Ray's Oct. 23 commentary

The first reading is Deuteronomy 34:1-12

We began reading the story of Moses, back on Sunday, August 21, from the first chapter of the Book of Exodus. Today we come to the end of the story of Moses – to the story of the death of Moses – in the last chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy.

This is the ending of the fifth book of the Bible – the ending of the five books which are the Torah for our Jewish brothers and sisters.

In the timeline or chronology of the first five books of the Bible, the people of Israel have been out in the wilderness for forty years since they were freed from slavery in Egypt.

They are within sight of the promised land, about to enter the promised land.

Moses, who God called to be the leader of the people, who God made use of as God’s instrument to bring the people into freedom, is not going to enter the promised land. That will be for another leader, Joshua.

The people of Israel had been slaves in Egypt, and over the forty years in the wilderness they had been formed as a free people. Not a perfect people. Not a people who didn’t make mistakes. But they had learned the skills needed to survive and be free. They were formed as a people.

So God will form you and me as disciples of Jesus – our primary identity.

Moses laid hands on Joshua, the leader who would bring the people into the promised land. The bishop will ordain Ben Varnum to the transitional diaconate on November 1 here in St. Chrysostom’s. The moment of ordination is when the bishops lays his (or her) hands on the ordinand’s head. This is the ancient custom directly out of the Hebrew Bible.

Joshua is described as full of the spirit of wisdom. So may we all be. I remember that in Thomas Aquinas the first gift of the Holy Spirit is wisdom. This comes from Isaiah 11:2 where wisdom is the first of the list of gifts of the Spirit, the list which became the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The last verses of the first lesson are a wonderful tribute to Moses. For me the most moving phrase is that the Lord knew Moses face to face: Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face is the translation in the King James Version.

When we come before God, God is unseen, as though hidden in the cloud, that great image from these readings from the Hebrew Bible. Yet we know the face of God in Jesus Christ. And a great theme of these readings is the presence of God with us – unseen but with us. Who loves us.

Today’s Gospel reading is from Matthew 22:34-46.

We are coming close to the end of our reading from Matthew’s Gospel. Our last reading will be on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, the Last Sunday after Pentecost from Matthew 25, the great passage that when we feed the hungry or give water to the thirsty, or visit the sick or the prisoner, or welcome the stranger, or clothe the naked, we serve Christ himself.

And in chapter 26 we begin the story of the cross of Jesus. Johann Sebastian Bach began the St. Matthew Passion with the first story in chapter 26, the anointing of Jesus. Then comes the Last Supper and the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and then the arrest of Jesus. This is only four chapters away. Three chapters to our final reading from Matthew (in Advent we begin reading from Mark).

In today’s great passage Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest and Jesus gives the summary of the law, quoting two verses from Deuteronomy. I know by heart the King James translation, found in the Book of Common Prayer, page 324:

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great
commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the Law and the Prophets.

And here is a clear call to us to follow Jesus as his disciples on his way of self-giving love: loving God and loving one another.

Poured Out

Sept. 25 sermon on Philippians 2:1-13

Susan is a mother of four.  Every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, she piles a table with food, corrals her kids in one room, wrangles them into seats, and loads their plates.  Once everybody is served, she wanders around the table with a milk jug in her hand, filling empty glasses, topping off half-full glasses, cutting everybody off at thirds because milk is expensive, and these kids drink it like water.  Susan never sits.  When all is done and the children run away, she clears the table and gets down to dishes.  She eats leftovers as she works.  If you knew her, you would see that she is tired.  You'd be able to tell that something is missing, something is too much, some piece of Susan is getting lost in the shuffle of her life.  She tells herself, "This is just how it is - I've got a lot of kids, I've got a lot to do," but she knows other mothers, other fathers who seem to take it all in stride - or, at least they laugh a little more than she does.  All around her the world grinds on, and Susan feels as though she's being poured out, day by day, like that gallon of milk. 

Depending on where she goes looking for it, Susan might not find a lot of help in the Christian tradition where "pouring out" is concerned.  The idea that self-effacement, self-erasure, or self-abnegation is required to be a disciple is one that's been taught and preached in many times and places.  There are popular understandings of the idea: the lyrics to a catchy devotional song repeat, "Less of me and more of him."  A famous hymn gets at this idea some with the chorus, "Have thine own way" and the image of a person being like malleable clay.  The apostle Paul wrote of himself, more than once, "I am being poured out like a drink offering.” 

It's often around Paul's letters that issues about self-sacrifice come up.  Paul writes to a lot of people that are being persecuted, so that accounts for some of it.   But Paul's christology - his teaching about who Jesus is and how Jesus works - can be hard to understand.  Today, he writes to a small church in Greece, and recites his own hymn that describes what it's like to have the mind of Christ:  "he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness ..."  Paul continues, "he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." 

For many people who first heard Paul’s words this song wasn't just telling a story about Jesus.  It solved a huge theological problem.  The very earliest Christians may have known people who actually knew Jesus, but they didn't have any sort of a developed way of thinking about how it was that he was God.  They relied on people like Paul, on the stories about Jesus that became our Gospels, and on their experiences of the Holy Spirit in worship to help them understand who this man was and what he meant for them.  So here, in this song, was a clue: Jesus emptied himself and took on human form.  He purged himself of all divine attributes like knowing everything, seeing everything, or having all power, and took on the limitations of human knowledge, human sight, and human power.  In doing so, he suffered.  He poured himself out.  He became something other than what he was and gave up what he had a right to in order to save us.  If you follow this - and, quite frankly, we're diving in to some deep stuff here - it means that Jesus didn't simply die once on the cross to release us from our sins ... he sacrificed his essential self at his birth by being incarnated and becoming a person.

So that's a very clever way to solve a metaphysical quandary.  You pour out the God, fill up on human, and you've got a God-man.  It explained how two such opposite things as divine and human being could be united in one person.  It explained confusing things, like how Jesus didn't save himself from being killed. 

