the blessings of brothers (and sisters)

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On Wednesday, I told the story of Jacob/Israel during my school’s chapel service (I am the chaplain of the St. Michael School of Clayton)–it was the first time I ever saw the first through sixth graders absolutely silent and absolutely still (now I thank God that I loved theater as a little girl and know how to tell a good story–I’ve got ’em!).

First, I said I was going to tell a story about a person whose character changed when he put “God in his thinking; God in his speaking” (this is a phrase from a prayer we pray to close chapel every day).  Two hands shot up–I didn’t realize they’d try to guess who!–the first said, “I’ll bet it’s Paul!”  I was so sorry to say that it wasn’t (but believe me, I’m bringing in my huge drop cloth next week to talk about Paul); the second hand said, “It’s Jacob, right?”  And we were off–I talked about how he’d fought his twin brother right out of the womb, how he deceived his brother and father and stole the special oldest-son blessing, how he ran away and was subject to an unfair master himself, and then realized the error of his ways and repented.  He was so sorry, I told them, and he’d been so changed by his experience, that God changed Jacob’s very name (i preached on this passage a year or two ago, text forthcoming).  God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, and Esau, his brother, forgave him when they met the next day (the chapel at the Church of St. Michael and St. George–where we hold chapel–has a stained glass window depicting Jacob’s dream and the name change).

I think I ended the story weakly–something like, “And so, when we have God in our thinking and in our speaking, we are kinder, and more honest, and more loving to each other.”  Learning, as I am, that ministry is mostly about asking questions to encourage people to think (duh–the most revelatory moments of my own journey have been the direct result of (Holy Spirit movement) gently-asked, probing questions), I wish I’d asked a question instead.  Following this train of thought, I wondered, “what’s the question I should have asked?”  “Who are we in the story?”  As Newton’s apple, the answer dropped into my head, “we’re Esau.”  I remembered the way that I’d opened my arms wide at the front of the chapel, showing the children what Esau did when he saw his long-lost, double-timing brother.  Some audibly gasped (what joy that these stories hold such power!  it’s been so long since I didn’t know the story that I’ve become inoculated to its shock value).  “Can you imagine being like Esau?  Can you imagine forgiving your brother or sister or friend for something like what Jacob did?”

Our culture does quite the job of telling us that we’re okay–we’re fantastic, even–just the way we are.  We don’t need forgiveness, we don’t need help, we don’t need to be told how to do things–we’re quite capable of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  Esau teaches us that the way we are–grudge-holding–is not okay, it is not the way that makes more of us.  Deceit, in the long run, makes less of us.  Holding onto the (bad) past makes less of us  (the old saying goes, it’s like drinking rat poison yourself and being sure that this will kill the other person).  Think of the story of Jacob & Esau next to the story of the Prodigal Son.  Have you heard, “the real question of the parable of the Prodigal Son is, ‘did the older son come into the banquet?'”?  We know that Esau did, we know that Esau’s story challenges us to do the same, and we wonder, as we, the older brother, stand on the edge of the threshold, whether we can let go of the words or actions (or lack of words or actions) that hold us back from opening our arms to our siblings (friends, spouse, parents…).

why we should dress up to go to church.

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In August, I drove to Ohio to visit my family for a weekend and to collect the dishes my grandmother had designated for me 12 years before, when she died.  After more than a decade, I had a stable enough (read: not-a-dorm-room!) home in which to keep and use these family heirlooms.  Though we have sturdy and colorful Fiestaware, I looked forward to using this set on weekends, on days I felt extra low, special occasions, and any time I longed to feel close to my grandmother and my family again.  Especially in a time when many kids move away from ancestral homes and lands, objects like these taken on extra meaning and reverence.

I remember Thanksgiving with these dishes (I’m talking specifically about the dinner plates/serving bowl in the photo above); just seeing them immediately makes me think of my grandmother, her home, how I felt when I was there, and by extension, the rest of my family.  In a way, when eating on these dishes, I’m eating with my family–we’ve shared meals on these plates and pieces.

This is the same thing that’s going on in church–this is why Episcopalians and Roman Catholics and other churches of “high” liturgy use silver-plated goblets and plates, and why they use fine linen napkins and tablecloths.  First, the meal that we join together to eat each Sunday (or whenever you go to church and enjoy a Eucharist) is an important meal, it is a meaningful meal–like Thanksgiving, or someone’s birthday, or the night the boss comes to dinner.  Second, just like the special dishes that remind me of my family and ancestors, our special silver chalice & paten (cup & plate) are reminders of the Christians who have worshiped God for generations before us, in that very church–they were bought or given by them and passed down through the generations of Christians called to be Christ’s church in a particular place; they’re heirlooms (metal lasts longer than clay or porcelain, let alone gold’s anti-bacterial properties–spurious or not, this comforts me).  Third, we believe that somehow, this bread and this wine is different than the stuff you pick up at the grocery store, and if it is different, if it is in some way Christ’s Body and Blood, then we ought to treat it with some care, and putting it on sturdy, beautiful, set-aside-for-that-use serving-ware seems like a good way to denote its importance.

