Transparent Noah and Unnatural Disasters: We are All In This Together

Ashes to Go offered at Whitman College

Sometimes I think I would like a deeper Noah. The person we meet in Genesis is almost transparent. So little of a whole character that we can see whatever we choose without much resistance. We have all seen the illustrations and the figurines where it is hard to tell Noah from Santa. I want a deeper Noah. I want him to give a concrete reply of any kind. I want him to ask questions like Abraham does - what if there is one good person out there, will you not turn back from this forecast? I want Noah’s spouse to have the nerve to raise objections - shouldn’t there be a medium place for medium people - a swamp of some kind? Despite all the attempts to make this story a sweet zoo cruise, it is not. Before the rainbow appears, this is a difficult tragedy for everyone, including God.

I wish I had taken a picture in children’s chapel that day. We had a dry wipe easel that sat on ground level in front of the children who were gathered in a circle. On this board every week we would record the prayer topics the children offered. That morning they named every natural disaster they had ever heard of. Prayed for people in Tornados Earthquakes Mudslides Avalanches Floods Hurricanes. Those things probably happened somewhere that week, but I don’t think they knew that. It was April 1999 in the Denver suburbs. The older children had spent several school days in lockdown. The coverage was nonstop and worldwide. It was the Sunday after the Columbine massacre. My church was about five miles away, when I stepped outside I could see the helicopters circling. We didn’t have any congregants at the school, it was the next school district to the west. But there were children of colleagues of parishioners, And friends of parishioners. We could barely comprehend it. So the children prayed for natural disasters Sought a shape and a story to contain the news that kept coming at us in waves. Flood epics are common in the sacred and folk stories of many cultures across the world. People experience natural disasters, everywhere. They also have experienced the brutal destruction of warring tribes and empires. The rubble looks much the same.

I was at the Reid Center on the Whitman Campus on Wednesday. It was Ash Wednesday. Marking friends and strangers with signs and words of our brokenness and immortality. And I looked up and noticed Someone had changed the channel on the lounge tv. I didn’t have to read any scrawl to know what type of image I was seeing. Again. I would tell you I am numb to it by now But the flood of gloom that has found me says that is not true. Maybe you asked what I asked this week. Why is this blight of un-natural disaster coming at us again and again? All the pain and grief and lost and lonely raging humanity unable to find balance or peace or the nerve to change. Sometimes I think that the Noah epic isn’t about God but it is about us. Our isolation and cruelty and ego and shame and dreadful capacity for lashing out. Other times I hope it is about both us and God, Because God changes. There are people who feel God to be changeless, but in a universe that is constantly in motion that would make God separate and apart and the only thing not in motion. My hope is that God is both - changeless in love and favor while also changing as any being in a relationship would change.

When I first looked at the lessons on Monday I thought it was the most lighthearted selection of First Sunday in Lent readings. Now Noah and the flood is much of what is on my my mind. If you feel like the devastation of the flood was wrong, which God seems to feel, Then we need to dive in and admit that our willful ignorance and failure of nerve is a repeat of the same story. Again. I am not sure right now if I have seen the rainbow and the assurance of never again. I am not so sure I can hear the voice of God saying we are his beloved. It is hard to hear over the torrent of cries and anger. Again. I do and I do not hear it. So I pray. When Jesus comes out of the waters of the Jordan river, Usually I picture the water as a few feet deep and calm. A pleasant sunny day at a festival down by the riverside. This week I need it to be a deep muddy and raging river. Our machinery is too powerful and our frustrations are too lonely, I fear we are being set up to wipe ourselves out. I need my savior rising from terrible waters and hearing all of you are my beloved and I need to feel it in every inch of my body. I imagine myself holding onto him, clinging to his back for dear life.

Nowhere in the Good News is it suggested that we are only with Jesus when he is the good shepherd. We are with him when he is under the raging waters of this trial and crucifixion. We are with him in the temptations of the powers that be. We are with him as he weeps. We are all in all of this together. I want a rainbow because the temptations and brokenness are so rampant. But I cannot grasp a rainbow. So we practice the sacraments because I need tangible outward and visible reminders of our deep connections with God and each other. The church begins each Lent as we did today with the Great Litany. Deliver us from pride and hypocrisy and malice. Maybe we should pray this Litany more often. Maybe we should pray it beyond the confines of our tiny ark. Prayer isn’t meant to be wishful thinking or pious pushy ineffectiveness. Prayer is relationship. Prayer is becoming open to possibilities we cannot discover on our own. If we are true and centered, what we pray to God should echo in our lives. Prayer is an opening through which God fills us with intention that is more than ours, while also blessing us with the freedom to act as free beings. In what ways could we translate the litany we prayed today into action? Is it by being open to being turned around, and ready to make real and reasonable changes to stem the tide?

