter and always susceptible to flooding. Still another participant survived the Rwandan genocide. There is so much pain and suffering just among our group, yet we have shared so much laughter and joy and music with each other. I've never experienced anything quite like it, and I want to hold onto this place and these people, even though I know that we will all go home, back to our lives, and it won't be like this again.

I am so grateful for what I have learned and experienced, the places I have seen, and, mostly, the people I have met. I have even discovered an inspiration for a book on reconciliation and forgiveness that I have been pondering for many years. That's certainly something I will carry away from here because it may also be the thing that brings me back again! I want to share this place with Tim, show him all that I have seen and introduce him to all of my new friends. This last may not be possible, but I will carry them all with me: Simbarashe, Silishebo, Leena, Violette, Robin, Thandikhaya, Lindsey, Nyasha, Vincent, Merlyn, Fatima, Madoda, Mercy, Alphonse, Mabongi, Patricia, Ian, Bukiwe, Phyllis, and Fr. Michael.

God Bless Africa;
Guard her children;
Guide her leaders
And give her peace, for Jesus Christ's sake.
Amen.
(The Most Rev. Trevor Huddleston)

Summer snapshots

My summer internship at Trinity Wall Street is more than halfway complete. How did that happen? The craziness of living in New York combined with working at a parish with its fingers in multiple pies has been rewarding as well as exhausting. A simple visit to bring communion to a shut-in can require a couple of subway lines plus a few blocks of walking in this searing summer heat. The steady daily cycle of Eucharist at 12:05 daily, Prayers for Peace at 12:30 at St. Paul's Chapel, and the morning and evening offices at 8:15 and 5:15 help to maintain a sort of rhythm that holds the rest of it together for me.

Unlike most Episcopal Churches I know, I could go days here without encountering a single parishioner if I chose to do that (which I don't). The congregation has its small groups (or "vitality groups" as they are known) that provide a constant hum of activity that does not require the presence of ordained clergy or seminarian interns. I do, however, show up from time to time at bible study, yoga for the seniors, or congregational council meetings, just to have interaction, to try to understand what's going on in their lives and in this place. I've also just completed on Sunday a very successful book study of the Presiding Bishop's new book, "Gathering at God's Table: The Meaning of Mission in the Feast of Faith." It contains a series of essays centered on the five marks of Anglican mission, so it lent itself well to a five-part discussion series. 

I was introduced to this book when I was asked to write a review for the Episcopal Digital Network. I was happy to do that, and it gave me the impetus to do a close reading (which I didn't want to let go to waste, hence the book study!). The end result was a bit disappointing, though, because the critical parts of the review were not published. It seems to me that when there are factual errors in a publication, they need to be pointed out so that, perhaps, they can be corrected in any future editions. In an essay on border crossings (page 148), Katharine Jefferts Schori talks about Samaritans, likening them to the mestizos of our day. She describes them as being descended from intermingling of races during the Babylonian occupation. In fact, the Samaritans intermarried with occupying Assyrians more than a century earlier, and, since the Assyrians were also a Semitic people, to call the Samaritans mestizos seemed, at best, a stretch, and, at worst, patently incorrect. Well, that part of the review was left out. There's another place in the book (page 4) where she has Abraham meeting the three angels in Genesis 17. It was actually chapter 18. Maybe if I publish a book someday, that kind of thing will get past my editors, but it will have to get past me first!

I'll be on hiatus from the internship beginning on Friday the 13th, when I head out to Cape Town, South Africa for a three-week training program at the Institute for Healing of Memories. If you want to know more about the history of that organization and its founder, check out Fr. Michael Lapsley's new book, "Redeeming the Past: My Journey from Freedom Fighter to Healer." This is the next step in my exploration of reconciliation ministry in the world. I expect it will be a life-altering experience.

Summertime, and the living ain't so easy...

