Word and words

Photo, The Cloud Shadow (Anti-Crepuscular Rays), by Jason A. Samfield at Flickr.com 

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark 1:14-20

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Homily

We have two poignant stories, one from the Old and one from the New Testament, this evening that speak of God calling to us.  And each is against a background of danger.

In the first story Jonah is called to go to Nineveh, which to this day is the name of a province in northern Iraq.  It was dangerous then as it is now.  There were ruthless potentates who held on to their power by force.  Confronting them was scary.  But that is what Jonah was called to do.  Why would anyone want to do that?  Why would anyone risk one’s life trying to confront evil doers who are not likely to change?  It’s hard for us to imagine.

In the second story, another Jonah (we translate it as John in English—John the Baptist) has answered God’s call against a background of danger.  He loses his head literally.  Why would someone risk that?  Immediately after the beheading Jesus picks up the baton.  What’s going on in him?  He starts calling disciples against the same background.  Why would they respond?  What would motivate them?

I guess my mind goes to the motivation question because my life is nowhere as difficult as Jonah or as the disciples of Jesus, all of whom risked death.  I get upset just going into a difficult phone conversation; I’m really not going into a war zone, but my stomach is upset nonetheless.  So I just found myself wondering about the motivation for “doing the right thing” whatever that “right thing” is at any given moment in our lives.

Now that I’ve raised those questions, can we leave them on the table for just a moment?  I want to prepare for an answer to them by zooming out and asking an even bigger question: What is going on between us and God that God would be calling to us in the first place?  Abraham Heschel (yes, I’m a total groupie) has a great answer for that.  To set up being able to really hear his answer, let me probe your experience.  Have you ever had the experience of living in a city and finding out it’s time to leave; then you say, “Oh, no.  I never did this or visited that.  And now it’s too late.”  Perhaps you felt that way at the death of a friend or relative.  “I wish I had spent more time.  We could have done this together.  We could have talked about that.”  Abraham Heschel says that it is profoundly embarrassing for us when we realize that we live our lives “in the shadow of greatness and…ignore it.”  (I Asked for Wonder, p. 67)  We were right next door to greatness and never or rarely visited.  The powerful, reassuring Stream of Life was there the whole time and we were too busy to pay attention, let alone enter into conscious engagement with it.  You can spend time with your spouse, be in the same room, but not necessarily be connecting.  Our children, even our pets, even our plants, can be in close proximity to us without us consciously communing with them. 

Rabbi Heschel has another line where he says, “Man is a messenger who forgot the message.”  (Ibid.)  We came from God.  From where else did our miraculousness emerge?  We were originally one with God; we became an expression of God—a messenger of this oneness with God, this love of God.  But we forgot.  We got busy.  We began to think we were alone…when in fact we cannot shake off the shadow of Greatness.

With our partners we might have “date night” as a way to be sure to consciously connect to keep the relationship alive.  We play with our children and our pets.  We carve out time.  To keep our relationship with God alive, most of us figure out that we need to set time aside.  We live in the shadow of greatness and should not ignore it.  There is a great wing that is causing that shadow.  It is literally a blessing to live in the shadow of that wing and to know that we are never alone.  We are never separated from the greatness.  Our personal prayer time is like “date night.”  So is our Saturday evening gathering.  We are consciously in God’s presence.  We are in God’s presence all the time, but now we are consciously in God’s presence. 

So when the Lord of life calls to us, to go stand in a dangerous situation, to do the right thing, it is the precious voice of One who is known.  Of course we pay attention.  And like a parent who would risk anything for its child, or a child who would risk because of the trust the child has in the parent, we are willing to risk standing in the breach and doing the right thing. 

We are called to “stand in the breach” all the time.  So we want date night to be special.  Each of you has set aside the time to be together.  The music ministry has spent hours preparing and practicing.  The preachers have spent hours studying and crafting nourishing words.  Readers and ministers and sacristans and bread bakers have devoted hours to the specialness of this moment.  All of this is a way of saying we do not want to ignore the great shadow.  All of this is aimed at having some sense of the divine, which cannot be put into words, settle into our souls until we know we are not alone and that we are loved.  How else could we walk out into scary situations?  How else could we stand tall in the middle of demanding situations?  We are better than “not alone.”  We are one with God.