The thinness of Noah gives us ample room to find ourselves in his story. The questions he doesn’t ask, we must ask. The feelings of being in the tumult of the storm, we need to know that we are not alone. And it is also the reminder that we have the resources to build the ark, or adjust the forecast and not be paralyzed. May we go out from our little ark, from breaking bread and offering whole body prayers not perfected, or shielded from tragedy, but bound to grieve with shattered neighbors and called by God to leave our complacency behind. We are all in this, all of this, together. Show us your ways o Lord, and teach us your paths. Echo in us the justice and mercy that we pray for. We are all in this, all of this, together.

Amen.

1 Lent B RCL

February 18, 2018

Walla Walla, Washington

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

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Ch Ch Cha Chia.

Superfoods and wonder diet's come and go. 10 years ago I didn't know how to say quinoa, but I knew how to say pomegranate and sun dried tomato and green tea. When I was very young I remember grapefruit diet, and the grapefruit supplements sold on TV advertisements between my steady diet of afternoon reruns. There were also ads for a chia pet. A little packet of seeds you would soak and then apply across water soaked grooved pottery shaped like a rabbit. It would sprout and you couldn’t do anything with it, and it would eventually wilt, but we thought it was cool. Never would I have dreamed that I would be eating chia seeds frequently. Urged by my doctor to do so,I throw them on all sorts of things, because I want to believe that granola and chia seeds on a bowl of ice cream makes it health food.

Chia seeds are recommended because of my fragile and lazy digestive system. So many of us have ailments and issues, we are so scarred and scared and so hopeful that something else is possible. Thank goodness I read somewhere that fermented foods are good for digestion. So many are worried and hurting and frustrated some of it inside, some of it is the turbulence all around. I will buy the turmeric and avocado oil coated baked coconut chips because I'm hopeful that it will do something that I can't seem to do on my own. Our gospel today suggests that this behavior isn't all new. The people are flocking to Jesus rushing to him because they have heard that his very presence offers healing from illness and release from hurts: huge ones and tiny ones.

The book of Isaiah comes to us canonically as one book with one title. However in its composition is more like how all the Star Wars movies are called Star Wars even when each film has different writers and directors- think of Isaiah as a little like a boxed set. They belong together in the wisdom & inspiration, but the distinctions can be enlightening. Today we come in with Isaiah 4, it is the first 5 minutes of the 2nd film in a 3 film series (or maybe a 4 film series depending upon which scholar you ask). The last chapter, chapter 39, is believed to be over a century and a half older. It was naming an apocalyptic vision that warfare and breakdown and decay were imminent. There was an overriding conviction that our failure to love God and love all others was the cause of the coming devastation. The new setting of this chapter is a radically evolved understanding of God’s connectivity and relationship with us. One that experiences a God who knows the pain and misery of the world and wants for us a sweetwater reign.

The experience of the wretched exile of the Hebrew people is now in the rear view mirror,but its memory is alive and well. And alienation and confusion are not something of the past. So the chapter begins:

Comfort o Comfort my people. The Lord God is coming with strength like a shepherd, he will tend his flock, he will gather lambs in his arms. 

God is not removed and unconcerned, God has not left us all on our own in our pain and fear and confusion, God lifts us out of the pits and carries us like we are soaring through the skies.

We don’t know if Simon's mother in law asked for Jesus to come over.She had a fever, but apparently, she was not so drastically ill that she was avoided, which was a common practice in that era. I have to say if I had a fever and someone in my life decided to bring over all their friends my initial response would not be kind. She's not one of these people in the crowds who rushed to Jesus surround him at every side in hope of relief. But she does have people in her life who love her and bring healing to her door. There are none of the occasions of other episodes where it is said that her faith or the faith of her friends has made her well. Jesus touches her and the fever ends and she gets up. What does it mean that her response to the experience of the healing presence of Jesus is to get up and to serve? It's easy to jump to gender roles and householding arguments, but that's not the intention here. The word used is diakonaeo, in which we can hear a related term, Deacon. This woman sets the example of the faithful response to being set free is to set others free. Love as you are loved by God.