But it sends you down a tricky road if you're looking to be a disciple - because Paul is telling us to be like this, right?  Paul wants us to have the same mind in us that was in Christ.  So here begins not only a theological tradition - a particular way of thinking about how Jesus is God - but an attitude tradition.  Here begins a way of thinking about how Christians should regard themselves and their suffering that has hard consequences.  For it suggests to be like Jesus we have to empty ourselves - we have to pour ourselves out.  And if, for Jesus, that meant that he sacrificed his identity, giving up his divine self in order to live for us, then how can we be concerned with maintaining our selves?  How can you count yourself as a person worth preservation or protection if self-emptying, being poured out, is the defining pattern of life in Christ?  

This is a critique that feminist and liberation theologians who write about poor or oppressed groups of people have leveled against the idea of Jesus' self-emptying because it's been used in the past to keep people "in their place."  You want to fight for freedom and equality?  Well Jesus took the form of a servant.  You want to think more highly of yourself?  Jesus humbled himself.  You can even set the big issues of marginalized groups of people aside, and we all know somebody whose personal faith tells them that it's ok if they suffer because Jesus suffered; or they won't stick up for themselves because Jesus was lowly and meek.  There are Susan’s in this world who brush aside this horrifying feeling that they are losing themselves because nothing has convinced them that they are worth finding. 

It may not seem like this is something a gathering of people like us would have such trouble with.  Mainline Christians - people who are not Roman Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant Fundamentalists - don't really go in for self-abnegation or self-obliteration these days.  A lot of us may even be here this morning because of that.  I, for one, was drawn to a tradition like ours because I hated feeling like I was such a lump of clay, needing to be molded into another shape.  I hated being guilty all of the time and having the sense that I should be poured out and something else should be poured into me.

But here, this gathering of friends and neighbors, this larger community outside these walls?  We just do self-emptying a little differently.  We pour ourselves out every day like drink offerings on all kinds of altars.  Ask the attorney crouched over a brief at 3:00 AM whether she knows about self-emptying.  Ask the parent for whom "stay-at-home" means board meetings and sports and fundraisers and committees and rarely setting foot inside the four walls of a house.  Ask the analyst and trader as their stomachs plummet with the economy.  Ask the person who worries that she has to perform well enough at work or at parties or who worries that he has to look good enough and have good enough things in order to be loved whether they know what it feels like to have self pouring out of you like milk, or to feel self draining out of you like water. 

In August, I attended a conference where a presenter told the story of sitting with a group of leaders of huge churches, all of whom confessed that their personal lives were falling apart.  They found it hard to pray, they worked all the time, and they couldn't remember why they had gotten into ministry in the first place.  They were depleted, completely drained.  These men and women had vision, direction, talent, prestige, money - and they were totally bereft. 

At the same conference, an international aid worker told the story of a pastor in Ethiopia during a time of state persecution of the church.  Like the apostle Paul, he had no family but wandered the countryside tending to these little churches, taking whatever food or money was given to him.  He was captured one day while preaching and thrown in prison.  Three times he was scheduled to be executed, and each time the electrical apparatus failed, so finally he was released and banished from the village.  On his way out of town, this aid worker met him, and knowing that the man had just escaped death, asked where he was going.  "I'm on my way to preach a funeral," the pastor nodded, and locked arms with another friend as they took off over the hill.  This pastor was wounded, threatened, probably physically hungry - but he was full. 

And that's the thing.  He was full.  The Ethiopian pastor was living in an immediate and perspective-enhancing situation and was being spiritually fed in a way that allowed him to go out, day by day, and offer himself to the world without losing himself.  He was a character - he was full and vibrant, not erased or effaced, and yet he gave of himself, he donated his spirit freely.  He could pour himself out because he was constantly drinking something in.

That's the thing about Jesus' self-emptying, too.  The idea that Jesus sacrificed a part of himself to be like us results in a tidy theological package, but shies away from the bold claim of our faith that Jesus offered his whole self on behalf of humanity.  His self-emptying was a giving of his whole self, God giving everything for us.  Jesus didn't empty himself of God; he poured all of himself out in love and service for us because he was drinking freely from his Father all of the time. 

So then there's us, and our self-emptying.  We may not always feel like Jesus calls us to self-abnegation, but our lives often look like we're in a race to pour ourselves out.  We work hard, we meet all sorts of obligations, we keep up the pace and give time, money, and energy to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways.  But we can't pour ourselves out without drinking something in.  To be sure, God always gives us the grace we need to keep going - but that's manna for the day, which you can't store up.  That's water from the rock, which is a miracle - a temporary solution to the problem of thirst.  We're come here, to places like this, because we're thirsty, and because we're hungry, and we need something that lasts.  Week after week we come back because we believe that in these books and these prayers and this music and this food and this fellowship we will find living water and bread from heaven.  And we must.  We must find it here.  God has brought us together to feed us, and being a disciple doesn't mean starving yourself to emptiness - it means eating God's food while your appetite for it grows and grows and grows. 

God doesn’t want you to hoard yourself or measure yourself out sparingly.  God does want all of you – but God wants you to give yourself for the things that give you life; and God wants you, not the husk of you that’s left after you’ve been emptied out.  And many of us probably want that too: we want to give ourselves to God, or at least we want to start to understand what that look likes.  But it’s our selves we give to God, standing up like the resurrection people we are.  There is a message of comfort for everybody who feels like Susan, that even when you lose yourself you’re never lost by God.  But there’s a message of hope that is stronger: there is food and drink that will keep you full, and when you find it, you can give as freely as you receive. 

(The Rev. Danielle Thompson, preacher)

Bread that the Lord has given (September 18 sermon by Raymond Webster)

Exodus 16The people are free. In our first reading today (Exodus 16:2-15), we find the Hebrew people on the other side of the Red Sea. Free.

