A Walk in Woods

God, Grant Us a Sense of Your Timing

A sermon preached by the Reverend Stephanie J. Nagley at St. Luke’s Bethesda, Maryland, November 27, 2011

The dogs and I go out the back door and down Rock Creek Trail nearly every morning.  I walk with them and with the news of the day. I walk with frustration thinking about the worldwide financial mess. I walk with the news of a government so dysfunctional that the only hope seems to be in loosely organized occupy movement across the country. I see the picture of protesters being peppered sprayed in California.  I think of things seen and unseen that threaten us from every side. As I make my way down the trail the trail of worries are closer to home. I recall stories about a grandchild who isn’t doing well in school, the lost job, the troubled marriage, declining health, a lump in the breast, a lump in the throat. 

Nevertheless, it’s a beautiful fall day and soon my attention goes to the leaves that crunch underfoot, old trees nearly barren with a few leaves hanging on.  Other trees have fallen and are finding a new way into the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  Young saplings refuse to surrender to the approaching winter. They are still green as if the sap is  rising. What was, what is and what is to come.  I hear the birds, each calling out in its own particular and distinct language.    

The dogs lift their noses.  There are four deer grazing, three doe and a fawn.  They could care less. They look at the three of us and chew away. Jackson, the Golden, is older and bigger and sees four legged kindred spirits.  Maggie, the Cairn terrorist, is a puppy and barks. I swear that the deer smirk at Maggie, give Jackson a friendly snort before they saunter away.

Off in the distance I hear the traffic on Beach Drive.  Did ever notice how traffic unseen sounds like the ocean? Then a siren and a train whistle. 

The train whistle takes me back.  I’m a child standing on the corner of Main Street
next to the bank.  Charlie Freeberg sets out for me fom his gas station across the street.  Mr. Freeberg is a grizzled stump of a man, his khakis stained with oil and grease. He’s coming to help me cross the street safely even though there hasn’t been a car for at least a half hour, not since Bob Gordon pulled his red pickup into the gas station so his dog could get an ice cream bar. The dog had a charge account at Freeberg’s gas station. Standing on the corner of memory I hear the words of my childhood: “Stop, look and listen”. 

It's breathtaking the way the present reaches back to the past and brings forward the very nature of our journey.  We’re here to “stop, look and listen”.  We’re meant to stop, look and listen for what was, what is and what is to come. There’s no better time to practice that spiritual discipline than in Advent.

Advent is a time when time has no boundaries, when past and present and future is one.  It’s like the walk down Rock Creek Park where the worries of the day are answered by the old trees and the young trees and those trees that have gone before – what was, what is and what is to come.  It is a memory stirred by a sound and the way that memory brings together present and future. 

Advent is God’s redemption of time and allowing us some space in our days to remember what really matters. There is very little selvage in our days to roll around a problem or pain until it is rendered a blessing.  The calendar is too full, the hours too claimed by other pressures and plans to allow God’s claim on our lives.  We live in a culture where busyness is worn like haute couture.  We live in a culture that bows at the altar of fast solutions and temporary fixes.

The first Sunday of Advent the church calendar turns over while the calendar in our kitchen waits to change.  The church is out of sync with the secular world and yet strangely in sync with how our hearts are meant to be tuned to God.  Over these next few weeks the secular world is going to try to seduce us in believing we can buy happiness.  None of this is to say that shopping and gift giving, and singing “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” and “Santa Baby” is a bad thing.  The church and commerce are both trying to prepare us for Christmas.[1]  The difference is that commerce isn’t interested in getting us closer to God even though the after Christmas bills lead many to prayer. 

As with every other day and every other season Christians bring a little something extra to this time of year. We bring our awareness that God is part of what this time is about.  So we can have the annual Christmas party on December 10^th, go to the mall, hear the Christmas songs and see God through it all.  We can see and hear what was, what is and what is to come.

