Ash Wednesday Sermon

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right. (Hymn #554)

You might recognize these words as an 1848 Shaker dance song written by Elder Joseph Brackett. Tis the gift to be simple – simplicity, I think it is one of the key aspects to trying to live a Holy Lent. What is simplicity? Consider these words from two of the Desert Fathers of the 4th Century:

Abbot Mark once said to Abbot Arsenius: It is good, is it not, to have nothing in your cell that just gives you pleasure? For example, once I knew a brother who had a little wildflower that came up in his cell, and he pulled it out by the roots. "Well," said Abbot Arsenius, "that is all right. But each one should act according to his own spiritual way. And if one were not able to get along without the flower, he should plant it again."

Simplicity isn’t about getting rid of our possessions, being a minimalist, although for some this might be helpful! What simplicity is really about is being authentic. Neither letting things control us nor define us, but instead making sure its about who we are, “each one should act according to his own spiritual way” as Abott Arsenius put it. Sister Joan Chittister, a contemporary monastic, puts it this way,

“Simplicity is an attitude of heart, not a checklist of belongings.”

It’s really not about our stuff, it’s about us. Who we are & when we focus on who we are, centered in our hearts, then we gain freedom in our actions. Again from Joan Chittister:

“Simplicity is openness to the beauty of the present, whatever its shape, whatever its lack. Simplicity, clearly, leads to freedom of soul. When we cultivate a sense of “enoughness,” when we learn to enjoy things for their own sakes, when we learn to be gentle even with what is lacking in ourselves, we find ourselves free to be where we are and to stop mourning where we are not.”

Simplicity and freedom are also in the Shaker Hymn: 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

Both Sister Joan and that Shaker hymn would agree that by seeking to live from our heart, that simple gift, we will be free, which will guide us to where we ought to be – centered in ourselves, all of which is a gift from God. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

The Shaker Communities saw themselves living in those valleys of love and delight. Simplicity ruled their lives, and that simplicity gave them the freedom that lead to justice and equality in their community well before this nation understood equality for all its citizens. Such understanding of justice is like the words from our first reading, Isaiah:

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…

What simplicity seeks is the essence of life, and the essence of life is not disconnected from the rest of creation. Our lives are interconnected, and the essence we seek in ourselves is something we work for in all people. And when we do, the light that is inside each one of us, a God given light, will break forth like the dawn. What might this look like? Again a story from the Desert Fathers:

It was said about one brother that when he had woven baskets and put handles on them, he heard a monk next door saying: What shall I do? The trader is coming but I don't have handles to put on my baskets! Then he took the handles off his own baskets and brought them to his neighbor, saying: Look, I have these left over. Why don't you put them on your baskets? And he made his brother's work complete, as there was need, leaving his own unfinished.

I would say that the monk understood the needs of his neighbor because he is so grounded in who he is. He could share what he had and not feel a loss, even with is unfinished baskets. Our challenge is to be so grounded, and that starts by working towards that simplicity for ourselves, and Lent is the perfect time for us to start. When true simplicity is gain'd, To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd, To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come round right.

When we gain that simplicity, know the essence of life and ourselves, we will have come round right and there will be nothing to be ashamed of. In the words of Joan Chittister,

“Simplicity has something to do with being willing to have it known that you are from Bethlehem rather than from Beverly Hills.”

May God help us be our authentic selves and bless our journey to Calvary this Lent. Amen.

March 6 Sermon (Last Epiphany)

I enjoyed watching the Academy Awards. I admit it. The glamour, the jokes, the wonderful movies, seeing 94 year old Kirk Douglas ham it up. But what I enjoy most, every year, is seeing that actor or actress who thought it was great to be nominated, but didn’t expect to win, hear their name read from the stage.

This year, that was Melissa Leo for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She was caught by surprise and then she just lit up, and enjoyed the moment that all actors/actresses dream of. It was her mountain top experience!

For Moses, he was called up the mountain, into God’s very midst and was given the Ten Commandments to give to the Israelites and he literally glowed from the experience.