--Frank Krebs 

Photo by Gulfu on flickr.com

We all have fantasies. It can be wonderful to push aside reality for a time, make life whatever we want it to be.  I have a biblical fantasy life; I think we all do whether we admit it or not, it’s not just a quirk of church nerds like me.  I read a story like today’s first reading about Samuel’s call from God and I really like it. Indulge me while I diverge from our typical gospel track and fantasize about this great story from Hebrew Scripture. Before my critical brain kicks, I picture a beautiful safe “monastery in the mountain” sort of place.  I see a young handsome monk, Samuel (picture a young Jeremy Irons) soundly asleep with clear conscience on the stone floor of the temple (that looks a lot like a Eucharistic Adoration chapel in my mind).  His serene face lit by candlelight, a gentle voice calls his name and Samuel rushes to the side of a grandfatherly Eli (picture Fr. Thomas Keating or perhaps Dumbledore).  Eli is confused but then coaxes Samuel to try centering prayer. And Samuel sits all night in that blissful combination of peace and ecstasy that the great Renaissance painters brush on the faces of the saints.  Ahhh...  That’s church, folks.  We can all go home.

I could probably preach a decent word cloistered in my little fantasy, but instead I decided to pick up the Bible and actually read it – like a cold bucket of water, folks.  Like a cold bucket of water.  Don’t get me wrong, 1 Samuel is a fascinating read, but peaceful and serene it is not.  It’s the gritty honesty of the Hebrew Scriptures that makes the humans feel real, whether we want them to or not. 

We learn that Eli is on his way out, and it’s not flattering or pretty.  Eli and his two sons are priests in the temple.  We learn that Eli’s sons are “scoundrels” (2: 12).  They have no regard for God or the people.  When sacrifices are offered they take the best portion of the meat, meant for the offering, and eat it themselves.  They take what they want by force and lay with the women who serve at the entrance to the tent of meeting (2:22).  (Ours, apparently, isn’t the first era that’s dealt with sex scandals in our religious institutions.)  Eli pleads with his sons to change their ways, but they don’t listen.  A man of God comes to Eli when Samuel is young and warns him that God is set to destroy Eli and his sons and raise up a new priest of Israel.  Eli is privy to this bad news long before God starts speaking to Samuel.  We arrive at the scene read today. 

It’s with this background that suddenly highlights Eli in this story, the very human, bedraggled soul that is put in a difficult position.   When Eli figures out that Samuel is being called by the LORD he knows the word that Samuel hears will not be favorable to him and his family.  And yet he still instructs him wisely allowing Samuel to gain power and authority even if it means his own fall.  We don’t hear it in today’s reading, but the word Samuel hears is indeed scathing and indicates dire consequences for Eli and his sons.  Samuel doesn’t want to tell Eli what he heard.  Eli presses him the next morning and Samuel relents and tells him the bad news.  Eli surprises me again.  His response is gracious, affirming, and trusting.  “It is YHWH; let him do what seems good to him.” 

After the haze of the fantasy has been swept away and I really look at these biblical characters, I find Eli offers us a gift, not a fantasy, but a gift for real life. 

It’s a gift that doesn’t feel like a gift.  It’s the gift of decrease, downward mobility, stepping back, becoming less, it’s the gift of dying a small death.  This isn’t the way to make headlines or become a hero.  We like to cheer the rising star.  We also like to despise those who fall from power – all of the stories of politicians stepping down after scandal.  Eli is neither rising nor being knocked from power.  He is gracious.  He acknowledges his ultimate fate.  He accepts the circumstances out of his control that will lead to the dying of his family and the rising of a new order in Israel. 

This sort of grace feels like a gift to us in a culture that values upward mobility, increase and tends to ignore, sterilize, shut away, and even despise the natural course of life that brings endings, attrition, death.  Other places and times closer to the natural rhythms of life have beautiful was of looking at this other half of life.  Where we might refer to the Grim Reaper, others call her Lady Death.  Francis of Assisi called her Sister Death in his Canticle of the Sun.  Salmon grown large and fat in the river caught by a bear to feed her cubs.  Aging, decline, death serves a purpose and it can be beautiful!  As our bodies fail our souls can flourish, as we step aside God can do new things. 

I am encouraged by the glimpses of Eli’s gift here at Sts. Clare & Francis.  During Advent we offered the Sacrament of the Sick. While many came for specific intentions, there were a few who shared that they didn’t have a specific ailment, but were feeling the effects of aging.  They couldn’t do what they once could do; they couldn’t be who they once knew themselves to be.  “I figure a little extra grace couldn’t hurt,” said one participant.  Indeed not.  To traverse the natural course of aging with grace we need prayer and we need community.  Another example: Our beloved sister, Dorothy, embodies Eli’s gift for me.  She shines with the afterglow of a life lived in service, working for justice, embodying Christ in her actions, the divine born out in her hard work.  Now she participates in our community, her very presence affirming to those to whom she passes the torch.  She is an Eli in the graceful way she has embraced change and allowed her soul to expand even as her physical activity decreases.

