Drop-By Authenticity

Enjoying the freedom of vacation on Sundays, I’ve been dropping by churches of different “brands.”  Now, I freely admit that a single visit can’t capture the fullness of any church community.  But I also know that the experience of a single Sunday morning forms the strongest perceptions for any visitor – whether it’s someone doing serious church shopping or someone just curious about what those strange people down the street are up to.  If I were in the visitor’s shoes, I’d be looking for authentic community – people truly connected with God and the people around them.

Three Sundays ago, I worshiped at Christ Community Church in the Crossroads.  This campus of Christ Community (an Evangelical Free church) follows the same pattern of worship as the other two I’ve attended, but the venue and the neighborhood shape the specifics.  In the Crossroads, the venue is The Gallery, an art space with folding chairs and rolling room dividers.  Works by a local artist hang on the walls, and the church participates in the First Fridays art walks through the Crossroads, inviting Sunday-morning visitors to come back for music, food, and art.  The worship feels intentionally simplified: a single musician singing and playing guitar, the pastor in jeans offering a (long) teaching sermon from a music stand, no altar or other liturgical furnishings other than the art that hangs there seven days a week.  There are no worship handouts, just screens on the wall.  In addition to music and preaching, the people share Communion – and it was made very clear the meal was available to those who had already made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ (nonbelievers were invited to use Communion time to ask Jesus to reveal himself).  The pastor engaged me as I left, as did a couple of other people; and I came away feeling that I’d visited not a cool art space but a spiritual home.  It felt real (and cool).

Two Sundays ago, I worshiped at Christ Episcopal Church in Springfield, Mo. – my home parish.  It did, indeed, feel like home; I’d spent 22 years of my life worshiping there (sometimes more faithfully than others).  But I tried to imagine what a visitor might notice.  The building is historic, one of the first churches in Springfield; the original part of the worship space dates from 1870.  So it evokes both the beauty and the baggage of “traditional church” – lovely stained glass, beautiful old wood, fixed pews, long distances between the worshiper and the body and blood of Jesus at the altar.  The liturgy is traditional, too – no smells and bells, but plenty of vestments, candles, crosses, and processions.  A visitor might or might not connect with that, but it’s exactly what the room was designed for.  Interestingly, the sermon compensated for any distance that the liturgy or the room might have imposed between a visitor and God.  It was an ironic shift from the week before:  In the Crossroads, the young pastor in jeans and an untucked shirt stood near the worshipers and tried mightily to make 37 minutes of teaching about the day’s scripture seem cool and casual.  At Christ Episcopal, the seasoned priest (well past retirement age) in vesture and a zucchetto shared his heart in the wake of Robin Williams’ suicide, speaking from his own experience of clinical depression.  The Anglo-Catholic father absolutely made the experience authentic; and I imagine a visitor that morning would have known, deep down, that he or she could be welcomed in that community, warts and all.  It felt very real.

Today, I worshiped at Jacob’sWell in Kansas City, one of the early success stories of the emerging-church movement in the U.S.  Jacob’s Well has been written up many times, and for good reason:  They’ve created a very vibrant community of mostly young adults in the Westport area.  In fact, this fall Jacob’s Well will celebrate its 15^th anniversary – making it basically an “emerged” church, I suppose.  The worship experience strives for the ancient-future feel you often see in emerging churches – an old building, complete with pews and stained glass, playing host to a five-piece rock band and filled with young people in shorts and t-shirts, sipping lattes and singing words from huge projection screens.  The pattern of worship was almost exactly the same as at Christ Community in the Crossroads – and not so different from what we offer in our “old fashioned” liturgical churches, too:  Music, welcome and announcements, more music, a long sermon rooted in scripture (this week including Prayers of the People), quick Communion (whose two-minute prayer of consecration began with the Sursum corda – “The Lord be with you; and also with you; lift up your hearts…”), a benediction, and music to send you on your way.  As intended, it felt old and new simultaneously, and I could imagine a visitor tapping into the “both/and” experience easily.  I also could imagine the visitor delighting, as I did, in watching the people hugging each other before worship began and the parents tossing their babies in the air to the beat of the music, reveling in the joy of that community’s life.  It felt very real – though I do wish someone would have welcomed me by engaging me in a conversation at some point.

This is no great insight, but it’s true:  Authentic community comes in all shapes, sizes, and liturgical flavors.  There is no recipe for creating it, other than taking people seriously – those making up the body of Christ in that place, those sidling up to it on a visit, and those living in the neighborhood the church is supposed to serve.  Like other things less holy, you know authentic community when you see it.  And when you do, you’re blessed to find the Body of Christ feeling that real.

Off to School

Yesterday, I walked by my neighborhood school as I listened to Morning Prayer on my phone.  It was the first day of classes in the Shawnee Mission district, and I happened by East Antioch school during “the parade”:  Tiny people, kindergartners and first graders, bearing backpacks that seemed big enough to tip them over, strode purposefully with moms and dads and siblings down the sidewalk.  The tiny ones looked confident and strong; I’m not sure what I’d say about the moms and dads.  I remember that strange mix of anxiety, sadness, and joy on the first day of school.

