Candidacy

On Monday, I received my application for candidacy for Holy Orders in the mail. This feels, rightfully so, like a major step for me. I have two years of Divinity School behind me, and one of my friends who is a year ahead of me was ordained as a deacon in June. If everything goes smoothly, it’s likely that I could be ordained as a deacon next year.

Initially, when I was going through the ordination process, the goal seemed to be to get the bishop to let me go to seminary. Ordination itself was too far off to really grasp or think about. Besides, there were 3-plus years of schooling in an unfamiliar field in which I had little to no background standing between me and ordination. Now I find myself in a position where I have to notify a few of my professors that I will be missing class during the first week of school to travel to my candidacy interviews.

So if anyone has a few prayers to send my way for continued discernment and peace during the rest of this process, I would appreciate it.

Song of Anselm

This morning during Morning Prayer from the Daily Office blog, I was introduced to the Song of Anselm as one of the canticles. I’m always looking for appropriate liturgical resources that have feminine imagery for Jesus or any other part of the Trinity, and this is particularly beautiful. If Anselm, one of the great theologians of his time, could see Jesus as mother, why is that so difficult for us? I would love to use this in the context of VDS worship or on the Sunday closest to Mother’s Day, but even in rotation with other canticles, I think it stands out.

Song of Anselm

Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you;
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.
Often you weep over our sins and our pride,
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement.
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us.
Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life;
by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy.
Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;
through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.
Your warmth gives life to the dead,
your touch makes sinners righteous.
Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us;
in your love and tenderness remake us.
In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness,
for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

Easter 2 Year C

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Second Sunday of Easter, Year C

In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

It’s good to see you all here this morning. In some churches, the Sunday after Easter is often known as Low Sunday, as in low attendance. A friend also informed me that this Sunday is also known as Seminarian’s Sunday because the seminarian is always asked to preach after the craziness of Holy Week and Easter. So by the time a person leaves seminary, she or he will most likely have preached on Doubting Thomas.

Poor Doubting Thomas. He can’t catch a break. Everyone always uses him as the bad example, the one didn’t believe that Jesus appeared to the disciples, passing through locked doors, and showing off his wounds. Can you really blame him? He probably thought the rest of the disciples were playing some kind of crazy joke on him. First Mary Magdalene sees Jesus and then the rest of the apostles. It just didn’t make sense. Who wouldn’t want some proof? People just don’t rise from the dead every day, and even though Jesus was a pretty special guy, cheating death takes it to a whole other level. I have to admit that I’m kind of in the Thomas camp on this one. Particularly for a post-Enlightenment person who relies on reason and facts for evidence, needing proof is not a foreign concept. Besides, Thomas had some other good reasons to doubt. Look at what happened. He gives everything up to follow Jesus. He does what God calls him to do, and then BAM, it all comes screeching to a halt on Good Friday. All this, and for what? Nothing? And likely to get him killed too. Thomas is not about to get his hopes up that this resurrection thing is the real deal. He is so pessimistic that he doesn’t say something like, “Well, I’ll believe it when I see it for myself.” No. He won’t believe it until he can touch Christ’s wounds.

Thomas is a Good Friday guy in an Easter world. He is so consumed by the bad stuff that has happened that his belief in the power of God is diminished. Just think about our Christian brothers and sisters in the Southern hemisphere who celebrate Easter in the fall. It’s easy to say, “Alleluia! He is Risen!” on a beautiful sunny, spring day when the flowers are in full bloom and the leaves are budding on the trees. But how difficult is it to say the same thing in fall when the days are growing shorter and everything around us is dying? The truth is that we are Easter people in our hearts all year round. Even on Good Friday, our knowledge of the resurrection is what gets us through those dark days during and after the crucifixion.

This is true of our lives as well. Being an Easter person is not about being endlessly optimistic or a Pollyanna-type who says that everything is fine when it isn’t. We all have our ups and downs. People close to us die. We lose our jobs. Money is tight, and stress levels are high. Life happens. It would also be foolish to suggest that these things happen because our faith isn’t strong. If we just believed a little bit more, we would have everything we wanted, and life would be smooth-sailing. Being Easter people means knowing that God is all-powerful, and God works through all situations for good. Being Easter people is about hope. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “But we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”[1] For Paul, hope is a spiritual grace, not an antidote to pessimism about one’s situation. Easter is about hope, and hope does not disappoint us, not after Easter.