Therefore, we dress up.  What I mean is that if we notice the importance of particular meals in our daily lives (Thanksgiving, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas (!!)), ought we not remember the Last Supper in the same way?  A way for each of us to respond to God’s call to us is to present our best to him–our best clothes, for one thing.  Of course, God doesn’t love us less if we show up unshowered and with jeans on, nor does he talk about us behind our back with the Son and Holy Spirit; however, dressing up for church is a way of putting some of our own skin into the game, so to speak.  God does not require it!–but God does desire a contrite heart (and since we are not just hearts, but bodies, our clothing and how we use our bodies can be an offering and symbol of our contrition and honor and love for God).

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost – Hard Heartedness – the Church of St. Michael and St. George

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“But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart, he wrote this commandment for you.’”
During the storms early last week, Jordan and I found ourselves in the Schnuck’s parking lot.  In the driving rain, I had turned the wrong way down one of the lanes, accidentally.  Unfortunately, it was not one of those mistakes that was going to go unnoticed.  A minivan raced up the lane, going the correct direction, and as I stopped my car, having just completed the wrong turn, the driver of the other vehicle began gesturing, flailing her arms, glaring at me.  I was stuck—she hadn’t left enough space for me to inch past her, there was significant cross traffic behind me, and she desperately desired the parking space I was inadvertently blocking with my car.
The logistics might be confusing, but the heart of the matter is this: in poor driving conditions, I’d made a traffic mistake, and as driving blunders go, it was a very small one; but this woman in the minivan was not going to let it slide.  She seemly jumped at the chance to ream me out from the safety of her car, reveling in my vulnerable position.
This, I turned and told my husband, is why I do not understand your mother.
No, no, not like that.  Really, the reason I thought of her is that she has developed a different knee-jerk reaction to strangers than the one that I have.  I tend to assume that people are always out to get me.  I generally expect to be berated in a grocery store parking lot, yelled by a passerby if I forget a plastic bag when I take my dog outside to go to the bathroom at 6 a.m., and raked over the coals for not being ready to order the moment I reach the front of a queue at a café.
Unlike me, my mother in law operates out of the assumption that everyone around her has a soft, generous, fleshy heart.  Though sometimes she may be wrong and someone with a hard heart may snap at her, her experience of life is much more like what God had in mind for us humans and for our relationships when he created the world—people walking around, forgiving, and being generous, being gentle with each other and being open with one another.  Jesus appeals to God’s original plan for human relationships in the Gospel text today as he responds to questions about the distance between the ideal what the law requires.
By pointing to the very beginning of time, Jesus is drawing attention to the norm that God established, which is human relationships that cultivate character and grow love and provide support for the weak.  This passage is about much more than divorce; it is about understanding the way that God sees the world and learning what God desires for each of us.
Jesus explains that though there are allowances that holy men, like Moses, have made for people throughout the ages, God never meant for our relationships to be bogged down with selfishness and violence.  Humans naturally carry around hard hearts—we’re prone to selfishness and to following the easiest, least invasive course of action.
For example, in Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Home, a wayward son returns as his father, a Presbyterian minister, nears death.  Instead of mirroring the famous parable, however, this story focuses on the father’s struggle to forgive his child.  Though the Reverend tries to welcome his son home with joy and a feast, it soon becomes clear that his acceptance was a veneer, all is not quite yet forgiven.  In the course of the novel, as the two try to reach out to each other in their sincere but imperfect ways, the relationship continues to deteriorate; their last conversation as the son packs up to leave again ends with a refused handshake and a father’s gruff words, “Tired of it!”  At different points in the story, each man was hard-hearted, but in the end, the father refused to forgive before he understood why his son had become what he was, and that hard-heartedness remained until his death.
God’s soft heart continually has mercy for us as we continually sin against him.  A soft heart is one that loves so deeply and fully that it does not hold a grudge and it gives generously to anyone who is in need.  This is why Jesus takes children into his arms near the end of the passage—he says, “the kingdom of God belongs to people like these children.”  Jesus holds up the kids and says, “be dependent on God like these ones are dependent.”  Allowing control of your life, its direction and its provision, to be handed over to someone else— that kind of openness is a soft heart.  God makes himself open to us because he knows in his infinite wisdom that openness is the only way to deep love and true relationship.
Jesus jumps at the change that the Pharisees gave him, using divorce as an example of how we humans harden our hearts with each other and with God.  As fallen people, sometimes we do damage to each other that cannot be repaired in this world, but we know that God can heal the hard parts of our hearts at any time, if we make ourselves open to him.
Walking around our in our society with a soft heart is a recipe for scandal.  People who are willing to be open with another are the exception, and so they look strange and do strange things.  Jesus isn’t new to this—people in his time and place thought he was doing strange things, too.  To be Christian is to align ourselves with something against the grain of our culture, to stick out like a sore thumb among the people who snap at each other, yell in parking lots, and avert their gaze on the street.  We are people who forgive because we know that we are greatly loved.  We are people who give freely of our time—helping the neighbor who can’t rake her yard because she’s sick; we give freely of our money—knowing that we have more than enough and that God’s presence in this place is something to affirm with our whole selves; we give freely of our resources, our talents—singing and teaching and cooking and visiting others, because God has gifted each of us uniquely to join in his work of building the kingdom.
God sent Jesus to live a softhearted life, to show us that it is possible to respond with generosity and forgiveness even when you are surrounded by stony hearts.  Our own hearts can only be made soft by God himself—we depend on God to transform us, and he sent Jesus to lead us back to him, that we could be made open to God and to each other.
This week, I read a story that captures the difference between a hard heart and a soft heart: At the end of his trial, a serial killer sat with his legal counsel in a courtroom.  After being sentenced to life in prison without parole, the families of his 50-some female victims were lined up at a microphone and invited to address him.  Spouses, parents, and siblings of the victims hurled at him the worst words they could think of; they told him he would end up in hell, they said that he was an animal, they wished on him a “long, suffering, cruel death.”  Finally, the father of a victim took the podium, and haltingly, he said, “Mr. Ridgeway, um… there are people here that hate you…  I’m not one of ‘em.  You’ve made it difficult to live up to what I believe, and that is what God says to do.  And that’s to forgive.  You are forgiven, Sir.”
Amen.