Fifteen years ago, Ann and I walked to our neighborhood school, Robert E. Lee Elementary in Austin, Texas.  It was Kathryn’s first day of kindergarten.  She must have had one of those overwhelming backpacks, but what my memory conflates from hundreds of other walks to school that year is me pushing Kathryn and Daniel in a double stroller – she was small enough she still fit in, while Daniel at 3 just loved the ride.  She was so ready for school, I couldn’t feel sad.  For both kids, the times of these transitions have always just seemed right.

Tomorrow, Ann and I will drive with Kathryn to Kirksville, to move her into her first house and her last year in college.  Granted, it’s a nine-month rental, but it’s still the next good step in breaking away.  This is a different move than the other times we’ve taken her to college:  She’s refinished some furniture for her new bedroom; she’s packed pots and pans, measuring cups, and dishes; the most exciting pre-college purchase this time was a stock pot (“Soup!” she squealed).  She’s nesting.

One week from today, Ann and I will drive with Dan to Manhattan, Kansas, for his first semester at K-State.  Again, the time’s so right for him that I don’t feel sad.  He’s excited about his classes, not to mention his freedom.  He has a good network of friends already in place, and Canterbury House (Episcopal Campus Ministry) will be a second home and great source of free food.  And yet, as we set out on the road next week, I feel sure that, in my mind, I’ll be driving the double stroller instead of the van, running fast up and down the sidewalk’s little hills at each driveway, relishing the kids’ squeals of delight.

Worshiping With the Enemy?

If you’re a Kansas City-area Episcopalian, you may remember our local version of the Great Schism, when Christ Church in Overland Park left the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas and became an “Anglican” church (which it always had been anyway).  That was a terribly painful time for Christ Church members nine years ago – a time of division and loss, a time of focusing on differences among people who had been family for years.

Aug. 3 was my first Sunday of vacation.  On vacation Sundays, I always like to visit churches whose approaches to worship I don't usually get to experience.  From a more crass perspective, it’s also a chance to check out the competition.  So, in the pouring rain, I drove to 91^st and Nall to worship in a church I’d never attended, neither in its Episcopal nor its “Anglican” manifestation – Christ Church. 

In several ways, it felt very much like St. Andrew’s on a Sunday morning.  About 200 people were gathered in a beautiful, traditionally designed nave.  In the pew racks in front of me were copies of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer (1979), and the Hymnal 1982.  The crowd was a little younger than ours, but not tremendously.  The liturgy was Holy Eucharist, Rite II, using Eucharistic Prayer A.  The Collect of the Day and the Prayers of the People were straight from the BCP. 

In other ways, it felt more like St. Andrew’s on a Saturday night.  The feel of the liturgy was a lot like Take5, though a few steps further down the path of informal and accessible worship.  All the music was “contemporary” (whatever that means) praise songs, with the lyrics projected on two screens.  The lighting changed during the music to spotlight the performers.  The congregation trailed in as the small band played a few songs before the welcome and announcements.  The presiding minister wore street clothes, putting on a stole for the Eucharistic Prayer. 

Of course, there were some differences that we might not want to import into Take5 or Sunday morning:  a single scripture reading, a 30-minute sermon, and lots of references to substitutionary atonement (Jesus dying on the cross to make satisfaction to the Father for humanity’s offensive choice of sin).  And then there was the difference I enjoyed least:  Other than formal greetings when I walked into the building and at the Peace, no one engaged me.

But what struck me was the fact of our unity even in our choice for division.  If you'd plunked an Episcopalian down in that liturgy knowing none of the back story, he or she would have sworn it was an Episcopal service of Holy Eucharist.  I had no feeling of worshiping with the enemy.  It felt more like being with family members whose choices you don't understand, like a Union soldier watching his brother practicing Confederate military drills.  We’d been trained in the same traditions; we’d just chosen to focus on what divided us instead.  Civil war – family conflict – is always the hardest.
             So I gratefully received the bread and wine of Holy Eucharist at Christ Church Anglican on Sunday.  Was it Jesus’ body and blood?  Was the sacrament “efficacious”?  I’ll leave it to God to sort that out, but I have to say:  It certainly tasted familiar.  It tasted like unity.  As Jesus prayed for his followers, so he yearns for us:  “Holy Father, protect them … so that they may be one as we are one” (John 17:11).

Our Four-Month Kingdom Moment

[Sermon from Sunday, July 27, 2014]

I am about to begin something I’ve never done before.  In fact, I’m about to begin several things I’ve never done before.  And so are you. 

In just five days – or, actually, in 102 hours – I will walk out of my office, close the door, and not walk back in for nearly four months.  I have to tell you, that is a strange feeling.  Like everybody else, I’ve left jobs before.  I’ve gone through the process of wrapping things up, handing things off, writing instructions to capture everything the person who’ll come after you needs to know.  But I’ve never left a job knowing that I’ll pick it back up again four months later.  That’s a new thing for me. 