I stand in a place of gratitude for all of the Eli’s that illumine the way.  At 29 years old I will readily admit that I am no expert in this gift.  I can see how many have stepped aside to allow me to rise in this present day: All of the women whose dreams had to die, who were executed for standing up for women’s rights, so that I could stand here an ordained woman today.  I am grateful to all of my ancestors who sacrificed, rose up and stepped aside so I could be.  But I know that what rises must also fall.  I hold Eli’s gift in gratitude but also in hope.  Hope that when I know the steady decline of life and self that I will have the spiritual resources and supportive community to see me through graceful transition.

What is fading, decreasing, ending, dying in you?  How can we express our gratitude and let it go, allowing something new to come?  How do you let Eli’s gift into your life?

Even for our young community, Eli can offer us wisdom.  As we inevitably change, parts of our life that we once loved will be no longer.  As we develop our gifts for ministry we may look outside ourselves (I hope) and notice other communities living the call better than us… and we will need the grace to stand aside and encourage the work of God wherever we find it even if it means the spotlight falls elsewhere.

As we gather around the Eucharistic Table this evening offering our gifts, as always, perhaps the gift of Eli will sneak into our prayer of thanksgiving.  A gift I didn’t know I wanted, I didn’t know I needed, a gift for real life… we welcome it here.

Rev. Jessica Rowley
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
January 14, 2011
Focus Text: 1 Samuel 3:3-19

Photo “Braded River” by Giant Ginkgo at Flickr.com

Isaiah 60:1-9

Ephesians 3:1-12

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany 2012

Sts. Clare & Francis

Homily

Some of you may have had a time in your life—perhaps now—when you wondered whether the religious practices around you really were the vehicle for spiritual life and growth.  At times like that perhaps the rituals, the religious architecture, the vestments, etc. just seemed like they were not “doing it for you.”  Perhaps during times like this you saw someone in another tradition with different kinds of robes, e.g., the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk, and you wondered if maybe they had the answer to your spiritual questions.  I am setting out this scenario because I know that it is a very common experience. 

Today we celebrate an ancient Christian feast and story about some seekers from “the East” coming to the Jewish world and finding the object of their worship.  This story may have lots to tell us about our own spiritual questing.

Consider this story, this painting if you will, in Matthew as an ancient icon that is intended to open us up to truth on a spiritual plane.  In the story a star “stops” over the place of Jesus’ birth.  Stars generally move like clockwork.  But spiritual reality is not on clock time.  Spiritual experiences have a quality of “timelessness” about them.  Time doesn’t seem as linear as it does deep.  When we are in an experience like this we generally feel like we have found something very precious.  Sometimes this awareness is acknowledged by our body language, for instance we might take off our hat or our shoes or we might kneel.  We are in awe.  As the experience deepens we might find ourselves wanting to surrender in some way or to be generous in some way.  As we stare at this icon—totally appropriate for our lives in 2012—the wise men notice that time has stood still, they kneel down, and they open up their treasure chests. 

This pattern is repeated in our lives often as the Holy One comes into our flesh.  You might be at the kitchen table with your daughter, home from college.  You might be in that kind of special conversation where it dawns on you how precious the moment is.  Time stands still.  There is no past or future, only the depth of this moment.  And you notice yourself responding to the awesomeness of it.  If it were not inappropriate perhaps you would kneel.  Maybe your genuflection is one of rapt attention and inner sensations of joy and gratitude.  Maybe a kind of gratitude comes over you and you find yourself wanting to give and to be generous.  And you find yourself saying, “I would do anything for you.”  (It is not that your daughter is God of course; it is that your experience of your daughter is one way of your experiencing how your life is a gift and a touch point where you and the Holy One meet and exchange.)   

Maybe you are thinking that it is possible that your daughter might bring some bad news home from school.  Would that alter the appropriateness of this icon?  If your daughter told you some truly devastating news, you would probably reach out to her and tell her that you will always be her parent.  Having the love of parent and child fully center and knowing that nothing else is more important to you, you would notice this; and this is when time would stand still and you would be in awe and you would be moved to gratitude and would say, “I would do anything for you.” 

This is how we experience the life of God as expressed in the gift of our own lives in all their ordinariness and awesomeness.  Once we understand the pattern, once we understand that it is grace we have been encountering in these moments of awe and yearning to give, then we see our own traditions for what they are: earthen vessels holding a treasure (II Cor 4:7).  Everything our Christian tradition is leading us to is this moment of stillness and wonder and worship and generosity.  This is it; this is what we are seeking. 

