A Maundy Thursday poem

The Fly’s Opportune Time

 

It’s Maundy Thursday.  The

Giant fly eyes the bread

And glides in for a landing –

Right there, in front of

God and everybody. 

This target’s too inviting to

Pass by.  Sweet and yeasty,

Full of life, the bread sits

There, defenseless.  Just as

This is no daily bread, this is

No small-time fly.  Twice the

Size of a picnic pest, the fly

Bears an air befitting its

Stature.  Even on the altar of

Sacrifice, unlike the bread

The fly won’t be denied.

We small men flick fingers

And wave hands, boys

Playing at power.  But

The fly knows better.  It’s

Been working the long con,

Waiting for this very night,

And it’s not going anywhere.

On this night of willing

Sacrifice, Jesus there at table

With his friends, the fly

Takes its time and

Makes its move.  The bread’s

Still there, of course, still

Whole and sweet and good.

But germs have now

Been spread, and only

Moments separate the

Lovely, holy now from

Creeping disease to come.

 

-- John Spicer

Church Going to People

I was gone most of last week at a conference for larger Episcopal churches.  The conference was in San Diego, which was a wonderful contrast to the two huge snowstorms that my wife, Ann, and I left behind.  It was also a great learning opportunity – a chance to think about where the Episcopal Church is going, how we can reach people who aren’t here, how we can do ministry better, how we can serve parishioners better.  Then, after the conference, Ann and I took a couple of days off, rented a car, and drove up the coast to Los Angeles.  I want to share a few images from our trip with you.

The first two images are from where we stayed in L.A. – a historic little hotel in a very funky part of the city, Venice Beach.  If you ever watch The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you may have an image of Venice Beach in your mind:  People in skimpy swimming suits, roller-blading down the sidewalk; muscle men pumping iron, “free spirits” peddling paraphernalia for, shall we say, alternative lifestyles.  Add to that the hawkers of medical marijuana, the homeless people camping on the beach, and the tourists trying to make sense of this circus, and you have quite a cross-section of humanity.  It was fascinating – like traveling to a different country (maybe a different world).  I’m not sure I felt like I belonged there exactly, but it was certainly interesting.

The next three images illustrate the real reason we went up to L.A.  No, that’s not the entrance to a club and a band beginning its set.  These are photos of the building and the “narthex” of an Episcopal church, as well as a band playing what functions as the “prelude” before worship there.  The name of the congregation is Thad’s.  Not St. Thaddeus’ Episcopal Church.  Just Thad’s.  Thad’s is an intentional church plant by the Diocese of Los Angeles.  As the priest puts it, Thad’s is there for people “who would never darken the door” of a traditional Episcopal parish.  Many of the people there have never even set foot in a church before – which is a little hard for us to imagine, here in the church-saturated Midwest.  So Thad’s takes the shape of the Episcopal liturgy, what we know from a Sunday-morning service, and turns it into something the people there can connect with.  And the morning we were there, probably 150 people were at Thad’s rather than hanging out at Venice Beach.

And what did they experience?  What drew people in?  Well, as you can see, it’s in a very approachable space, part of a collection of cool galleries and boutiques in Santa Monica.  The music is basically alternative rock – and the musicians there write it all themselves.  There’s no explicitly Christian symbolism in the room, other than the purple draping on the music stands reminding those in the know that it’s Lent.  Worship is led by guys in jeans and sweaters sitting on stools.  There’s only one Scripture reading.  There was no celebration of Eucharist that Sunday – they have Communion only about once a month.  After the sermon, people have a chance to share their reactions and contribute their experiences in response to what they heard.

And the people there clearly felt like they belonged.  Several of them shared personal experiences out loud in response to the sermon.  They took a long time exchanging the Peace.  They gathered for coffee and doughnuts before and after worship.  It doesn’t look like our version of church, but clearly they felt like they were in God’s house.  Clearly, they felt at home. 

Why am I telling you this?  It’s NOT because I want to turn St. Andrew's Sunday mornings into an experience like Thad’s.  Let me say that again: I do not want to turn our Sunday mornings into an experience like Thad’s.  I can say it one more time if you want to hear it again.  What was interesting to me about Thad’s is the way this congregation has taken Episcopal worship and community life, and made them authentic to the context in which they find themselves.  They’ve looked around at who’s there in Santa Monica – people with little or no experience of church, people in the entertainment business, people who like funky museums and boutiques – and they’ve created a place where authentic relationships can flourish for those folks.  They’ve created a place where real community can grow out of the fertile Episcopal ground of Scripture, tradition, reason, and welcome.  Thad’s has created a place where people feel they belong.

Belonging is a huge piece of what it means to be part of a church community.  And I don’t mean “belonging” in the sense of having a membership.  I mean feeling the embrace of God’s love welcoming you, holding you, and supporting you through the ups and the downs we all face. 

We heard about that kind of belonging in the Gospel reading today, one of my favorites, actually.  It’s what we usually call the “parable of the prodigal son,” but a better name would be “the parable of the Father’s embrace.”  Jesus tells this story because the religious authorities are grumbling at him for associating with lowlifes, the tax collectors and other sinners.  He’s out there with the folks on Venice Beach, so to speak, and the religious leaders can’t understand why.  So Jesus tells them a couple of parables, including this one, to reveal the sense of belonging that God offers us and God’s passion to draw us into it.

In this story, it’s not cheap grace that the Father gives his wayward son.  It’s true that the Father’s love is always there for the taking, but it matters when the Father extends it – which is once the son has made the first move.  The son has to decide to turn around, to repent, to come back home.  But once he does, the Father doesn’t put him on probation until he proves himself.  The Father makes a move just as dramatic as the son’s return, rushing out of his house and down the road, meeting his wayward son out there on Venice Beach.  The sense of belonging, the sense of embrace, that the son had thrown away – it’s there for him, once again.  The Father runs to him, puts his arms around him, and kisses him.  And once he’s in his Father’s arms, the son knows that’s where he belongs, without a doubt.