A sabbatical is not as new a thing for you, for St. Andrew’s.  Rectors here have taken sabbaticals before.  But things haven’t always been so rosy on the rector’s return.  As I’ve heard the stories, sometimes priests have come back fairly different after sabbatical time away.  Now, I can’t see into the future, but I think the odds are pretty low that I’m going to return as someone you don’t recognize.  Still, every sabbatical is a time of some uncertainty for the congregation precisely because we can’t see into the future.  So this will be a new thing for you.

It’s also a new thing for the staff.  Now, our staff is an extremely talented group of people; and I have every confidence that Mtr. Anne and Peggy Wright, our business manager, will oversee the work just fine.  Still, it will be a new thing for them to have me gone.

It’s also a new thing for Ann and me and the kids.  Kathryn will be going back to school at Truman State in a couple of weeks; Dan will be heading off to K-State the week after.  Ann and I will be empty nesters.  And not only will it be “just us”; it will be just us with me not going off to work every morning.  Instead, after vacation time, we’ll be traveling for the better part of two and a half months, working together on my sabbatical project.  This will be a very new thing for us. 

So let me just say this out loud.  When there are so many new things in the air at once, here’s what happens:  We get anxious.  Maybe even a little afraid. 

So let me just say this out loud, too.  Here’s what I know:  We have nothing to fear.  We have nothing to fear.  And why is that?  Because you, and I, are stepping into a kingdom moment.

And what’s a kingdom moment?  We heard about them in our Gospel reading this morning.  In fact, we’ve been hearing about God’s kingdom for the past several weeks as we read through Matthew’s gospel.  Today, Jesus is taking images of the kingdom of heaven and tossing them at us like a sower scattering seeds, hoping that some, at least, might land in our hearts and take root. 

·        The kingdom of heaven is like planting a tiny mustard seed, a seemingly insignificant act but one that produces a bush 10 feet tall, safe habitat for those needing the shade and sanctuary of God’s embrace.  Not bad.

·        The kingdom of heaven is like a woman adding a tiny bit of yeast to 50 pounds of flour – a small act with a small agent that turns lifeless flour into rising dough and feeds more than a hundred people.  Not bad.

·        The kingdom of heaven is like treasure – maybe treasure you’ve been seeking all your life or maybe treasure you never knew you needed ‘til you found it, but treasure that makes you give everything you’ve got to make it yours.  Not bad at all.

We find ourselves in moments when the kingdom of heaven claims us and grabs us and turns us around, helping us see ourselves and our world in a new light – in God’s divine light.  As Fr. Marcus said last Sunday, we are not simply people who belong to a church but people called to let their lights “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43).  When we do that, those are kingdom moments. 

You and I are stepping into a kingdom moment now.  So let me share what that might look like, for me and for you.

For me, I’m stepping into rest.  I need that.  This good and holy and wonderful work will kill you if you let it.  I need sleep; I need boundaries; and I need to remember that God actually is the one in charge of whether my work accomplishes anything.  So for the first few weeks, I will be observing Sabbath, a time of holy rest and relaxation.  I will not be checking church e-mail, not during vacation or sabbatical, so please don’t be disappointed when I don’t reply.  I will not be answering texts or phone calls (unless it’s one of the clergy or wardens with the secret code that means the building’s on fire).  I will be stepping into a kingdom moment of rest, and I am incredibly grateful for it.

Then, in early September, Ann and I will step into a journey, a journey of learning and sharing – a journey that I pray will give us some glimpses of what God’s future might look like, for this congregation and for others like ours.  We’re visiting nine Episcopal and Church of England congregations – six in the U.S. and three in Britain.  We’ll be in Boston, Denver, Portland, Seattle, Richmond, and St. Mary’s County in rural Maryland; and in England, we’ll visit Tewkesbury, Manchester, and London.  These parishes are all different, of course; but they share a kingdom-related trajectory:  traditional congregations steeped in history, liturgy, organ music, and red doors; but also hearing God’s call to raise up something new alongside the strength of that tradition.  It’s the “both/and” approach that appeals to me, and it’s what we’re striving to incarnate here, too.  These congregations, as Jesus said, are like “the master of a household” throwing a grand party – the banquet of the kingdom of heaven – and bringing “out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52).  I’ve been learning their stories over the past several months, and now Ann and I will get to experience them – meet the people, interview their leaders, worship with them, eat with them, drink with them, learn from them.  And in the process, God willing, I’ll bring back things both to benefit us and to share with others in a book.

So that’s the kingdom moment Ann and I are stepping into, beginning 101 hours and 51 minutes from now.  But you’re stepping into a kingdom moment, too.  It’s a step along a path we’ve been marking out for three years, so you know the way to the place Jesus is leading you.