--Frank Krebs

Photo by dok1 on flickr.com

              My vote for the best commercials in recent history goes to E-Trade Baby. If you are unfamiliar go to YouTube and check it out and laugh. You will thank me. A baby in diapers has the voice and personality of a middle aged stock broker. The baby can operate every gadget, he makes fun of his peers and teaches adults how to invest. My favorite is when the baby is in "timeout" in his crib and his mother takes away his laptop, and when she walks away he triumphantly pulls out from hiding a smart phone with and E-trade app.

                 While funny on TV, it is not so funny when our tradition turns Jesus into a form of E-Trade Baby.  If you look at much ancient art the baby Jesus has this lovely halo, the intelligent look of an adult and his hand raised in blessing. Similarly, Mary goes from this dark skinned, vulnerable teenager to a regal figure that was immaculately conceived, ever virgin, and ascended into heaven. Is there something in the infant scene that both draws us and scares us? What is it in our humanity that needs to separate the divine from normal life? Luke's account brings us back to the original story and asks us to ponder the infant within.

The Scandal of the Ordinary

                Our biblical tradition paints a picture of Jesus' family that is defined by vulnerability and uncertainty. Historians tell us Mary in this famous text was about 15 years old. She was a nobody from nowhere. First century readers would notice immediately how isolated she was - there is no mention of her parents or siblings, no typical support while pregnant.  If we read between the lines, we sense the scandal of a questionable pregnancy. She is temporarily homeless, acting on the whim of the foreign power occupying her country. She is caught up in a story of the messiah that is totally different than the story she was taught to expect. She is recuperating from childbirth in a barn.

                 In the midst of this very fragile scene, a group of shepherds show up testifying to a concert in the sky about her child. She takes this in and "ponders it in her heart." Twelve long years later Jesus shocks her by impressing the theologians at the Temple with his knowledge. She ponders this in her heart as well.  In between, Luke simply wants us to imagine countless days of simply raising a child in a harsh world.

                 We gain something precious by letting Mary be Mary.  She becomes an approachable example to us who, in the midst of her uncertainty, was asked to believe God was present in the earthy physicality of a little boy. Perhaps Jesus was not the first on the block to walk or talk. Perhaps there were more attractive children in the neighborhood. Perhaps Jesus was bullied by older kids. Day in and day out Mary looked at normal, earthy, evolving physicality and pondered divine life in a human disguise. She had to believe day by day that she was nurturing divine life that was unfinished, vulnerable and powerless. Perhaps we want to make Jesus and Mary unapproachable to avoid the hard work of pondering God's activity in the "normal" physicality in and around us.

The Prism of the Chubby Buddha

                  How do we gain the eyesight to see the divine in ordinary physicality?  Ron Rolheiser refers us to the parable of the Chubby Buddha in this context. Our overweight Buddha was minding his own business one day when an impressive soldier road up. He considered Chubby Buddha being unproductive and exclaimed that Buddha was "disgusting." Buddha paused a moment and replied to the soldier "but you sir, are a god." The startled soldier asked what he meant and Buddha replied "when I look inside I see evidence of the divine, so when I look outside I see the same thing. I wonder what you see when you look inside?"

              Our second reading today (Gal 4:4-7) gives us a great image of what to look for inside. Paul writes that we have been given a spirit within us that cries out like an infant, "Abba, Father." When we look inside he says we should see the dignity of an adopted child, a son or daughter of God, an heir. This is the prism offered to us through which we can turn to "ponder" God's presence in the world.

            What prism do we use to see the world? Many are offered to us. As we start a new year I wish you success in your chosen endeavors - but the prism we have been given is unaffected by success or failure.  I hope your investments grow in 2012 - but the prism of the Chubby Buddha tells us your value has nothing to do with your investments or lack thereof. I hope you receive great consolation this year from your friends and family - but your value is not defined by how others see you or treat you.

           Would you agree with me that the right prism is the key to love? Infants arrive unfinished, vulnerable and powerless.  Don't we all share a deep instinct to love the infant?  In a way aren't we all Mary pondering the spiritual infant within? Something in us is afraid to look at the unfinished, vulnerable and powerless presence of God within us.  But when we glimpse it in ourselves and in each other we find it easy to love and nurture. That is why we must be like Mary, we must be a people who ponder divine Life, who treasure all evidence of it.

           This evening, yet again we "ponder" the presence of God in the most basic forms of physicality - the bread and the wine.  May these readings and this Eucharist reset our prism to discern the unfinished and vulnerable divine life in and around us. Be a Chubby Buddha this week and see humanness in a new way.