If you think about it, most of the Christmas songs are a prayer – a prayer for today, a longing for an idealized past, a hope for tomorrow.  “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” is a religious song.  He’s the outcast reindeer.  He’s the one everyone else laughs and scorns.  He’s the orphaned and the widowed, the lame and the blind that Jesus cared so much about.  Rudolph is a 99%er.  He’s the beggar on the corner of Rockville Pike.  He’s the kid needing school supplies, the woman hoping for something from the giving tree. Rudolph is the immigrant waiting for a job at some parking lot somewhere hoping he’ll get a chance.  And then he does get that chance. 

You want to sing along with Bing Crosby on “White Christmas”?  Go ahead. That song is about Christmas past written when all the world was at war.  It now floats over the mall shoppers when much of the world is still at war and we’re still dreaming of a day when there is peace on the earth.  What was, what is and what is to come…

This is our time to stop look and listen, to sink deeply into this luxury of Advent and hear about the Second Coming of Christ.  The scenes of that coming won't be peaceful winter wonderlands and a quaint little town of Bethlehem isn't in sight. Instead we'll hear warnings like the one from the gospel according to Mark: "...in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Then you will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great glory…”

I’ve never been sure what to make of the Second Coming as a one time event. Maybe it will indeed happen one day that there will be blast and blare from on high and we’ll see Jesus floating down. Who knows for sure?  But the dark and dissonant cords of second comings have fallen on every generation. For the early Christians the story of the Son of Man coming in the clouds may have sounded like the resurrection. And for Mark’s readers in the year 70 those dark and troubling times seemed to happen with the Jewish revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem.[2] Generations later it may seem to have come in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Hiroshima.   It could be that our Second Coming looks like a financial meltdown, terrorists’ threats, crumbling governments and all the rest.

For each and every generation there are times that look like the end is near.  Apocalyptic visions and warnings of the Second Coming recycle. Their function is to rattle us into attention to God’s presence, to keep awake and alert and aware that as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be.   

The Son of Man comes. He most often looks different than we thought and appears unexpectedly, but he comes. On Rock Creek Trail he is a grizzled and stained stump of a man coming to help me cross the street and a reminder to stop, look and listen. He’s the woman putting a present under the giving tree in the church foyer and the teenager passing out turkeys in the parking lot at the food bank.  He’s beggar on the street, and the schizophrenic woman sitting next to you in the airport.  He’s the store clerk and the girl moving to her iTunes on the train. He’s there when we are jostled and awakened to the vastness of our existence with God that stretches us beyond the limits of our imagination.  

We’re made to take this journey, alive, awake, and expectant.  We’re meant to stop, look and listen to our lives and for the way in which God is bringing all of time together, for how God in this Advent season and in every season is calling us to a new ways of seeing and a new sense of being the very presence of Christ. 

Let us pray:

“O God of all seasons and senses, grant us a sense of your timing…

In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold; teach us the lessons of waiting…

In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold; teach us the lessons of endings….

In this season of short days and long nights, of grey and white and cold, teach us the lessons of beginnings…

O God, grant us a sense of your timing.  (Guerillas of Grace, Ted Loader)

           

---

[1] The Christian Century Nov 15, 2011 Christine Chakoian

[2] Feasting on the Word  Year B, Volume I, Christopher R. Huston

REMEMBERING AND RESURRECTION

REMEMBERING AND RESURRECTION

A Reflection On September 11, 2011

… I’m not convinced that lingering on the tragedy offers a way to transformation any more than staring at Jesus hanging on the cross tells us about the resurrection.

I’ve searched and searched but I can’t find it.  I can’t find the piece I wrote about September 11, 2001. It was my personal experience.  It was my window on the tragedy as I drove north on 395 and came to the Pentagon.  I heard the roar of a jet, looked to my left and said, “My God, that plane is low”. 

The roar, the boom, the fireball, the silence, the debris floating in the sky.  A few days later I made my only pilgrimage to that site. On a hillside I stared into the black hole and twisted metal.  I won’t forget that day or the people who lost their lives, the people whose lives were changed forever, and those who gave everything to rescue who and what they could. I don’t need a week of reminders. I don’t need one more showing of news footage of the World Trade Center, or the Pentagon or the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.   I honor and mourn those who died and how that event has marked us, but going back is not what helps me move forward. 