She could of stayed in bed. She could have mistrusted her senses or come up with another explanation. A healing on the small scale is no different than the cosmic comfort God offers on a large scale. We are a part of a divine movement that is both as immediate as a woman being relieved of a fever and as historic as a people being set free from Exile. Sacred texts went from spoken word to written word because ancient prophets and caregivers and community experienced new life in the deep comfort and healing power of God and they wanted to share it. How is this Jesus a way of life and not just a dash of this week's superfood on our cheese fries? How could your mysterious affection for him be a life-giving diet not only for ourselves but for others?  What needs to change to live into that call?

From the section but not the text of Isaiah that we read today is the very idea of good news.Good news goes from just being nice information to a holy concept of divine rescue, words that find themselves expressed in the Greek text with the word we know as gospel - which means big deal message. Good news is a big deal message of comfort and liberation from the cruelty of the powers that be and it is rescue from a fever or emotional turmoil and bitter dysfunction. We have the option to believe this Good News or to try and ignore it and find other solutions. Yet it is alive and working to heal us with or without our comprehension of it.

If you have a fever, or someone in your life has a fever, then I believe Jesus would say to take care of yourself or that other person, eat wholesome foods, whether they are super healing or not. Jesus would say to take care of whoever has a fever just as medical science has shown, and God will hold us in his arms while we do. If your fever is of a different sort, heartache or loss or the frightening stream of ridiculous absurdity that surrounds us, then Jesus comes to us in word and community and sacrament and lifts us up as if we were soaring through the skies on the back of a broad-winged bird.

This is the feeling that people had when they met Jesus, when they followed him and told others about him.This life of resurrection is the good news that started the Jesus movement the new life that God continues to raise us into. Good News. He who is so much more than a viral superfood miracle diet is with us.The Savior Shepherd Lord Friend Neighbor Healer is already here.

Let us pray.
We gather and make a pause amid many voices
Some innocent and some coercive,
Some genuine, and some not.
Amid this noisy flow that pulls us in many directions,
We have this Good News 
That you are fierce and generous and surprising and abiding.
Give us good ears to hear your Good News 
In our lives and in our neighborhoods.
Give us grace and courage to listen, to answer, to care,
And to rise and serve,
That we may be more truly your people.
Amen.
(prayer adapted from Walter Bruggemann)

Epiphany 5 Year B RCL

February 2018

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Walla Walla, Washington

say goodbye say hello

I heard it said by a wise woman that how you say goodbye is how you say hello.  That isn't really what she said, and it may also be exactly what she said.  It is rather hard to do both in the same manner.  Saying goodbye to friends is more complex.  There is the desire that no goodbye is actually a goodbye.  We say, see you later.  And I do believe I will, however, that is more of an existential subject than the motions of even this nomadic church lady intends.

Spokane, Washington, is a much-underappreciated city full of tasty nooks and brag-worthy bar stools and nice people.  I first visited Spokane just under five years ago and I must say there are few cities I have never lived in that I have so much appreciation for.  Now I should probably add a caveat that I have slept here for what must total over two months of nights, so this isn't a pass-through place for me.  For a while, it seemed like I was running an Expedia review series of downtown hotels (Montvale is my favorite; followed by the new RL).   Our regional headquarters and therefore one-quarter of my job was centered here.  So too were meetings of huge importance and friendships of long standing.  I had no idea how well I would know this city, with its large chunks of rock in random spots, steep streets, and darling vaguely craftsman houses.  I wonder about the bold ambition to build the Cathedral of St John on that steep slope and the sheer volume of raw materials of life that pass through the rails and roads of this city.

This week was supposed to be a retreat but I don't usually find dozens of colleagues gathered in winter at a less than cozy site to be the most retreat-full.  I know this could be a goodbye time and I am moved to say goodbye the way I like to say hello.  Meetings and beverages across the various treasures of the city.  Some have been here for a while, and a few are quite new.  Glistening jewels of hops and coffee craft sprouting on the hard brick of this old city.  I have had tea with a young woman growing and a long-term saint continuing.  Beers with myself and this computer and beer with one of my unexpected besties.  We never say so long, only see you later.  It is not goodbye even if it is goodbye, but instead, it is a chance to celebrate our lives and share in what makes us us.  This is rather different from all the original awkward cafe conversations and will always be.  I adore you, each of you.  The coffee shops and breweries, the dancers, the administrators, the deacons, the priests.  Thank you for welcoming me into your journey.  Clank the virtual glasses and raise a toast to the mysteries of the Spirit that draw us to each other.