That’s what the people at Thad’s are experiencing: God, in the person of that congregation, is throwing open the doors of the traditional Church and running outside it, finding lost daughters and sons and welcoming them home.  They need to feel that they belong; and in the spiritual community of Thad’s, they’re finding that embrace.

These days, that’s what the experts are saying people need as their first step in becoming part of a faith community.  In the old days, when the Church could expect most people would want or need to be part of it, the model worked like this:  You believed in the things the Church said you should believe, you behaved in a way that let you fit in with the other folks there, and eventually you came to feel like you belonged.  Now, as writers like Diana Butler Bass explain, the model is reversed for the religiously unaffiliated.  Now, they need to feel like they could belong in given a spiritual community.  Then they’ll try on the behaviors people practice there – things like coming to worship, having a prayer life, serving in the church and the community, giving back to God in thanksgiving for their blessings.  And through this process comes a deep, centering belief in God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  It’s the kind of belief that’s more than simply agreeing something’s true.  It’s the kind of belief you stake your life on.¹

Those of us who know the love of Christ at St. Andrew's would say we belong here, in the way the prodigal son belongs in the love of his Father’s household.  You could cite lots of examples, but I saw one here a couple of weeks ago that blew me away.  Many of you know Allen Roth, who’s been a parishioner for many years, along with his wife, Cindy.  Many of you also know that Allen has received difficult news – a diagnosis of cancer the doctors say most likely won’t be cured.  The other night, Allen stood up in the Jewell Room before a couple of groups he belongs to here.  Everyone shared a glass of wine and a bite to eat, and Allen told his story – of his diagnosis, but also of the joy, the hope, and the paradoxical new life he’s found in the experience of “terminal” cancer.  The fact that Allen could stand up and offer that story says he feels he belongs here – and so does everyone who filled the Jewell Room that night.  They are bound together in the life of God’s kingdom that Paul describes in the reading from 2^nd Corinthians: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (5:17).  The fact that Allen could throw a “cancer party” with his spiritual community at church shows just how much more than an institution St. Andrew’s really can be.  Everyone in the room that night felt life being made new.  Everyone in the room that night felt the Father’s embrace. 

And now, as St. Paul would urge us, we’re called to take the next step – to be “ambassadors” of God’s new creation (2 Corinthians 5:20) and bring the power of Jesus’ love to reconcile those who are spiritually homeless, those out wandering on the beach.  Our neighborhood looks different than Venice Beach, and most of the people on the Trolley Trail aren’t quite as interesting as the characters out in L.A.  But the call is the same.  Jesus asks us not simply to be a church that accepts the people who come to it but a church that reaches out to the neighbors around us and draws them into a spiritual community they may not even know they need.  Jesus asks us not just to be people who go to church but to be a church going to people.  I think Jesus is asking us to explore what it might look like to create a new worship opportunity, sometime other than Sunday morning, that connects a little more directly with the experience of people who aren’t here.  I think Jesus is asking us to build a community where people who aren’t here could feel like they belong.  I think Jesus is asking us to show “all sorts and conditions” of people that they can feel the Father’s embrace.  As the people of God in this place, we’re called to meet folks out on the road as they make their first, hesitating turns toward the Father’s love.  And then, we’re called to welcome them home.

1.         Bass, Diana Butler.  Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening.  New York: HarperCollins, 2012.  199-214.

God's Answer: Christmas

[Sermon from Christmas Eve]

If you were here on Sunday, then you know this sermon is sort of Part 2 to what I began that morning.  But don’t worry – you don’t have to have heard Part 1 for Part 2 to make sense.  Part 1 was about the question, How can we get ready to celebrate Christmas after the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut?  Part 2 is about a harder question:  Where is God this Christmas if something so awful can happen?

On Christmas Eve, we like to hear stories.  I’ve often written stories for sermons on Christmas Eve.  There’s something about this night, a chord of memory long-played from childhood, that makes us want to gather around the fire with a mug of hot chocolate (or something stronger), basking in the warmth of the love of family and the love of God.  I can still see my family gathered around our living room on Christmas Eve when I was a child, and I can feel the warmth of the fire toasting my back as I sat on the hearth – the spot for the youngest in our household because the older people got the chairs.  We talked, and sipped whatever our mugs held, and got ready to head off for midnight mass to welcome God’s love into the world once again.

That was my Christmas Eve from childhood.  This Christmas Eve, things feel different.  This isn’t a sipping-cocoa-‘round-the-fire sort of Christmas Eve – not with our nation and our own hearts still aching from the shooting in Newtown.  This is a Christmas Eve when sentimentality feels even cheaper than usual.  This is a Christmas Eve when we can only imagine how the people of Newtown must be reeling, trying to figure out how they’re supposed to celebrate the birth of the Christ child only 10 days after losing so many children of their own.

In fact, this is a Christmas Eve when some of us might have come to church trying to figure out a few things about God, too.  If you’ve come here tonight with serious questions on your heart, know that you’re not alone.  If you’ve come here tonight even with something of a chip on your shoulder, know that you’re in good company.  I imagine there are many people, even folks of long-standing faith, who’d like to ask some serious questions of God tonight.  At the top of the list might be, “Where were you in Newtown?”  Or maybe, “How can such awful things happen to such innocent people?”  Or maybe, “Why didn’t you do something?”

On a night when those questions hang in our hearts, I guess I do want to tell a couple of stories after all.  First is the story of one of the victims at Sandy Hook Elementary.  Of course, all the adults who died at the school that day are rightfully remembered as heroes, giving their lives for the children they served.  But one woman’s story particularly strikes me this night – Anne Marie Murphy. 