We have been reading these past Sundays the stories of how God acted in history to deliver the Jewish people, to save them slavery. It is the Passover story, the formative story of Judaism. We have been remembering these stories, and they echo in all sorts of ways in the stories of Jesus, which we also remember. And as we remember, God draws near to us and speaks God’s Word.

We have remembered how God spoke from the Burning Bush and sent Moses to stand before Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go” – those words of such importance in the history of Chicago and Illinois and our country -- biblical words fundamental to the abolition of slavery. In classic Christian theology, we believe God has created each human being and each is of infinite value – and the church is called to be a voice for the value and God given rights – “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” As Moses spoke God’s Word “Let my people go” the church in our time is to speak that Word, God’s Word of the value and dignity of each one.

And then how Pharaoh refused to let the people go, and God sent the ten plagues on Egypt.

And then how God had them sacrifice a lamb and sprinkle the blood on the doorposts so the angel would pass over the houses of the Hebrew slaves the night of that most terrible of the ten plagues, the last and most terrible, the killing of the first born in Egypt. And then Pharaoh let them go.

And then changed his mind, and went after them, and the Hebrews found themselves at the shore of the Red Sea – trapped, stuck – and God parted the waters and they walked through on dry land. The Egyptian horsemen followed, and the waters closed over them.

And the people stood on the further shore, free. God had delivered the people. We read this story last Sunday, the great passage we read every year at the Easter Vigil (the one lesson we are required to read at the Easter Vigil) for it looks to how God acted in history in Jesus Christ to save us from sin and death. And last Sunday we also read the great song of thankfulness of Moses and Miriam – I love the detail that Miriam took up her tambourine to sing -- God has thrown the horse and its rider into the sea.

And today we come to the very next story. The people are free. Saved by God. Safe. Free. And what happens?

They wake up to the fact that they are out in the middle of nowhere, totally ill equipped to live in the wilderness, unprepared for this survival exercise they find themselves on.

And they complained. OK, they were hungry. Always good to begin with our real needs and who we really are and what we really need. They were human beings who were hungry, and had no food and not a clue as to how to get any.

They would learn how to get food. Over the next forty years wandering in the wilderness they would learn. A whole new generation or two would be raised up who learned how to survive. Their parents had learned how to survive as slaves. Never downplay the skills and sacrifices needed to survive in what must have been often degrading and terrifying situations. But now they were embarking on a whole new training course as a people.

For the moment, where they honestly were was scared and angry and clueless and they complained.

And God who saved them, provided food. I have no idea how God did this – I know what quails are, and they appeared all over the place at night, but the manna is a mysterious substance. Well, what manna was, this was not the way God was going to do it over the long run. This was a miracle of feeding just for the moment. There is a detail in the story that I love -- the detail that if they tried to keep the manna – take a doggy bag home for the next day – it would go bad. I love the earthy King James Version that someone kept and it bred worms and stank. (Exodus 16:20) This was not something to store into barns, there weren’t any barns, this wasn’t for the long run, this was not how it was going to be.

The miracle for the long run would be the people learning how to feed themselves, how to be free and feed themselves. God would inspire them to do that, inspire their leaders to learn how to do that – maybe Moses’ long time as a shepherd precisely out in the middle of nowhere gave him knowledge and skills for teaching the people how to get food, how to take care of animals who would provide food.

And God who provided food in the wilderness would also provide the deepest feeding we need – the rich bread of the Word we find in all the ensuing stories and poetry and hymns of the Scriptures. God would feed. And form God’s people by God’s Word, by feeding them, feeding us, feeding us today.

God who had acted in history to free them and save them, would now form them.

God will form us as disciples of Jesus

Just so, God who has acted in history in Jesus Christ to save us, will form us as disciples of Jesus.

You may well say, whoa, wait a minute. Did you just say I am a disciple of Jesus? I thought that was Peter and John and Matthew, two thousand years ago.

Yes, it was. They were the first disciples. Jesus called them to follow him.

And I believe deeply God calls you to follow Jesus just as truly.

God calls us to follow Jesus day by day on his way of self-giving love, as his disciples.

By the Holy Spirit dwelling in each one of us, God gives each one rich gifts for discipleship. Gives you rich gifts.

I always remember that in Thomas Aquinas the first gift of the Holy Spirit is wisdom, the wisdom to know we are loved by God, the wisdom to know how to love.

What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?

I am trying to make a list of what makes a disciple. Perhaps it is my French Cartesian side.

There is a whole movement in parishes of our diocese at this time to make a simple list of the basics of being an Anglican. I am a big fan of this movement and the clergy and parishes involved and of the Rev. Clarence Langdon is who is sort of godfather of this movement! And this list is my contribution, although I am quick to add that what is on the list is from the Bible – the Bible is on the list! – and from the Prayer Book and our tradition.

Making a list, checking it more than twice, in order to invite you to the discipleship God call you to embrace. The mission of our parish is to make disciples. So what does discipleship mean?

Being a disciple means listening to the Word of God. Listening to the Bible read here in church, listening to what the preacher hears, listening to what you hear within you. I believe the Holy Spirit dwelling inside you (that inner place within your mind and heart is the Temple of the Spirit) will light up images and words and passages. Or give you things to wrestle with, like Jacob wrestling through the night with God.

One of the great principles of the Reformation was to put the Bible in the hands of the laity, to read and meditate on and pray about, and listen for God’s Word to you of how much God loves you. May the Holy Spirit give you light and wisdom to glimpse that and trust it. And offer God thanks and love in return.

Being a disciple means coming regularly to Holy Communion. Here God feeds us, both in the bread, and in the entire liturgy – music and prayers and word. Here the bread is placed in our hands as a tangible sign that God is with us, present with us, loving us with the love we see in Jesus – the love that is the bread of my life.

Being a disciple means regularly asking God’s forgiveness which we do in the prayer of confession and being forgiven.