And as you step along this path over the next four months, you’ll be doing the same thing I’ll be doing, just in a different way and in a different context.  You’ll also be bringing out of your treasure what is old and what is new.  Mtr. Anne will continue to love you with all her heart, as only she can.  And she’ll take on new work, overseeing our spiritual affairs and guiding the staff for this season.  Fr. Marcus will continue to nurture our young people and families, and he’ll begin new gatherings down at The Well to draw people from the community into this beloved community – I especially wish I could be there for the new series called “Heaven and Ale.”  Steve Rock and Mary Heausler will continue to lead our temporal affairs, along with next year’s incoming senior warden, Greg Bentz.  They’ll raise up the next class of Vestry nominees, and set budget priorities, and lead you in the annual pledge campaign – processes we know how to do well.  But they’ll also oversee new kingdom work in these next four months: Along with Sean and Sarah Murray, and Blake and Megan Hodges, and the clergy, they’ll lead the Vestry in naming the specific ministries to which we’re committing ourselves with the Gather & Grow Campaign, how God’s call to connect St. Andrew’s with our community takes flesh through our hands and hearts. 

We will not spend these next four months resting on our laurels and patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.  Honestly, we have done a pretty good job over the past three years of building a culture of collaboration and respect and mutual ministry.  Well, that work is precisely what allows us not to spend these four months holding still.  I have known rectors who’ve spent their sabbaticals licking their wounds and praying for guidance about where to serve next.  I won’t be doing that.  I will rest – and I’ll be figuring out how to keep at this work without either getting divorced or driving myself into an early grave.  But I won’t be holding still; Ann and I will be stepping from one kingdom moment to the next in this study project.  And the same truth holds for you.  You will not be holding still; you’ll be loving each other, and serving each other, and beginning St. Andrew’s next 100 years of ministry, with each other and the world beyond these walls.  Four months from now, when I’m back up here on St. Andrew’s Sunday, things will not be the same as when I left.  That’s OK.  In fact, it’s good.  In fact, it’s very good.  In fact, that’s what it means to be disciples of a living Lord who calls us to bring the kingdom of heaven to life in everything we do.  As we pray at each ordination liturgy, and as you’ll pray, God willing, when Bruce Bower is ordained this November:  “Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made…” (BCP 540).

We have nothing to fear.  How could we?  What “will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35).  Fear of the unknown?  Worry about the future?  The anxiety of separation?  No way.  We have nothing to fear.  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

Seeds Don't Grow on Their Own

[Sermon for July 13, 2014]

Today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 13:1-9,18-23) is a parable, as the story tells us.  Parables are compelling because they aren’t intended to be taken literally; in fact, the point of a parable is stretching the mind, spurring the imagination, and exploring different interpretive paths.  Usually, Jesus tells the story and it just sort of hangs there, with us left to wrestle with the meaning.  Well, with this one, Jesus hands us an interpretation:  “Hear then the parable of the sower,” he says.  This story is about hearing “the word of the kingdom,” the proclamation of God’s way of ordering things, and how we might respond to it.  Jesus wants us to be seeds sown on good soil – people who hear God’s word, understand it, and bear abundant fruit.  Great – Jesus has done my work for me.  You’ve just enjoyed the shortest sermon of all time.

Or not.  Sorry to disappoint.  In the spirit of spinning parables, let me play with this story by adding something to it.  We know those less-than-ideal situations of discipleship Jesus named – seeds sown on the path, which the birds eat; seeds sown on rocky ground, which spring up and die off quickly; and seeds sown among thorns that choke off the new plants’ growth.  Well, imagine Jesus offering one more – the lost verse in the Parable of the Sower.  Here’s how it might go:  “Other seeds fell on good soil, but they declined to tap into it, confident they had what it takes to grow on their own.  So they lay on the soil until the next rain washed them away.”  And what might be the point there?  Scattered seeds are vulnerable and weak, and the good soil is where they find their nurture and their strength.  Seeds can’t grow on their own.

Admitting vulnerability … talk about a challenging call.  At least it is for me.  As most of you know, my wife, Ann, has lupus; and she’s been very sick from time to time over the past 15 years or so.  (She isn’t here this morning, but not because she’s ill; she’s just she’s out of town.)  When we were in seminary, the disease almost killed her; she was in the hospital for two months.  A small part of my struggle in that time had to do with the fact that we were living in a seminary community, an environment where people like to engage in what one of my professors called “the helping Olympics.”  In that intimate community of people on fire to serve Jesus, sometimes helping goes a little over the top.  We had more food than I knew what to do with.  I will never see tater-tot casserole the same way.  I had pans of lasagna and bags of spaghetti stored in freezers literally across campus.  But the real challenge wasn’t the supply; it was the demand.  At first, my reaction to all this helping was shamefully negative.  I could take care of myself and my kids just fine, thank you very much.  I didn’t need anything … especially not another tater-tot casserole.  I have always prided myself on self-reliance.  Hmmm.  Note the verb in that sentence: “prided myself.”  That might have been a clue that something was amiss.  Pride isn’t one of those things about us God enjoys so much.

My guess is that I may not be the only one who struggles with needing to assert my independence and self-reliance.  Perhaps some of you can identify with that.  It’s a huge part of our American character.  It’s a marker of maturity, a marker of success in our culture.  And I would say, having been with you nine years now, that self-reliance is a value deeply held here at St. Andrew’s.  Just ask anyone.  How are you?  “I’m fine.  Just fine.  Really.  I’m fine.  Everything is just fine.”  Right?

Well, let me tell you:  We’re a lot more fine when we let God love us through this beautiful community we’ve been given.  And as we grow that sense of community – as we cultivate connections among us and embrace our interdependence – we grow stronger and stronger as a parish family.

