February 28, 2018

One Day at a Time

Every Tuesday after our staff meeting, Mark and I sit down together and discuss upcoming services. We go over the music, make sure we have the correct readings, and talk about any other issues that may come up, or that came up in the past, so that the liturgy of St. John's reflects the dignity and mystery of our worship of God. We try to live into the words of the psalmist who wrote, “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; let the whole earth tremble before him.”

Yesterday we went over the services for Holy Week and Easter Day . . . all of them.

We began with the upcoming choral Evensong service scheduled for March 11 at 5 pm. Following that we went through Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, the Great Vigil, and Easter Day. Each service had notes from the previous year for us to consider. Each service had a few changes here and there that we needed to straighten out. It took well over an hour, but we are that much more prepared for Holy Week.

As we worked our way through those services, I was reminded yet again that the only way we get to Easter is to go through Holy Week. The only way we get to resurrection is to die. The only way we get to the empty cross is to nail Jesus to it in the first place. The only way we get to Easter is one day at a time.

We can't rush the journey. We can't magically snap our fingers and arrive at the point where we sing, “His cross stands empty to the sky.” Because this isn't magic. This is life and this is our faith. If we sing the above, we must also sing, “Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?”

Our faith isn't the faith of wish fulfillment. Our faith is a daily journey with Jesus toward the cross and, ultimately, resurrection. But the cross stands in our path.

As we journey through Lent, try not to get caught up in focusing on the end result. Instead, focus on the journey that lasts 40 days. Because while the end will come and Easter will arrive, the journey is meant to be made one day at a time. And it is often in our daily journey where we have the most impact.

Blessings,

February 21, 2018

Pain

Pain is something that I've become very accustomed to over the past two months. I've had to deal with the pain of the initial injury, both the ensuing nerve pain and numbness in my forearm and hand, and the chronic shoulder pain. In the immediate aftermath of the accident I was unable to use my right arm and hand. This necessitated using my left arm and hand, as well as making other bodily adjustments. Those adjustments led to their own type of pain in my back and (no pun intended) neck.

I have been attending physical therapy sessions for a few weeks now. Some of that pain has disappeared, some has lessened, and some still reminds me that I am dealing with a major injury.

During my PT sessions I have had some interesting conversations with the people in the office, a lot of which have been religious in nature. My therapist told me a story about a missionary in India who worked with a leper colony. Because this disease attacks the nerves (among other things), the people would often reach into an open fire to retrieve a piece of food that had fallen. While there was physical damage to the hand, the person was not able to feel it.

“The point,” he said, “was that pain is useful.”

The pain in my shoulder is constant. But there is also additional pain when I try to move it too far or do too much. Both types of pain are useful. The first in that I am reminded I need to heal. The second to remind me to be patient and not do more than I should during my recovery.

But we also need to realize that not all pain is useful. While my shoulder pain is telling me how far I can go, my chronic back pain has no such useful benefits other than reminding me that my back is somehow defective. The pain of a breakup, the death of a loved one, or the loss of a job, to name a few, are painful experiences that seem to be of no use other than providing a certain type of pain.

The pain of family and friends of mass shootings, or any shooting for that matter, may not seem to be useful in the least. But there have been new calls for a new way to talk about our country's idolization and fetishization of firearms. So maybe that recent pain will provide useful after all.

We all experience pain in one form or another in our lives. Hopefully we can find a way to see what that pain might be telling us. Or, short of that, be able to have some kind of assistance while we experience it.

But no matter what type of pain you may be experiencing, I hope you don't have to go through it alone.

Blessings

February 7, 2018

Silence

There are a lot of aspects to silence. There is the silence that comes when all noise stops. There is the not-quite total silence of the forest. I worked a game last year where the home team, up by five, allowed the visitors to score the winning touchdown with 6 seconds left in the game. The silence was deafening. There was the silence of the Wednesday Word itself as I was off due to my injury. There was the sheer silence experienced by Elijah outside the cave. And there are many other forms of silence if we sit and think about them.

One piece of silence we should pay particular attention to is the silence before and during worship.

If you think back to my arrival here, one of the things I added to the liturgy were periods of silence. At 8 a.m., we use it immediately after the announcements and before the liturgy officially begins. In both services there are moments of silence before the Collect and between the readings. A longer period follows after the sermon, and another one between the call to confession and its recitation.

Silence prepares us for what is to come, as well as opening us up to listen for God. So if silence prepares us and opens us, then the very first place for us to incorporate silence is before any worship service – whether that be the Sunday Eucharist, the Wednesday mid-week Eucharist, or Evening Prayer.

Lent begins next week. This is the time of adding a discipline to our life by either taking on or giving up something. Ideally this Lenten discipline leads to a lasting change that helps us present ourselves as holy and blameless before the Lord.

This year may I suggest taking on the discipline of silence before our worship services? This means holding conversations downstairs or farther away from the main entrance, speaking only quietly as you enter the church, and spending time sitting and/or praying in silence before worship begins.

To help facilitate this, Mark King, our minister of music, will begin the organ voluntaries for both services several minutes earlier than we have in the past. It just may be that not only will you find this helpful, but our guests may also find this time of quiet a lace of holy centeredness.

As the psalmist wrote, “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.”