On this day we remember the Hebrew people out in the wilderness without a clue as to how to feed themselves, we remember the great theme running through the Hebrew Bible and into the Gospel teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, the consistent theme of helping those who are hungry, feeding the widow and orphan, feeding the helpless. An essential part of being a disciple of Jesus is helping others – serving Christ as we serve those in need (Matthew 25). May we have wisdom and vision to broaden that to the myriad ways human beings can be helped, from shelters to hospices to hospitals to schools.

One of the mysteries of human life is that when we help others we are fed ourselves.

Discipleship means our ethical and political choices. In our tradition we value freedom to make those choices as a positive spiritual value – we are called to be mature free disciples, with consciences formed by worship and prayer and reading the Word of God. The Holy Spirit living within us will guide our consciences. In a modern democracy, it is not for the church organization to tell people who to vote for, but it is for the preacher to say that these decisions are part of our discipleship. Part of our responsibility. And our tradition tells us we are free to make those decisions. This obviously opens us to diversity of opinion in the church which I believe is healthy in a free society and church.

Being a disciple means discerning, listening for, looking for what God wants us to do and to be. How am I obedient to the call to follow Jesus on his way of self-giving love as a free and mature person?

Being a disciples mean taking our share in building the community of the church – gathered by God here around Jesus’ table and altar. Sharing joys and sorrows, welcoming the newcomer.

Being a disciple means our giving.

It means building a home, whether single or with four kids – a place of refuge and renewal, a place of hospitality. (When I say that, I am using “home” in its widest sense – many urban people practice hospitality within their residence, others elsewhere – that is simply a personal choice). May the place we live be sometimes a place of prayer. Remember that in the Sermon on the Mount here in Matthew Jesus said when you pray go into your room and shut the door.

Being a disciple means finding places to be still and quiet and pray. It can be anywhere. God will be there with you, hidden as though within the cloud, yes. And truly there.

Being a disciples means taking care of oneself – discipleship can be a long distance run (and I pray it will be for you). Discipleship may mean laying down our life, as Bonhoeffer did, like a fire fighter. If that hour comes may God give us courage and strength. God may also call us to the long distance run. On the way we need to find the things that feed us – the things we have a sense God makes use of to feed us. The beauty of the world – art, music, poetry – sport, running along the lakefront in the early morning. You are free to make your own list, find your own things, free to be open to the Spirit leading you to what feeds, to things that feed you, to things by which God feeds you.

How much God loves you. Loves you and me and invites us to a way of life – our mission is to extend the invitation to this way of life. To follow Jesus as his disciple day by day. And to trust at the very center of who we are – faith at the center -- God’s love for us in him, love which nothing can break.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, September 18, 2011, the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.)

image found at http://fineartamerica.com/featured/3-bread-from-heaven-nigel-wynter.html)

A tall order (July 31 sermon)

(The readings for the day were from Genesis 32, where Jacob wrestles with God; Romans 9, where Paul wrestles with his understanding of the church; and Matthew 14 where Jesus feeds the crowds)

A few weeks ago I got an email from a friend, which said, "I'm reading Howard Schultz's book, and it reminds me of the church." Now if you don't recognize his name right away, believe me - you'll be surprised to find out who Howard Schultz is. He's not a minister, or a professor, or a self-help guru. Howard Schultz is the founder and CEO of Starbucks. The coffee company. And he hits the nail on the head when it comes to the problem of the church in our time.

He's not trying to do this, of course. The name "God" doesn't make one appearance in Schultz's book. In no way does he attempt to describe the challenges faced by the body of Christ in the twenty-first century - and why would he? Onward is a business memoir, plain and simple. The weird thing is, Schultz's story of a company brought back from the edge is undeniably religious. And it's something we need to pay attention to not just because it's instructive, but because it calls all of us in the church on the carpet.

Some background information matters here. For one, what was the problem with Starbucks? Well on the surface, it looked like two things: runaway growth and a bad economy. Do you remember when it suddenly seemed like every other building you passed had a little green mermaid plastered to its window? I've actually been in a Starbucks and looked out, across the street directly into another Starbucks. (People joke about that, but it actually happened to me!) No matter how much you love iced green tea or decaf Pike Place, you know intuitively that there's something wrong with that. And three years ago now, right about the time when all of the deep, negative issues that come with that sort of unsustainable growth began to be unbearable for Starbucks, the economy tanked. Everything went into a tailspin, and people stopped buying expensive coffee.

This is when Schultz became the CEO of Starbucks for a second time. And the story he tells of risk and leadership, the way he paints a picture of this moment where Starbucks had to figure something out or that mermaid was sunk, has all of the dramatic, biblical flair of Jacob on the edge of a stream, in all-night hand-to-hand combat with God in human form. You would never guess it from your lectionary insert today, but the reason Jacob sends his family on ahead of him, the reason he's struggling and sleepless, the reason he demands to receive a blessing is that he, too, is in crisis. He’s in immediate, stomach-chewing danger from none other than Esau, the older brother whose inheritance he stole. Jacob ran away from home because Esau wanted to murder him; he's spent years and years at his uncle's place, has a family and some cows and some servants ... but now it’s time to go home. God calls Jacob to return to his kindred with everything he has - only it means crossing paths with Esau. And Esau hasn't done so badly for himself, either. In fact, when Jacob sends a messenger to warn Esau that he's approaching, the message he gets back is this: "Esau is coming. And he has four hundred men with him."

Four hundred armed warriors sort of makes angry shareholders look like another day at the office. And Jacob and Esau's bad economy - the give and take, the market of respect, compassion, and brotherly love that could exist between them - is every bit as uncertain as ours. But it has to change for the story to work. See, in order to be one of these Old Testament patriarchs - in order to be a father of Israel, like Jacob is - you have to live in the land that God promised to Abraham. At this point the story, Jacob can't carry on the family line and be living with his uncle, in a foreign place. He has to go home and claim his inheritance. So, as Ray noted last week, in order to pass faith in God on to untold generations of people through his descendants, Jacob has to get back, regardless of Esau. A whole kind of future depends on it.

