The Adventure Continues: Sermons August 25, 2013

Here is a link to the sermon preached at the National Cathedral yesterday, because you deserve the best.

Below it is the text of my sermon from yesterday, preached in English and Spanish at Saint John's Episcopal Church, Waterbury, Connecticut.

If you want the Spanish version, please let me know.

As you read these sermons, I want you to know that I did not see the Very Rev. Gary Hall's sermon until tonight, Monday, August 26. Any likeness of intent between the two is coincidental absolutely.

The Adventure continues.

Sermon August 25, 2013 by

The Very Rev. Gary Hall, Washington National Cathedral

or copy and paste:

http://www.nationalcathedral.org/worship/sermonTexts/grh20130825.shtml

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Sermon by the Reverend Lois Keen

August 25, 2013

St. John’s Waterbury

Luke 13:10-17

Isaiah 58:9b-14

If you remove the yoke from among you,

the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

if you offer your food to the hungry

and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,

then your light shall rise in the darkness

and your gloom be like the noonday.

On Tuesday I saw the movie The Butler. The movie is the story about a man, an African-American man, who becomes a butler in the White House. His name is Cecil Gaines. I expected the movie would be about life in the White House. I expected state dinners and famous guests.

Instead the movie is about the fight for civil rights for African-Americans. The character Cecil Gaines is based on a real butler who worked in the White House during the time of the freedom riders, desegregation, and the Black Panthers, from Eisenhower to Reagan. So we see Cecil in the White House, standing as a servant, silent, invisible, in the Oval Office listening to arguments about his people, black people, alongside scenes of his son at a lunch counter sit-in.

We see his son in jail.

We see his son following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We see his son on a freedom bus when it is fire bombed.

We see his son in jail again.

We see his son in jail a lot.

When Dr. King is murdered, we see the son of the butler cease following Dr. King’s way of non-violence.

We see him join the Black Panthers, a militant organization pledged to get freedom for African-Americans at any cost.

We see him decide to leave when the Panthers begin to talk about killing people.

I grew up during the era of civil rights. I was fourteen when my family moved to Lewes Beach, Delaware where I saw and experienced segregation and racism. My mother was told by our new white neighbors that we white children were not allowed to play with the black children who lived in the ghetto one block from our house. I attended a segregated school. I worked at a soda fountain news stand where I was instructed to not serve any black person who sat at the counter. I was fired from the job after one week.

I was a freshman in college during the freedom rides and the assassination of President John Kennedy. I was at the University of Delaware in Newark Delaware when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and Newark, Delaware erupted in riots.

I was on the side of desegregation, on the side of assuring the right to vote to African Americans, on the side of full civil liberties for all people. I still am.

The movie about the butler, Cecil Gaines, brought back that time so strongly that I was crying uncontrollably because of my memories of the horror of living in a racist society and the cost of making racism illegal. A horror I hadn't even dared to think about at the time. And because when I and others dared to elect an African American man as president of these United States, all the hate that is racism came back again. I asked myself, “Will it ever end? Will I ever live in a nation that is not racist?” And my question now includes the racist underpinning to our attitude toward immigrants.

Racism is bondage. It binds the African-American; it binds the immigrant. And it binds the racist. This coming Wednesday, August 28, this country marks the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington. Fifty years ago two hundred fifty thousand people demonstrated peacefully for civil rights and economic equality for African-Americans. The people walked down Constitution Avenue, down Independence Avenue, and then gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for speeches, songs, and prayers. It was exactly 100 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the African slaves in this country. At 3:00 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous “I have a dream” speech.

Well, 50 years later, things are a little better, but not much better. Racism is still alive and well in these United States. And racism has been extended to immigrants of all kinds.

 Two thousand years ago a crippled woman, bent over double, enters the synagogue. Jesus heals her. It is the Sabbath. The religious authorities scold the woman. “Come any day for healing, but not on the Sabbath!” they cry. You can have freedom any day of the week, but not on the Sabbath!

And Jesus, who came to free all those who are in bondage of any kind, replies, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?"

Christians are expected to follow Jesus. We are expected to do what Jesus did. Jesus came to free everyone from bondage and, therefore, we are to work to free everyone from bondage too. When we do not work to make everyone free, when we do not counter racism in ourselves and in others, we become like the leaders of the synagogue who wanted the crippled woman to remain bent over double one more day. Wait a little, they say. Freedom will come eventually. Be patient.

This is what the ministers in Birmingham, Alabama said to Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Be patient. Someday your people will have equal rights with white people. Someday they will be free. Be patient.

There is no more time for patience. When we work for freedom for everyone – freedom to vote without restriction of sex, color, or culture, freedom to earn a living wage, freedom from being imprisoned because of what a person wears or the color of their skin or the language they speak – then we become like Jesus, who has no patience for waiting just one more day to set free a woman in bondage.