So, I want to introduce you to two new ways to do that this morning – two ways to connect with each other and embrace our interdependence.  One is the new Welcome and Connect card, which the ushers handed you when you came in.  You’ll notice they’re blue and white – combining the old blue cards and white cards into one.  I’ll talk about this more during the announcements, but I hope each of us will fill one out and put it in the offering plate every week.  Really.  Every week.  Part of the goal is that we want to know you’re here so that, when you’re not here, someone can check in and see how you’re doing.  But we also want to stay in touch better, making sure we have your current e-mail and cell-phone number.  We’d like to have your birth date so we can send you a card.  And we’d like to be praying with each of you, every week.  Everybody’s got something or someone to pray for – just jot down even a single petition or thanksgiving.  It’s a great habit to start. 

I’d also like to introduce you to the other new card, the one in the pew rack in front of you.  At the top, it says, “In His Service,” or IHS.  IHS is an opportunity to match up St. Andrew’s people who have a willingness to help with St. Andrew’s people who have a need.  So, what kinds of things do we have in mind?  Whatever you might want to offer.  Maybe it’s a ride to church or to the grocery store.  Maybe it’s a meal during a challenging time.  Maybe it’s babysitting.  Maybe it’s mowing the lawn.  Maybe it’s help with polishing up a résumé and networking for a new job.  Or maybe it’s just the chance to go out for a cup of coffee and a conversation.

So what we’re asking you to do is share your abilities and your needs with your parish family.  On one side of the card, you’ll find bubbles to fill in, saying whether you’re offering help or requesting help, as well as when you’d like to paired up with someone.  On the other side is space for your contact information and the most important part:  telling us what you can offer or what you need. 

Now, I do think this is an inspired effort, but I don’t think we’re magically going to get precise matches all the time.  That’s OK.  You may offer to help someone file income taxes, and it may be closer to April before anyone takes you up on it.  You may let us know that you’d like help figuring out how to use your computer, and it may be a while before someone else volunteers the right skills.  Please be patient, and don’t think you’ve been forgotten.  Someone from the IHS team will be in touch with you in any case, to let you know that you’ve been heard.

And who might that team be?  I want to honor these parishioners who have cared enough about you, and about this church family, to build a system to help us love each other.  Thanks very much to Connie Hesler, Bill Meeker, Jerry Miller, John Norton, Jerry Stanley, and John Walker.  Bless you for being a blessing and for helping us bless each other.

The IHS system is new – and it will surely have its kinks to work out – but the mutual love it reflects already happens here all the time.  In a single week, I have seen these moments of community, moments of connection:  A Eucharistic visitor not just taking Communion but arranging flowers from the altar to brighten a lonely person’s day.  An usher noticing someone in tears and offering a hand on the shoulder – and a prayer.  A volunteer helping a grieving family put on a funeral reception.  Trained lay people visiting parishioners in the hospital.  People from the SweeneyCare telephone ministry calling to check in.  People bringing food when a friend’s child came home from the hospital.  In these moments, and dozens of others, I’m sure, the love of God has taken flesh at St. Andrew’s – just this week.  And that’s what we hope IHS will build on, helping people see that they can turn to their church family first as the place to use their gifts and meet their needs, the place to grow into the wholeness and wellness God desires for us, the place to grow into the “stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).

IHS is not a panacea for meeting every need.  We will stumble along the way, and that’s OK.  In families, you don’t get each relationship right every time.  But you do know that your family is there for you.  And that’s the long-term goal of IHS – to encourage us turn to St. Andrew’s, to turn to each other, first to help foster our well-being.  And in that, I mean by giving as well as by receiving, because, as everybody knows, the giver receives as much or more than the recipient. 

This church is a place where each of us can grow stronger and deeper in our relationship with God and with each other.  This is a place where the kingdom – God’s deepest desires about the life we share – can take flesh in the relationships we nurture and grow.  This is good soil.  We just have to acknowledge the fact that we need it.  We just have to admit that we really aren’t always “fine.”  We just have to embrace the beauty of our dependence, on God and each other – the kingdom reality that seeds don’t grow on their own.  

Earning This

[Sermon from July 6, 2014]

This summer marks the 70^th Anniversary of D-Day – the invasion of Normandy and the tipping point toward the end of World War II.  I guess I tend to think in movies, so this summer I’ve had scenes of Saving Private Ryan running through my head. 

As you probably know, Saving Private Ryan is a story of a deeply heroic effort undertaken not for military advantage but for compassion.  The Ryan family has sent four sons into battle, and three of them have been killed on D-Day.  Remembering a Civil War letter from President Lincoln to a mother who’d lost all of her sons,¹ Gen. George Marshall decides to rescue the last Ryan boy.  The commanders send a squad to find him, as he fights his way toward Germany, and bring him home.  Enduring great struggle and loss to achieve their mission, the squad finally finds Private Ryan – and finds itself fighting a German Panzer division.  The squad helps stop the German tanks as well as saving Private Ryan, but the captain, John Miller (played by Tom Hanks), is mortally wounded.  As he lies in the dust, struggling for his last breath, he grabs Private Ryan, pulls him close, and whispers Ryan’s mission for the rest of his life:  The captain says, “Earn this.”

