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More than we can ask or imagine…
I don’t know about you, but our house when I was growing up was known for its leftovers. To this day, when I’m home at my parents place my friends tend to show up to raid the fridge for stray containers of Chinese food, or pizza, or whatever may be on offer. There is always the delicate procedure of opening the container for a cautious sniff. How long has that Kung-Pao chicken sat in the back corner?
We’ve spent many a late night over beers and leftovers in deep conversations about music and life, rehashing old high-school stories. As the night wears on we tend to shift into global politics and theology. By three or four in the morning in my parents kitchen we’ve solved one of the world’s great problems: Poverty, Healthcare, Immigration…if only we wrote down those solutions.
In today’s readings we learn that God is a bit like my friend Drew, who is always the first to the fridge. God is concerned about leftovers.
We read today John’s tale of Jesus’ feeding the multitude. This story is so central to Jesus’ identity that it appears in all four Gospels, in fact in Matthew and Mark it appears twice. In all of the Gospels a figure stands out. After the loaves and fish are eaten, 12 baskets remain behind. There are 12 baskets of leftovers. In 2 Kings we hear of Elisha also feeding a crowd with a seemingly scarce source of food. Again we are assured that there is a remainder, there are leftovers.
The Word in either Hebrew or Greek for “leftovers” for “remainder” is theologically significant. This is the same word which describes the portion of field to be “left over,” not harvested, in order that the poor might have food to eat. This is the word that Isaiah uses to describe the Jewish people “left over” after the exile, the faithful remnant which is the hope of Israel’s future. This is the word that shows God’s concern for those who are left out, and that which is left behind. And so today’s lessons ask us to pay attention, like my friend at home do, like God does, to the leftovers. Leftovers are our way in, our way into the story of God’s abundance.
You all know the general theme of this story. People need to be fed. It appears the resources are too scarce, and yet somehow, miraculously after everyone eats there are leftovers. These stories tell us of God’s overabundance. My guess is that you all know a little bit about both scarcity and God’s abundance. In today’s economy we are aware of scarcity. Unemployment numbers and housing foreclosures continues to rise. Thousands are jobless, homeless, or on the brink. There seems not to be enough.
And yet you all are here this morning, and my bet is that many of you could tell stories about God’s abundance, stories where it seemed like the resources were scarce and yet somehow God provided more than you needed. These miraculous and surprising moments continue, our God is a God of overabundant blessing.
This is a basic tension that is named in the time of Elisha, the time of Jesus, and is still present today. Society and the forces of economics tell us a story of scarcity and God asks us to rely on God’s abundance. 5 loaves feed 5000. In God’s economy ALL are fed, ALL are satisfied. This divine economy of abundance requires a different sort of living, one that asks us to turn over our imagination to God.
Ephesians this morning assures us that God is doing more for us than we can ask or imagine. I don’t know about you, but I can ask and imagine a lot. What is at stake here is the realization that often we don’t really know what is best for us, that we must turn our lives over to the God that knows better than us. The God who, in the Word’s of Thomas Merton, “loves us better than we could ever love ourselves.” We are asked to live not out of what we imagine for ourselves, but out of God’s desire that ALL are fed. We are asked to live not out of scarcity, but trusting in God’s abundance.
St. Alban’s is a community that knows something about this. In your work with the Karin you have imagined with God what it would be to gather up the resources necessary to feed, clothe, and provide for God’s refugee children. This is a powerful witness to God’s care for the refugee, the remnant, to those left behind. With John Conrad you allowed your leftover land to house and advocate for the homeless. Might I be so bold this morning as to ask: Where else is God calling you to care for the leftovers? We are about to participate in a meal that among other things recalls Jesus’ feeding miracles, the bread come down from heaven. This morning, no matter how well the ushers count, there will be leftovers. Who do you still need to invite to this table?