Bishop Michael Curry, in his sermon for today, is preaching that God has a dream. God has a divine purpose for this world. God has a dream for every person who is living today and every person who ever lived. God will not rest until God’s dream comes is realized.

This is what Jesus is all about. This is what Jesus came to show us. This is what Jesus is telling us in today’s story: In God’s dream, there is no one in bondage. And God expects us to work with Jesus to free everyone who is in bondage – to free everyone from poverty, hunger, discrimination, crippling fear, racism.

In Jesus, God shows us how to become more than a collection of our own self-interests. “[Jesus] came to show us how to become the human family of God.” You and I are expected to help God’s dream become true.

For me, this means I must understand the unwarranted privilege I have of being a person with fair skin whose ancestors came from northern Europe. I will not be free until this land is free for everyone. I will not be free until I have done everything I can to assure that every person of whatever color, faith, or land of origin is as free and as privileged as my race is. I long for that day. I know many who long for that day. I know of others who will keep that day from coming as long as they can. But Jesus will not wait forever. Jesus is for freedom. The day will come when those who are in bondage are set free.

God will not rest until God’s dream is realized. And, Bishop Michael Curry says, “…miraculously God will not do it without us.” 

Or, to paraphrase St. Augustine and Bishop Desmond Tutu, according to Bp. Michael,

Alone, God won’t do it.

Alone, we can’t do it.

But together with God, we can.

Pray to become one of the people who will do everything they can to help Jesus to make God’s dream come true, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And God help me to become one of those people, too.

For,   “If you remove the yoke from among you, …

The LORD will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters never fail.

Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to live in…” 

for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it.   (Isaiah 58)

Adventure: Snag in the Road Continues

ECF Vital Practices shares the latest from Bp. Steven Charleston. Of course, I take this is a sign just for me!

Photo credit Lois Keen

ECF Vital Practices

Why is it we often do the same thing over and over, and then are surprised when the results are the same? Steven Charleston reminds us to "open the windows of grace..."

Steven Charleston

Open the windows of grace. Don't wait, shut up in a closed room, hunched over the same old plans, breathing in the airless atmosphere of failure, praying for rescue, expecting only more of the same. Open the windows of grace. Let a fresh wind flood your room, let it scatter the paper plans on the floor, stir up the dust, wave the curtains like flags of victory, give you a new air to breathe. Open the windows of your soul to receive the grace of God, blessings like breeze, life new like morning air.

Adventure: Chapter IIV - Rider's Block

I've hit a snag in the road. (Hence Rider's Block/Writer's block.)

I don't want to write. I'm overwhelmed by all the creativity and the ideas and the tasks to which they invite me. So what is the subject of the weekly email I receive from CREDO?

Here it is: The brief descriptions are all you need. And of course, it all meshes with my time with my shrink this past Monday. Hint: He's on the CREDO faculty.

August 21, 2013     Dear Lois,     In his latest reflection "Get Out!" Bill Harkins quotes a few lines from Richard Rohr about risky journeys. The journeys we undertake can involve both risk and delight, and both can point us toward a greater sense of who we are and whose we are. We offer these resources for your journey of health and well-being. May they help equip you on your way.   Navigating Change A time apart is sometimes crucial when we are faced with important changes, giving us space to look at our circumstances from a generous angle. View this and other videos  on topics including change, transition, discernment and sources of support in CREDO's resources for Lifelong Wellness.    Watch Now in CREDO's video library...    Taking Action By Matthew Stockard  Having trouble getting all those great ideas organized for action? Here are some approaches that may help!  Read CREDO's latest post on Vocational health... Get Out! By Bill Harkins We can learn from our adventures outdoors in ways that can nurture, heal, sustain, challenge, and provide moments of freedom, perspective, and grace.    Read CREDO's latest post on Physical and Emotional health...   Collaboration By Sam Portaro     No creation--not even The Creation--is a solo performance. It's all a partnership, precious and holy.    Read CREDO's latest post on Spiritual health...

Adventure: Chapter VI - Beyond the Breakwater

Early this month a friend wrote on her facebook status that she is finding ways to serve God, the Church, on her own terms, "...without some of the burdens of having the Church as one's career." This struck home for me. This is what I, too, am doing. I know I'm not alone in this. Next step networking? I have to admit that I'd rather take on a bishop than cold-call fellow clergy to see if we can come together on this remaking of the vocation of serving God without the Church being one's career.

Photo credit Newlin Keen

I've said it before. Our Diocese has said clearly that most clergy are going to have to be bi-vocational from now on and into the foreseeable future. I do accept that. I embrace it. Now the challenge begins to redefine what part time parish ministry looks like, then to educate congregations that part time means just that - part time during the week, part time Sundays.