Ms. Murphy was a teacher’s aide at Sandy Hook, assigned to help special-needs kids in a first-grade class.  Ms. Murphy was a wife and mother of four, a strong Christian who loved to paint and who was planning a big celebration with her extended family over Christmas.  That morning, she was with working with Dylan Hockley, a 6-year-old who struggled with autism.  When the gunman burst into the classroom, Dylan Hockley was hit, along with the teacher, Vicki Soto, and several other children in that class.  What stands out to me about Ms. Murphy, the teacher’s aide, is where her body was found.  She had apparently been nearby Dylan because she had pulled him close, using her own body to try to shield him from the gunfire.  In that act, she lost her own life.^1,2,3 

Why do I tell you such a sad story on this holy night?  Because, in a deep sense, it’s the Christmas story.  It’s the Christian story. 

In our culture, the Christmas story tends to come across like the images on our Christmas cards – a loving couple cast in soft light; cuddly lambs around a manger; a baby glowing in divine light, wrapped in blankets and resting comfortably on clean, warm straw. 

Now, none of us has video from that night 2,000 years ago, but I think the scene probably didn’t look quite like that.  Two thousand years ago, this child was born to impoverished, unmarried peasants.  They’d been forced to travel on foot the 70 miles from their home in Nazareth to the father’s hometown of Bethlehem because government authorities commanded it.  It wouldn’t have been easy in any case, but it was all the harder because the young woman was about to deliver their child.  When they arrived, the only place they could find to stay was in a cave, sleeping with the animals that were kept there.  And if you’ve ever mucked out a stall, you know how clean that cave most likely wasn’t.  This couple’s situation wasn’t all that remarkable.  Thousands of peasants would have been affected by the Roman government’s census, and most of them would have been enduring similar hardships.

But the difference, of course, was the child.  This wasn’t just another peasant baby, as likely to die as to live in its first few hours and days.  This peasant baby was the Son of God.  Now, you’ve heard that said so many times before that it may not mean much to hear it again tonight.  But let me say it again:  That was the Son of God lying in the muck of that stable. 

Messengers from heaven came to other peasants that night, sheep herders outside town, and told them a Savior had been born – the anointed ruler, the Lord, the true king who would reveal the Roman Emperor as the imposter he was.  But this divine king was lying in a feed trough, and his parents were just hoping they’d find something to eat that night.

To the sheep herders, the message must have been literally unbelievable.  It didn’t make sense.  How could it be “glad tidings of great joy” (Luke 1:10) that another peasant baby had come into a dark, uncaring world?  He certainly couldn’t have seemed like a savior.  He looked like he was the one who needed saving. 

Thirty years or so later, he’d look very much to be in need of saving once again.  He’d be beaten and killed by the worldly authorities he’d come to challenge.  And on that dark Friday, people gathered around would ask, where was God?  Why didn’t God come to save this young man who who’d worked miracles and who called out to his Father from the cross?

On the floor in Newtown, Connecticut, a teacher’s aide lay shot and killed by a madman.  And again we ask, Where was God?  Why didn’t God come and save the children at Sandy Hook Elementary and the teachers and staff who protected them?

This is the mystery of Christmas: In Jesus, God was lying there in the dirty straw.  In Jesus, God was being beaten by the Romans.  In Jesus, God was dying on the cross.  And at Sandy Hook Elementary, Jesus was shielding a 6-year-old, trying to save a beloved child from the power of sin and death.

The mystery of Christmas is that God saves us from sin and death by stepping directly into the line of fire.  God loves us, and all of creation, so deeply that God saves the world from the inside out.  As a baby, vulnerable to everything, God chose to enter into our experience and make it God’s own.  The pain we know, God knows.  The fear we face, God faced.  The death we seek to avoid at all costs, God chose.  Like the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary, God saw us in need and decided to act, no matter the cost. 

But what transforms this from simply a story of noble suffering to the story of salvation is the fact that for this baby born in the dirty straw, death was not the end.  Jesus’ death toppled death from its throne.  Enduring it, he defeated it – and gave to us that victory, as well.

Anne Marie Murphy knew that truth.  She staked her life on it.  For Christians, death is not the end because God chose to defeat sin and death from the inside out, stepping directly into it to lift us out of it. 

In our own small ways, we, too, know that we’re called to walk the path of Anne Marie Murphy.  We probably won’t find ourselves called to shield a child from a bullet.  But we most certainly will find ourselves called to love people extravagantly in a thousand smaller ways.  We may not lay down our lives, but we can hold out our hands.  We can give when the world might take.  We can cry with someone who mourns.  We can offer a coat to someone shivering in the cold.  We can commit ourselves to honor this truth: that all children deserve the chance to learn free from violence, free from hunger, free from systems that bind them in despair.  As Anne Marie Murphy chose to act as Christ, so must we.  God loves us enough to defeat sin and death from the inside out.  Now, Jesus asks us to return the favor.

At the end of the order of service, you’ll find a poem.⁴  It wasn’t written in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, but it might as well have been.  On this holy night, let me leave you with this: 

 

When the song of the angels is still,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their sheep,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoners,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among people,

To make music in the heart.

                           – Howard Thurman

 

1.   Cleary, Tom. “Dylan Hockley died in Anne Marie Murphy’s arms.”   Available at: http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Dylan-Hockley-died-in-Anne-Marie-Murphy-s-arms-4122828.php.   Accessed Dec. 20, 2012.

2.   Feldman, Emily. “Newtown Teacher’s Aide Died Cradling Dying Student: Family.”   Available at: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/national-international/NATL-Newtown-Teacher-Died-Cradling-Dying-Student-Family-184007371.html.   Accessed Dec. 20, 2012. 

3.   Liu, Betty Ming, and Shelley Acoca.   “Connecticut shooting: Sandy Hook victim Anne Marie Murphy mourned by Katonah parents.”   Available at: http://newyork.newsday.com/news/nation/connecticut-shooting-sandy-hook-victim-anne-marie-murphy-mourned-by-katonah-parents-1.4336910.   Accessed Dec. 20, 2012.

4.   Thurman, Howard.   “The Work of Christmas.”   In: Thurman, Howard. The Mood of Christmas and other Celebrations.   Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1973.   23.