Can we do that?  Can we earn the sacrifices made for us?  As an older man, Private Ryan is haunted by the thought that maybe he didn’t earn the soldiers’ sacrifice.  And as people of faith, we’ve struggled for 2,000 years to accept the mystery of salvation made possible through Jesus’ sacrifice.  Can we do anything to earn that?  Absolutely not – it’s the “free gift,” as we heard last week – “the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).  But that free gift inspires us – or at least God intends it to inspire us – to turn from our slavery to sin and bind ourselves “to righteousness” instead, (Romans 6:19), to Jesus himself (Romans 7:4).  So even though we can’t earn a holy sacrifice – not even the sacrifice of a soldier for a brother in arms – we can strive for the righteousness exemplified by the one who gives his life.

So our story is that striving for righteousness.  And as we celebrate America’s independence this weekend, we remember striving for righteousness is what this country has always done, too.  From the very beginning, the United States has been an aspirational nation.  As we declared our independence, before we even were a nation, we proclaimed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”²  None of us in this room would deny that statement.  None of the Founders, more than 200 years ago, would have denied that statement.  But the nation they created certainly didn’t enflesh the reality of that statement – a nation of slavery, and broken treaties with native peoples, and second-class citizenship for women.  What the Founders couldn’t fully accept wasn’t the truth of their prophetic claim; it was the definition of the subject of the sentence:  “men,” or as we would say, “people.”  All people are created equal.  Well, who qualifies as being fully a person?  If all people are created equal and enjoy equal rights, but you deny those rights to women, the logical consequence is that you aren’t seeing women as being fully people.  Or African-Americans.  Or Native Americans.  Or gay and lesbian people.  The list goes on. 

Our gift as a nation has been seeing the possibility of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people; but our challenge as a nation has been extending the definition of “people” to all.  We are a nation that lives slightly ahead of ourselves, writing checks to future generations that those future generations then seek to cash, as Martin Luther King Jr. said.³  In any given moment, we are never “there” yet.  The finish line is always moving farther down the road.  For those of us who presently enjoy the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, God challenges us always to look for new ways to “earn this” by striving to extend those blessings to all.

We are not yet fully who God wants us to become.  Think about what we heard in that reading from Deuteronomy, a clear call God’s been making for more than 3,000 years:  Care for the stranger who lives among you.  Now, over time, the face of the stranger changes.  In our nation’s history, shop windows once held “Help Wanted” signs that also read, “No Irish need apply”; and cartoons depicted Irish immigrants looking like apes.  That’s horrifying – we can’t imagine it today.  But we still find ourselves struggling to respond to immigrants from Latin America seeking life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – now, suddenly, including tens of thousands of children crossing the border on their own.  I don’t pretend to be an expert on immigration policy.  Clearly, the number of immigrants overwhelms us.  It’s probably fair to say that not everyone who comes should come.  But as we sort through the details of public policy, as nations must do, we must also heed God’s call to compassion, for adults and children alike.  As Deuteronomy puts it, the “God of gods and Lord of lords … loves the strangers….  You shall also love the stranger,” says the Lord, “for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (10:17-19)  It is God’s aspiration for us, a call to be more than what fear and self-interest tempt us to be.

That’s a challenge.  But it’s nothing compared with the aspirational call we hear from Jesus in today’s Gospel reading:  “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).  Really?  So, like, the people actively seeking to harm our nation, the guys with automatic weapons screaming, “Death to America!” – we’re supposed to be praying for them?  We’re supposed to love them?  Yes.  So what does that look like?  What does it say about the practice of warfare by Christian people?  That’s another conversation – a long conversation.  But Jesus’ aspirational call does help explain why, even when we feel immediately under attack by our nation’s enemies, we know, deep in our hearts, that we cannot torture even the people who hate us the most.  That boundary makes the work of defending ourselves harder, but we know that as followers of Jesus – and as believers in the American gospel that all people are equally people – we know that we can’t allow ourselves to go down torture’s road.

“Strive to be perfect,” Jesus continues in today’s aspirational Gospel.  “Strive to be perfect … as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)  That seems an impossibly high bar, for our nation and for ourselves.  How can we strive to be what we can never be?  As always with Scripture, language matters – and in this case, language both saves us from the need to be error-free and challenges us embrace an aspiration we actually can attain.  The word in Greek here isn’t about perfection in the sense of making no mistakes.  The word Jesus uses actually means “complete” or “whole” or “mature” – that we are to live fully into the miraculous reality that each one of us is made in the image and likeness of God.  If that claim is true, Jesus would say – if each and every person is made in the image and likeness of God – then we must live past the limitations of each historical moment, the sinfulness that makes us see anyone as less human than we are.  We must aspire to live into the wholeness made possible by the spark of divinity that burns in each of us.  We must aspire, as Lincoln said, to be governed by “the better angels of our nature.”⁴

Standing in a cemetery in Normandy, a blessedly old man among the headstones of his friends, Private Ryan turns to his family and asks the movie’s heart-rending question:  “Have I been a good man?”  Have I earned this?  Clearly, this face of the Greatest Generation had been striving toward that goal across the decades of his life.  He surely failed at times, but his story isn’t the failure; it’s the striving for goodness that defines him. 