Hope is sometimes the only thing that keeps us going. I’m sure that you all are familiar with the story of Pandora’s box. When Pandora opens her box and all of the terrible things come flying out of it – ills and sicknesses and human toils – the very last thing that weakly limps out of the box is hope. In some interpretations of this story, hope is the worst of the evils. Instead of letting us resign ourselves to the way the world is, we are foolish enough to hope that it will get better, hope that we can change it, and imagine something different. I prefer the explanation that, although hope is the puny thing at the bottom of the box, it ultimately conquers all of the other human ills that we experience. As Christians whose hope is in Christ, this is our reality. We know that God loves us. We believe that God has good things in store for all of creation and that God is bringing that into fulfillment through Christ.

But like our good friend Thomas the Twin, there are times when we despair, when we think that God has abandoned us, ceases to exist, or is even out to get us. There are times when the resurrection seems like a cruel joke that someone is playing and a pervasive sense of gloom settles around us. How could we hope when everything is only getting worse? But Easter breaks through the pessimism and despair. We, along with Thomas, place our hands in Christ’s wounds – the wounds that say, “You are forgiven, and I love you.” The wounds that say that the power of God is stronger than death and ask, “Where, O Death, is your sting? O Grave, where is your victory?” We hope in a love that surpasses all that we can even imagine. What else, besides the bodily resurrection of Christ, could have transformed the disciples’ despair into hope after seeing all that they had seen, after being afraid for their very lives? Just as the disciples believed and had life in Christ’s name, so the good news is written so that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God and to have life, not a life where we simply exist, but a joyful, abundant life. One full of hope and trust in God’s love for us and for all creation.

Easter is despair transfigured into hope by the all-powerful love of God. Jesus tells Thomas and us, “Do not doubt but believe.” Believe that love conquers death. Believe in the resurrection of the dead and in life everlasting. Believe that God abides with us as God was with the disciples. And through believing, may you have life in his name. Amen.

---

[1] Romans 5:3-5

Remember This

Remember that it took the good part of two semesters to finally feel like the church community liked and respected you and that was as a seminarian intern. Imagine what it will be like as full-blown clergy.

Remember what a beautiful day this Easter was. Remember when someone introduced you as “the preacher.”

Remember the woman who stopped you to talk about her faith and how much she appreciated your nod to feminist theology. Remember that your sermon inspired her to go home and re-read Sallie McFague, to revisit a turning point in her faith journey and understanding of God. Remember that God used you to speak to her experience as a fellow woman and to encourage her to advocate for a continued female voice at that congregation.

Remember how after the passing of the peace, the guy who first made you feel like this church was somewhere that you wanted to be hugged you from behind and told you what a great preacher you were. Remember that he said this on a day when you didn’t even preach.

Remember to ask for help, like when you know you couldn’t reach the candles to light them. It’s not your fault that you’re short.

Remember the awe of the children and the visitors who had never been to an Easter Vigil when all the lights came on when we said, “Alleluia! He is risen!” After sitting in the dim candlelit sanctuary for over an hour, remember the joy in your heart to hear the bells and see the lilies uncovered. Remember the little boy who asked quite loudly if Noah was REALLY 600 years old.

Remember how the Kingdom of God can look like an Easter egg hunt or a Mardi Gras pancake breakfast or just the simple act of watching the congregation process up the center aisle to receive communion.

Maundy Thursday

Now that the weather is nice, I am wearing black sandals, my toenails painted red from before our trip to Puerto Rico. I knew I needed shoes I could take off and on easily with foot-washing. The service this year is at Holy Trinity, a small congregation with an historic building on an odd piece of triangular land. The city is trying to swallow it up, and the hot dog place next door looms ominously.