 

Magnifying the Lord

[Sermon from Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012]

It’s been a little more than a week now since the murders of 27 people in Newtown, Connecticut.  We’ve heard about events there we can barely fathom: an insane young man blasting his way into a school; teachers doing math problems in one moment and shielding children from bullets in the next; funeral after funeral for 6- and 7-year-olds.

Now, as the days give us some distance from the initial shock, we begin to try to place this horror in some larger context.  There are several contexts to choose from, at least based on what we hear in the media; and the common denominator seems to be identifying which of society’s failings we should blame.  Some look at the shootings and blame public policy on gun control.  Some blame inadequate mental health services.  Some blame violent movies and video games.  Our culture and our government offer plenty of failures for us to work on, but my hunch is that blame for this tragedy doesn’t reduce to any one of them.  And with so much pontificating in the media about what’s right and what’s wrong with American public policy, you certainly don’t need another talking head in the pulpit this morning.

Instead, here in church, it’s enough to try to figure out what to make of a liturgical moment that doesn’t seem to fit the world around it:  the joyful anticipation of our Savior’s birth in a time of deep and tragic grief.  I can’t begin to imagine how the people of Newtown, Connecticut, are preparing their hearts for Christmas this year.  What does the fourth Sunday of Advent have to say to us in a week of funerals for first graders?  How in the world do we celebrate Christmas this year?

Well, consider what I’m about to say as Part 1 of a possible answer.  Part 2 will come tomorrow night, at least at the 8 and 11 o’clock services.  Part 1 is about us:  How does God ask us to respond to a world where children may be murdered as they sit in their classrooms?  Then, on Christmas Eve, we’ll ask the harder question:  Where is God in a world like that?

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, our Gospel reading is about Mary’s visit to her cousin, Elizabeth.  Mary and Elizabeth are about to bring children into this world – both inexplicably, but for different reasons.  Elizabeth is old and barren; she and Zechariah have been unable to have children for decades.  At the other end of the spectrum is Mary – a girl who has no business being pregnant, given that she’s never been with a man.  Yet, in the reading just before today’s Gospel, which we heard in Lessons and Carols last week, Mary receives a visit from the angel Gabriel, who tells her that not only is she pregnant; she’s pregnant with the Son of God, the one who will reign as king and save God’s people.  “Do not be afraid, Mary,” the angel says (Luke 1:30).  Yeah, right. 

And yet, at the end of this astonishing announcement comes an even more astonishing reply from the unwed teenaged mother:  “Let it be with me according to your word,” she says (1:38).  Mary hears an implausible story of God’s desire to save people, to deliver them from the oppression of Roman rule, to unveil an entirely new set of ground rules, to reveal God’s own kingdom on earth – and Mary says, “Yes.”  Ridiculously, in the eyes of the world, Mary chooses to be God’s primary instrument – someone who seems an entirely inadequate beacon of hope for a world that doesn’t even deserve that much blessing.

As she and her cousin celebrate the astounding news they’ve both received, Mary lifts up a song of praise that honors both God’s foolishly hopeful plan and her ridiculous role in it.  She begins with one of the most amazing statements in all of Scripture, something we’ve heard so many times that it may not strike us as it should.  Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46).  Now, think about that a minute.  You can hear that word “magnify” in a small and poetic way, simply meaning that Mary praises or glorifies God.  But it can mean much more.  In the Greek text, the word is a form of the verb megalynō, which literally means to enlarge or to amplify (http://www.teknia.com/greek-dictionary/megalyno).  What a thought: that Mary’s spirit, and that our spirits, might enlarge or amplify the sovereign Lord of the universe.  Who is she to think such a thing?  Who are we to do such a thing? 

Well, think for a minute about magnifying in another context – using a magnifying glass.  Remember how you played with a magnifying glass when you were a kid?  At least I did.  Used one way, the glass enlarges something small.  It lets you look at an ant crawling by and really see the head, thorax, and abdomen in detail you could never make out on your own.  It lets you see the wonder of creation with new eyes.  But little kids also know a magnifying glass can be used another way.  In the sun of a summer day, you can take your magnifying glass, hold it just the right distance from the ground, and focus the sun’s rays into a tiny point, concentrating the light so much that you can burn through a piece of paper.  Or, for that matter, you can burn to death that little ant you were studying so intently a few minutes before.  The instrument that magnifies is also the instrument that focuses light with such clarity, precision, and intensity that it can set the world on fire.

And there’s the rub.  We can set the world on fire with the power of God made manifest in ordinary people who choose to say “yes” and make love bear flesh.  Or, we can set the world on fire by twisting that power God shares with us, setting loose the demons within us that long to be gods themselves. 

What does God ask of us?  In a world where a twisted killer can steal the life from 27 innocent people in a matter of seconds, what does God ask of us?  God asks us to join Mary in magnifying the Lord. 

Through the magnifying glass of Mary’s womb, the light of God’s salvation was focused into the ultimate act of divine healing, as God’s saving nature took on flesh and bones to dwell among us.  That child would live out God’s shepherding rule, bringing divine power to earth in a kingship of saving love.  Mary chose to be the magnifying glass that set the world on fire, aflame with God’s own Spirit. 

And through the magnifying glass of other human hearts – yours and mine – we still focus the light of God’s salvation into specific saving acts.  We show God’s healing power when we turn away from “the thoughts of [our own] hearts” – when we, who think we’re powerful, come down from our thrones and lift up the lowly (Luke 1:51-52).  We set the world on fire with God’s Spirit when we “fill the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:53), when we act “in remembrance of God’s mercy” promised to us across the generations (Luke 1:54-55). 

Every day, angels visit us and ask us to say, “Yes.”  Every day, we have to choose how we will use our freedom.  Every day, God asks us to help invert the worldly order, the apparent victory of death over life, of darkness over light.  Every day, God asks us to bear salvation into humanity’s corruption of God’s intent.  Every day, God asks us to scatter the darkness of human agendas and twisted priorities so that the light of God’s saving purposes can shine through.

