November 27, 2019

Gratitude.

That word is especially appropriate on this day before Thanksgiving. Gratitude and Thankfulness go hand in hand as we reflect on everything for which we are grateful.

I am thankful and grateful for a whole litany of things: My wife and daughter; the parish I serve; friends I have made here on the east coast; modern communications that allow me to remain in contact with family and friends on the west coast; a hobby I continue to love; all of the various people who keep the ministries and outreach of Saint John's active and vital; a good and caring Vestry; a good medical team; and the list goes on.

One of the challenges, though, of listing all of these thanksgivings is falling into the trap of the Pharisee at the temple who prayed, “Thank God I am not like those other people.”

Giving thanks and being appreciative is one thing; seeing those as a blessing from God because you are better in some way than those other people is something else entirely.

So how might we avoid that “more blessed than thou” attitude?

What if, for every blessing you count, you counter that with an action that looks beyond yourself? In other words, if you're thankful for having enough food to eat every day, make a donation to the food bank, to Micah's backpack, or to Community Cafe. If you're thankful for having enough clothes, make a donation to places where clothing is needed. If you're thankful for having a roof over your head and safe place to sleep, make a donation to the Saint John's Shelter, to REACH, or to another agency that works to house the homeless.

This Thanksgiving we give thanks for all the blessings we have received, for that is meet and right so to do; but let us not forget or neglect to see how our blessings can be used to bless others in need, for that is our bounden duty.

Blessings to you and yours this Thanksgiving,

November 20, 2019

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I ran across this saying in a little periodical some years ago. It struck me as particularly appropriate for us right now.

Our pledge campaign is wrapping up and our various commissions are working on their budgets for 2020. The Vestry will be working in conjunction with our Treasurer as we chart our financial course for the upcoming year. And all of that will be presented to the congregation at our Annual Meeting.

Our bishop has, over the past several years, put forth his vision for a Community of Love in the diocese. I have touched on that in a variety of places since I've been here at Saint John's. What does it mean to be a community of love? How do we interact with each other in that community? How do we interact with those outside of this particular community? As St. Paul wrote, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

In other words, love takes work, and it often takes people looking in the same direction.

In this beloved community of Saint John's, we express our love of God and others through our mission statement to Worship, Welcome, Serve, and Encourage. Love is a verb, and so are those four words. With those four words we practice love in a variety of ways, and we practice love by looking outward together in the same direction.

In our Worship, we look outward from ourselves toward the holiness of God. In our Welcome, we look outward to those who are seeking a spiritual home. In our Service, we look outward to those who are in need physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially. And in our Encouragement, we look outward to those whose only positive interaction may come from us.

Our pledge campaign is not simply a plea for money to keep the doors open and heat on. Our pledge campaign, in reality, is our chance to individually commit to being an active part of this beloved community. It is a place where we as individuals can express our active love by looking outward together as we work to make the kingdom of God a very real presence in the here and now.

If you have not yet completed and turned in your pledge card, please do so – not so much that we can set the 2020 budget, but more so we can all work to strengthen this beloved community as we look outward from God.

Blessings,

November 13, 2019

“I believe . . . that our humanity, the 'who we are,' is often laid bare and expressed in the inconvenient actions and time-consuming pursuits we undertake.” – Barry Mano, Publisher, Referee Magazine

I receive Referee Magazine every month, and every month it includes a Publisher's Memo. Think of this as the Rector's Ramblings for the officiating world. And, more often than not, he usually writes about something that can be applied equally to both officiating and the Church.

As I read this particular Memo, I was again struck by the similarities between the two.

Our lives, it seems, are driven by convenience. We run to the store in our cars to pick up a box of butter that we forgot when we were grocery shopping. If dinner can't be made in a crock pot on most weekdays, we scrounge through the refrigerator to find enough stuff we classify as a meal. Microwaves are the most used appliance in the kitchen. We get our news in headlines because it's not convenient to read the whole article.

A lot of this push for convenience comes into play because we seem to be more busy than we ever were and we just don't seem to have the time to take the time.