It is time for the foot-washing. I slip off my sandals and pad over to the foot-washing station, the stone floor cool against my bare feet. The deacon and I are paired up, and I sit down in the chair, my feet hovering over the copper basin. I think that I should have remembered to shave my legs. Thankfully, the water is warm. He washes my feet and towels them off, and we switch places. He is much older than I am. I have never washed someone’s feet who I was not intimately involved with. My husband was called away at dinner beforehand when a liver became available for a patient. I pour the water into my hands and then over his feet, washing off the rough particles of dirt from his heels. I use the same towel, making sure his feet are completely dry. We do all of this in silence. We return to our seats, and I watch others come up. Friends and spouses wash each other’s feet with utmost care and love. I can see how the disciples would have been awe-struck by Jesus’ act.

Earlier that day, in our liturgy class, my professor asks a question. “Do you think that foot-washing should be a sacrament?” One student answers immediately in the affirmative. I think about the question while I watch people process up: old and young, black and white, professionally-dressed people and people with nose-piercings and ripped jeans. A server helps an elderly person to her knees so that she can wash the feet of another. I also watch the people who did not come up, looking uncomfortable and slightly embarrassed. I decide that foot-washing should be a sacrament. It was instituted by Jesus, which is more than we can say about a good number of our current sacraments. Jesus commands us to wash each other’s feet, to love one another. Someone remarked in our class that they thought at Amish weddings that the bride and groom washed each other’s feet as part of the ceremony. I personally find that a lot more meaningful than a unity candle.

Good Friday Year C

The Lessons Appointed for Use on Good Friday

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

After looking at altarpieces, reading poetry, and singing hymns about the crucifixion, my words will fall far too short of the task set before me today. How could I do better than the simple words of “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” or the glorious chorale of “O Sacred Head Sore Wounded”? So I’m going to copy a friend of mine at seminary in Virginia who opened his sermon today with words not of his own but from W.H. Auden’s first poem of the “Two Songs of Hedli Anderson”:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

In so many ways, our only response to Good Friday, to being faced with the cross, is silence.

On Good Friday, we contemplate the cross. Not the empty cross, the one that resides in our churches to remind us that Jesus is risen, that he no longer hangs from the cross. Not the sterilized and safe cross of popular culture, the one that we see rap musicians and celebrities wear encrusted with diamonds. Today we contemplate the cross as what it was, a torture device, a means for putting the worst of the worst criminals to death, and the site of the death and suffering of the Son of God as well as the site of our salvation and redemption.

A commentator on NPR, Elizabeth Scalia, spoke today about why she remains a Catholic in spite of the very public and grievous acts of child molestation that occurred within and were covered up by the church. She speaks of how darkness and light are always intertwined, how the church has been a beacon of light for many as the flip side to these awful acts. The cross is the very manifestation of the enmeshment of light and dark – both a violent tool of destruction and where our sins our atoned for. We are surrounded by this dichotomy in the world and in our faith. As Ms. Scalia notes, America gives more money to the rest of the world than any other country. We are also the only country to detonate an atomic weapon. Our government was founded on principles of personal liberty, and many of those founders owned slaves. For a chaplain at Baptist hospital, this was embodied in his father’s leather doctor’s bag. That bag represented a man who selflessly treated other people’s health and was a respected citizen. That bag was also where he hid his alcohol.

The pure awfulness of the cross is where we see the depth and magnitude of God’s love for us. That is why it is the predominant Christian symbol. That is why we come forward to venerate the cross, why people weep tears of joy and sadness on this day. Because God loved the world so much that God gave God’s only Son, not just to dwell amongst us but to be sacrificed for us, to atone not simply for our individual sins but to transform our very being as sinners. And because no words can possibly express our gratitude and love and thankfulness to God, we try to live out our lives in a spirit of thankfulness and love. And we are awed into silence by this great gift, the gift of forgiveness and wholeness, that comes through the most horrible means we can imagine. Amen.

Lent 5 Year C

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Part of Ignatius of Loyola’s program of spiritual exercises involved praying the Gospel by envisioning one’s self in the scene. I find that particularly easy to do in this passage. Perhaps we can imagine ourselves as one of the disciples, journeying with Jesus towards Jerusalem in order to celebrate the Passover. The strange proclamations that Jesus keeps making about his own death have us somewhat unnerved, and we get the feeling that there might be some trouble soon with the authorities. After watching Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead and the following hullabaloo, we had to go to a town called Ephraim closer towards the wilderness before coming to Jerusalem for the Passover. It is nice to spend the evening with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, enjoying a hot meal closer to civilization, though also potentially closer to danger. The atmosphere is solemn, in spite of the joy of Lazarus’s resurrection a short while ago. The room is heavy with unspoken tension and grief. We do not think this week is going to end well.