Can you imagine not having art in elementary school? No finger paints. No glitter. No construction paper projects? I couldn't either until I accompanied a group of staff volunteers from Trinity Wall Street to PS140 on the Lower East Side. This is just one of the schools in Lower Manhattan that Trinity has partnered with under its All Our Children initiative to provide enrichment opportunities in areas the schools are lacking. It was almost the end of the school year, and these young children had not  had art in their classrooms all year beyond what the teacher was able to fit in from time to time between required subjects if, that is, there were any art supplies to be scrounged up. Some of the graphic arts folk from Trinity accompanied the Faith in Action team (of which I am a part) for a morning of marble painting, paper-ornament making, and pipe cleaner fun (for the younger ones). The enthusiasm of the kids was matched by that of the adults as projects came to life, and young faces lit up with delight as the stack of folded paper really did create an ornament or the marbles in the box really did mix the paint on the paper. Things I always took for granted, that all kids know how to use scissors and glue, for instance, were not the case here, and I can't help wondering what the end result will be of the lack of art and creative projects at this age as the children grow older.

My summer internship at Trinity is providing me training in areas of pastoral leadership that I will need once I'm finished with seminary and (God-willing and the bishop and people consenting) I am ordained. Granted, this is not your ordinary, struggling-to-keep-the-lights-on parish as are so many in the Episcopal Church today. But I've discovered that Trinity faces many of the problems every other church faces, just on a much larger scale. It is, though, just a church, and it's filled with people trying to make sense of a world filled with pain and doubt and fear by embracing a Gospel of hope that sends them out into the world to make a difference. Also in my first week, I was privileged to meet this year's Trinity Transformational Fellows, three South African women recognized for their work in HIV/AIDS communities who were provided with a generous grant and sabbatical time over the past year to improve their skills, network with others doing similar work, and to simply rest. This is the kind of financial support of vital ministries that Trinity is uniquely situated to provide, and it is exposure to this kind of ministry and such a wide variety of people that will likely be invaluable to me over the long course of my life in ordained ministry.

Of course, Trinity is also very much engaged with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement which has heated up once again as the hearings for those who trespassed on Trinity property are scheduled for this week. I arrived early this morning to protesters camping in front of the church, and last week, the service was disrupted by a protester shouting in the middle of the Eucharist. In the month I have been here, I've spoken with many of Trinity's clergy and staff about Occupy, and I've become even more convinced that the church was committed to working with the leaders of the movement and still supports the general message that the way financial empires control our economy is unjust and negatively impacts millions of very human lives every day. What I also have learned is that Trinity long ago lost control of the narrative and has been hammered repeatedly with negative publicity over its refusal to allow the movement to camp out in church-owned Duarte Square, even though it had opened its doors to the movement, providing hospitality, meeting space, Internet access and pastoral support from the very beginning. The message that isn't getting out is the good that continues to flow into the surrounding community, in schools and prisons, and around the world in New Orleans and Haiti, Panama and Burundi, as well as areas of conflict in Congo and Sudan. Many people whom I love and respect share the OWS opposition to Trinity Wall Street and no doubt question my presence here. To them I would say, if nothing else, I am getting quite an education!

Two down, one to go!

Today, I finished the last of my exams for this term and submitted the last paper due. Ah, two years of divinity school are behind me! There is not, however, much time to rest on my laurels, because the summer that lies ahead promises to be extraordinarily busy, challenging, and, undoubtedly, exhilarating.

I begin a parish internship on May 14th at Trinity Church, Wall Street in lower Manhattan. It's one of the largest and most well-heeled Episcopal churches in the US, so if I'm going to get on-the-ground church experience over the summer, this will be an ideal place to do it. Many smaller churches slow down considerably in the summer months, and if I am going to gain practical experience, I certainly need to go somewhere that stays at least somewhat busy. The other reason I want to go there is that Trinity has a Faith in Action program that includes local, national and international reconciliation programs, so at least part of my work will be in this area that holds such interest for me. While I don't yet know exactly what I'll be doing, there will be no lack of work to do. I'll be living in a dorm at General Theological Seminary where I have sublet a room from a student there, and on Friday and Saturday, I'll be at home in PA with my poor, hard-working husband!