But Esau isn't the moment of truth in all of this. The crucial step in Jacob's whole business of saving his family and his future is discovering who he really is. The thing that prepares Jacob to face Esau and prepares him to assume the responsibility of leadership is learning his true identity. Jacob is alone, in the dead of night, afraid of his brother, and God is suddenly there in human form, as though to say, "Don't wrestle with your brother – wrestle with what really matters." And Jacob shows up. Jacob puts up such a fight that God has to stop playing fair and wound him in the thigh in order to break it up. Because he has grappled so hard - because when he was pressed, Jacob pressed back - God gives him a new name, Israel, which means "one who strives with God" or "God strives." So Jacob becomes Israel, and Israel becomes who she will be, a people, including us, whose faith is built on a dynamic, restless, intimate, and ever-evolving relationship with God – with “what really matters.” Jacob limps away, marked not by loss but by the victory of knowing who he really is.

In the end, this was Howard Schultz' victory, too. During sleepless nights and early mornings as he wrestled with our seemingly god-like economy, the thing Schultz kept returning to was identity. In order to get back home, get back where it needed to be, Starbucks needed to know who it actually was. The company had lost its way and forfeited its soul in the pursuit of programs and products and more and more and more, and was in desperate need of what we might call a "come to Jesus" moment. In the book, this is where the real religion begins: the first word Schultz can think of to depict the essence of Starbucks is "love." He follows that up with "respect and dignity. Passion … Compassion, community. Authenticity." He says that if home is the "first place" in a person's life and work is a "second place," then a place like a coffeehouse is a "third place," where people can connect with one another and reconnect with themselves." His new mission statement begins, "To inspire and nurture the human spirit." And finally, Schultz cites an article from the Wall Street Journal written in the midst of 600 store closings, which observed that Starbucks stores are like "secular chapels" where "ritual abounds." The journalist lamented, "I don't go to Starbucks much. I don't go to the Baptist church, either. But I'm glad that we've got one just about everywhere."

Howard Schultz is obviously dramatic. But he's not wrong. Or rather, he's not wrong about the niche that Starbucks is filling, but he is wrong about how they're filling it. Starbucks' coffee is amazing. Starbucks' employees are lovely and are treated fairly. But Starbucks is selling you something, and that something is the idea of love, community, authenticity. Starbucks is banking - quite literally - on the fact that you long for these things, and the problem they faced a few years ago was that they'd forgotten what human beings lack. They were blind to our tender, emotional demands and were supplying something we didn't need. That was the problem with Starbucks.

The problem with the church is that we've forgotten that, too. For decades now the buzz has been declining numbers in all traditions, congregations losing members to death, life transitions, distraction, or disinterest and not replacing them. To this day, every issue of The Christian Century, a magazine that represents mainline Protestantism, or America, which represents a similar group of Roman Catholics, has some article about who's attending, who's not attending, why this is happening, and what we can do to stop it. People worry especially about the next generation of Christians, which is why the National Study of Youth and Religion, a huge project undertaken by scholars within the last few years, was so devastating with its insight that two-thirds of teenagers believe in God and have positive feelings toward church ... but only eight percent of them think that religion has anything to do with their everyday lives. One author, writing on the study, blamed the situation on what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism" - the tendency of many churches to promote being nice, being friendly, and feeling good about yourself above being just, being honest, and working like a dog for the kingdom of heaven. But it can be more than this. It can be feeling trapped in ways of doing things that don't make sense anymore. It can be the pressure of an increasingly complicated world that is outpacing an institution that appears to be about the preservation of tradition only. Or it can be that the church tries to mirror that complicated world too much with too narrow of a focus on growth, too many activities, too much flux, too little silence and peace, so that its true identity, it's core essence, gets lost out there with everything else in a sea of soccer games, office parties, and mocha frappucinos.

One church in our own diocese felt this sense of stagnancy and desperation acutely and decided to explore it. Church of the Holy Spirit, an hour north of here in Lake Forest, took a survey - the same one we did - and uncovered a deep sense of untouched spiritual longing. Their rector responded by coming up with events and programs and classes and activities ... and still, nothing worked. So the church did something risky to pull itself back from the edge. They took another survey, which inventoried not their satisfaction with the parish, but their thoughts about God, their relationship with Jesus, their felt sense of the Holy Spirit, and their life of prayer. It was a hard thing to do. The language of this survey was more evangelical than anything most of us are used to, and it felt too private to many people to answer questions about their interior life of faith. But this is the thing that worked - actually, a better way to say it is that this is the thing that put the church to work. For the last eighteen months groups within Holy Spirit have been studying the Baptismal Covenant and the Bible and their own hearts; they've been trying to pray before meetings and incorporate spiritual practices into their daily routines; they've written spiritual autobiographies and participated in classes called "God sightings" where they try to figure out where and how grace is working in their lives and in the world around them. Not everybody is on board, and not everybody has been totally blown over, but parishioners who've committed themselves to this process report that they are experiencing something they’ve never experienced before.

Church of the Holy Spirit in Lake Forest is not us. The way the challenges of the church in the twenty-first century present themselves to it are different than how they present themselves here. But the overall situation is the same. And whatever we do to meet it now or at any time in our future is likewise the same: we have to discover our true identity. We have to find out who we really are. The good news is that like Holy Spirit, like Jacob, but unlike Starbucks, what we have is the real deal. Real love. Real community. Real relationship. Starbucks has a word for you that changes with each season, each campaign, each shift in the market - God's word for you is always the same: Yes. Starbucks closes - in the dead of night, on holidays, when the weather is bad. God is with you, even when you are searching for God's presence and not finding it ... you are assured that God is there. Starbucks wants to engage you in an economy of exchange, but what God has for you is free: freely given, freely received, free to all. Which is, finally, the last point - Starbucks doesn't have to serve you, but God wants nothing more than to fill your body with food. Jesus saw the crowds, had mercy on them and created substance, created nourishment out of almost nothing at all. We are those crowds, coming to him in need of everything, wondering how there could possibly be something for us here, yet after we eat with him, we’re not only satisfied - we become him. We become his hands and feet and heart and mouth so that the people we are when we are limping away from our encounter with God in this person are people who are changed, equipped, and empowered. People who have tasted and drunken something ... real.