We all have had such experiences. Our wedding day, the birth of a child, graduation day, a job promotion, so many things in our lives are those mountain top experiences, when we think we are on top of it all, it can’t get any better than this moment. I want you to take a second and think about those moments in your life…

For Peter, James & John it was an unexpected moment. Sure they had been called by Jesus to follow him, seen incredible acts, but now Jesus was transfigured before them, dazzling white before their eyes on Mount Tabor. Moses & Elijah are there too! This is that Kodak moment, to capture and hold on to. Let’s build three dwellings here, Peter said. But then the voice from heaven speaks and the three are fearful & fall to the ground until Jesus touches them and tells them to get up and all will be well. On the way down the mountain they are told to refrain from telling about this experience until after the death of Jesus.

That is the hardest moment, coming down from the mountain top. We all have to go down the mountain; we can’t live on that mountaintop. Life is down the mountain; our day to day experiences. The disciples knew it and so do we and it is there in our daily lives, that Jesus called his disciples and us to act. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it:

“God places us in the world as his fellow workers – agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so that there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God’s world.”

To be agents of transfiguration we can’t be content with the mountain top experience even as great as they are, for it is in those daily moments in our lives, lived in the valley, in good and bad times that we are to be those agents. Maybe a better way to think about it, is those wonderful mountain top experiences give us the impetus, the push, to be those agents of transfiguration, in a world in so need of change. We want everyone to feel what we have felt up there. Again in the words of Abp. Desmond Tutu:

“God asks us to be agents of transfiguration; the God who could transfigure an instrument of the most excruciatingly painful and shameful death so that it becomes the source of a tingling, effervescent, bubbling eternal life. To proclaim that nothing, no one, no situation could ever be untransfigurable. Nothing, no one, no situation is beyond redemption, is totally devoid of hope.

This God who could snuff out all troublemakers, does not dispatch perpetrators of evil, those who rule unjustly and oppress others. No, God waits, waits on us as those who will provide the bread and the fish so that God can perform God's miracles to end injustice and oppression, to end war, disease and ignorance.”

The miracles that will happen, will happen because we work with God to make them happen, when we share our bread and fish to a hungry world. I think of a traditional folk image from Vietnam. The image tells us the difference between heaven and hell. In hell, people have chopsticks a yard long so that they cannot reach their mouths. In heaven, the chopsticks are the same length—but the people feed one another.

We are to be those agents of transfiguration, to help people feed one another, to help people love one another, to help people see what can be. And it all begins with you & me. Remember your mountain top experience; remember the love, the hope, the sheer joy in it. Now be that agent of transfiguration & in God’s name share that love, hope, joy with all that you meet. Amen.

International Women's Day: A Prayer

I know I missed International Women's Day by two days, but here is a prayer for all women:

Loving Creator God,
you made all things,
your Spirit energizes all things.

We believe you made all human beings in your image.
Bless, we pray you, all the women in your world, that they may come to know they, too, are human beings made in your image.

Help them to understand that your love and compassion, your message of justice and inclusiveness, and your affirmation in the Gospel of Jesus, is for them, too.

Give them the courage and strength to withstand the discrimination and insults that come their way, the fear and hatred that has led your church into the sin of sexism.

We pray that all faith communities, but most especially your church, will use the gifts that women have to offer, listen to women's stories and affirm women's experience, that all people may be enriched on their journey with you.

We ask this in remembrance of your child Jesus, and in the sustaining power of your Spirit, Amen.

Written by Lillalou Hughes from London, England

Simplicity in Sr. Joan Chittister's words

Simplicity requires that we learn to live a centered life, to “make God our portion”…

Isn’t simplicity really what the ancients called “purity of heart” that single-minded search for the essence of life rather than grasping after its frills?

Simplicity is openness to the beauty of the present, whatever its shape, whatever its lack. Simplicity, clearly, leads to freedom of soul. When we cultivate a sense of “enoughness,” when we learn to enjoy things for their own sakes, when we learn to be gentle even with what is lacking in ourselves, we find ourselves free to be where we are and to stop mourning where we are not.