I have been challenged on this by a fellow clergyperson who has served pastoral size churches and, as a pastoral church priest, believes strongly this is a recipe for the failure and closing of more and more small churches because it is essential that the priest be present every Sunday to give support to the congregation. I too have served only pastoral sized churches. She is right, if we do not re-educate the people we serve and guide them to empower themselves to do those things which they are very capable of doing for themselves - supporting themselves and one another with the part time guidance of the clergyperson and reflecting with the clergyperson theologically twice a month on what they are doing and where God is in that, as well as in their daily lives.

Photo credit Lois Keen

This is, then, part of the sabbatical I'm on - having those conversations about the logical result of having more and more clergy taking 1/2 time parish positions. And setting up a network of those of us who are finding ways to serve on our own terms, with or without some of the burdens of having the Church as career. And clarifying the calling that was what drew me into ordination and now draws me out beyond the breakwater, into uncharted waters. Sacramental ministry is the call; charting those waters is part of the mission God may need someone to do, for the future, and the now, of God's overarching mission of restoration and reconciliation.

Adventure: Chapter V - The Telltale Heart

Photo credit Lois Keen

It's taken me almost a week to write this next chapter. I was waiting for the implications to become clear. Clearly, that is not going to happen in any linear fashion.

On Monday I wrote these words in my handwritten journal: "I grew up in chaos. Chaos is normal for me. Or it has been."

I'm not sure what my normal state is now.

My maternal grandparents and my parents were alcoholics. The adults in my life were not reliable. Except for one - an aunt unrelated by blood who as I look back was the one stable compass point in my life. She was Catholic and lived in New York. I didn't see her very often. And while she was reliable, her home life was not, and I stayed with her from time to time. When I was with her we went to Mass every morning. I was not a Catholic. But I liked going with her.

Trust has not been my strong suit (for those of you who play bridge). Trusting God has been an absolute NO. "Your will be done" is not in my conversational vocabulary in conversations with God. I say it in the Lord's Prayer and it makes no impression on me.

Last Saturday morning, August 10, at 8:00 a.m., as I was reading Morning Prayer, someplace in my mind a thought was forming - "I just want to be able to do what you most need me to do".

It came while I was reading the lessons, not really absorbing them at all because at the same time I was fretting about not having full time, reliable, remunerative work and fretting more that I would end up being cut off from the institutional aspect of being a priest if I wasn't attached to a parish, and in the fretting I heard this still small voice of some part of me saying something like, " As long as it's something you need me to do. As long as I'm useful."

You see, I can't recall the exact words. They were a thought, a feeling, as much as they were words. The sense of them was that my intent was to trust God.

And I smiled.

I smiled, because I have never trusted God, so far as I know. So it was a surprise. And I was pretty proud of myself. And though I continued to fret, there was this second layer - first "adventure", now "trust" - and I wonder where it is going.

As the week has continued, I begin to see that I have been learning to trust for a very long time. Today I was able to trace it back almost thirty years to the days when I was working on issues from the past and part of my prayer life was to include my anger as a spiritual exercise, including yelling at God and throwing my Book of Common Prayer across the room or on the floor at God. That BCP is held together on the spine with surgical tape, a metaphor in itself that I find satisfying.

Anyway, it took trust to yell at God and call God names and still expect God to love me and stay in my life. It may have been the beginning.

To continue to trace the progress toward trust would take more time than I want to take today. However, just as I decided to live in watchfulness for adventure, I now live in watchfulness for the fruit of trust. Hence the title "The Telltale Heart". Clearly my heart, as the ancients understood heart, has been working on and harboring this for a long time and only now, at an advanced age, revealing itself to me.

Today I wrote this in the comments on someone's Facebook post:

" The church as institution is ambivalent, at best, about recognizing non-parochial work by a priest as priestly work. I keep coming back to the legends about David of Wales as I re-examine "call" in this in between season. He is said to have carried the church with him, metaphorically and physically, into the mines and factories and to bring the miners and factory workers into the churches where they were not much welcome, and to tramp in plain clothes all over Wales going into every cottage kitchen and taking bread from the oven and wine from the cellar and celebrating at the kitchen table facing the people. In this I see him saying, "This mine, this factory, this farm, this kitchen and every farm, mine and factory and kitchen table, are holy ground and the work is holy work and the people are consecrated to that work." This image drew me into the priesthood, and I have come back to it at this time when the churches and the institution is being invited (pushed?) out the door to see the holiness all around and to join God there. And I'm feeling my way to what my part as a priest might be. Twenty years ago I called it "giving away the priesthood". Today I might say "revealing, pointing out the priestliness in all lives". This is part of the work of a priest. It and I are works in progress."

Photo Credit Lois Keen

I'm looking on these months as sabbatical. Given what I wrote on Facebook, what do I need a sabbatical to include in order to get the most out of it? One thing comes to me today: Conversations with bishops, canon for clergy in transition, and Church Pension Group on recognizing non-parochial work as institutional diocesan work equal with parochial work - not the exception. I will record those conversations and I will report them out in the way people on sabbatical record their progress.

Trust will have to advance another step to do this.