We are asked to turn our lives over to God’s imagination, indeed to imagine with God. I believe it is God’s imagination that turns my parents leftovers into the blessing of a community of friends…it makes you look at your tupperware differently…leftovers are pregnant with possibility.
What will you do with your leftovers?
Spilling beyond the parade route, shaking hands, waving and dancing a sea of purple shirted volunteers, the St. Paul’s Cathedral contingent, made their way down University Avenue in the Pride parade. The message was clear: God loves you, and this church supports the full inclusion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. 
It was a particularly salient time for the message. The Episcopal Church passed two resolutions this last week at General Convention. The first declares that our ordination processes are open to all baptized Christians regardless of sexual orientation. I was really inspired by my Bishop’s words on this one. He framed them with a joke:
“Do you believe in infant baptism? Believe in it? I’ve seen it!” I too have seen and affirm the ministry of All who God calls to ministry.
The other resolution called for Bishops to exercise “generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this Church” which basically means that more dioceses will allow for the blessing of same sex relationships. I had the dubious honor of ending up in both the Washington Post and the Boston Globe talking about how I am “relieved” that I will be able to celebrate the unions of my gay friends when I’m ordained.
I am proud of The Episcopal Church this week. I am especially proud to be a part of the church in San Diego which has worked so hard to keep everyone at the table while we move forward. A lot of what I talked about in the interview with the Washington Post didn’t make it into the article. I expressed frustration at some of the triumphalism exhibited by some of the more extreme advocates for LGBT people at convention. The interviewer asked me at one point if I was relieved that so many of the conservatives had left the Episcopal Church. I responded that I was saddened. It is always sad when people choose to walk away.
I am also incredibly concerned that the actions the Church took will be characterized as attempts to break with the Anglican Communion. Ian Douglas of Episcopal Divinity School and Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, both characterized these two resolutions as very concerned with the future of the Communion. Indeed they both include a great deal of language about desiring ongoing relationship. Anderson and Douglas said that the resolutions were about being open and honest. I think they are about coming out.
When an LGBT person comes out, they do so not to hurt the person who they are telling. So many of my gay and lesbian friends’ parents asked the question: “How could you do this to us?” Coming out is about wanting to be in a better relationship. If I am going to truly be in relationship with someone, they have to know who I am. If I hide a part of myself because that part is viewed as inconvenient or “messy,” than I am not bringing my whole self to the table. The Episcopal Church essentially came out this General Convention. I am proud.
Sermon from Sunday. The Lessons are actually for a couple of weeks from now…I’m meditating on hope, loss, beheadings, and Guiding Light (yes the TV show). Let me know what you think!
Sermon from June 28, 2009 Good Samaritan. God Has the Last Word.
http://www.goodsamchurch.org/artman2/uploads/1/_20090628_GSA.mp3
It’s been a long time since my last post. Brief update: Finished a marathon in Pittsburgh 3:59:42 (right under the 4:00:00 goal mark) It was a blast to train with my buddy Josiah from seminary and I’ve really learned to love running. Finished out the first year at the seminary, twas lovely. I miss Virginia. Spent a couple of weeks in Colorado with the family. Ran the Bolder Boulder again.
Now I’m in San Diego. I just started my Clinical Pastoral Education. Translation: CPE is a 400 hour certification. I am paying the Vitas Hospice Network to allow me to be a “Chaplain in Training” to hospice, clinic, and hospital patients. I will spend 1 day a week with a group or 7 people doing the same program and refining our skills and discussing our perceptions of pastoral care. I’ll blog more about this later.
I moved into the Hawthorn House, a Christian community of people living together. I live downstairs with Brooke, Jason, and their two kids Paige and Matty-boy (he’s a bit of a super hero) and Tasha (the dog.) Upstairs there is an apartment of guys just out of college and in the backyard another house with three people. I’m viewing summer as a bit of an experiment in discernment around how living can work differently…Sharing meals, resources, and conversation seems like a small thing. Still it is already making a difference in the quality of my days.