Other Way Around - Jonah, Jackie and Lifelong Formation

In 1945 Jackie Robinson was playing Negro League Baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs. He was known to be scrappy, clean cut, multi-talented and willing to confront institutionalized segregation. Branch Rickey was the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was known to be courageous, devious, brash, conservative and innovative. There was a day where an agent was sent to find Jackie Robinson and bring him to New York, where Mr. Rickey invited Mr. Robinson into what had to be the most frightening and alluring call. The call to stand up against the vast forces of racism and injustice, to shred social norms common conventions because we will be judged by them. What was it like to be Branch Rickey? What was it like to be Jackie Robinson? What experiences, what gifts and skills, what knowledge, what mentorship enabled these people to dare to change an enormous and broken system?

Who were Simon Peter and Andrew? What were their experiences and convictions? How did the work of a fisherman correspond to the journey Jesus was calling them to? Fisherman do messy life-giving work that offers food for others. It's a livelihood that requires you to serve as a team to work together to listen to each other. It's work that requires mercy and patience and Trust in the abundance that God has given.

Who was Jonah? We are sort of told he's a prophet, not so much told as it's implied. However, in the whole text Jonah, the only utters one sentence of something that is sort of like typical prophecy. Yet this text is prophetic even if it does not shout oracles. We read Jonah with a couple of drawbacks. The first is that some of us confuse it with Pinocchio for obvious reasons. And then relatedly, the second is that most of us have only encountered a disneyfied children’s Bible version. Which is too bad because it is only about 1000 words,  and it is unlike so much else in the bible, it is a whole story.

Jonah is a person who been called by God, who is presumed to be a prophet, and he is compelled to go and invite the people of Nineveh to repentance. In the name of the one Lord God of the universe. These are people Jonah hated and assumed were all terrible and dirty and no good at all. The dislike isn’t just the dislike of the unknown and the foreign. Nineveh is a major city of the former Assyrian empire that had been known for its cruelty all across West Asia. The prejudice and misgivings were generations old. Whatever Jonah’s gifts and talents were, they seem not to have been teamwork or ‘get it done-ness’. Jonah’s response to this specific call was to say ‘Heck no’ and get on a boat going in the opposite direction. While he is on that boat terrible storms swell up and after some theological discussion with the shipmates Jonah is sent overboard and swallowed by a really big fish. While cast down to the bottom of the sea, while he is in the bottom of a fish he offers a beautiful work of art of a psalm of lament and petition and thankfulness to the Lord of all.

After three days he is tossed back onto the shore and goes as directed to Nineveh.He follows through with the proclamation, and these people that he disliked and really wanted God to dislike, as we heard today, they repented and praised God. And Jonah, well, he got mad and sulked about it. Biblical Scholars have classified Jonah as an allegory, fable, folktale, historical account, midrash, novella, parody, saga, satire, short story and tragedy to name a few. And usually what they suggest is that it is some combination of those forms. Jonah is a story of resistance, a tale against the keeping of God in our little boxes, and how God can work with our hardness of heart. Jonah is a glimpse into how some lives of faith can be lived in unexpected forms. Jonah is a complicated and compelling story of the mixed-up-ness of the people God invites to establish his field of dreams.

My primary source for knowing anything about the interactions of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey come from the movie 42. And every time I watch that film I'm struck by two things. The first is that there's not nearly enough baseball (about 26 days till college baseball begins). And the second thing that captures my attention is the complex theological reflection that is present in the words and actions of Branch Rickey. I don't know if what we get in the movie is true to him or if it's true to the thoughts of the screenwriter. But every time I'm enlivened by the evidence of deep Christian formation that is present in those conversations. Conversations about the radical choice to raise up and stand by Jackie Robinson. You don't get to this understanding of this choice by glancing at ten ways of easy discipleship. You don't get to this call by osmosis. As offered in the film, the daring action and the strength to weather the storm is evidence of a person who has a whole lot of gumption and a plenty of organized spiritual study, and conversation and prayer.