In his Memo, Mr. Mano refers to things such as carving wood, making repairs to cars or appliances, taking a long hike, and such. These are things, he says, that take time and offer a sense of satisfaction.

Which brings me back to church. Attending church is not convenient. It requires a person to get up early on their day off and commit to being in a place at a particular time that takes time and may offer a sense of satisfaction or fulfillment or completion or whatever word you find descriptive.

Committing to worshiping God takes time and is certainly not easy in this convenience-driven world. Committing to daily prayer can be difficult and also takes time. But like anything worthwhile – a friendship, a marriage, a hobby – these are not things of convenience. These things are difficult, but also an essential part of our being.

May you make the time to do that which is difficult, and may your soul be fed by doing so.

Blessings,

November 6, 2019

“Would you be willing to serve . . .”

And with those words, or something similar to them, the Rev. Ramelle McCall asked me to consider being on the team behind all of the liturgy for General Convention 2021. If you aren't yet aware, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church will be held in Baltimore from June 30 – July 9, 2021.

Fr. McCall serves as Priest in Charge of Holy Trinity, Baltimore, and as Urban Missioner for the Diocese of Maryland. He was appointed as Vice Chair to the GC21 Worship Committee, and he is working on putting a team together to pull this off.

One of the things he did was to ask me to serve as part of this body. For those of you who know me well, you know that I am an introvert and really dislike large groups. In fact, I was hoping to basically hide out in Hagerstown where it might have been possible to be overlooked for anything having to do with GC21. That didn't happen.

However, if I'm going to get asked to serve, it might as well be on a committee in which I have a good skill set (liturgy) as opposed to evaluating some resolution on the efficacy of canine baptism (I'm kidding).

But, like it or not, this is part of what I am called to do. In the ordination rite the Bishop says, “Now you are called to work as a pastor, priest, and teacher, together with your bishop and fellow presbyters, and to take your share in the councils of the Church.” In other words, remember that the Church is bigger than the particular parish you serve; because sometimes even priests need to be nudged out of their pews.

As we come to the end of the calendar year, this is something for which we should all remember: the Church is bigger than our pew, it's bigger than our parish, it's bigger than our diocese, and it's even bigger than our denomination. We are part of the Body of Christ – a living, breathing, active organism. If all we do is sit, then that body will eventually atrophy and die.

You may not be called to serve on a committee for General Convention, but there are plenty of areas around Saint John's for which you can serve. As some of our members begin to grow older and are not able to give as much time physically as they used to, or are in need of a long overdue rest, others need to step up to keep this part of the body healthy and active.

So, would you be willing to serve?

October 30, 2019

“Oops.” – Almost anyone at one time or another

Every once in awhile I have some “free” time on my hands in the office. For one reason or another, the schedule works out where what I normally have scheduled for the week doesn't happen, thereby freeing up the time to do something else . . . like clean off my desk and/or catch up on my reading.

Today I worked on the table in my office as well as the inbox for one of my e-mail accounts. The table got cleaned off to a respectable level, and the in box got down to a grand total of 9 (NINE!!) emails, down from something like 2065.

I basically went through the list one page of 50 at a time, scanned through to see if it looked like it was anything important, and hit the mass delete button. Obviously e-mails from 2016 and 2017 were easy targets. The ones from 2018 received a little slower look, and the ones from 2019 received serious consideration as to whether or not I should keep it.

E-mails to me are a lot like the closets in a church. You don't want to examine them too closely for fear of discovering something that should have been dealt with years ago. But you also don't want to go and throw it all away without taking at least a glance at it because you “might need it someday.” I thought that I might need some of those e-mails someday.

But, really, how many e-mails from two years ago and beyond does a person really need to save?

So I screwed up my technological courage and began deleting page after page after page.

And I may have deleted one or two that I probably shouldn't have. Oops.

If you sent me an e-mail and think I've ignored you, it may be because it fell into the delete pile by mistake. Feel free to contact me again, and I'll get back to you. But I have a feeling that none of the ones that were deleted are ones that we couldn't live without.