Simplicity of life in a complex and complicated world is marked, I think, by four characteristics: a life is simple if it is honest; if it is unencumbered; if it is open to the ideas of others; if it is serene in the midst of a mindless momentum that verges on the chaotic.

Simplicity has something to do with being willing to have it known that you are from Bethlehem rather than from Beverly Hills.

Keeping a Holy Lent

Lent is a season of preparation leading up to Easter. It is the forty days plus the six Sundays before Easter. For centuries, it has been observed as a special time of self examination and penitence. Lent is a time for concentration on fundamental values and priorities, and is not a time for self punishment.

The custom is to mark the season of Lent by giving up some things and taking on others. Both can serve to mark the season as a holy time of preparation and help bring 'new life.' Some examples of things people give up for Lent include sweets, meat for all or some meals, and alcohol. In most cases, giving up something for Lent can be made more meaningful by using the money or time for another purpose. For example, meal times on fast days could be spent in prayer. Another example is that if you give up meat or alcohol during Lent, the extra money can be given to a group, such as Episcopal Relief and Development or through our Lenten Offering to the Children’s Mission in New Haven. Some things added during Lent are daily Bible reading, our Lenten Study with the Lutherans, and times of prayer.

Note that the season of Lent is forty days plus the six Sundays. This is because Sundays are always 'little Easters,' celebrations of Jesus’ resurrection and are always an appropriate day to lessen the restrictions of Lent. So that if you have, for example, given up chocolate for Lent, you could indulge in a weekly candy bar on Sunday.

Whatever you deny yourself or add to your personal discipline, the goal is increasing your own awareness of God in your life. Lent should be a time of deeper reflection, a time to discover and remove the self-made barriers that keep you from experiencing God more fully. Then your joy in celebrating Easter and that 'new life' will be all the more meaningful as you will have spent this last six weeks drawing closer to God.

***

Using the Book of Common Prayer:

“Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” beginning on p. 136 in the Book of Common Prayer. These are one page devotions for morning, noon, evening and at the end of the day.

The "Litany of Penitence" from the Ash Wednesday service, BCP p. 267, is especially fitting for this season.

One form that is particularly broad, inclusive and appropriate for this season can be found in the liturgy for Good Friday on pages 277 - 280. Composed to serve as the Prayers of the People for the Good Friday liturgy and entitled "The Solemn Collects", these prayers remind us that when we pray as the People of God, we are in spiritual communion with Christians past, present and future.

Online:

Daily Office
http://www.missionstclare.com/english/index.html

Oremus: daily prayer, liturgy, hymns, prayer resources
http://www.oremus.org/

Stations of the Cross
http://www.osp.org.uk/worship/stations_of_the_cross.htm

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death. Give mercy and grace to the living; pardon and rest to the dead, to your holy Church peace and concord; and to us sinners everlasting life and glory; for with the Father and Holy Spirit you live and reign, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, p. 282)

(Thank you to the Rev. Frank Logue for his resources on keeping a holy lent.)

Rev. Peter Gomes, RIP

Our Lenten Study will be looking at the sermons of the Rev. Peter Gomes, who recently died.

From the Boston Globe:

The Rev. Peter J. Gomes, who was known internationally as Harvard’s pastor and was just as pleased to be seen as a son of Plymouth, died Monday in Massachusetts General Hospital of complications of a stroke suffered in December.

At 68, he had been dividing his time between a 1799 house in his hometown and Sparks House, the 19th-century residence reserved for the leader of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard.

Rev. Gomes cut an imposing figure at Harvard and was as memorable for his groundbreaking roles as he was for his aristocratic presence and a preaching style that set him apart.

He was the first black minister of Memorial Church and the only gay, black, Republican, Baptist preacher most people would ever meet. Descended from slaves, he nonetheless delighted in serving as trustee emeritus of the Pilgrim Society and celebrating his hometown’s Mayflower history, a distinctly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant tradition.