And so it is for us, for ourselves and for our nation.  Our call is to continue to look at ourselves in the mirror – seeing the faces of all humanity looking back at us – and ask, “Are we a good nation?”  Do we reflect the principles we want to claim, the ideals of our nation and the statements of our faith – that all people are created equal, that all people enjoy rights no one can take away, that all people are children of God?  As we set immigration policy, do we love the stranger?  As we provide for the common defense, do we love our enemies?  Our history assures us we will constantly miss the mark.  But our story is more than that.  Our story is the story of striving – striving to live out the truths we hold as self-evident, striving to pay the checks we’ve written to people yet unborn, striving to honor the promises we’ve made to ourselves and to our posterity.

1.        Lincoln, Abraham.  “Letter to Mrs. Bixby.”  Abraham Lincoln Online: Speeches and Writings.  Available at:  http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/bixby.htm.  Accessed July 3, 2014.

2.        “The Declaration of Independence:  A Transcription.”  Available at:  http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html.  Accessed July 3, 2014.

3.        King, Martin Luther King, Jr.  “I Have a Dream…”  Available at:  http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf.  Accessed July 3, 2014.

4.        Lincoln, Abraham.  “First Inaugural Address.”  Abraham Lincoln Online:  Speeches and Writings.  Available at:  http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/1inaug.htm.  Accessed July 3, 2014.

Taking the Stranger's Hand

[Sermon from Sunday, June 29]
Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew (10:40-42) concludes a chapter that’s all about discipleship, costly discipleship.  And that’s OK.  As Fr. Marcus said last week, following Jesus ought to cost us something – in fact, it ought to cost us everything. 

Now, Fr. Marcus was discussing the Church’s call to take decisive stands on large issues – issues like marriage equality, and investment in Israel, and economic justice.  I guarantee you the Episcopal Church will debate these same issues next summer when we gather for General Convention.  Even now, the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council passed a resolution two weeks ago encouraging all Episcopalians to “stand in solidarity with our low-wage brothers and sisters” and commending the voters of Seattle for raising the minimum wage there to more than $10 per hour.¹  Some of you are probably angry to hear that; others of you are trying not to applaud.  That’s what living in the Big Tent of the Episcopal Church is like.  But here’s what else I know about living in that Big Tent:  Faithful, passionate people can share a holy goal even as they disagree vigorously on how to achieve it.  In this example, one person might work for legislation to raise the minimum wage; another might extol the free market’s power to expand opportunity and raise incomes for all.  But both can make the case from deep faith, and both can share the same kingdom goal: getting people out of poverty.  Working toward that goal is one way we strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks here because issues of justice have kept knocking at our spiritual door, one after another.  The Kansas City Public Schools unveiled a plan last week to lease Southwest High School to charter school Academie Lafayette, which wants to add high-school grades to its successful elementary and middle-school programs.  After a conversation between the Southwest Faith-Based Coalition and school-board member Gunnar Hand, the writing on the wall seems clear:  Southwest would be closing anyway; and the Board sees partnering with Academie Lafayette as a way to give this historic high school a new lease on educational life.  We’ll see; it’s not a done deal.  Of course, the members of the Faith-Based Coalition are concerned for the students who won’t qualify for admission to Academie Lafayette – which is nearly all the students currently at Southwest.  What happens to them, other than being shunted off to an even worse educational environment?  The faithful folks on the Coalition, who’ve served the students and teachers of Southwest for four years now – they want to ensure these kids who’ve often been forgotten are not forgotten again.  The Coalition members are striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of these forgotten kids.

Then, two days after the Faith-Based Coalition meeting, 29 St. Andrew’s people gathered at Operation Breakthrough for perhaps the least likely bus tour ever: a tour of Kansas City’s east side, “the city you never see.”  Dorothy Curry organized it as the next step in a journey of relationship we’re trying to begin with people we basically never see.  When Sister Berta from Operation Breakthrough was with us in May, she spoke about the power of connecting with another human being – the transformation that can happen when individuals who live in wealth and individuals who live in poverty enter each other’s worlds by simply sitting down together for a cup of coffee or a meal – or, before that, by taking a bus ride.  On Thursday afternoon, just a few miles from this beautiful church and this beautiful neighborhood, we saw parts of our city that many of us had never even driven through.  We heard clients from Operation Breakthrough describe challenges most of us would never think about – the insane reality of getting a 10-cent-an-hour raise, and thereby losing your state child-care benefits, and thereby losing the job at which you were excelling.  That makes no sense.  Or how about this one:  A mother on the bus whose young son was shot to death told a story about talking with a teenage boy at Operation Breakthrough about the pervasive presence of guns, mostly illegal guns, on the east side.  The teen said to her, “Give me $10.  I could buy you a gun today faster than I could buy you a fresh tomato.”  Let me say that again, because it’s true:  With $10, he could buy a gun today faster than he could buy a fresh tomato.  That’s appalling – and it’s life on the east side.  On that bus, our hearts were stirred by the lived experience of other children of God – folks who’d suddenly become real people rather than representations of poverty.  Seeing “them” as human beings is the first, absolutely necessary, step in striving for justice and peace, and respecting their dignity as human beings.