I flew home last weekend for my sister’ wedding. She looked beautiful, and he grinned the whole time. I was happy to be able to help the priest navigate a confusing ceremony. Spending the last night with her friends from San Antonio and some of my friends from High School dancing in lo-Do was great. I’m still adjusting to having a “brother-in-law.” I said those words for the first time last night and it was confusing…but I’m super excited to have Corey in the family.
For your Lenten Enjoyment!
This is the first time in several years that I haven’t spent March preparing to leave for El Salvador, to be a pilgrim on the road to the tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero. I’ve been thinking a great deal about pilgrimage lately. As part of a course this January we had to write up a “Rule of Life.” We had to describe the faith practices that give meaning and shape to our life. I included a section on pilgrimage.
Regular Pilgrimage
In addition to weekly worship, it is important for me at least once a year to seek God more deeply through intentional pilgrimage. Whether encountering God on a mountaintop, in a monastery, or among the poor, I find refreshment in leaving behind my daily life in pursuit of the living God.
This need for pilgrimage has been fulfilled for me through travel to El Salvador to visit the graves of the Jesuit Martyrs, killed for speaking their thoughts that the poor are beloved by God, and that they deserved a better lot in life. They were shot in the head to tell the Salvadoran people not to think such radical thoughts. Most palpably in 2007 a group of students and I marched with 20,000+ people through the streets of San Salvador to the tomb of Bishop Romero, who stood up to the Salvadoran government that was murdering its own people to keep the poor from claiming their voice. In one of the last sermons before his assassination, Archbishop Romero promised that “if they kill me, I will be resurrected (reborn) in the Salvadoran people.” Indeed his death caused the movement to foment. (On March 15 the FMLN party representing the ideals of the those who stood up to the powers that be, will most likely claim the office of the president for the first time.
Normally when one thinks of pilgrims, the destinations they have in mind are Rome, Canterbury, Compostelo, Jerusalem. Pilgrimage is thought to be travel to a place where God’s spirit has hovered close. Saints have showed the presence of God in a troubled time. In the practice of ancient Israel pilgrims came regularly to Jerusalem for great festivals. Often while they were in the city they brought their case before the high court in the city. In his article on Psalm 122 in the Interpretation series James Mays writes, “Pilgrimage is a journey in search of justice.”
As pilgrims we walk in the places where God has acted, whether among the poor of El Salvador inspired by the example of martyrs who died on behalf of the oppressed, or on the road to Jerusalem. We draw close to the God who has drawn close to us. This lent, we all walk as pilgrims to the foot of the cross. Let us remember that pilgrimage is a journey in search of justice.
Sometimes Jesus doesn’t make a lot of sense. In today’s Gospel reading he exhorts his followers to fast, but also tells them not to make a big deal of it. Though the Old Testament reading from Joel tells us to “Blow the Trumpet. Sanctify a fast.” Jesus says specifically, “Do not blow a trumpet.” Confusing.
I grew up thinking of Lent kind of like a Christian version of New Year’s resolutions. It was a time to start a diet, give up caffeine or chocolate, stop smoking or swearing, or doing something else unproductive. This understanding existed alongside the traditional understanding of giving up something we loved as a sacrifice to God. It saw Lent as an invitation to self-improvement. God would be our helper. Both of these images of Lent are important and beautiful. They help me to understand the places in my life that need work and to invite God into those spaces.
Lately though another image of Lent has become compelling. A few years ago Trinity Wallstreet, an Episcopal Church in New York, had a series of Lenten audio/visual meditations on their website. One in particular focused upon a staff member at the Church who had chosen to take a different route to work on his bicycle as his Lenten discipline. He saw Lent as an invitation to change perspective, to shift his daily commute to work initiated a process of examining his usual assumptions. Lent became not simply a time of abstinence, but an opportunity to look at life through a new lens, to start each day with a new route.