In many places of worship this Sunday the liturgy will be shaped by what happened a decade ago.  There was quite an elaborate weekend planned at the National Cathedral, that is until an earthquake and a falling crane changed all that.  I don’t know what the best response is to this particular anniversary.  A weekend of special events at the National Cathedral is probably appropriate. I’m not convinced that lingering on the tragedy offers a way to transformation any more than staring at Jesus hanging on the cross tells us about the resurrection.

At my church we will say a prayer to remember those who died and those who still suffer.  We will ask God to protect those for whom this event has led to prejudice and hatred especially our Muslim and Arab brothers and sisters but September 11, 2001 won’t be the cornerstone of the worship.  We will probably give some time to talking with each other about where this decade has led us but we won’t linger on the past.

To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I would go to a place of worship that asked me to relive that day over again.  I would go to a church that asked me what resurrection came to me out of that day.  

Ten years ago there was the roar, the boom, the fireball and the silence.  Debris fell from the sky like burnt angels. I slowed my car, looked at the other drivers as if they could tell what to do.  It took a few hours for the shock to wear off but once most of it dissipated I knew we were called choose transformation or tragedy. I feared our fear, for whatever we do out of fear is never loving or wise.  I feared how our  anger, pain, and confusion would shape us. I feared that "getting the bad guys" would exhaust our energy and imagination for the good. I feared we might not see that this was our moment to rise from the ashes and allow our best selves to show the way.  

When Jesus offered the bread and wine he said, “Do this for the remembrance of me”.  He wasn’t asking us to look back but to look forward.  He wasn’t asking us to linger on the tragedy but reach for transformation. He was asking to re-member his flesh and bone into ours and be God’s dream in the world.  That’s what I want this Sunday, a reminder of the resurrection, the transformation that comes from tragedy, the daring declaration of Jesus who rose from the dead and said, “Peace be with you”.

Recycling

The news hit the front page of the Washington Post that the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington reached a mutually satisfying agreement about the St. Luke’s Episcopal church in Bladensburg.  St. Luke's is now in the process of being received into the ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Church.  (I hope that the correct phrasing. I don't pretend to know the intricacies of all this.)

Churches are good at recycling – Lutherans becoming Methodists and Baptists becoming Presbyterians, Roman Catholics becoming Episcopalians and a few Episcopalians becoming Roman Catholics.  It’s a good thing that people can find traditions that suit them and feed their journeys of faith.   

I’m not opposed to recycling.  In fact, my growing congregation is growing mostly due to Roman Catholics seeking a new way to exploring their faith and live out their faith.  They come and stay because the Episcopal Church corresponds to their understanding of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  I'm grateful for their presence and what those who come from other traditions bring to our church that helps us grow in numbers and in spiritual depth.

Recycling is a good thing for all of us.  But I wonder about those who have yet to cycle at all.  We have a powerful story to tell about love, mercy, justice, compassion and peace.  We have a remarkable expression of a living God that pursues reconciliation rather than revenge, for some reason that good news hasn’t made the headlines in a very long time. 

Were You There?

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there….?

A story is told about Jesus entering Jerusalem for the last time. The story is the collision of two kingdoms and two kings. Jesus like life comes to an end in the way it began. 

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Herod was King and when Quirinius was governor.  When Jesus was tried and crucified in Jerusalem Pilate was governor. 

If we are there, we see the perspiration on Pilate’s his upper lip and a small drop of sweat roll down his neck.  He’s in a tight spot.  The religious leaders have demanded Jesus’ death but their reasons don’t hold up.  Pilate knows the truth is jealousy.  They are jealous and afraid of Jesus. 

Pilate doesn’t worry much about Jesus challenging his authority.  He’s the governor and Jesus is just a peasant.  But he does worry about the crowd and keeping them satisfied so they won’t cause trouble.   He does worry about cooperation from the religious leaders to keep revenue flowing into the empire’s coffers. He does worry about maintaining status quo.
Pilate squirms. He needs to keep the peace and live with his conscience so he puts justice to a vote. He lets the mob decide what is right and good and true. “Who shall crucified, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus of Nazareth?” The crowd voted for Barabbas. 