If you're going to learn to play the cello and you sign up for orchestra class, but you never touch an instrument and you only sit in the back of the room you may learn a great deal about music, but you will not learn to play the cello. If you are going to join a baseball team and you never take the field and never practice, well that's called a booster, might even be called a fan. But it's not a baseball player. The discipleship that Jesus calls us to isn’t a casual following. It is a surrender of all that I think I know and all that I am afraid to let go of. Our goal is union with God and each other in Christ, and our call is attending to the fractured mess of this world to pursue that union. It isn't self-help or self-seeking but self-surrendering.  

One of the clear prophetic directions of this unusual prophetic text of Jonah is that all means all means all means all whether I like it or understand it or not. God is more than ready to partner with us in what we can barely comprehend. The ball doesn't come from us, the pitch comes from God. I don’t have to get it, I don’t have to like it, I only have to trust that God believes in us. The whole way of Christian discipleship isn't something we do on our own we do it with a team and the support the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is already out on the field extending mercy to those we least understand and us at the same time. How will you take the challenge of divine call in these lessons to put aside bluster and resistance and lean into the mission of God? How will we learn to extend mercy into the cycles of violence and blame that are a stormy sea all around us?

I am wondering if there is a way for some of you to move from booster to player? It occurred to me recently that I might have been going about the ‘getting together part’ of this all wrong for a while. Clergy leaders like myself are well equipped to be companions and resources for your journey. We are tour guides and librarians. The plethora of clergy and retired clergy at St. Paul’s and among our ecumenical neighbors, we are pretty good at listening to the questions and sometimes we know where to look for answers. What we are less capable of is arranging your schedules for you. In twenty plus years I have never been able to really do that. 

So here is the challenge. Well, some of you - the boosters and rookies and fans and occasional bench players and everyday players - I want you to figure out how to get together with 2 or 3 others and INVITE ONE OF us ALONG. Get together more than once. Sing hymns or old camp songs and wonder about them together. Watch Crash course videos and discuss. Listen to on being podcasts and talk about them. It doesn’t have to be a forever plan but a get-together and plant seeds plan. Let us be a people who are putting ourselves in the direction of being changed through study, and prayer and fellowship.

Jonah was a radically imperfect servant of the Lord. Just like every one of the apostles and all of Jesus’ disciples right down the line to you and me. We cannot wait until we are perfectly ready until all the players align to start swinging. Step on the field, step into the box. Goals tend to go better with a final date - so your get together and invite us along challenge, you have until Opening Day, which happens to be Easter weekend (as it should be) - April 1. Jesus says come and follow me, we would love to come and follow him with you.

Epiphany 3B RCL

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Walla Walla, Washington

Badges and Sashes

My baptismal certificate is superglued into this prayer book. A gift at my baptism at age 9. It even has the stickers that were on the paper it was wrapped in. As a cradle and professional Episcopalian I have been given or picked up enough of them to keep one in every room in my house. This isn’t my favorite prayerbook, strange printing that it is, thicker than a pew BCP, but shorter and narrower, it does not hold easy, open or closed. Yet I have kept it where I pray at home for many years, mostly because that certificate resides there. Baptism is the primary call to ministry for all practitioners of the way of Jesus. Baptism is the mark and fuel and commission of all ministry. As I was preparing for my ordination to the diaconate This was the prayerbook, that I chose to pray with.

Looking to bookmark the ordination rite I flipped the pages looking for one of the various items that seem to have found their way there. The first one I found was this card. A Girl Scout membership card. It says: I will do my best:

• to be honest
• to be fair
• to help where I am needed
• to be cheerful
• to be friendly and considerate
• to be a sister to every Girl Scout
• to respect authority
• to use resources wisely
• to protect and improve the world around me
• to show respect for myself and others through my words and actions.

Finding that card full of diaconal applicable promises it seemed like there was some sort of holy witness there, A voice from when I was very young, who are you to be and how shall we live? The last time I wore a sash - oops stole - frequently was in my scouting days. And I have found myself looking down over the last month at this “sash” and occasionally wondering where the badges are.

People of all sorts went out to see John the Witnesser. People made their way through strange territory to find this unusual John. Opponents and the curious. Folks who have sunk their ships of safety and those still well secured. The desperate, the heartbroken, the anxious and the cheerful. People seeking solace in what seems to be an untamed wisdom. Daring to hope for clarity, for release, for salvation. John the Witnesser echoes the demanding job description in our Isaiah lesson today. Bring good news to the poor. Bind up the brokenhearted. Release captives. Comfort those who mourn. The figurative clothes that God offers in our lesson today are the garments of the Isaian suffering servant. Elsewhere it is commanded - put on your splendid clothing, shake the dust off of your feet. Beautiful is the messenger who brings peace, proclaims good news, whose holy arm has comforted the people. People will see what they have not, and hear what they have never pondered.