As we move into the colder weather, take a look through your closets and identify those things that you carry with you because “you might need it someday.” Chances are you can probably live without it. Screw up your courage and donate that item to the appropriate place – clothing sites, the Re-Use Store, etc. Because sometimes it's necessary to have a planned Oops in our lives as we reach out to others.

Blessings,

October 23, 2019

“One cannot become holy all at once.”

The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection

The practice of holiness, like anything else worthwhile, takes dedication and perseverance. The journey to holiness should be focused on the journey, not the destination. If we only focus on the destination of being holy, then we might assume we are already there.

But we are not there. I'm not sure we are ever there. But we can continue on the journey. We can continue to make small steps toward holiness.

On All Saints' Sunday we will have a baptism. When that person is baptized into the household of God, he will not become holy, but it will be his first steps toward becoming holy. His journey toward holiness has just begun.

That journey will include intentional time with God. It will include learning about the faith. It will include making Sunday worship a priority. It will include times of study. It will include learning how to put “loving your neighbor” into practice. It will include so much more that I can't write down here. But maybe most importantly, it will include learning to not take his faith for granted but to put effort and time into becoming a disciple of Christ.

How are you doing on your own journey to holiness? Would you like to become more spiritually “fit?”

Like physical exercise where nobody begins by lifting 200 lbs or running 10 miles, nobody becomes holy all at once; we need to develop good habits and focus on the journey. Where to start? You could start by committing to read Compline from the BCP a few nights a week with a goal of reading it every night. You could commit to reading one chapter of the Gospels each day – at one chapter a day, starting tonight, you could have all of Matthew, Mark, and Luke read by December 29. You could commit to praying at each meal. The list is endless.

And, like with physical exercise, the more often you do it, the easier it becomes and the more you can increase the commitment.

We cannot become holy all at once; but what is stopping us from becoming holy a little bit at a time?

Blessings,

October 9, 2019

The Beloved Community

What makes up a Beloved Community? Or, more appropriately, what are the hallmarks of a Beloved Community? The first, obviously, is that it is based in love. Not the starry, infatuated, emotional kind of first loves, but the kind that hopes all things, bears all things, endures all things. The second is that it is based in gospel justice, it proclaims the love of God to the world, it addresses that which is counter to the mission of God, and it attempts to do so in such a way that, hopefully, opens our eyes to see where and how God is working in the world around us.

Invariably, though, when the community of God meets the powers of the world, things will be said that offend certain people. The prophets offended kings. John the Baptist and Jesus offended Scribes, Pharisees, temple authorities, and other political leaders. Paul offended parishioners in Corinth and Galatia. Bishop Paul Jones of Utah, a recognized saint of the Episcopal church, offended church leaders when he spoke out against WWI. Bonhoeffer offended any number of Germans. Martin Luther King, Jr., offended the white majority. And, no doubt, I offended some people by calling out the president's anti-Christian behavior.

As people of the world, disagreements happen and people are offended. As Christians living in the world, we are no different – which is why I'm convinced that Jesus promised to be in the midst of us when two or three are gathered together. The difference, as I see it, is that the world has moved to a win-at-all-costs mentality, regardless of how harmful that may be. In contrast, the Beloved Community is continually working to align kingdom goals, gospel justice, and the baptismal covenant with our daily living. Sometimes that means pointing out inconsistencies with how we say we will live versus our actual behaviors. And sometimes that means people will be offended.

God, the Church, and her ministers have, at times, disturbed, disrupted, and offended the world. Thomas Kennedy did such a thing right here when he proposed removing the requirement that people holding public office be Christians in what came to be known as “The Jew Bill.”

I have offended people in the past, and I will probably offend people in the future. But those words spoken and written are never spoken or written with an intent to offend; rather, they are offered to make people aware of situations that are contrary to my understanding of gospel ideals, the mission of God, and of the Beloved Community.

As part of that community, our challenge is to confront the disparate goals of God and world in such a way that generates open and honest conversations without resorting to threats or personal attacks. In other words, if we can bear and endure with each other in all things, then we will have the foundation of a Beloved Community.

Blessings,