Amen

George von Stamwitz

Sts. Clare & Francis Ecumenical Catholic Community
Saturday Evening, December 31, 2011
Liturgy for the Nativity of the Lord
Focus text: Luke 2: 16-21 (the shepherds' visit)

Photo by localsurfer at Flickr.com 

Christmas Day, 2011

Isaiah 52:7-10

Hebrews 1:1-6

John 1:1-18

Homily

John’s gospel does not give us a picture of a manger or swaddling clothes or wise men from the east.  John’s community was more contemplative, more mystical.  Tonight’s gospel speaks of an eternal Word that takes flesh.  This at first may not sound as inviting as the graphic images of animal stables and gifts of gold.  However it is actually very, very engaging.

A favorite carol refers to this evening as the Silent Night.  What is this Word that comes to us in silence?  What is it we hear when everything else is silent?  That is what John’s community is asking us to ponder this evening.  What do shepherds and magi and young couples hear when they simply still themselves and open themselves up to the deepest reality right in front of them? 

It is very difficult to put that answer in words.  It is an answer that is accessible to all of us.  But it is hard to describe this process of our Source, both radically other and yet radically intimate, communicating with us as a kind of wordless Word.  Let me tell a story that may help.

I have been thinking a lot of a mentor of mine who passed away a month or so ago, Father Bill Lyons.  When I entered the seminary very few priests had good training in being counselors.  Bill was the one exception.  He was trained by Carl Rogers.  Students flocked to him.  Most “counselors” and spiritual directors in the seminary at that time talked at the counselee, that is, tried to fill the student with information they thought the student needed to hear. 

Bill listened.  And Bill clarified until both Bill and I knew that I was understood.  What a gift!  To be understood!  And it was beyond understanding really; it was an experience of compassion when we suffered and appreciation when we revealed.  It was a kind of blessing, an unexpected gift, a sense of peace and “at-homeness.”

But there was a second phase to this encounter.  So at first there was this “blessing,” we’ll call it.  Then Bill became this “en-courager.”  He would see something deep inside of us and would call it forth.  It was as if he was giving us the courage to be bold and creative and ourselves.  So first “the blessing,” then “the calling forth.” 

That’s it.  That’s how it is when all is still and silent and it is just you and the Holy One.  So much is done in silence.  No one has ever seen God, it is God the only Son and those who are transformed like him, those close to the Father’s heart, who make God known to us.  (see John 1:18; notice too that today’s reading from Hebrews describes Jesus in a way we are to model: “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” Heb 1:3)  Perhaps you have had a Bill in your life.  Or perhaps in silence you have heard this Word.  First the love, then the courage.  It comes to us like a pulsating star deep inside of us; it is an endless spring that often escapes our notice; it arises as if from ourselves and yet from “out of nowhere.” 

There are so many takeaways for us this Christmas.  I can think of three.

1.   We are called to be like Jesus and to be like Bill.  We are called to love and encourage.  I am aware of how many of you are doing this day after day.  Thank you.  It is a great inspiration to many.

2.   We are sometimes in need of a Jesus or a Bill in our lives.  We sometimes need love and courage from one another.  A number of you lost jobs or loved ones or some aspect of your health this past year.  We are here for you.

3.   We in this community were named Sts. Clare & Francis, a balance between the feminine and masculine energy of this famous pair.  The balance of love and courage, of nurture and coaching.  Hear today, Sts. Clare & Francis, that you are greatly loved!  Your God is compassionate and appreciates you deeply.  And hear today, Sts. Clare & Francis, that you can be anything you want to be!  Take courage and be all that you can be!

--Frank Krebs 

Photo by Derek Caiden on flickr.com

“How do babies get into mommy tummies?” asks my 3-year old. It’s begun.  It feels like a rite of passage as a parent and I’m not sure how well I’m doing.  No answer seems to satisfy him.  The last barrage of questions about where his sister came from ended with him concluding that I laid an egg and she hatched.  “Laurel was a really big egg, mama,” noted Finn.  But telling the story of Jesus’ entrance into the world has been markedly easier.  Explaining that an angel told Mary she was pregnant and God put Jesus in Mary’s tummy met with an, “Oh… ok.” 

The world of unseen activity and beings runs fluidly with the visible world for a child.  For my son, fairies light fires, angels help us to be born, imaginary friends accompany us in difficult times.  What seems like a no-brainer to a 3-year old can be quite the stumbling block for adults in our culture, though. As we age our world becomes so much more binary. There’s ordinary reality, life that is seen and somehow proven by science; and there’s non-ordinary reality[i], the place of myth, imagination, dream. 