Martha is bustling around the house, doing what Martha does, serving food, making several trips back to the kitchen, and clearing plates. The conversation is subdued but involved. And then Mary appears by Jesus’ side carrying an alabaster flask. When she removes the stopper, we see that what the flask contains is as precious as the flask itself as a musky perfume envelops the room, the distinct smell of nard, an expensive distilled perfume. The fragrance is thick and warm, and we watch as Mary takes the perfume, anoints the dusty, calloused feet of Jesus, and then wipes them with her hair. The room goes silent, in awe over Mary’s act of pure devotion and love. Even Martha has stopped her flurry of activity to observe Mary single-handedly expressing the whole room’s feelings of love towards Jesus and our nervous anticipation of what is to come. It slowly dawns on us that, in all likelihood, Mary is anointing Jesus for burial, that the end is drawing near. Only Judas breaks the meaningful silence. What has been up with him lately? He’s been acting very strange and dodgy and way too concerned with money. I guess he’s right, that the money could have been used for the poor, but maybe he didn’t see what we saw, the real meaning in what just happened. Sure enough, Jesus confirms what we all suspected, that the day of his death is approaching, and we will not always have him with us. Mary stands up, ending the moment, and we all gradually resume our dinner and fellowship. We’ve come to the end of Jesus’ public ministry. There is only one more place to go, to Jerusalem and the cross, the site of Jesus’ glorification in death.

I came across a quote this week: “Love Jesus – all else is commentary.” Certainly, we cannot doubt that this is exactly what Mary was doing when she anointed Jesus’ feet. But it goes against our very “Martha” instincts, that we should be doing something: feeding the poor, polishing the silver, working to end racism and sexism and heterosexism. Shouldn’t we be doing those things that Jesus told us to do? Visiting those in prison and welcoming the stranger and clothing the naked? There is so much to do in our broken and sinful world, not only just what we do out of our faith but also what our own lives require. There are dishes to wash and food to prepare, friends to spend time with and church to attend. There are our personal goals, the things that we are trying to attain, and the things we enjoy: cars, houses, clothes, etc. But, as Paul says in the letter to the church at Philippi, “For Christ’s sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” Paul starts this passage by telling us his qualifications, and he is highly qualified. He comes from the right kind of people, and, on paper, he is the perfect Jew – zealous and blameless in upholding the law. But all of this is commentary. For Paul, it is even less than commentary. It is rubbish, trash, useless. It is worth nothing without faith in Christ, without love for Jesus.

Everything we do, everything we have, everything we are, and everything we will be is just commentary on our love of Jesus. Our love of Jesus should be the source of all our faith, all of our action, and all of our being. It is not hard to look at people like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman, and Thomas Merton and figure out who and what their source is. For these spiritual giants of the twentieth century, their love of Christ was directly tied to their actions. One of my favorite books in my time at Divinity School so far has been Robert McAfee Brown’s Spirituality and Liberation. In it, he argues that we are wrong in thinking that prayer and contemplation is removed from action in the world, to hold the two things as an either/or. One is either spiritual or one works for justice. One is either called to be a monk or a social worker. Instead, the two feed each other. There is not a dualism between an internal prayer life and social action but a dialectic. The two are in conversation and are inextricably linked to one another. Our actions both come out of our love of Jesus and contribute to our love of Jesus.

Because there are so many actions that could potentially show our love of Jesus, we must try to discern what God is calling us to do in a given situation. Perhaps in another setting, it would have been more appropriate for Mary to donate the money spent on the expensive perfume to the poor, but knowing that she was anointing Jesus for burial, the money was put to its right use. Our personal prayer lives, our time that we spend with God developing that intimate, devoted relationship with the Trinity will guide us in acting out the love that we both give and receive from God. Robert McAfee Brown refers to this as “withdrawal and return”. We “withdraw” into prayer and solitude, not as an end unto itself, but for the purpose of “return” to action within a community. We can experience God both in our individual prayer lives and out in the community as we go about our daily work, and our time spent individually loving Jesus will manifest itself in right action, in loving Jesus in the world. Action without contemplation will lead to burn-out, and contemplation without action leads to navel-gazing. In order to develop a deep, intimate relationship in our love of God, both action and contemplation are required.