Even though this is a world where killers sometimes have their way, we must remember that they will not win.  Neither those who spew bullets nor those who spew hate will have the last word.  In the darkness of this world, God asks us – remarkably, even us – to embody a different reality, a kingdom reality.  God asks us to fight back by choosing to focus the light of Christ, to shine it into this darkness that surrounds us, and to set the world on fire, as each and every one of us “magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46).

God of the Paradoxes

[Sermon for Nov. 4, 2012]

This is a morning of many possible sermon topics.  It’s the conclusion of our season of stewardship, and in a few minutes we’ll honor and bless the pledges we’ve received so far.  It’s time for a quarterly parish meeting, where we’ll update you on our parish’s budget priorities, finances, and giving patterns.  And it’s All Saints’ Sunday, the time we honor the long line of holy men and women beginning in ages past and continuing to Liam, the new Christian we’ll baptize this morning.  So I guess I’m supposed to preach on stewardship and the saintliness of offering time, talent, and treasure to the Lord who gives us all that we have.  And all that would have been right and true.

But sometimes, life gets in the way of what you’re “supposed” to preach, and this week is one of those times.  As many of you know, I’ve been out of town this week – first in Haiti for our mission trip and then at Diocesan Convention.  Meanwhile, Hurricane Sandy has beaten and battered much of the Caribbean and our East Coast, killing 160, destroying crops in hungry lands, flooding countless homes and businesses, and causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage.  As we offer our prayers this morning for the saints we’ve known and loved, we should also remember those who’ve died in this storm and those now struggling to make their lives whole again.

While you’ve been watching news coverage of the storm, I’ve been watching Haiti once again – this time, in the aftermath of a hurricane.  On this visit, as before, I was taken by the sight of the tap-taps.  As you may know, tap-taps are what pass for public transportation in Haiti – vehicles of various sizes, from pick-ups to school buses.  They’re called tap-taps because that’s how the riders, hanging off the sides and sitting on the top, get the vehicle to stop.  More often than not, tap-taps carry proclamations of faith, written on the vehicle in decorative script, often with paintings of Jesus or the Virgin Mary.  The statements may be specific Scriptural citations or devotional phrases like “La Grace de Dieu” (the grace of God) or “Merci Jesus” (Thank you, Jesus).  But on this trip, I saw a tap-tap proclaiming the deepest theology of Haiti I’ve ever seen.  It read, “Le Dieu des Paradoxes” – the God of the Paradoxes.  That’s the faith story of Haiti in a nutshell.

This has been a week of paradoxes – for the eight of us serving in Haiti and certainly for you back in the States.  For the missionaries, we went into a context of deprivation, poverty, and disaster; and we left feeling blessed, guided, and protected – beginning, dramatically, by leapfrogging over Hurricane Sandy to get from Florida to Haiti, which had been ravaged by the storm the day before.  Meanwhile, for all of you back home, you’ve watched the paradox of Americans becoming the victims, rather than the responders, to a natural disaster when the same hurricane turned north and ravaged New Jersey and New York.  The missionaries in Haiti were in some senses much safer than their friends and relatives back in the Mid-Atlantic states. 

The theme of paradox continues this morning, as we celebrate a feast of paradoxes – All Saints’ Sunday.  As we remember those we love who’ve gone before us, we see in our minds’ eye those we can no longer see.  We rejoice that they live in our hearts while we rejoice that they’ve found their homes on the other side of eternity.  It’s a day marking the presence of the absent – a paradox, indeed.

On this All Saints’ Sunday, we hear the story of Lazarus.  I love this story – not just because of Jesus’ miracle in raising the dead but because of the honest, authentic struggle that leads up to it.  Sometimes we forget that this story begins with Jesus knowing that his friend Lazarus is dying and deciding not to go do anything to heal him.  It seems fairly heartless; and we hear the bitterness in the voices of both sisters of the dead man, who independently confront Jesus when he finally arrives, four days too late.  As we pick up the story this morning, it’s Mary we see pinning Jesus to the wall, saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).  We also see Jesus paying the price, grieving for his friend’s suffering and for the suffering of his sisters left behind.  And we hear the visitors whispering to one another, “Couldn’t he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:37).  It’s the same question we ask all the time about places like Haiti.  It’s the same question we ask whenever something like Hurricane Sandy strikes:  Lord, how could you let this happen?  Jesus, where were you?  Why didn’t you step in and do something?

I’m sure the people in the story were just as frustrated as we are by the immediate answer, which is ... no particular answer at all.  We get no neat and tidy explanation for the death of Lazarus, or the suffering in Haiti, or the tragedy of Hurricane Sandy.  Instead, it’s more God’s style to respond with action rather than talk.  Jesus responds by entering into the suffering, crying with those who mourn, comforting them by showing up in the pain – and then transforming the tragedy into the seedbed of resurrected life.  Jesus stands before the tomb; and, against all odds, he commands, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43).  It’s the same kind of crazy proclamation we hear at funerals – when death clearly seems to have carried the day, yet we say that “life is changed, not ended” when we die (BCP 382).  It’s the same kind of unexpected end to the entire Scriptural story we heard in the reading from Revelation today, with God tying the ending to the beginning with a second act of creation, saying, “See, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).  The answers we get may not be satisfying in the moment of pain, but God’s pattern of action is far richer than we’d have any reason to expect:  not life and death, but life and death and life again.