This is the original meaning of the word “repent.” The original word (metanoia) translates literally: “a change of mind:” a shift in perspective. Our world can become flooded with ordinariness. We can be so caught up in the ways we usually see, our everyday patterns, that we miss the strangeness, the particularity, the holiness present in our daily lives. In the midst of this, Lent becomes an opportunity to allow God to jar us out of the ruts we run in, the well worn paths we know by heart, so that we might discover newness, fresh perspective, and glimpse the divine in ways we might otherwise miss.
Barbara Brown Taylor talks about it this way. “In order to to discern the hidden figure, it is often necessary to cross your eyes or stand on your head so that all known relationships are called into question and new ones may be imagined. When earth and sky are reversed and it seems entirely plausible that lawns may grow down instead of up, then you are in a good position to glimpse the hidden figure, because you are ready to approach it on its own terms instead of your own.” (from The Preaching Life).
I’ve never been particularly good at standing on my head. I was always clumsy and awkward, and I have what a friend once described as “sturdy legs,” which draw themselves quickly toward the earth when they are raised in the air. But the times I have managed to stand on my head, the world has seemed more alive. Whether due to the blood rushing toward my head, or the disorientation of balance, being upside down is always a thrill.
What Lent asks of us, what I think Jesus is saying through his contradictoriness in the passage for today, is to practice fasting while standing on our heads. Disorientation can become reorientation, inversion can become a practice for discerning truth, for discovering the God surprisingly present to us. Out of the wisdom of thousands of years of spiritual practice, the Church invites us into a holy season that is wholly different from the ordinary. Whatever we decide to do for Lent, whatever we give up or take on, let it be for us an invitation to shift our perspective, to see things upside down. Because standing on our head we might just catch a glimpse of God.
Church of the Saviour
History occurs with some regularity in Washington DC. In the 1940s a group came together to make such history. The Church of the Savior was founded by a small group dedicated to the living of the way of Jesus of Nazareth. They were at times a house church, at times they worshiped in larger spaces. What began as a small ecumenical group on Sunday mornings grew into a network of charities, non-profits, and most importantly believers with a conviction that when Jesus told his followers to take care of the poor and work for justice, he meant it. Church of the Savior members donate a large portion of their income, dedicate countless hours of their time, advocate policy, and otherwise follow a vocation towards realizing Jesus’ dream: The Kingdom of God.
For six decades the principle voice and leader of this movement, The Rev. Gordon Cosby, has preached this Gospel of hope, of mission, of service. Last Sunday I had the opportunity to hear his last sermon. The living room which has served as the Church of the Savior’s central worship space was overflowing. Some of Cosby’s original cohort, leaders of various charities, even Jim Wallis of Sojourners came to hear this final message from a visionary follower.
Cosby’s sermon meditated on “tension.” Tension, as the state in which Christians are called to live, comes about because Christians are meant to be ontologically centered in the Kingdom of God, ruled by the values of justice and love. Yet Christians realistically must interact with a world that constantly falls short. Tension. He noted that the Church needed both elders, like himself, who had practice living in this tension., and young idealists who could imagine ways to allow the Kingdom to spill through a bit more.
What most impresses about the sermon is not the words but the actions which they represent. Church of the Savior has never been known for its captivating sermons. A friend from seminary described Cosby as a “special preacher.” Cosby and the members of Church of the Savior have been working to preach not only with their lips, but with their lives. May we all do the same.
I remember May 16, the day the CA Supreme Court ruling upholding Same Sex Marriage was passed, I was doing laps up at UCSD. As I mulled over the news suddenly I had to stop in the middle of the pool I was so taken aback. I felt like the world had shifted. I remember feeling that suddenly the world really had said, to me, “you are valid; you are worthwhile; you can love who you feel called to love.” A couple of nights before I’d had a difficult conversation with my sister who is getting married this summer. I was being irrational and unfair with a stressed out bride to be, venting my frustration at watching so many friends get married, and complaining that I couldn’t have that experience. So as I swam I felt both silly for making such a fuss with my sister, and joyous that suddenly the impossible wasn’t. That day it seemed a hole had broken through the wall between us and the Kingdom of God and the light was shining through.