Mary’s anointing of Jesus a week before his death with expensive oil was a manifestation of her love and devotion. Mary understands and acknowledges what is about to happen to Jesus. We too know what is going to happen. Next week, on Palm Sunday, we will process in, waving palms, crying out that Jesus is the Messiah, only to hear the story of Jesus’ Passion during the Gospel reading. Our love of Jesus continues through Palm Sunday, into Holy Week and Good Friday, and finally, after three days in the tomb, to Easter and the resurrection. But, for now, we watch, and we wait, and we pray for the faith of Mary, that we too will know when to adore Jesus and when to use the money for the poor. Amen.

Lent 2 Year C

The Lessons appointed for use on the Second Sunday in Lent, Year C

In the name of God: Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Amen.

This is not the first time in the Gospels that we hear about a King Herod trying to kill Jesus. In Matthew’s Gospel, King Herod the Great kills all of the children in and around Bethlehem who are under two years of age, trying to eliminate the Christ child, after he is tricked by the magi in what is known as the Slaughter of the Innocents.[1] Now we have that King Herod’s son, Herod Antipas, out to get Jesus. Jesus is heading for Jerusalem, heading for death, and in this season of Lent, we travel along with him, listening to his teachings along the way.

Back in Luke 9, Jesus sets his face towards Jerusalem, and nothing can stop the events that are about to transpire. But that journey takes a while, and he stops in towns along the way, issuing judgments, proclamations, and teaching in parables. In today’s gospel, he blatantly identifies himself with the Hebrew Bible prophets who were rejected by the people in Jerusalem. Even knowing that he is going to die, and most likely die a horrible, gruesome, and violent death, Jesus expresses his, and consequently God’s, love for Jerusalem and for all of us. He wants to gather all of us together as a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but we are not willing. We turn away from God and ignore Jesus. We participate in leading Jesus to his death. Ultimately, the expression of God’s love for Jerusalem and for the whole world culminates in Jesus’ outstretched arms on the cross. To paraphrase the collect for mission, our Lord Jesus Christ stretched out his arms upon the hard wood of the cross that all might come within his saving embrace.

In Jesus’ lament for Jerusalem, he bewails that we have gone astray. We have sinned and turned away from God. Sometimes, in spite of confessing our sins communally each week, I get the feeling that we aren’t always comfortable talking about sin, and justifiably so. A lot of people have grown up in traditions that use sin language in an oppressive and hurtful way. But sin is a reality that everyone experiences. All of us make choices that take us further away from God, that try to extinguish the image of God in ourselves or in others, when all God wants to do is gather us under Her wing. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “For all sin and fall short of the glory of God.”[2]

I want to differentiate between two different types of sin, a distinction that I think is helpful. On one hand is the type of sin that we are most familiar with, which could be classified under the sin of pride, thinking that we are God, that we have control. This is what we repent of during the Litany of Penance on Ash Wednesday: our love of other things besides God, our neglect of our relationship with God, and our abuse of God’s creation. On Ash Wednesday we are reminded of our wretchedness, that we have not done anything to make ourselves worthy of God. Only God’s love makes us worthy. Pride is a willful act of disobedience, a turning away from God and into ourselves.[3] That’s a very traditional, and a very Calvinist, view of what sin is.

Feminist theology posits another type of sin, what they call “unfaithfulness”. If God has a plan and a calling for all of us, unfaithfulness is living contrary to that call. It is living against God’s plan for us to flourish and grow in God’s love and grace. It is certainly not only women that experience this type of sin, but anyone who has encountered some kind of oppression. We are sinning when we listen to those voices, external and internal, that tell us that we’re not good enough for God to love us, that we’re not worthy of God’s love. When we listen to those voices and then act on them, believing that we are not God’s beautiful creation, that we are not made in God’s image, we separate ourselves from God, not in pride, but in unfaithfulness to God’s plan for us. Those voices that tell us that, because we’re gay or female or a recovering alcoholic or suffering from depression or whatever makes you think that you’re unworthy in the eyes of God, God doesn’t have a plan for you, a plan to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.[4] Those voices are WRONG. They are evil, and they are causing us to be less than God wants us to be.