The title of deacon comes from the Greek word diackonos which means servant, waiter, or messenger. It is suggested that the roots of the Greek word really mean ‘through the dust’. The dust stirred up by a busy servant on ancient floors or the dust created by a messenger on a mission along ancient streets. We currently, and quite unusually, are a congregation with three deacons. Ann, Pat, and most recently myself. Deacons are certainly the oldest clearly named Christian order of ministry. Yet I suspect most people are a bit mystified by the distinctions.

In some denominations, deacons are not ordained, but special appointed leaders. In Catholic and Orthodox and Anglican churches like ours, we are ordained. We have deacons who are deacons for always, such as Ann and Pat - vocational. We also have deacons who are to have deacons hearts forever, but are expected to be ordained to the priesthood after 6 months or more. Deacons like myself who are referred to as transitional. All Deacons all wear the same clergy shirts as each other, and as priests, and most of us, priests and deacons, are officially titled the same - the Reverend. Sort of odd that a tradition that loves extra titles and names for everything (!) in the hundred years since its reinvigoration hasn’t decided that vocational deacons deserve their own additional title. Most Reverend and Very Reverend are already taken. Maybe Rousing Reverend or Bustling or Invaluable.

The focus of diaconal ministry Is fourfold.

• Servant leadership, 
• Proclamation of Christ's redemptive love to all,
• To interpret to the Church the needs and concerns of the world; 
• To assist Priests and Bishops in their ministries.

Activities that are all rooted in the servant ministry of Jesus. Tasks that are called for by the prophetic word of Isaiah. Duties that are shown by John the Witnesser. Wade in the water. Speak the truth. Point beyond yourself. Shake the dust. I wonder what our most experienced deacons would want this church to know about the diaconate. In the context of real peril Jesus invites all of us to risk being a holy invitation for others. The way is made level by our union with him and all people and by making his actions real in our lives. Our Gospel passage makes it sound like Jesus is standing here with us in this scene beside the Jordan river. Standing with accusers and wonderers and messengers, Just like us. We pray that he may he be born in our hearts this Christmas, and look, he is already here.

What if we did give badges? Injustice undoing, speaking up for the outcast, served a meal. Tried a new prayer practice, gave generously, offered comfort. Dared to try going to church. Looking around at this crowd gathered to hear John the Witnesser: what badges would you award someone else in this scene or someone in the neighborhood? Are there faith practice badges you worked really hard for? What badge do you need some divine motivation to pursue? As we have done throughout Advent when you come up to communion take a green disc, which does look rather like a badge. Invite you to write or even draw the faith practice badge you would award to someone in your life or community. Our badges probably should be imagined, but as long as we are wondering, What would they be?

Beyond the human messiness of our wilderness is a way, a way shaped by Jesus that isn't just thought about, but enacted, performed and fleshed out. God calls us to seek the badges that the prophet of Isaiah and John the Witnesser declare. Reach out to the refugee, listen to the shamed, challenge the comfortable - especially if it is you. Scatter the ancient dust with service and good news. Risk yourself as an invitation to a beautiful someone who stands here among us, someone who is a way we want to call our own.

Let us pray.

Help me to be a beginning to others,
to be a singer to the songless, a befriender of the friendless;
of reconciliation for the divided;
to become a beginning of freedom for the oppressed,
of comfort for the sorrowing, of sweetness for the soured,
of gentleness for the angry, of wholeness for the broken,
of peace for the frightened and violent of the earth.
Help me to believe in beginnings, to make a beginning, to be a beginning,
so that I may not just grow old,
but grow new
each day of this wild, amazing life
you call me to live with the passion of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Prayer by Ted Loder

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Walla Walla, Washington

Advent 3B RCL

How to Have a Nick and Lucy Celebration!