In a week like this one – on the ground in flooded Haiti or on the ground in flooded New Jersey and New York – it’s hard to see God making all things new.  But then, God surprises you.  A few days ago, we visited the homes of some students who attend the Episcopal school in Les Cayes, Haiti, the larger city near our rural school in Maniche.  (We tried to go to Maniche, but the flood waters prevented it until nearly the end of the trip.)  In Les Cayes, you see the same kind of poverty as in the countryside, except that living conditions are worse because the population density is so much greater.  In the city, we stopped at one student’s home – a tin and concrete shack, six people living in literally two small rooms, crammed next to other houses just the same.  Fetid water oozed down an open gutter in front of the door.  The family had little more than a few clothes, a charcoal-fire stand, a pot, some plates, a table, and some odds and ends.  “Depressing” doesn’t begin to describe it.  But inside the house, I turned around to see a large piece of thin particleboard tacked to the wall behind the door.  It’s the daughter’s chalkboard, and it was covered with her homework for that day.  We talked with her about the Episcopal school she attends.  She’s so grateful to be there.  She’s one of the top students in her class.  Her favorite subject is math, and she plans to be a nurse someday. 

You see the story play out again and again.  Another student we visited wants to become a doctor.  Another, a lawyer.  Many want to become nurses and help the people they see suffering all around them.  In the midst of next to nothing, in the breeding ground of despair, there is hope.

The God we worship specializes in bringing light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, hope out of despair.  The God we worship will heal the people of New York and New Jersey through the presence of Jesus suffering alongside them, and then empower them to rebuild their cities and their lives.  The God we worship empowers us, with our partners in Haiti, to build the kingdom one child’s life at a time, redeeming the possibilities for a little girl in a two-room shack by transforming the poverty of her present into the fullness of her future.  The God we worship promises to all the saints a “yet more glorious day” (Hymnal 1982 287) when “mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4) as heaven and earth are reunited, and all creation returns to the fullness of what God intended “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1).  The God we worship leads us into the waters of baptism, into Jesus’ own death, so that we might rise with him, with Lazarus, and with all the saints into the life of the heavenly kingdom, now and always. 

The God we worship is the God of the Paradoxes.  And at the end of the day, all we can do is name the deep and divine reality we can barely comprehend: that beginnings come from endings, that gain requires loss, that emptiness creates the space for God to fill.  As St. Francis prayed centuries ago, still we see and marvel at God’s stunning inversion of blessing: that “it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life” (BCP 833).

Haiti Trip 2012 -- Day 6

Oct. 30, 2012, 9:04 p.m.

 “You see, we have a problem.” – Worker at Walls International Guest House, Port-au-Prince

To truly enjoy this day, you have to start near the end.  Sarah Kieffer and I left this afternoon, ahead of the rest of our group, because we each had to be home early for other commitments.  We made it to Port-au-Prince after a long afternoon’s drive from Cayes, and Pere Colbert finally found Walls International Guest House, where our adventure began several days ago.  After checking in (and convincing the man in the office that we really did need two rooms because Sarah and I weren’t married), Zo the driver, Sarah, and I took our bags to the two rooms.  Zo dutifully locked the door to my room as we left so my things would be safe; and Sarah locked her door, too.  I hadn’t received room keys when we checked in, so I went back to the office to get them.  “Keys?” the attendant asked.  “You don’t need keys.  Everything is safe here.”  The locked metal gate, 10-foot concrete wall topped with razor wire, and the guard with the loaded shotgun made me think he was probably right, in a sense; but we were still locked out of our rooms.  So they sent a worker over with a ring of keys that only could have come from a movie – at least a hundred different keys, probably every key to every lock ever installed on any door in this guesthouse’s history.  The worker tried about five, got frustrated, and took out a screwdriver.  Within two minutes, he had broken into my room – not only are keys unnecessary; so are locks.  The worker had more trouble with Sarah’s door, which had a strip of wood trim obstructing the screwdriver’s access to the latch and the strike plate.  He worked on it for a few minutes (without ever trying a key) and left to get more tools.  He came back with a small crowbar and pried off the wood trim.  He still couldn’t get the lock to give, and he ended up forcing the screwdriver between the latch and the strike plate with sufficient force to break the lock and tear the strike plate out of the doorjamb.  In this, he succeeded in opening the door.  Without any apparent awareness of the absurdity of this situation, he then calmly set to the task of trying to repair the damage, replacing the trim and hammering the strike plate back into the doorjamb.  Of course, the door no longer closed, so he pounded on the door’s hinges, which apparently had been pulled out in the break-in.  This allowed the door to close – but the latch no longer caught in the strike plate.  The worker stopped, looked at me, and said, “We go upstairs to another room.  You see, we have a problem.” 

Indeed.  Look around Haiti, and you find truer words were never spoken.  For all its holy paradoxes and charming personalities, Haiti is also a place where inexplicably silly things happen for no good reason.  A guesthouse gives you a room whose door has a lock, posts no sign telling you not to lock the door, has no key available to open the door, and destroys the door in the process of opening it.  It’s a story that plays out over and over again.  Good intentions or standard practice are implemented halfheartedly or half way; then people have to deal with the consequences.  Roads are made through running rivers.  Buildings are erected well enough to stand for a few years, but no one can afford to fix them once they begin to crumble.  A highway detour is made when a bridge becomes unsafe; and instead of fixing the bridge, they pave the detour – which involves another water crossing.  “This is how things are in Haiti,” you hear.  But it can’t be how things remain.

We had a fabulous conversation last night about what a missional response to the enigma of Haiti might look like.  Is it appropriate to take the perspective, as people have for years, that “something is better than nothing”; or does that actually result in nothing in the long run?  Is there value in foreign mission groups coming into Haiti for a week to build outhouses or cuddle babies, and then leave?  Experience (by St. Andrew’s and countless other groups that have been in this work for some time) has shown that something often ends up being nothing more than cause for the missionaries to feel good about their work and have a little Indiana Jones moment in the back of a pickup at 60 miles per hour. 