Here’s the real kicker though: No matter what kind of sin we succumb to, God loves us anyway. Like a parent who watches their child make bad choices and can do little to stop him or her, God is pained. God hurts with us when we sin. God cares about our sin so deeply that God sent Jesus to remind the world of the profundity of God’s love. God forgives us.

There are people in each of our lives who have made poor choices and caused us pain, sometimes knowingly but often without knowing. They have done damage to themselves and subsequent damage to our relationships with them. This can be as major as a kind of addiction or an important life choice or as seemingly minor as an offhand comment or a bout of forgetfulness. We have also harmed others by our choices. Our actions are not limited to ourselves but have a ripple effect throughout our relationships with others. We are all in need of forgiveness and in need of forgiving. We need reconciliation with each other and with God. This Lent, let us work on forgiving, both ourselves and others. Let go of a deep-seeded grudge. Embrace your own fault or failure and let it be transformed. And let us remember that, no matter what our sin, God longs to have us return to relationship with God because God loves us so deeply and radically that ultimately God’s love will triumph and we will all be reconciled completely to ourselves, one another, and God. Amen.

---

[1] Matthew 2:16-18

[2] Romans 3:23

[3] Jones, Serene. Feminist Theory and Christian Theology p 100

[4] Jeremiah 29:11

Epiphany 3 Year C

The Lessons appointed for Use on the Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

The first sermon I ever gave was in my hometown, in the church where I had grown up and in which I had been confirmed. In a way, it was a homecoming for me – the picture of me as a six year-old in Cherub choir still hung in the hallway. But now I was grown up and expressing where I felt God was calling me. Jesus also returns home to Nazareth after his baptism by John the Baptist in Jordan and a subsequent battle with the devil in the wilderness. To his fellow townspeople, Jesus is different. Jesus has changed. He carries himself differently. He is filled with the power of the Spirit and has grown fully into the incarnation of God. Jesus has come into his own, and his mission to the people is beginning.

Epiphany is about incarnation, about God’s embodiment in Jesus Christ, and nowhere do we get more of a glimpse of that than in this passage from Isaiah that Jesus reads. If John 3:16 (For God so loved the world that he gave his only son…) is, as Luther said, the gospel, the good news, in miniature, then this passage from Isaiah is God in miniature. This is what God, and specifically God in Christ, is about: bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom and release to the captives, the physical healing of the sick, to relieve oppression, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee year.

The year of the Lord’s favor, or the Jubilee year, occurred every 50 years and was instituted through the Holiness Code in Leviticus. This year allowed everyone to more or less press the reset button. The land was required to lie fallow, permitting the earth to rest and regenerate itself. Land was returned to its original owners or their heirs, debts were forgiven, and slaves were freed. The Jubilee year put a halt to ever-increasing monetary debt and the cycle of constant acquisition of land and human property, maintaining a certain amount of equality among people. The Jubilee year was obviously a good and welcome year for those who were physically and economically oppressed.

And so Jesus proclaims to the Jews of Nazareth that God is FOR them and that he is the embodied bearer of this good news, sent by the Father and anointed by the Spirit. After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the church as the gathered body of Christ must take on what Jesus proclaimed, that God is FOR life and health and freedom. God is FOR access to healthy food and clean water and healthcare and medicine and safe housing and education. This is also what the church is about. As Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians, we do not all have to do everything. This portion of scripture seems particularly apt today as we gather for our annual meeting. We all have different gifts. Some of you are hands and some are eyes and some are feet. Some are teachers and some are cooks and some are administrators and some are musicians and some are lightbulb changers. Some are good with numbers and some are good with children. It takes all of us and all of our gifts to be The Church, not just a church, to be St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in East Nashville.

So as we gather to exercise and celebrate our gifts as they make up the church, let us not forget in whose image we were made, both individually and as a community. And may the Spirit of the Lord be upon us as we bring good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, freedom to the oppressed, sight to the blind, and the acceptable year of the Lord. May we be the body of Christ, working together, to bring about the good news that we preach with our lips and with our lives. Amen.

Advent 2 Year C

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the Second Sunday of Advent

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.