a little gift

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On Sunday, I got to bed too late and slept *horribly* (due to an over-abundance of cream and pasta and bread and butter… don’t you feel sorry for me?).  Monday morning, I was slated to preside at the 7 a.m. Eucharist.

I put on my coat and pulled out my key to lock the back door.  As the cold (38 degrees here this morning, yay!) hits me and the creeping light of dawn surrounds me on the back porch, it suddenly feels like I’m in Minnesota, about to hop in the truck with my dad to go to work with him, as I often do when I visit.  The familiarity brings on a wave of homesickness; not that Minnesota has always felt like home, but that familiar, comforting experiences are fewer and farther between in this new, but dear, place.  To pull the blanket of homely-comfort around me tighter, I tune my iheartradio app to Cities 97–one of the two stations my dad and I always listen to on the way to work, the other being WCCO 1370 AM (I could sometimes pick it up in Ohio on quiet nights, I wonder if it comes in here…).  I stop at Starbucks to ply myself with caffeine to prepare for the long day, and when I get back into the car to finish the six-minute drive to work, a song I’ve heard once or twice before comes on to the Cities 97 station.

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

(“Home” – Phillip Phillips (is that a real name??))

These words spoke to me as God’s message this cold morning back in the Midwest.  I’ve been struggling the last months, missing North Carolina, Durham, Duke–home.  This song tells me, “remember to hold on to God–He is your home, no matter where you go.”  “this may be an unfamiliar road/place, but God has promised never to leave you alone, even here.” “do not allow fear to overtake you.  do not be overcome by loneliness or exhaustion or hardness of heart.” “and, when you are overcome, you will not be overcome forever, you will be found, and re-placed.”

This was God’s gift to me this morning; I am so grateful for the mercy we are granted when we need it.

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost – Song of Solomon – the Church of St. Michael and St. George

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Proper 17 – Year B

One of the things a person faces when they move somewhere new—not speaking from personal experience, of course—is that she knows that her influences will change.  For example, in North Carolina, I used to get up at 6 a.m. a few times a week to run with my dog, Ben, before heading to Morning Prayer and school.  I loved the quiet time in the morning, it felt like I was alone with my university—no one was around when I would pound down Chapel Drive and I could enjoy the gothic towers by myself.  I’d been living under the shadow of Duke for almost a decade and I could hardly imagine life without them.  Knowing that I’d graduate soon and move somewhere—who knew it would be a move to other Gothic towers—the lonely runs were all the sweeter.

The first Saturday that we lived in our apartment, I hoped that keeping to my early running schedule would provide some familiarity and make the jarring transition a bit smoother.  I eagerly woke up at 6 a.m. and laced my running shoes.  I grabbed the leash and we were off.  Except, as you well know, a 6 a.m. run on Wydown, even on a Saturday, is not a quiet, lonely, soulful experience.  There are myriad other dogs, runners, bikers, and walkers—I wondered if I’d read the time-change wrong.