What counts here, and probably in all missional enterprises, is longevity of commitment and intentionality of relationship.  If we send money to fund teacher salaries and buy books, that’s great – if it’s the start of something more.  Even better is coming to see how the teachers are doing with the books, and asking them what else they need.  We certainly have ideas to offer, as the preschool seminar this year and last clearly show.  But we also have to be humble enough to ask them what works – even if our learning is as small as the insight that glue sticks really don’t work here but bottles of glue do.  If we take seriously the idea that we’re partners in the missional enterprise – specific people sent into relationship with other specific people – then we have to take seriously the implications: that both sides of the partnership are equal, and both partners will be changed by the experience of relationship.  Even if we hold the purse strings, that doesn’t mean that “our school” in Maniche is St. Andrew’s school.  It means we’re co-creators, with the people at the school and with God, of the new future awaiting the children who will one day lead Maniche and Haiti on a new path.

Here’s a story to make this concrete.  First, some background:  We spent this morning driving, once again – this time looking for an eastern route to Maniche that might allow us to get there despite the flooding.  We drove through Cavillion, where another U.S. Episcopal church sponsors a school, and headed toward the mountains from the third direction in as many tries.  We got to a river crossing – the first of at least two – and found the same thing we’d found the day before.  Crossing would have been a foolish gesture, and this time, only one member of our group advocated taking the heroic leap.  We drove back to the guesthouse in Cayes, had lunch, and talked about what might be next.  Mary Ann insightfully noted that we’d be well-served to enter into the conversation prayerfully, asking God to guide our discernment as we struggled to see how we might be of value here if we couldn’t cross the river.  I suggested that we look for God’s direction in the activities we’d found to be most holy and life-giving over the past few days – ways we’d seen God active in the things we’d done so far, even if they weren’t exactly the things we’d planned.  The conversation included many moments of revelation and insight, but none as rich as Chris Nazar’s offering:  “My heart has been touched most by talking with our teachers [a few of whom we’d encountered in Maniche yesterday], even if only for a few minutes.  I count these people as my friends, and I want to spend time hearing about how things are going with them.  Let’s go back to Maniche, even if we can’t get to the school, and sit down with them so we can spend time with our partners.”  It’s not about the deliverables, as valuable as the items were that the donkeys carried yesterday.  It’s about the relationship and the effect of that relationship on helping kids prepare for a life beyond subsistence farming on their fathers’ lands.

Tomorrow, Sarah and I will get on planes and head back to the States.  We will fly back into our own country damaged by the same hurricane we hurdled to get to Haiti a week ago.  For Sarah, the hurricane whose aftermath she’s seen in Haiti will become intensely personal as she travels back to Connecticut, God willing – though, through the bits we’ve picked up on Haitian radio, it sounds like scores have died, and millions are without power, and Sarah most likely will not fly out of Ft. Lauderdale tomorrow.  Most likely, I will fly without too much difficulty, given that my path is through Miami and Dallas to Kansas City.  As we make our ways home, our compatriots in this mission trip will drive back to Maniche tomorrow, uncertain what they’ll find.  They may simply gather whichever teachers they can find, buy them Cokes in the market, and talk under a banana tree.  But Pere Colbert told Sarah and me he thinks there may be a decent chance they can get to Maniche tomorrow, and get to the river’s edge, and ride a couple of donkeys across the water, two by two, so they might have at least one day at this school with which we partner in mission.  They won’t be able to accomplish their agenda:  photographing all 200 students and collecting information about them, observing classes, doing art projects, teaching about great Haitian artists, holding parent-teacher meetings, and visiting students’ homes.  But they will show up to be in relationship in whatever way God makes available in that moment.

And from the God of the Paradoxes comes this last chuckle:  The donkeys for the river crossing will be arranged by a cell-phone call.

Haiti Trip 2012 -- Day 5

Oct. 29, 2012, 4:52 p.m.

Another day in Haiti, another day when your agenda takes a back seat.

The schedule called for us to head up the mountain today, see the students and teachers, bring five duffels of supplies, begin taking pictures of the students, work with the construction foreman to get the school walls sanded for painting, and have an after-school meeting with the teachers.  Only one of those purposes was accomplished.  The hurricane is still swelling rivers between Cayes and Maniche.

There are three river crossings between Cayes and Maniche, if you take the regular route.  The largest river is just before you get to the school, and we knew it would be high.  (In fact, as I said, we didn’t even try to go to Maniche for church yesterday because of the likelihood of high water.)  This morning, we came to the first river crossing, just north of Cayes.  It’s usually a little unnerving, driving the truck into the water, about 20 feet across.  This time, we couldn’t even try.  The locals weren’t even trying.  The water was simply too fast and too deep.  Only 15 minutes out of town, and it looked like our mission for the day was cancelled before it even began.

This led to an interesting conversation about, “Now what?”  One contingent wanted to plan for a morning hike up the mountain tomorrow, once we could pack more water and ensure everyone had both water shoes and tennis shoes.  The problem is that it’s about five miles of switchbacks up to Maniche – and then, of course, five miles back down again – on a road of rocks, gravel, and mud.  But still, the heroic missional impulse said, “We’ve come this far; let’s give it a try.”  Another contingent felt the risks were too great, particularly given that we hadn’t trained or planned for a 10-mile mountain hike in a foreign country.  A compromise was developing in which those who wanted to go would plan to hike up the mountain early the next morning, and the rest would find something else to do. 

The dilemma was resolved, however, when Pere Colbert spoke with someone on the phone and found an alternate route up the mountain, one that would take us along several more miles of even worse road than we usually traveled – and still not solve the possible issue with the major river crossing at Maniche, just before the school.  So we took the chance in the hopeful thought that trying was better than giving up.  The long way to Maniche involved some small amount of graded road under construction and even a few stretches with blacktop – as smooth as in the States.  But soon, this gave way to roads like riverbeds, except these riverbeds ran up and down at incredible grades, testing the integrity of the overloaded Toyota 4x4 pickup.  After a couple of hours and one relatively uneventful river crossing, we bounced into Maniche, rejoicing.