There is no place like home for the holidays, or so the song tells us. I, like many of you, I’m sure, have painstakingly decorated my house and home in preparation for Christmas. The nativity scene is out, the Advent calendars and stockings hung, and the angel placed just so atop the tree. Even though I will leave my home for Christmas and travel to be with family, I want my home to reflect that warm, cozy, holiday feeling. It is part of my preparation during this season of Advent, as much as any spiritual exercise, to ready myself and my home for Christmas.

John the Baptist knows about this kind of preparation, a preparing of home. John’s task is to prepare the way for the One who will bring about our final home, the One who will provide a home and a table to those who have no home: the sick, the widows and orphans, and the known sinners like the tax collectors. In the wilderness, without a home himself, the word of God comes to John, and John preaches the good news, the familiar refrain that Jesus will take up in his ministry as well: Repent. The Kingdom of God is at hand. In order to make a home for Jesus during this season of Advent, of preparation for Jesus’ birth and for Jesus’ second coming, repentance is essential.

Repentance is not the same as confession or doing penance and seeking forgiveness for a wrong action. Repentance is about change, a reversal or turning from. The Greek word is metanoios, which could be broken up and literally translated as “with thought”. Repentance is not about apologizing or making amends but continuing to do the same thing. Repentance requires action going against the status quo, which necessitates thought and intention.

I see a lot of room in public discourse and politics for serious consideration of repentance and its implications. What first comes to mind, especially in light of the upcoming meeting in Copenhagen, is our energy consumption and the effect of fossil fuels on the environment. I do not think the problem can be solved by companies purchasing carbon off-sets. More than likely, what will be required is a more radical change of mindset. Because change is hard, we try to console ourselves by taking small steps, but as a society, repentance and lifestyle change for our energy gluttony may become more of a necessity in the near future.

Likewise, since the recession started and as many people continue to lose their jobs, houses, and dignity, we as a society, and often the ones who are hit the hardest, have been forced to repent for an attitude and culture of consumption and greed. Though it seems doubtful that the institutions who were the worst offenders are repenting, there are movements towards being more conscious of consumption, particularly during the holidays. I have one friend who is trying to buy all of her gifts in a way that is eco-friendly, sustainable, or somehow gives back to society, such as purchasing gifts from Thistle Farms that were made by the women of Magdalene House who survived lives of violence, abuse, and prostitution.

Why repent? Why the need for this baptism of repentance? John says it is because God’s salvation and judgment are on their way. As a t-shirt that a former youth minister wore read, “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” While the timing of the full reign of God’s righteousness is only known to God, by our repentance and turning from sin, we participate in beginning to manifest the Kingdom of God among us. In the verses that follow the gospel lesson today, John explains what this repentance looks like. “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”[1] The repentance of tax collectors means not collecting anymore than the amount prescribed, and the repentance of soldiers means not extorting money or favors through force or blackmail. Well, I am not a tax collector or a soldier, but sure enough, I have more than one coat hanging in the hall closet and more than enough food in my pantry. While 1 of every 8 Americans goes hungry and forty-seven percent of Second Harvest Food Bank’s clients are children, I know that I have access to a glut of nutritious food.

During the holiday season, there are a lot of opportunities to give and share the wealth and abundance with which God has blessed us. The Salvation Army ringers are out in force, and some families make a tradition out of adopting a child or family from an Angel Tree. Our children here at St. Ann’s just wrapped up a food drive that people contributed to. While the season can bring out our generosity or perhaps our guilt, true repentance is not about the fleeting feeling of having done something nice for someone else but is about a change in perception and living. It is about preparing the way of the Lord, of making a home for the coming of Christ by clothing and feeding those who have no home, whether they are lacking a physical structure in which to live or a place of security and happiness.

Preparation during the season of Advent involves more than stringing the lights on the tree and wrapping the presents that will be opened on Christmas morning. As baptized Christians, we are called to repent and work together with God for the coming of God’s kingdom here on earth. At that time, as Luke quotes Isaiah 40, all flesh, the whole world, shall see the salvation of God. Repenting and preparing the way of the Lord is a foretaste of that glorious salvation that is the source of our life and hope in God. Amen.

---

[1] Luke 3:11