On Civility

The sermon by our Senior Warden, Ann Robinson, on Civility can be read in its entirety here.

It is an excellent sermon and one we need to hear as we approach this November and the political rhetoric that is already on the airwaves and internet.

A good article, This Election Season, Let’s Focus on Truth and Civility by Jim Wallis can be found here and another article on the Urgency of Civility here.

“When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency” ~ Samuel Johnson

A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops (Immigration)

From our CT Bishops:

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

The bishops of The Episcopal Church (about 150 or so) gather twice a year in various parts of the country to pray, study the bible, worship, and take counsel together for the sake of the Church's participation in God's Mission. We write to you as your bishops in the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut upon our return from the Fall House of Bishops' meeting, which was held in Phoenix, Arizona, from September 16 to 21, 2010.

This year's meeting was planned to be in Phoenix well before the passage of the controversial Arizona legislation SB1070 that allows for police officers to question suspected undocumented people for proof of residence without cause. The fact that we bishops were going to Arizona in the wake of passage of SB1070 propelled migration and immigration concerns to be a central concern of our meeting.

Before our meeting in Phoenix began there was an opportunity for some bishops and spouses to travel to the United States/Mexican border in Arizona to learn first hand about border realities. Bishops Douglas and Curry were blessed to participate in the border experience, while Bishop Ahrens represented the diocese at a bishops' meeting on theological education at that time.

The time that bishops and spouses spent on both sides of the huge steel wall that now separates our two countries was incredibly enlightening, difficult, challenging, and spiritually transformative. Those who gathered on the border were blessed to meet and have conversation with migrant families and individuals newly returned to Mexico, with border patrol agents, with ranchers, with health care workers, with town officials and police officers from both sides of the border, and with pastors, priests, missionaries and lay-workers who were ministering to border communities and migrant families. We learned that border issues are incredibly complex and not easily resolved through sound bite political posturing. Above all, we learned that enlightened immigration reform that is humane, just, and economically fair to all on both sides of the border is needed.

The Rt. Rev. Kirk Smith, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, reminded us in his closing sermon at the House of Bishops meeting that "immigration reform is one of the great human rights issues of today." We agree.

The Pastoral Letter and Theological Resource (links below) are the result of our experience, expert testimony, theological reflection, and prayerful deliberation as the House of Bishops. By canon, Pastoral Letters from the House of Bishops are to be read, or made available, in all congregations of The Episcopal Church. We ask that as the clergy of the diocese you read this Pastoral Letter in your congregations on or before Sunday, October 10.

We also commend to you for study in your congregation, the accompanying theological resource on migration and immigration, entitled, "The Nation and the Common Good: Reflections on Immigration Reform."

God bless you in this important work.

Faithfully,
The Rt. Rev. Ian T. Douglas
The Rt. Rev. James E. Curry
The Rt. Rev. Laura J. Ahrens

Click here for Pastoral Letter Click here of Theological Resource on Immigration Click here for full article from Episcopal Life Online

September 26 Sermon (Proper 21)

"Do a little bit of good wherever you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." ~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu

I love that quote because it reminds me that we all have apart to play. We each have a little bit of good to do in this world and together those little bits add up to help change the world. But we live in a society that struggles with our individuality and the common good. We have a hard time seeing the need next door, in the next city or around the world, even as we are more and more connected in this media driven age.

Yesterday, we had a world awareness dinner with our youth group and the youth were divided into the first world, the second world and the third world. You can just imagine the meal. The first world sat at a nice table with candles and tablecloth, nice cutlery and good china and a comfortable chair. The Second World had its own table – no candlesticks or tablecloth, plastic cutlery and paper plates and cups. They had some food but not everything of the first world. The Third World has its own table. It is practically bare. There is only one plate but each person has a small cup and plastic fork. There are no chairs. They had rice and water.

The one who lived in the first world was invited to eat as much as they wanted, others were not given any more food. As one youth said afterwards, it reminded them to be thankful for what they had and not take it for granted. With statistics like these…

1 in 6 people in this world do not have enough food live a healthy life
1 in 8 do not have access to clean water

It reminds us, just as our youth learned yesterday, that if we look around at this world, we are all in fact rich. To see what this means on a global scale, you can go to http://www.globalrichlist.com/ and plug in your income and see where it falls on a global scale. How rich are you the site asks?

I did just that, and I’m in the top 1.72% richest people in the world! The site goes on to say that we all have a choice to make with our money… $8 could buy you 15 organic apples OR 25 fruit trees for farmers in Honduras to grow and sell fruit at their local market. $30 could buy the last season of ER on a DVD Boxset OR a First Aid kit for a village in Haiti. It would seem we all have choices in how we use our riches, even if we don’t feel particularly rich.

But if we look, we will see someone sitting by our gates, waiting for our compassion, our love, our hope. In the parable, the rich man ignores Lazarus who is at his gate, and only after their fortunes are reversed at their deaths, does the rich man see Lazarus. But he wants Lazarus to serve him some water and later to seek out his brothers. He still does not see him as anything more than a servant…

But it is Abraham, the patriarch of the faith that says to him that his brothers should listen to Moses and the prophets, for if they won’t listen to them, they will never listen to someone risen from the dead. Which reminds us that whether we are the rich man or his brothers and sisters, we have Moses & the prophets and Jesus who was raised from the dead, reminding us of our calling to care for one another. The rich man was blinded because of all his wealth, he did not or would not see the poor man Lazarus who was at his gate. St. Paul warns us about such riches in our lives.