While I'm looking forward to living in the big city for the summer, I'm a bit hesitant about living in Chelsea, the neighborhood where Seth's studio was located when he was at NYU's Atlantic Studio. I spent a lot of time with him walking these streets and coming to his shows, grazing our way through the Chelsea Market when we got hungry. I don't know. Maybe this is an opportunity to continue to heal, to perhaps to mourn in a new way. I've pretty much avoided New York since he died, so this does present something new for his grieving mom.

As if this did not provide enough for me to work through and on this summer, I am also attending an Excellence in Preaching Conference sponsored by the Episcopal Preaching Foundation. That's at the end of May in Richmond, VA. Then in mid-July, I leave for Capetown, South Africa for a three-week training seminar at the Institute for Healing of Memories. More on these events later.

            ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

With all the busy-ness of school and life since spring break, I haven't had as much time as I might have liked to write about the Holy Land trip. Just about every paper or reflection that I have written for school has included a story or a reference of some kind to what is happening in Israel-Palestine. I follow the news from there, checking at least the headlines in Haaretz daily. It usually makes my blood pressure go up. I am haunted by the stories we heard and the things that we witnessed (beyond even the life-changing visits to the holy sites). I thought I might share some of the stories here, starting with an amazing wife and mother facing challenges peculiar to her time and place:

Dina Nasser is a public health nurse and senior health advisor on infectious diseases to the Palestinian Authority. She is married to an American and has three children, and they have all lived separately for the past four years because her husband has been denied a permit to reside in Jerusalem where she lives and works, and if she moves to Bir Zeit, fifteen miles north of Jerusalem where he lives, she forfeits her right to live in Jerusalem along with the attendant privileges of residency in the city as opposed to residency on the West Bank. The children live with her but attend a co-educational Friends school in Ramallah. A spirited and charming woman (as were all the Palestinian women we met), Mrs. Nasser’s exasperation and frustration with her situation are palpable as she has repeatedly tried to obtain a family reunification permit but has been denied each time. She calls the closing of Jerusalem, which occurred as the Palestinian Authority was established and the Oslo Accords signed in 1993, “silent ethnic cleansing.” The Israeli authorities, she claims, throw around the word “security” in such a way that “even a lawyer can’t challenge them.”

He is not here! He is risen!

The long Lenten fast is over, and I am slowly returning to electronic media and connectivity with the outside world. I must admit that it was somewhat soothing to be so undistracted, and I wonder if that kind of Zen-like calm can continue now that I am not under self-imposed restriction. We shall see. In case you weren't aware, I was active in one venue as the Yale Divinity School Travel Seminar blogger. You can read all about our two weeks in the Holy Land here, including additional posts by Dean Harry Attridge about the history of the land and Director of External Relations, John Lindner, on current geopolitical events in Israel and Palestine. When I have a moment to gather my thoughts, I will include some of my own reflections on the trip and our experience of the conflict there, but for now, suffice it to say that it was an amazing and transformative experience for all of us pilgrims.

And on to Easter. It is the highlight and culmination of all that Christians proclaim - the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the profound implications of that for those who believe. How can we continue to live complacent, self-focused, and self-indulgent lives when God has upended the world order and turned a symbol of tyranny - the cross - into one of liberation? If we confess Christ crucified and raised from the dead, the only appropriate response is to take on that life ourselves, the one in which the human person of Jesus proclaimed Good News to the poor, the imprisoned, the marginalized, and the suffering. We are all brought into the embrace of those arms stretched out on the cross (to paraphrase a good Episcopal prayer), so there is no 'you' and no 'me' but only one community in the body of the risen Christ. Let's think about that the next time we think our actions have no broader implications!

I have to say, also, that Easter is very hard for me. Since Seth died, it's been pretty much a white-knuckle experience, trying to keep myself from tumbling into the abyss of grief. When we sing "Were you there when they laid him in the tomb," I am immediately taken back to standing next to his grave on a cold February day as his casket was prepared to be lowered into the ground. I never understood Mary, the sorrowful mother, quite so well as I have since losing my own son. And when we sing our joyful alleluias on Easter morning, there is such a tinge of sorrow laced within the rejoicing because the one I love so much I still cannot see or hug or hear. So on this Easter Monday, while I can say with my lips that I will be reunited with Seth someday, this mother's heart still grieves.

The Lord is Risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!