If you’ll allow me a bit of a stereotype, I think you’ll see my point: around the southern-cuisine-soaked North Carolina paths, I was a standout, I was bucking the norm.  Around active Missourians, I was at most, the norm, and more likely, I was trailing the crowd.  In the last months, my influences have changed.

In the same way, our relationships influence how we think, and how we talk, and how we behave.  We not only pick up other peoples’ way of talking, but we pick up their habits, good and bad, and we pick up their perspective on life and belief.  Some of it is peer pressure, and some of it is just how we humans work—we mimic those whom we like and with whom we spend a lot of time.

Jesus longs to spend a lot of time with us, he longs for us to be changed in our speaking and habits, and in our belief by spending time with him.  He says, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”  Song of Solomon is a curious book in the Old Testament, and its original purpose was probably as love poems between two human lovers.  It is still instructive to us in that meaning, but our God, author of all good things, provides more than one level of meaning in his Word to us, and today, he says to you in the words of this poem, get up from where you’re seated, stagnant, and move with me.  Follow where I am leading you, hold my hand and let me be your companion—spend your life’s journey walking with me, and let me be the most significant influence in your life.

What God invites us to do in the Scripture reading this morning is the same exact thing that we prayed for in our opening collect this morning.  We said, “graft in our hearts the love of thy name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and bring forth in us the fruit of good works.”  We’re echoing what God has already said to us; we are praying that our desires would be aligned with what God desires for us.

This prayer acknowledges that we need God’s grace even to accept the offer he gives us to arise and come away with him.  We need God to develop in our hearts a love for him, we need God to plant and grow the seed of true religion, we need God to nurture goodness in us, and we need God to bring these changes to bear in a transformed life, evidenced in new God-centered perspectives and behavior and language.

So what does it look like when God is doing all this work on us?  The collect calls it “true religion.”  By implication, we’re only capable of false religion on our own—which might be another name for what the Pharisees were up to in the Gospel lesson, fastidiously washing their hands and their kettles, careful to not allow anyone, especially Jesus, to influence or change their well-defined religious practice.

“Religion” has become a touchy word in our culture, it carries baggage of intolerance and carries the whiff of meaningless but complicated rules and regulations.  But if we think about the way that we use the word “religion” in our daily lives, another meaning, perhaps a more faithful one, emerges.  Consider: “she religiously packs her lunch.”  “He gets up at 5 a.m. religiously in order to run.”  “That family does yard work every Saturday religiously.”  These more everyday uses of the word refer to habits, and most often, to good ones, at that.  Religion, then, must be about our habits and the things that we do that hold our lives together.  So what makes our practices, our habits in our relationship with God, “true”?

Throughout the Bible, God reminds us that he desires obedience, not burnt offerings, and he wants us to be of the right mind and heart, not of the right clothing and mannerism.  We humans continue to worship in ways that Christians and Jews have for centuries because we know that it is not all about what we think is trendy in 2012, but what Christians throughout all of history have discerned about how to be faithful through their own lives of prayer and habit.  We are joining in the habits of the Church by worshipping this way on Sundays and throughout the week.  Part of how we know what true religion is is from looking back at what faithful people who spent at least as much time, if not more than we do, in God’s presence, allowing themselves to be transformed by him.  We know that there is wisdom in old generations, and we should listen, both to the voices in the Bible, and the voices of saints throughout the centuries.  The Church is so much larger than just St. Michael and St. George, and larger than the Anglican Communion, and larger than all the Christians living in the world today.  Our history tells us some of what true religion looks like.

As we’ve been considering passages throughout Scripture this morning, we’ve found that we can also see some of the shape of true religion through Scripture.  The Pharisees are a cautionary tale, for example, and the disciples are sometimes shining examples and sometimes illustrations of mistakes we ought not make.  The Old Testament shows us through the Hebrews how God communicates to his people, of whom we’ve become a part, and how we can best respond to God’s call.  Scripture also details God’s ultimate call to us—Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  We are shown by example exactly how it is we can grow in true religion by mimicking and habitualizing Jesus’ words, attitudes, and behavior.  We are invited into true religion by our Baptism following in the footsteps he trod to the river Jordan.  We encourage and submit ourselves to God for growth as we seek the Eucharist every Sunday, just as Fr. Andrew & Fr. Jed have explicated in the past weeks.

Finally, God inspires our minds and pricks our consciences as he draws us to himself and continually makes his invitation.  It is a lifestyle of habits that can be painful and difficult at times, and is almost always inconvenient to our lifestyles in this culture, but deep down, we know that it is the way of everlasting life—it is the true religion.

Perhaps a way of rephrasing God’s invitation to you this morning can be found in a modern-day love poem:

Baby, why don’t we just turn that TV off?

Three hundred fifteen channels

Of nothing but bad news on

Well, it might be me, but the way I see it

The whole wide world has gone crazy

So baby, why don’t we just dance?