"We brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains."

Can we be content with what we have? Can we share with others? The pursuit of wealth and riches can lead us to wander away from the truth. And “the truth of this parable” as a fellow Episcopal priest put it,

“is that the rich man needs Lazarus as much as Lazarus needs the rich man. The independence that riches seem to bring is only an illusion. The rich man thinks he can afford not to see Lazarus lying outside his gate. The rich man lives under the illusion that we are islands, contrary to John Donne’s wisdom, entire of ourselves. The rich man lives with the illusion that we are intrinsically separate beings, our own possessions, and that to be responsible only for ourselves is enough.” (the Rev. Dr. Amy Richter)

But we know that our lives and dependent upon one another and on God. As St. Paul says,

“As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

Life is lived with our hope set on our God who has so richly loved us. Things will happen in our lives, and the riches we have one day, may be gone the next, but God will not be gone the next and our eyes need to be open to seeing our God at work in the world about us, & at work in our own lives, to use what we have for the sake of the world. We must not be blinded by our own stuff, too worried about what we might lose, for it is then we will sacrifice others, God, even ourselves before we lose those things in our lives.

As Jesus said, "you cannot serve God and wealth;" and the life of the rich man is the perfect example to us. We are blessed in so many ways, but our truest blessings are from our interactions with one another. We must look and see the Lazarus at our gate, for by doing the little bit of good to them, we can change our lives and our world. For as St. Paul puts it,

“We are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for ourselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that we may take hold of the life that really is life.”

Amen.

AA and the Episcopal Church

Here's an interesting article:

12-step manuscript rare glimpse into early AA

At the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous was the Rev. Sam Shoemaker.

You can read about him here and here.

And here is an article by the Rev. Shoemaker on "WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TO LEARN FROM ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS"

Prayer for Peace

Almighty God, kindle, we beseech thee, in every heart the true love of peace, and guide with thy wisdom those who take counsel for the nations of the earth, that in tranquillity thy dominion may increase till the earth is filled with the knowledge of thy love; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer p. 207)

September 19 Sermon (Proper 20)

Fortune named this company "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years. It was one of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America in 2000. Its stock was traded on the NYSE and was known as a Blue Chip stock. The company traded in 30 different products. It made $101 Billion in 2000. And its finances were all lies…

The company was Enron. Its accounting fraud and corruption is legend and has only recently been outdone by the failures at Lehman Brothers. It is easy to hear the words of Jesus, his parable of the dishonest manager in light of such acts. But as Jesus tells us about a dishonest manager in his parable, at first the dishonesty seems to be OK with Jesus. But what is Jesus really getting at in this parable? Isn’t honesty a good thing?

Think about the parable: A manager is summoned to his master who has found out that he is squandering his property. He is fired by the master but first he must make an accounting. The manager then meets with those who owe a debt to the master, he lowers their debt one by one, not because they have been over billed but he is reducing his take in their debts that he legally could take as a manager, a type of service fee. He lowers the costs to get in good with the debtors. And it works. The debtors are happy and so is the master. The master commends the manager for what he has done.

So what are we to make of this parable?

I don’t think the question that Jesus asks and answers in this parable is really about the manager. The manager’s dishonesty is not the point of the parable. Jesus seems to turn everything upside down by having this manager praised for acting shrewdly and commended as something for the children of light (his followers) to do, but there is more to it. The manager acts to save himself, to be welcomed by others after he is thrown out of the master’s house. But he does it by cutting his take, his fee, so others would look upon him favorably. The possessions, the money he could make from the debts are no longer given priority. He has had a change of heart, and I think that is the message within this parable; the change of heart over possessions. He acts shrewdly by changing and making the debtors happy.

As disciples of Jesus we are called to worry less about our possessions and to act more shrewdly with them, for they are mere things. Jesus has talked a lot about possessions in the Gospel of Luke and it is summed up by the last line from today’s Gospel: you cannot serve God and wealth. In fact, it’s hard to love others when the bottom line is to earn yourself as much money as you can without looking around at the needs of others including clients and shareholders.

Sadly, the debris from Enron Lehman Brothers shows us what unbridled love of wealth can do to us. Jesus tells us that we can’t serve two masters because he knows we can’t do it. We will fail at it. However, the parable is not just about such businesses and the mangers of today. If we are honest with ourselves, really honest, we know that is also true of us. We often put our wealth, our possessions, our status, many things in front of our Love of God, and in front of things that really matter in our lives. And we can and do act like the dishonest manager.

But the parable reminds us that what matters, is how we live, our relationships with God and our neighbors, its about “the dash”, which is a beautiful poem read by Katie Fernandes at her grandmother’s funeral (Kathy Sheppard) on Thursday (The Dash (Poem) - by Linda Ellis).

Are we willing to change, to put our possessions in their proper place so to please and be faithful to our God, the first in our hearts? And when people speak of your dash, will it be your stuff they speak of, or how you gave so much love, so much of your time, talent & treasure to others? For when we place God first in our hearts, when our treasure is not our possessions but our relationship with God and each other, then we will be made complete and everything else in our lives, all of our relationships, will fall into line. Today, let us let go of those possessions and let God lead us on. Amen.