That is who we really are. How we live it and what difference it makes for our life together and for every other life we touch will be our great victory. May God, who has given us the will to do these things give us the grace and power to perform them.

Sermon preached by the Reverend Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Sunday, July 31, 2011.

Cited:

Dean, Kenda Creasy. Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenager Is Telling the American Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Schultz, Howard. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing its Soul (New York: Rodale Books, 2011).

Read the Reverend Jay Sidebotham’s story of Church of the Holy Spirit, “Don’t Shoot the Messenger! Or, How We Raised Our Episcopal Spiritual Expectations” at http://makingexcellentdisciples.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/dont-shoot-the-messenger-or-how-we-raised-our-episcopal-spiritual-expectations/.

Sermon preached on the Fifth Sunday in Easter: Youth Sunday

Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31.1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-4

To me, and to many others who are Christians, this is an extremely important Gospel. Here, Jesus is telling us that by believing in him, we are believing in God. He says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” a very famous line. But in this Gospel, with so much explanation from Jesus, and Jesus telling us about some of the core beliefs of Christianity, we also see doubt. We see questioning from Phillip who wants some kind of proof, visual proof of the father. I believe that every Christian has to face this kind of doubt at some point in their lives, and in the end it makes their faith stronger.

I faced a sort of doubt a couple of years ago. Doubt doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t believe in God anymore, it can just mean that your relationship with God isn’t as strong as you would like it to be. Maybe you haven’t prayed as much as you feel you should, or you haven’t gone to church in the past couple weeks. Well, about a year and half ago, this doubt began to creep up on me. I still loved God, and I still believed in God, but I felt like I could be doing more to be making my relationship with God stronger. That is when our Youth Minister, Charles Murphy, told me about a Episcopal Diocese of Chicago Youth Event called Happening. Happening is an event with around 60 youth from Episcopal churches all around Chicago and the suburbs, who come together for a weekend twice a year to talk about God, in a relaxed, comfortable, and safe setting. Everyone is welcome, whether you are the strongest Christian, or you are having your doubts, or want some proof like Phillip did. Well, at Happening, my relationship with God was strengthened. I saw God in all of these youth, most of whom I had never met before. But, they opened their arms to me, a stranger, and welcomed me. It was an amazing experience. I felt like I began to get to know God, and it was through others. I was doing things that I never thought I would do, and meeting people that I never thought I would.

And although the event that I went to, Happening, was something specifically made for youth, I think that we can all have these moments at any time in our lives, moments when our relationship with God is strengthened, maybe after a time of questioning like Phillip had. It can happen anywhere, especially in the church and our church. It could be at a foyer dinner, or even just talking with a friend at coffee after a church service.   But keeping your mind and heart open is important. Because if you close yourself off, it’ll be tough to have an experience like this. And we do this, keeping ourselves open, by doing simple things. Simple things like listening to what another person is saying, or by caring for someone and helping them when they need help. Being there for people. And don’t forget to talk to God. He is always there, listening. And he will help you, if you need that sign. He certainly helped me when I needed that, and he will help you get a chance too. A chance to strengthen your relationship with God.

I am still participating in Happening today, I’ve been to three others after the first one I told you about, and now I’m on steering committee for Happening. I have now realized what Jesus was talking about at the end of this gospel. That he is the father and the father is in him. It just took some very special people in the church to help me to realize it.

(Sermon preached by Michael Begel on May 22, 2011 at St. Chrysostom's Church in Chicago, IL at 11:00 AM.) 

Sermon Preached on the Eighth Sunday in Epiphany

Camina, Camina, Camina!

My wife Eve and I are just back Wednesday from a mission trip in Mexico. It was early spring in the southern highlands, flowering trees coming out, and I was remembering a trip to Israel in 1988, also in February, when it was early spring, and the trees were in flower, and the wild flowers were coming out on the grassy hillsides around the lake in Galilee.

We finish our month long reading from the Sermon on the Mount today. When Jesus taught by the lake, it was not desert. There is desert in Israel, and not very far away. But Galilee is not desert. There is a lot of water, a good sized lake, and all kinds of wildflowers. 

Consider the lilies of the field, said Jesus. (Matthew 6:28)  

Consider the lilies of the field – they are beautiful, glorious, even King Solomon in all his glory was not more beautiful than these.

But in the light of the Gospel there is something even more beautiful, even more cherished and loved by God – even more clothed in the glory of God’s love.

And that is the individual human life. Created by God. Loved with a saving love by God in Jesus Christ, who came that we might know and believe the love God has for every single one.

Jesus has given us many teachings in the Sermon on the Mount about ethics. At the heart of Christian ethics is the conviction that each person is created by God and of infinite value. I believe basic human rights are basic to Christian ethics. And extremely important – however hard to safeguard and put into practice – in thinking out our responses in a shrinking volatile changing world. An important Anglican contribution to Christian ethics is a commitment to dignity and value of each person joined with a commitment to freedom of conscience in making ethical decisions.

The most beautiful is the one child, clothed in God’s love.

I was thinking of this visiting a village, getting to know the people, including the children, in a very far away place and culture. A from our parish and diocese flew down to Mexico a week ago – flew to Mexico and then changed planes for the trip to the far south, the Mexican state of Chiapas.