A lot of energy in today’s churches is used to explain non-ordinary reality – placing it in categories of psychology, art, and metaphor.  There is good in this effort as we try to come into an adult faith. It is fascinating to look at, for example, Jungian psychology and see that angelic beings enter into the consciousness of people in vastly different cultures and places.  Though there seems to be no way these different people could have shared their understanding of angels, they all have similar significance – as a kind of mediary between these worlds of ordinary and non-ordinary, or human and divine if you like.   To read the work of Joseph Campbell can be thrilling as he shows how the mythology and stories of the cultures and religions of the world coincide and overlap.  It’s as though a unified consciousness or unified story connects us in our very DNA.  Studying this stuff is so cool!  But today I have different objective.  Instead of trying to prove, understand, or categorize non-ordinary reality, I want to engage it. 

No matter how we come to understand non-ordinary reality at any given time, as Christians we must contend with it.  A basic tenant of the Christian tradition is in the story of God’s non-ordinary reality breaking into our ordinariness – particularly in the unlikely, vulnerable and most human of places.  Jesus’ mother could have been any woman of child-bearing age.  There is nothing particularly special about Mary, this peasant girl from Nazareth, other than her willingness to trust in the non-ordinary experiences that told her not to fear and to believe the impossible.  The gospel of Luke characterizes her as a person familiar with a reality that contains angelic messengers.  She wasn’t shocked by the angels presence, but by the nature of the angel’s visit.  “What kind of greeting is this?” she wonders.  Similarly, there is nothing really special about Jesus in the way he is in ordinary reality.  He is born as baby, grows up in a family, develops a following with his teachings and dies. But he constantly engages in prayer and refers to an unseen reality – the Kingdom of God as it’s sometimes called… non-ordinary reality.  

Lamb: The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to his best friend Biff is a refreshing (and totally irreverent) novel by Christopher Moore.  It imagines Jesus’ “lost years” with his best friend, Biff.  It does a great job of embracing Jesus’ ordinariness while also observing the incredible things that happened through him.  Even Mary, who is Biff’s crush as a child, grows fat as she ages.  How wonderfully ordinary!  How often do you see a round statue of Mary?

As people of faith we know that mere ordinary reality can be deceiving. People who seem to have it all - health, wealth, love can be isolated, lonely, struggling to find meaning.  We also know the simplest of people whose lives overflow with riches.  I have a friend with whom I paint watercolors.  She is ordinary in every way –  struggling to make ends meet, managing health issues.  She lives a simple life, intentionally leaving space for the non-ordinary reality she engages so fully.  The brushes , paint and water we use are instruments of divine communication.  Her cat speaks to her of love and devotion.  The simplest of things are cared for and treasured because they can provide a portal to another reality.  Her small apartment feels full with life unseen.

There’s a thirst for spirituality that takes non-ordinary reality seriously.  Individuals and even the wider medical community are being drawn to engage energy work (i.e. Healing Touch, Reiki) as a part of wellness.  Intelligent people, some with advanced degrees, living ordinary lives, are being drawn to esoteric ritual, tarot cards, ruins, anything to connect to something beyond them.  It’s humbling to realize that Christianity (especially mainline and progressive Christianity) isn’t offering that to them anymore, but too often repressing or relegating non-ordinary reality.

It felt a bit hypocritical to write a homily about engaging non-ordinary reality and simply talk about doing it.  So, I felt compelled to open up space for it myself.  I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never directly asked God/helping spirits to help me with my homilies before.  So this week in my prayer I asked.  Everyone experiences non-ordinary reality differently, with different senses.  I’m really visual, sensate, and tend to have a big imagination.  So my request was met with an experience that went like this:

A black bird picked me up and, while carrying me, became a black angel.  The sweep of the angel bird’s wings darkened everything around us so it was pitch black.  I was told to wait and listen.  I didn’t hear much of anything and began to grow impatient.  Until, with a sweep of my arms, I surfaced from, what I could now recognize, a dark watery sea into blazing light.

I offer this vision as an insight into this watery womb time – in Advent and in the dark days of winter.  I think of children who come from the womb into a world where “nothing is impossible.”  I offer this vision as a challenge, to find that womb place for yourself.  This week, when we mark the longest night of the year, turn off the lights, use other senses to see, hear, touch a reality that doesn’t need anything but your trust in it.

Why?  Why engage this reality?  To have cool experiences to share with friends?  No.  Engaging non-ordinary reality opens us up to the transformation of our ordinary reality.  Where we feel division in our ordinary reality, there is unity and connection.  Where there is loneliness and isolation in ordinary reality, there is a host of angels and saints accompanying you.  Where there is simple bread and wine shared at table in ordinary reality, there is a banquet of abundance and hope.  May non-ordinary reality break into your lives as you prepare for the birth of Christ among us.