We’ve heard a great deal about hope this election. Many of us have been inspired by what has been called, “nothing short of a peaceful, orderly and constitutional overthrow of a tyrannical, violent and unjust government.“ In so many ways this election became a reason to hope, and the results were a realization of that hope. 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” the United States of America has elected its first African American president. Dr. King knew that Christian hope is located in the Kingdom of God, what Desmond Tutu calls “God’s dream.” Dr. King’s dream was God’s dream. He said, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’” This is the dream, this is the kingdom, a place where justice reigns and love is the only law.
This Kingdom of God is both our hoped for destination, and at moments it breaks through into the present. It broke through when the US Court ruled that segregation was not equal protection under the law. It broke through when women’s right to vote was acknowledged. It broke through when Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected presiding bishop. It broke through as Barack Obama spoke Wednesday night as the newly elected president.
That May afternoon in San Diego I could feel the light shining through a fresh hole in the wall that separates us from the Kingdom of God.
Then someone decided to throw a patch up over that hole.
As Senator Obama spoke, the votes were being tallied in California that would take away the newly recognized right to marriage for Same Sex attracted people. Proposition 8 passed by a tiny majority.
I have been amazed by the responses from so many of my friends, especially my straight friends. Allies across the state sent messages of sympathy and anger at the results. They couldn’t believe that Prop 8 had passed. I was blown away that people had made contributions in my name to the No on 8 campaign and were so concerned about my rights.
While I think justice fell short a few days ago, I know that it is a simple patch in the wall that is coming down. Christians believe that we will get to that hoped for Kingdom. Dr. King knew setbacks. Still he said:
“With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”
So do not despair. Continue to tell your story, or the story of the ones you love who love people of the same gender. Let’s bring more than 51% of people with us to the Kingdom.
Since the beginning of the current economic crisis, no one has done a better job explaining exactly what has gone on than This American life. If you’re still lost, I highly recommend the following two shows
Another Extremely Frightening Show About the Economy
They lay out in comprehendible ways exactly what has happened in the economic world.
Here’s what it seems to boil down to: People want to make money. More than any stock, they are invested in economic growth. Growth is the biggest commodity in the market. Any stock that grows sells. Some very bright people found a way to create a product that grew like crazy. By creating an industry of selling mortgages and then bundling stakes in those mortgages as stock options, investors could ride the wave in appreciating home value. Money grew like crazy. BUT because growth was more important than anything else no one hesitated to wonder whether home prices were being inflated, whether it was a good idea to lend money to people who had no income and no assets, whether this all would come crashing down like a house of cards.
Our economic system values growth above all else.
In the story of the Exodus, as the Hebrew people come out of Egypt, God consistently provides for their needs. Each morning the Israelites collect bread from heaven. There is plenty for everyone. Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread and feeds thousands from five loaves and two fish. The underlying economics of the Bible is abundance.
If we operated from an economics of abundance rather than an economics of growth how different could our behavior be? Rather than worrying about how to tap into the fastest growing vein in the economy and suck as much out as we can so that we are taken care of, we could trust that their will be enough and look for those who are not doing so well. We could spread out wealth, resources, technology. We could look for quality of product rather than quantity.
As we look at economic plans that seek to patch the hole in our economic growth machine, we have to wonder if it isn’t time to reassess the ways in which do business. Whether through regulation, or a change in spending habits can we prioritize and invest in companies that look to a bigger picture than growth, that look toward quality? Maybe even looking toward the health and well being of our planet and fellow human beings?
Can this economic crisis be a turning point in the way we treat one another and this planet?