On Saturday, February 19, our team was driven, in the van belonging to the Anglican Diocese of South East Mexico, to the mountain village of Yochib, where a community of people have joined our Anglican church.

Yochib is high in the southern highlands – very high, about 8,000 feet I believe – and we had on sweaters and scarves. It warmed up by noon.  

How did we connect with a village in southern Mexico? Some years ago, our Diocese of Chicago established a companion diocese relationship with the Anglican Diocese of South East Mexico. Chicago also has a companion relationship with the Diocese of Renk in the Sudan.

Parishes and individuals are of course perfectly free to form relationships on their own and Bishop Lee encourages these. St. Chrysostom’s Day School has formed a relationship with an Episcopal school in Haiti – and that has my full and enthusiastic support. Hurrahs and Te Deums.

Our original connection was through our diocese, because it was a diocesan mission connection. Eve and I met Bishop Benito and his wife Angelica, who have been to Chicago a number of times, and been to St. Chrysostom’s and we have visited them in Mexico.

And indeed – was it ten years ago? --  we had a Brunch Auction for Mission to benefit South East Mexico and bought four Chevrolet pick up trucks for their clergy to use in the far flung diocese (Mexico is big, and traveling on mountain roads is slow) and also put water in a priest’s house.

Several years ago at another Brunch Auction parishioners Lisa and Michael Coleman offered their house in San Miguel de Allende, a lovely colonial town in quite another part of Mexico, in the hills north of Mexico City – and then they bought it themselves and gave it to Eve and me to use with the hope we would have Bishop Benito and Angelica come stay for some R & R. Bishop and Angelica did indeed come, what fun we had – and we were joined by Judy and John Bross who had just gotten married!

It was Bishop Benito, and his deacon, the Rev. Deacon Charles Parker – US citizen, professor of economics in Mexico City, commander in the US Navy, renaissance man – it was Bishop and deacon Charles who drew our attention to the new community emerging in the far south state of Chiapas.

Another question – what are Episcopalians doing in Mexico? I thought it was Roman Catholic? Well, Mexico is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, as is our own city of Chicago (since the 1880s). However Mexico is a big and complex society. As in all of Latin America there is a growing Pentecostal Christian community. There are also mainstream Protestant churches – if you look across the valley in the village we visited one can see the spires of the Presbyterian church! Anyone who knows me, knows I love many things about the Roman Catholic Church – and I pray we all will find ways of working together. But there is a (I hesitate to use the word, it is neither Biblical nor theological) “niche” for the Episcopal Church. We used to say between Rome and Geneva, that the Anglican Church was a middle way, via media, between Rome and Geneva. But perhaps between Rome and Pentecostalism. Also Mexico is a free country and people have religious freedom. 

On Saturday the 19^th we arrived in Yochib and greeted everyone – some faces familiar from last year. Many new. Our team climbed the dirt path up to the clearing in the forest where the church is. The church is a simple hut, open on three sides, with a tin roof and a dirt floor.

So, what did we do? Well, what do Christians do when we gather? We say hello and get to know one another. We read the stories of Jesus together, listen to the Bible stories. We share the Eucharist. And we have a meal together.

This is exactly what we did. In all of these things it was in no way “us” and “them” but the baptized people of God, gathered together at Jesus’ table.    

Eve Webster led telling the children a Bible story, assisted by the local lay leader Francisco. Meanwhile, Victor Conrado, who is from our diocese (from the Cathedral) and originally from Colombia, led a study with the women and older teens.

Not everyone in Yochib speaks Spanish. Many speak the indigenous Mayan dialect Tseltal. The local school is bi lingual, Spanish and Tseltal! As Eve Webster told the Bible story in Spanish, Francisco translated into Tseltal. Meanwhile another friend Esteben translated into Tseltal in the adult Bible study led by Victor Conrado. Esteben Lopez Gomez is a key lay leader in the new mission in San Cristóbol de las Casas – and related to some of the people in Yochib.

Judy and John Bross had brought along a wooden ark for telling the story of Noah – and also had us bring crayons which we passed out for the kids to color. Great fun! And then we sang songs – they taught us some wonderful ones. 

On Sunday we drove out to Yochib again with  Father Florencio, Anglican priest in San Cristóbol de las Casas, who celebrated the Eucharist, in Spanish with readings and translations of Deacon Charles’ sermon into Tseltal. . 

Our primary mission is in the city of Chicago. The primary mission of St. Chrysostom’s, Chicago is here in the city.

But an key part of the mission of the Christian church, from the days of the earliest church, there has also been support of the mission of the church beyond our borders. Not instead of, but also. If you stand amid the ruins of the palaces on the Palatine Hill in Rome, one can look over to the ancient monastery where Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to be the first Archbishop of Canterbury in England. To organize and build the Church in England from which we descend.

It means a great deal to me to try to be supportive of this new Church plant in Yochib – to support a Christian community somewhere that was not there before. To support something starting, a church plant, a beginning, something new.  

We went to Yochib because of the companion relationship of our diocese with theirs. Church structures have their failings! But in this case, I believe the Holy Spirit has used the larger relationship between dioceses, to lead two groups of Christian people from extremely different places – in terms of culture and history and language – to be friends.    

When Christians get together we often have food. We also have parties. And I want to invite you to a party to celebrate our friendship with Yochib.

                                               

Judy Bross and a team (including Eve and me) are planning a ¡FIESTA! here at St. Chrysostom’s on Friday, May 13 to celebrate and benefit our companion diocese of Southeast Mexico, and especially this new congregation of Yochib. Please know an invitation.

When we were leaving Mexico on Wednesday, we flew to Mexico City, and for the second year in a row, flying up from the south, had spectacular views of the two great volcanoes outside the city.

Mexico City of course is famously big, the airport is big, and when Eve asked which way to the international flights she told me the policeman she spoke to said it was down the hall, a long distance and then he said “Camina, camina, camina.” Walk, walk, walk, journey, journey, journey!   