Rev. Jessica Rowley
Sts. Clare & Francis
Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 17, 2011
Focus Text: Luke 1: 26-38

Photo by UncleBucko at Flickr.com

Isaiah 61:1-11

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

John 1:6-28

Sts. Clare & Francis

Third Sunday of Advent, 2011

Homily

In the days when I used to smoke cigarettes, I would often approach a friend or stranger and say, “Got a light?”  I think that tonight’s readings are an invitation to reintroduce that phrase into our conversations with new meaning—even if we gave up smoking years ago. 

Tonight’s gospel is a very different kind of gospel, one that appeals to the mystical imagination in each of us.  Jesus, it tells us, is the Light.  (In a moment I’ll make an important connection between Jesus as Light and the one he called “abba,” who was also the Light.)

In the first reading we see some teasing out of how God is light.  The God of Compassion that Isaiah proclaims is touched, is moved, when this God sees the oppressed, the brokenhearted, captives, prisoners, mourners, or those with a faint spirit.  So God comes as a great Light in the darkness, a Light that lifts us up, a Light that instills hope and draws us up out of our droopiness as if we the brokenhearted were being lifted like plants in the presence of the Sun.  Isaiah is talking about the Hebrew people coming back from where they had been exiled, but people ever since those ancient days have applied this image to the weariness they have confronted in their own day.  Staring in the darkness we might ask, “Got a light?”  And if we remain still we might “hear” the hope filled words of Isaiah coming as a word from the Light: good news, wholeness, liberty, release, comfort...coming your way!  We then stand up not just like a plant, but like an oak showing off the power of the Light to make it grow!

Jesus of Luke’s gospel uses this passage as his mission statement.  Jesus is the Light as well.  (See Luke 4:14-21.)  The Christian communities at the beginning really understood that this was their mission too.  And so in tonight’s second reading, Paul reminds the Thessalonians “encourage the faint hearted, help the weak.”  When someone asked, “Got a light?” they knew how to respond. 

At the beginning of Christian history, a great Christian thinker named Justin, reflected on the relationship between God and Jesus.  He said it was like when someone has a torch and lights another torch,  torchlight from torchlight.  This phrase made it into the Christian creed, “God from God, Light from Light.”  In an analogous way we participate in this passing of the light from the torch.  At the Easter Vigil we symbolize this when the Paschal Candle is processed into the church and all of us ask of the Master with our cold candles outstretched, “God a light?” 

And of course all of this is but a great sacrament (productive symbol) of the shaping of our lives.  When we are in the lunchroom at work or the kitchen table at home and someone asks us for a light, we will be there and we will know what to do.  Amen?

--Frank Krebs

Photo by Tiemen Rapati on flickr.com

One of my most enduring memories from 9/11 is what happened afterwards - do you remember how for weeks and weeks the papers and news outlets would produce stories about the lives of the victims? It was both very moving but also healing. Funerals and wakes have a similar dynamic. Who wants to hear about the resume of the deceased at this time? No, some instinct deep within us wants to laugh and cry listening to and telling stories about the deceased. The Jewish people knew story was at the core of things. For them God was as God did. Who is God? God is the one that parted the Red Sea and fed them in the desert. Stories are at the very core of things.

            There seems to be a tendency in religion to abandon stories and find solace in concepts, doctrines and dogmas. The genius who penned Mark's gospel is here to help. Tonight we consider the first few verses of the first story, the first gospel, about Jesus. Mark wrote it to help a struggling community in Rome find their story. Let's see if he can help us find ours this Advent.

A Gospel Born in Experience

            Thomas Merton has a great approach to finding our gospel. He suggests we start with our experience and identify the "spontaneous contemplative experiences" each of us have been given: those fleeting moments when we feel connected to love, aware of the utter holiness of life. He says arenas for these experiences that break into our lives include nature, children, intimacy, art, suffering, silence and prayer.

            James Finley, who writes about Merton, tells the story of a "spontaneous contemplative experience" of women he met on a retreat. She grew up on an orchard and one day when she was about 10 years old she went out into the orchard, lied down on the grass and looked up at the sky through the tree branches. She said "something was given to her in that moment." She was gifted with an experience of utter love and clarity. She felt totally connected to infinite love. This gifted moment became a marker in her life, a vision of what was possible. Her spontaneous contemplative experience inspired her to find contemplation in her busy life as an adult.