1. Reserve a date in Advent.  I know that sounds like an absurd idea to some of you church leaders and volunteers.  However, it is achievable.  Currently, I have been offering Nick and Lucy as a Formation hour event between the services, and is only a feast of treats.  In the past it has been a whole brunch or a dinner with Sicilian-ish and Turkish dishes.  Different settings have different schedule demands, so choose what works best for you.  I have a silly attachment to trying to place it the weekend between the two feast days (Dec 6 for Nicholas and the 13th for Lucia), but it is often the case that the 3rd Sunday in Advent would work better.

2. Ditch the Miter.  Tea cozy headdress does not become typical for WESTERN bishops until after the 12th century.  Nicholas is 4th century.  And Nicholas was a minister in what became the Eastern church.  Where such hats never really appear.  So please, no miter.  I recommend a knit hat and beard combo like the one pictured on me.  There are plenty of plans for this craft online; and folks on Etsy more than happy to sell you one.  Nick costume should be a plain shepherds crook, plain red hat, a beard, a stole or a simpler cope and either an alb or cassock and surplice.

3. Give Thanks for LED. Make a head sized candle wreath.  I make one with a styrofoam ring and ribbon and LED candles.  More crafty folks could make something more elaborate to be sure.  I limit the candles to four because they do get heavy.  Lucy wears an alb with a red sash for a belt.

4. Act! Recruit congregants who have some desire to do a bit of acting.  I have a script for both saints, who both tell their story. These are saints from beyond time who don't know anything about any other legends connected to them.  I invite the actors to read up a bit on their saint, but to mostly follow the core of the script.  Lucia's script is rather imaginative, drawing on some of the other hagiographies of young female martyrs of that era.  Here are two excerpts from the scripts.  I would be glad to share the whole text. 

My home is called Myra. It is warm and sunny, and on the edge of a very large sea. 

My home is near a land called Greece and near a land called Egypt. They might call the place where I lived Turkey. Are we in Turkey or Egypt? Are we far or close? Oh my.

Well, hmm. Let me tell you about myself. I am a Christian bishop. 

When I was a new bishop, the church was a very big secret. It may have been the biggest secret that ever was. It was a secret because sometimes, men and women who followed Jesus, well we could get in very great trouble for being his disciples. Yet we grew and grew and grew because we worked so hard to follow Christ, to love as he loved and serve as he served.

My mother named me Lucia, which means light.  She says we shine like the sun in the deepest darkest nights. My family, we live on the island of Sicily. Is this Sicily? It doesn’t seem like it. Hmm. 

Well at home in Sicily, our family has lived here for as long as anyone can remember. 

And our family is powerful and our family has plenty of everything and anything. There is nothing that we need that we cannot get.  Several years ago, I woke up early on a Sunday morning.  ....Inside I could see city leaders, a neighbor, other servants, someone whom I had seen begging near the market and many people who were comfortable like my family: and then I noticed my Aunt! ...

Then it began – the beautiful sweet singing, the stories about Jesus, who had died and then lived again, the prayers for friends and strangers, even prayers for the Emperor who hated anyone who didn’t worship him.

5. Gather! Find people to bring the following items

• Candycanes (vaguely associated with the Bishops crozier), chocolate coin candies, butterscotch candies (they look like gold), and an orange type of candy.
• Oranges sliced into sections.  Oranges are associated with Nicholas for two reasons.  First that they also look like gold coins (round and orange) and because he is the patron saint of sailors, oranges prevent scurvy.  
• Cinnamon rolls 
• Sparkling cider.  There isn't any reason besides it is festive and fun and way better than other options.  I have to wonder if I personally increase the yearly sales of sparkling cider because I use it at almost every event. 
• If you want a larger feast then find avid cooks to bring other foods.  Breakfast pizzas are a nice brunch option.  These don't need to be region specific, I just find that educational and special.  I have had pasta dishes for later meals with Nick and Lucy.

6. Fetch! Get the following items

• Tall narrow birthday candles.  I like to use the sparkly ones, but that is because the first version of the event involved sparklers.  Amazingly we did not set off the smoke alarm in the nave.   This year one of the candles lit some of the parchment paper on fire, but that was quickly extinguished.
• Nicholas saint prayer cards from the St. Nicholas Center.  They used to sell an awesome one that highligted his whole ministry and was very international.  Maybe some pressure could bring that one back.  And if I could find nice ones for Lucy I would be so thrilled.  Maybe you know an artist who could craft one.  Anyways, we put  Nicholas prayer cards in the shoes with the candy.