Remembering how Jesus said, in John 14, “I am the way,” in La Biblia Latinoamerica, that Father Araiaca gave me, “Yo estoy el camino.”

Jesus who is himself the way, calls us to follow him on his way of self-giving love, caring for one another on the way – caring for others in the church beyond our parish borders, and also beyond our diocesan borders, over all sorts of walls.

Camina, camina, camina. Jesus, may we faithfully follow you day by day. Amen.

(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, February 27, 2011, the Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany.)

Sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday in Epiphany

Fourth Sunday in Epiphany, Year A:
Micah 6:1-8; Ps. 15;
1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Matthew 5:1-12

There are two major players in our Gospel reading today.  The first one is obvious: Jesus.  For the last few weeks we’ve followed his birth, his baptism, and the beginning of his ministry.  In the church, we call the season where we remember all of this “Epiphany,” because with each new thing that Jesus does, he reveals himself, he unveils something important about himself.  He causes revelations, epiphanies, to happen all around him and we discover who he is and what he shows us about God.  Today, as Jesus begins his famous Sermon on the Mount, the epiphanies continue. 

At this point we know that Jesus is a preacher and we know that he is a healer.  And because he’s been helping so many people, and speaking so powerfully, crowds are following him around.  It’s not like he’s a celebrity, or a politician, or even a guru, because he’s actually in the middle of all these people – he speaks directly to them, he walks among them, he touches them and affects them immediately.  He doesn’t have bodyguards or minders, so even when he does something sort of seemingly-introverted – like going up on this mountain here, away from most of the crowds – he’s followed by a group of disciples.

 And this is where the next epiphanies happen, where the next revelations take place.  Jesus reveals to us that he is a rabbi, an authoritative teacher.  Beginning with these sayings that we just heard about blessedness, Jesus will take the ethical principles that people are taught to live by and break them open to reveal the beating heart at the center of each of them.  In doing this, Jesus will reveal to us the will of God, what God’s heart is like. 

But the more striking epiphany, the revelation that’s new in every generation – the revelation that is new every day – is the identity of that other major player in the Sermon on the Mount.  The crowds have been following Jesus, that’s true, but the crowds don’t follow him up the goat path to this place where he sits down to teach.  His disciples do, literally, his “learners.”  They peel off from the regular flow of things to be set apart on this day, with this person.  Just as you peeled off of Lakeshore Dr. and onto our street.  Just as you stepped off of the bus and into this church, or walked down the steps of your building and turned toward an altar, and not a breakfast table or a newspaper stand.  The epiphany is us.  The veil is lifted on the disciples, and they are revealed to have our faces.  This church is revealed to be our mountain, and the whole dynamic of our being together, everything that happens when we break bread together, when we hear Scripture read and when we sing and pray together is revealed to be Christ himself, his presence among us, embodied in our worship.

But for each one of us there’s a further personal epiphany, something to be unveiled that we can’t get at just by reading the story and talking about it.  We see that a group of disciples takes that deeper step and follows Jesus up the mountain to hear him teach.  We see that several of us have made it here this morning with some intention.  But why?  What is it that we’re looking for?  What does being on this mountain mean for us?  Because it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do.  In fact, if we borrow a line from St. Paul this morning, it may even appear foolish.  Even these first disciples, who had the living proof of Jesus in front of them, had a rough time.  For starters, they actually, physically followed him, climbing mountains, walking for miles, being tired and thirsty.  Jesus’ sayings about blessedness give us clues to what they experienced, because our Gospels were, after all, written down for them, and read to them in their worship services.  So we hear that they were poor enough to be excited about what they hoped to gain; they were grievous enough to want the whole world to rejoice; they were hungry enough to sense their own constant needs; they were single-hearted enough to be able to hold up Love as the single most important thing.  And they were willing to be thought foolish – by others, and most importantly by the voices of doubt in their own minds – in order to deal with all of these challenges and to not lose heart.  They had to have a sense, then, of why any of it mattered. 

And us, we the disciples, have a hard time of it, too.  Some of our problems are the same as the first disciples’: churches have always had to deal with money, from the very earliest times.  Churches have always depended on the time and talents of their members, who’ve always had a lot of responsibilities to juggle.  Churches across the ages have weathered political crises and cultural shifts.   Really, these are problems that any group, institution, or association might encounter.

But we live in a time that makes some of this harder.  Disciples have always been busy, it’s true, but I think more than ever it’s hard for us to be single-hearted, what Jesus calls “pure of heart” in our Scripture today.  We have just as much to do as any person ever did, but our lives are so fractured.  We’re pulled in so many competing directions that it’s very hard to devote ourselves wholly to something like discipleship.  And especially when the payoffs aren’t so obvious, so external.  In our day and age, going to church doesn’t guarantee you the things it once did.  Our culture doesn’t require churchgoing in the same way it once did, so your parents might not be watching to make sure that you’re here.  Plus, the social benefits of belonging to this denomination or that denomination are much more muted than in past generations.  You may have friends and neighbors and co-workers here, but your friends and neighbors and co-worker aren’t necessarily here.  All of this means that you are here for another reason. 

And so this other epiphany, this thing that is to be revealed in your heart, is that question.  Why are you here?  Why have you come up this mountain to sit with this teacher?  What do you want from him?  What will finding the heart of God mean for you and for the people you love?  In the weeks leading up to Lent, as we read the Sermon on the Mount, let’s sit with this question and let’s enjoy being with one another in the presence of Christ.  And then, let’s be ready to live into a new epiphany about who we are, about who we are here, in this place, and about who we are with God.   There is hope here, and there is promise. 

Sermon preached  by the Rev. Danielle Thompson at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church in Chicago, IL on Jan. 30, 2011 at 8:00am, 11:00am and 5:15pm

Posted by Danielle at 9:21 AM