“The oddest thing about being an oddity,’’ he told The New Yorker magazine for a November 1996 profile, “is that there are very few oddities like you.’’

Drew Faust, Harvard’s president, called Rev. Gomes “one of the great preachers of our generation and a living symbol of courage and conviction.’’

Read the rest here.

O God, we pray to you for Peter and for all those whom we love but see no longer. Grant to them eternal rest. Let light perpetual shine upon them. May Peter’s soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

February 28 Sermon (Epiphany 8)

In God we Trust. It is the official motto of the US. (Since 1956) And has been on our paper currency since 1957 (some coinage had it as far back as 1864).

In God we trust. Reminiscent of a line from the Star Spangled Banner, “and this be our motto, in God is our trust.”

President Teddy Roosevelt never liked the motto on the coins of his day – thinking we should not put God’s name on our currency,

“is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege…It seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins.”

He also might have had today’s reading from the Gospel in mind, “No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and mammon (wealth).” But it is interesting to me, that something that we probably put our hands on everyday, should say to us: In God we trust.

Even if we don’t think about it, it is always there to remind us to place our trust in God, and not money or mammon or wealth or anything else. That trust in God is what we heard in today’s readings. In our first reading, we heard from Isaiah about the Lord’s work among the people: “In a time of favor I have answered you, on a day of salvation I have helped you;” But the people complain, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” “I will not forget you,” says the Lord. It reminds me of a quote from Meister Eckhart:

“God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk.”

Its not that God has forgotten or forsaken us, it is we who have forgotten. We use our money but forget the inscription. We get caught up in everything, and lose our way. Why trust? Because the Lord says I will not forget you. It was a promise then to the Israelites, it is a promise to us now. Through it all, God does not forget. And building on that foundation is Jesus.

"So do not worry about tomorrow,” Jesus said. “for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today."

With his disciple worried about what to expect, Jesus tries to ease such anxiety, by saying, don’t worry about it – put your trust in God. Just like the disciples of Jesus day, or the Church of Matthew’s day, our lives are much more then the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses we inhabit, the jobs we do. Wendell Berry, the poet & farmer, understands us well in his poem:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

We get too consumed with our stuff and lose our relatedness to one another & to life. But Berry is not satisfied with such living, and encourages the reader:

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Our faith and trust is in the goodness & creation of God. Jesus wants us to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Look what God has done for them and consider what God is doing for us today. For God knows we need food and clothing and shelter. But God doesn’t want us to focus on them, we are to

“strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Strive for God, work toward God’s will, put your trust there. While today's Gospel speaks of the birds of the sky and the flowers of the field, I read an author who has us consider for a moment the lowly hamster.

The hamster spends its days in its little cage day in and day out. Sometimes it turns a little plastic wheel; other times it gnaws on whatever is available. Whatever the hamster needs "falls from the sky" into its happy little cage. It's a good life: Be cute, keep moving, and all things will be given you, little rodent. Our vision of the good life, though, isn't much different: Keep moving, make a lot of money; be cute, look good, stay young and healthy; stay within your cage.

But there is a problem: In the pursuit of the good life, we become hamsters in a never-ending wheel of motion, moving at a pace that gets more and more difficult to sustain. We have to have what our neighbors have; and we keep pushing ourselves franticly in lives full of busy. But our life on the treadmill is anything but the real thing: the blessed life, rich in joy, rich in peace, rich in the things of God.

Its time to get off the hamster's treadmill and embrace the hope of the birds of the sky and the flowers of the field. [Suggested by "Off the treadmill" by Kenneth H. Carter Jr., The Christian Century, July 24, 2007.]

For Jesus warns us that too often we become the servants of our anxieties, of our stuff rather than the masters of our lives: Jesus tells his disciples & us that we have nothing to fear in our lives, God loves us unconditionally.

In God we trust must be more than a motto. It must be part of our lives for today's trouble is enough and we must put our trust in God who will help us see it through. Get off the plastic wheel of your life. Plant yourself in God’s creation. Whatever you do today, may it proclaim that in God you trust. Amen.