            In our tradition we have the added gift of Mark's gospel to help us identify these markers in our lives. I encourage you this Advent to take out a piece of paper and make a line across the page representing a timeline of your journey. Then identify the markers, those moments of transcendence, awareness and clarity you were given at various times. Let Mark's gospel help. I expect you will find in the beginning of your timeline one or more John the Baptists that "prepared the way" for you to experience God. I expect you will see deserts in your timeline, a demon or two, healings, an occasional great teaching, people that failed you. I expect you will find a Garden of Gethsemane where you struggled to be faithful and a moment or two when you cried out "why have you forsaken me." I expect you will find what Mark's suffering community in Rome found: Jesus' story is our story.

A Community of Gospel Writers

            You might be thinking I am making this up. How do we know Mark intended his gospel to be a pathway to spontaneous contemplative experience? One big clue is that he titles his work "the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus" suggesting the gospel writing continues in us the reader. He is writing the story of Jesus alive and loose in Israel and we are writing the story of Jesus alive and loose in St. Louis. Another clue is at the climatic end of the gospel where we have a picture of two women who just had a "spontaneous contemplative experience" with an angel at the tomb. They are confused and fearful and Mark does not tell us what they do next. What would we do? What do we do with our spontaneous contemplative experiences? Mark wants us to know everything depends on the answer.

            Its fascinating that the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of our Experience begin in very similar ways. John the Baptist is pointing to a reality in us that is "not yet," that is still to come. The Messiah is near but not yet here. The good news revealed in my spontaneous contemplative experiences have a similar first chapter. Finley becomes most animated talking about how our markers of transcendence train us about what is "not yet." If I ponder my moments of awareness the most fundamental lesson they reveal to me is that most of the time I experience a lack of awareness. Because I have had fleeting moments of connection with infinite love I am aware of its absence. As Finley calls it I "become aware that I am unaware." The ache in me that results is the critical first chapter that "prepares the way" toward a more contemplative and conscious life. It is this ache which is at the core of the Advent experience.

            Story is at the core of things. My concepts of God move all over the place, my doctrines have changed. The "gospel" that has been given to me in my experience is my core. It is a gospel I share with all humanity, even those that cannot relate to Mark's Gospel. 

            Let's honor and ponder our experience the way we honor and ponder the sacred texts. Let's reconnect with our story this Advent, find the "ache," and learn how to live lives of intentional contemplation. Let's be a community of gospel writers.

Amen

George von Stamwitz

Sts. Clare & Francis Ecumenical Catholic Community Liturgy for the Second Sunday of Advent Saturday Evening, December 3, 2011 Focus Text - Mark 1:1-8

Photo by CarbonNYC at Flickr.com 

Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17
1 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28
Matthew 25:31-46
The Community of Sts. Clare & Francis
The Feast of Christ the King
November 19, 2011
Homily

This great painting of Matthew is a kind of climax before the ultimate climax of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Like the final scene in much of literature (think of the final “judgment” scene of Romeo & Juliet) it allows the meaning of the story to “come together.”  Here Matthew is spelling out for us through this literary device the meaning of a true follower (disciple) of Jesus. 

The true disciple not only loves those who love him or her.  “What good is that?” Jesus has asked us in the Sermon on the Mount.  On that occasion Jesus had become the new Moses and injected the old law with steroids.  The true disciple loves those who cannot repay, because that is how God loves.  We cannot repay God. 

Disciples are always aware of the marginalized, for two reasons.  One, they are aware of the marginalized because they themselves have been marginalized.  (On one level this story is about recognizing Jesus in his marginalized “little ones” and “brothers and sisters,” i.e., the Church.  No one should be scandalized that the Christ allows himself to be embodied in the marginalized.  The church Matthew writes to is full of marginalized first century Christians.  Today we might hear: “Lord, when did we see you as a lesbian?”)  Two, disciples are always aware of the marginalized because the heart of God which grows like a seed within them pants with compassion toward the suffering of this world. 

Being aware of the suffering of another (i.e., empathy) is a major doorway to connecting as human beings.  Suffering, in one form or another, is common to everyone.  Companioning each other in our suffering is a great potential source of connectedness.  The disciple, like an emergency first responder, counter-intuitively runs toward the suffering, not away from it.  Sitting with someone and sharing their pain creates a special bond and lightens the load of the sufferer.  Notice that this painting of Matthew immediately precedes the narrative of Jesus’ passion. 

My ego wants to put myself in the center of the story, not on the margins.  It wants to be important and powerful and pleased.  These are not drives that lead us to create communion.  It is death to this “old self” (the unrestrained ego) that allows us to see our connection to all those who suffer. 

The eucharist is a ritual or sacramental expression of this deep meaning.  We are sharing one loaf; we are sharing one cup.  Fighting over who gets the loaf or who gets the cup is another paradigm.  The Empire of God operates differently.

--Frank Krebs