The chief priests and the elders pat each on the back, pass out cigars and clink their glasses.  They won’t have to deal with Jesus anymore.  No more talk of change.  No more threats to the system. 

Meanwhile Peter, the disciple Jesus trusted, who Jesus called The Rock, sits on a courtyard bench weeping.  The cock crowed and he betrayed his friendship with Jesus by denying he ever knew him. 
Judas he couldn’t live with his conscience it turns out.  The minute he was handed the money and watched them take Jesus away he knew he’d done a terrible thing. 

Judas is dead when the first nail is struck.  Peter wipes his eyes and hears the second.  The chief priests, scribes and elders down their second glass of wine as the third nail is pounded into Jesus feet. 

Jesus hangs on the cross between two bandits.  He cries, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”  Is it a cry to be saved from death or cry that death might come more quickly? 

When he breathes his last the earth shakes, rocks split, and tombs open.  This is the second time the cosmos has spoken.  When Herod was King and Quirinius was governor a star guided shepherds and the magi to the newborn king. On this terrible day the earth shakes and a centurion is guided to believe that God has indeed been disclosed in a dead man on the cross. 

Are we there?  Of course we are.  You don’t have to be Christian to understand this story. You don’t even have to be theist, mono or otherwise to get it.  We know the story. We know what it is to betray and be betrayed, to lie and tell the truth and the consequence of each.   There are times we have felt abandoned and broken and screamed “Where are you, God?”  We scream even when we are convinced there is no God. There are those whose death approaches and they ask “why, why now?” There are those approaching death begging God to deliver them home soon. 

If we scan our personal histories we will see moments when the earth trembled and the old ways were torn in two and then for reasons we’re not sure of a new day comes and we have the courage to go on. We know this story.  It told a thousands times in the living of our days. We are there.

Finding Our Way

Jackson welcomed a new sister a couple of weeks ago.  Well, maybe welcome is a bit generous.  He sniffed turned and settled his body into what looked like a 75 pound question mark.   The last thing he expected that Sunday was a five pound nine week old Cairn Terrorist to enter his life.  Cautious Jackson slowly is finding his way with her. She wasn't ever cautious.  Ever intrepid, not realizing that another dog might not think she was just the cutest thing. 

As I watch them it occurs to me that is what we are trying to do much of the time.  We're just trying to figure each other out and figure out how to be with one another.  Some of us are cuter than others and our alignment on issues is compatible.  But there are people in the world who just don't see things the way we do and aren't a bit cute -- or not in our estimation.  We may circle them a time or two, curl our lips and raise our hackles or we may just tuck our tails and run. 

The true measure of our humanness is the willingness to let others in even though what they have to say or what they believe is uncomfortable.  Unless they're trying to kill us there's seldom a reason to snap back -- at least that's what I'm gathering watching an eight year old Golden Retriever deal with a pup.  He is letting her into his life more and more and he may even welcome her exuberance.  In fact, she just stole his Greenie and he didn't seem to mind at all.

Looking Through

Larry said, "You have to look through the bush to see the animals".  We were trying out best but didn't quite have the soft eyes to see what he seemed to see so easily.  Slowly we got it as we relaxed and looked through the bush. A time or two we even spotted a elephant or giraffe before Larry did.  Given the size of those two creatures that's not saying much.  Larry was probably looking with more zen-like countenance for the more elusive cheetah.

Looking through the bush is a great metaphor for trying to see that place where the secular meet the sacred or said in another way trying to see Jesus or God in everyday experiences.  Some people will tell you they saw the face of Jesus in a whole wheat pancake, the eyes bright blueberry and the lips outlined by a pancake crease.  I don't doubt it.   It's never happened to me although I'll admit longing for that one moment when he appears in the toast or on the fogged up bathroom mirror.

I have spotted Jesus or God on the horns of a dilemma.  Usually, if I relax and soften, I find that sacred experience between the poles of what I should do or not do, what is best and what may be better.  It's as if I need to stop looking for God in the rightness and realize that God is through the bush.

In the wild the animals are always there.  We may not see them but they are there.  In the wildness and wilderness of our life so it is with God.