7. Party! Set up the Feast

• It could be around seated tables or more of a reception style.  This choice also depends on the food you choose.  
• Put up signs inviting folks to leave their shoes outside of whatever room you are celebrating in.  I make use of teenagers as 'elves' who work on filling the shoes and lighting candles and other tasks that make things run smoothly.  

8. Pray! This is a liturgical style meal.  Older (longer) versions have scripture readings and more music.  One of my core values in liturgical work like this is that the voices are shared.  I MC the celebration, and multiple voices share the leadership voice.  These are divided up by color.  

9. Serve!  Discover a good and meaningful way to serve together at the end of the party.  We make Take Home Paks.  The possiblities vary by community.  However if we are inviting folks to live into the witness of Lucy and Nick, we should help them give it a try.

10. Prep! Make copies, share scripts, find elves.  Publicize.  

So why do I like bringing these saints together?  Read more from the year before.  

If you would like actual scripts and actual programs please just email me and I am glad to share.  What else do you need to know about setting this good thing up??

Will there be turkey? Discovering we are thanks giving people.

In a church I served in Colorado there were triplets, two girls and a boy, all with fine blond hair. They would listen attentively to children’s chapel and when returning to the sanctuary they would settle in with their crayons at the special child-size desk that can be found in many Episcopal churches. The one you find by turning around, putting your bum on the kneeler, and using the seat as a table. When they were nearly five one of them heard something new.

The priest prayed some of the same words that had been offered every time we gathered at the Eucharist. What he said in the prayer was the phrase ‘the great thanksgiving.’ One of the girls piped up in her everyday voice: Thanksgiving? Daddy, why is he talking about Thanksgiving? Is it thanksgiving? The brother and sister looked at her, so too did almost everyone in the sanctuary. The priest and the deacon paused for a chuckle, and then they continued with the sacramental prayers. The little girl’s tall father leaned over and did his best to quietly explain the connection and the difference. She seemed satisfied. However for the next 5 weeks or so, every time this family was in worship one of the triplets would respond in the exact same way. Thanksgiving? Mommy, or Daddy, why is he, or why is she, talking about thanksgiving? Will there be turkey?

Thanksgiving is a loaded dish of a holiday. Memories of school assemblies singing songs of cultural harmony and celebrating pluralism. Paper bag turkey costumes and the endless mix up of Puritans and Pilgrims. Visions of bountiful concord and weather-blown parades, hopes of perfect and scrumptious tables around which peaceful families might be gathered. Apparently, 85% of Americans partake in this holiday of thanksgiving. Which may make it the most widely celebrated moment we have. It is a holiday that strives to be more than our differences, a celebration of a daydream that in these divisive times seems far far away.

All our lessons for this Thanksgiving service push into our lives with the word of God and ask revealing questions. Have we lived in gratitude? Have we lived as if we know that all is God’s and all goes back to God? And the other way is jogging into a pit of despair? The fall decor and game times only sort of block the darker truths that also come to our tables. Truths about our un-generosity and un-forgiveness and numbing. The trappings only kind of cover the memories of the terror of religious dissenters who risked the wild unknown rather than stay at home. Only vaguely masks the history of the decimation of American Indians. What is it about the holidays that are supposed to be beautiful but somehow seem to bring out the broken in us?

As Christian practitioners, we are to be thanks giving people, week in and week out we celebrate communion, the Great Thanksgiving. That is what those triplets were noticing for the first time. The questions they asked should be our daily question. Are we really thanksgiving? As people who hear Jesus’ invitation to discipleship, we return to the table to hear the questions that Jesus asks us. How are we broken with friend and family and neighbor and stranger? What is Jesus’ measure of gratitude and how can we sow it, reap it, share it in God’s way?

Imagine a moment where a lid has been lifted. In the pot is a holy soup where anxieties and cruelty are lessened, where we breathe deeply and where we know that there is enough. Under this lid there is not boiling fear or frantic loneliness. The soup here is only gratitude. Smells like gratitude, tastes like gratitude.This is what we are called to sow, reap, share. Let us not only pass through thanksgiving. Let us settle with listening hearts around this table with this soup of gratitude all the time. Expand this practice into each day like lungs filled with good smells. Let us make our feast here with Jesus. With candor and simplicity and wholehearted love. For we are thanks giving people. Sow it, reap it, share it. Amen.

Lutheran Episcopal Thanksgiving Eucharist

November 22, 2017

Christ Lutheran Church

Walla Walla, Washington