The rejoicing stopped as we came to the end of the road, at the river just before the school.  Literally, we came to the end of the road.  It wasn’t supposed to end there, but now it did.  With the hurricane, the river had risen so high that it had washed out the road that once led down the bank and onto a gravel bar.  Normally, the road continues down that gravel bar for a fifth of a mile or so; then you drive through the river and come up on the opposite bank.  Not anymore.  Now, the river literally had swept the bank away, and the road simply stopped at the edge, about five feet up from the water and probably eight feet up from where the gravel bar had been.  We were not driving across this river. 

This led to another missional dilemma:  We’ve come this far; why not just wade through the water to get to the school?  We saw local people doing it.  Some in our group wanted to try it, too.  The water was about waist high.  We would have been soaked, but hey – it’s all for the kids.  But again, there is the issue of cost vs. benefit.  What would be the benefit of making a waist-high river crossing and trudging the remaining half-mile to get to the school?  It seemed to me the benefit was mostly for us – so that we could feel good about having gone the extra mile to accomplish that which we had purposed.  But what would be the value for the teachers and the students?  What would we be bringing them through our heroics?  We would prove that we cared, certainly – in a very outward and visible way.  But what if one of us was caught in the stream?  What if one of us fell?  I said something about being in the position of standing up in church and explaining how one member of our group had been seriously hurt on the mission trip because we decided to be heroic and walk through a flooded river.  But the resolution was made clearer by Pere Colbert, who reminded us of the active presence of cholera in Haiti, which is borne through fecal contamination transmitted through water or by hand-to-mouth.  Basically, it wasn’t just waist-deep water – it was waste-deep water, too; and the risk of walking through it most definitely outweighed the benefits. 

So we found ourselves standing on one side of the river, virtually able to see the school on the other side, unable to get there.

The next missional dilemma was this:  What do we do with the five duffels of school supplies we had hauled up the mountain?  Assuming that we’d be able to come back to the school later in the trip, we had to off-load them now because we had another pickup-full of supplies for painting the school.  We considered storing the school supplies somewhere in Maniche but eventually decided to strap them on the backs of two donkeys, who are accustomed to walking through this river, carrying goods to and from market.  As we stood there – carefully discerning which bags of supplies should ride where on a donkey’s pack, and whether some of the cargo (especially the 50 or so books for the school’s library) was too valuable for donkey transport through a swollen river – as we stood there debating which bags should be taken and which shouldn’t, the blasé donkey dropped a load that splattered on the legs of the wise blans, who’d been standing too close to the business end of a farm animal.  So much for our capacities for discernment.  Although some members of the group were fairly upset that the books were being risked in a water crossing, we offered a prayer for safe transport and sent the donkeys on their way.  They made it just fine, and none of our materials got wet, thanks be to God.  Unfortunately, the donkey’s owner couldn’t say as much.  He apparently had put his cell phone in his shirt on top of the pack, and the shirt slid off into the river.  So much for his capacities for discernment.  And I like to think that the Lord did chuckle at the wisdom of these pinnacles of creation.

So, with the supplies safely delivered, we revised our plans and decided to go visit the secondary schools in Maniche where several of our graduates are continuing their studies.  We wanted to find out whether our students measure up to students in other local schools: Are they adequately prepared by the education we offer?  We stopped at two schools, spoke with the headmasters, and came away with very good news.  Our students we performing at least as well as those from other schools, and some were doing much better than their classmates.  In fact, one of the headmasters said they look forward to students from St. Augustine (our school) because the school has such a good reputation.  It was great to get the information from unbiased sources; the third-party credibility carries a lot of weight. 

In the last secondary-school visit, our daily miracles continued (building on the divine success of the donkey crossing).  First was the miracle of hospitality.  Apparently, the headmaster took seriously the Biblical command to treat strangers as if he were “entertaining angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).  We had asked if we might stop in his schoolyard to eat the lunch that had been packed for us at Hosanna House.  Oh, no – he took us upstairs to his own home in the floor over the classrooms.  He ushered us into a sitting room and dining room that were immaculate, set to receive company, with marble tile on the floor and lovely decorations on the walls.  (Even better in the moment was the fact that the bathroom was similarly appointed; and it had been four hours since the truck ride began.)  Miracle #2 was of lesser grandeur but just as much appreciated:  No boiled hot dogs this time but the tasty chili con carne that Hosanna House packs on good days.  Miracle #3 was the best of all.  The lunch packed for us was intended to feed a group of eight.  We had eight Styrofoam plates, eight forks, one bag of the omnipresent stale hot-dog-bun bread, and eight packages of crackers.  But by that time in our day’s journey, we were now 16, with the addition of Pere Colbert, a translator, the construction supervisor, our headmaster Samuel, the 5^th grade teacher Homer, and other hangers-on.  So, it was time for Jesus and the feeding of the 5,000.  We shared plates; we slopped up chili with bread and crackers rather than forks; we emptied out our backpacks of the protein bars and peanut-butter crackers we had brought.  Everyone was served, everyone had enough, and there were leftovers of everything.  We shouldn’t have been surprised – this is not exactly a new storyline.

Then, on the way back from Maniche to Cayes, we stopped at a local tourist attraction.  (Yes, there are such things in Haiti.)  Tucked away in the mountains, down an even worse road than the previously even-worse road we’d been taking, was a waterfall – a glorious waterfall.  It’s significant enough that the Haitian government is in the process of building a concrete viewing platform there (though, frustratingly, not doing anything yet with the path down the muddy hill leading to it).  The scene was glorious, and I realized why they give you raincoats at Niagara Falls.  We stood there, getting wet, enjoying the cool break, and marveling at the contrast that is so deeply a part of the Haitian reality:  The presence of breathtaking beauty around one corner and squalor around the next.  Of course, it’s all about what you choose to focus on, because neither one defines the country.  Instead, what defines the country is the reality that God is in the midst of all of it – creating the beauty, suffering with the poor, inspiring those who would change broken and corrupt systems.  As that alternate Lord’s Prayer puts it, “Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver.”  That is the God who is known and worshipped deep and wide here, from churches to tap-taps to signs at cashier windows.  The fundamental reality of Haiti, maybe, is this:  that God is.