And then, on Friday, another 20 of us went to the housing projects east of downtown for an evening with Freedom Fire Urban Ministries.  We brought dinner for the 80+ kids there, but this is no feeding program.  This is an eating program and a playing program, a ministry of simply hanging out.  You don’t do “mission work” at Freedom Fire in the sense of doing a project for someone; the things being built there are human connection and faith.  You eat hot dogs with a few boys and throw a football around; you sit and talk with a few girls and paint their faces – and something happens.  Something changes.  No longer are they “them” – those people in the projects who … fill in the blank with whatever judgments you want to make.  Instead, they become kids who like to play football, and have their faces painted, and eat hot dogs.  Again, it’s a way to redeem our perception of “them.”  It’s that vital first step in striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of other human beings.

I know people who would argue that the way to live out that baptismal promise is at the macro level, working for systemic change.  And I know people who would argue that the way to live out that baptismal promise is at the micro level, working to build relationships.  And I would say … yes.  They’re both right.  One of the absolute requirements for practicing faithful, costly discipleship is to look carefully at your own context and ask, “How can we best reveal the kingdom of God where we are, who we are, here and now?”  And then – like the members of the Faith-Based Coalition, and the people on the bus tour, and the people who went to Freedom Fire – then we have to take what may be a huge risk for many of us, the risk of taking the stranger’s hand in ours.

This is small-time ministry.  It’s not going to change the state’s rules about qualifying for child care, or get guns off the streets, or bring a decent grocery store to the neighborhoods of the Northeast.  But in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus raises up the blessedness of small-time ministry.  After spending an entire chapter outlining the costs of being his ambassador, sent to bring the kingdom of God to life in the world around us, he ends with a counterintuitive model of success.  Not only will the one who endures costly discipleship receive the reward of eternal life, but even those who simply welcome Christ’s ambassadors will receive their reward.  Bringing the kingdom to life is not always about large-scale metrics of success.  Sometimes simply extending hospitality, extending relationship, leads to blessing enough.  We strive for justice and peace by showing up – to work with a kid in a classroom, or to hear a mom tell her story, or to throw the ball around in the yard.  It’s thinking globally – or thinking “kingdomly” – and acting locally.  As deeply as we want to solve the problems around us, as badly as we want to fix the Kansas City schools and get poor people decently paying jobs, we can’t make it happen tomorrow.  And we can’t make it happen at all without first loving people as children of God. 

How do we do that?  Well, here’s a very direct suggestion.  It won’t apply to everyone here today, but maybe the Spirit is whispering directly into your ear this morning.  The idea is simple yet simply transformative:  Strive for justice and peace, and respect human dignity, by crossing a boundary to build a relationship.  Take a stranger’s hand in yours.  You’ve heard before, from Sister Berta, about one way to do this – by being part of Starfish Ministry.  The idea is that a small group of women here would get together with a mom who lives east of Troost, not to “fix her” but just to get to know her.  Maybe God is calling you to be part of this, to build the kingdom by building a relationship.  Or here’s another possibility.  You know about our partnerships with Southwest, and Benjamin Banneker, and Gordon Parks schools.  No matter how those partnerships may look in the coming year, I can guarantee you this much:  There are people in this room right now who can offer what these kids need deeply, which is someone who cares enough simply to show up consistently.  So whether it’s through Starfish Ministry, or by working with a teacher or a student, or some other way of crossing a boundary – some of you, right now, are hearing God whisper new life in your ear.  So talk to me or Dorothy Curry – or to Gerry Barker, or Pete Vogt, or Sally Tudhope, or Jerry Kolb, or Joy Bower, or Ann Rainey, or any of us who’ve already heard this holy whisper. 

In these relationships, at first, we might imagine that we’re in the role of Jesus’ ambassadors, and we’d be right about that.  We are his disciples; and we are called, in word and deed, to “proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 10:7).  But the beautiful paradox is this:  In being sent to bring God’s healing, we are healed ourselves.  In being sent to proclaim the kingdom, we hear the kingdom proclaimed to us.  Jesus’ ambassadors aren’t just church people.  Sometimes the ambassadors with the clearest message are those God sends to talk to us.  God wants us to sit down and get to know those ambassadors of Christ we usually don’t hear. 

When we do, the relationships will cost us something, because we’ll have to let go of some of our favorite pat answers and presuppositions and prejudices.  “But I tell you,” Jesus said, “whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones” who speak on his behalf – truly, they will receive their reward (Matthew 10:42).

1.  Schjonberg, Mary Frances.  “Council takes action on both justice and governance issues.”  Episcopal News Service, June 12, 2014.  Available at:  http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2014/06/12/council-takes-action-on-both-justice-and-governance-issues/.  Accessed June 27, 2014.