Feeding One Another

           Rosie and I do meals-on-wheels every week.  It is a time to connect with some wonderful people whom we wouldn’t otherwise know.  We don’t do much, except take them their meal for the day and have some conversation with them.

            One of the people on our route had two dogs who barked whenever I would ring the doorbell.  One of them died and the other kept up the routine of barking at me whenever I came with the meal for the day.  Last week, when I rang the bell, there was no answering bark.  When our client came to the door she told me that her second dog had also died.  She was in tears over her grief.  We have lost dogs also, so I knew how she felt.  She had no one else in her house, so she was lonely without her pet. 

            Without our contact, I don’t know who might have heard about this woman’s loss.  It just brings home to me how meaningful this kind of routine effort can be in people’s lives.  I’ve always thought that one of the main reasons for meals-on-wheels is the contact, to make sure that these people are all right.  It is a wonderful way for all of us as a community to keep track of each other.  

            I know that talking about the loss of her dog helped that woman to get through her day.  It seems like a little thing, but community is never a little thing.  It is important for all of us to see and talk with one another.  It keeps us whole.

            I’ve always loved the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the people in Corinth.  His essay about love is deeply touching.  No wonder that brides and grooms want is read at their weddings.  Paul tells us that no matter what else we do or have in our lives, without Love there is no meaning.  That certainly sums up the Gospel of Christ as well as I think it can be done.  We are called to love one another in the same way that we love the Lord our God.  When we do that, miracles occur.  We comfort and we offer companionship to each other in our daily walk.  There isn’t much that is more important than that.

            I have been fed by the people on our route more often that I have fed them.  Even though we carry the meals to them, the conversation that we have with them feeds us.  We’ve done this ministry both here and also in West Virginia, where we lived before.  I know what a great thing it is not only for the clients on the route, but also for those who carry the meals.

From This Day Forward

         The second inauguration of Barack Obama as our president was a magnificent day.  There were moments that seemed to me to be stunning.  His walking down a part of Pennsylvania Avenue in the inaugural parade hand in hand with Michelle was one of them.  In his inaugural address he spoke of the great conglomeration that we are as the American people, a phrase so often used by politicians to make it seem as though they speak for everyone, when in fact they only represent a fraction of the people of the country.  I was proud of the president for the remarks that he made that painted the people of this country with a broad brush including all of us, many by category.  He talked of peace and inclusion, of hope and of moving forward all together.  He invoked the memory of Seneca Falls for the women’s movement, Selma for the civil rights concerns, Stonewall in the West Village for gay inclusion and Newtown for the pain of the parents.  It seemed to me that he was talking about a country that is basically liberal, despite all of the hatred that has been so evident on the far right.  That for me is what made this day so spectacular. 

            When the Hebrew people came back from their captivity by the Babylonians, they gathered together in wrecked Jerusalem before the Temple that had been destroyed and they listened to the prophet Ezra read to them the law.  When they heard it they wept, but Ezra told them to dry their tears and to get on with the work of restoring their home.

              After the brutal political campaign that we endured in 2012, I was pleased to see this day come as a day of possible unity rather than one of division.  I know that those ancient Hebrews also felt desolation in their broken surroundings.  I think that the President was very much aware of our brokenness this day as he spoke of who we are and what we need to do.

  It won’t be easy.  There will be much political contention in the coming year.  A great budget fight looms and our priorities must be thought out so that we can build this country, not tear it down.  I know that building is possible even in the face of difficulty.  Do we have the will is the only question before us.

            During the Civil War, the transcontinental railroad was in the process of construction.  During the Eisenhower years, the interstate highway system was built.   These things didn’t depend on anything other than our will to get them done.  We found the means once we decided that the necessity was upon us. 

            Even if we are a broken people with politics that can’t be reconciled, we have a responsibility to those who have little or nothing to be sure that they are provided for.  I can’t forget what Jesus said when he when to his hometown of Nazareth to speak to the people in the Temple.  He took the scroll of the book of Isaiah and read from the sixty-first chapter:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

                     to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

                This is what we need to do as a people: to be particularly concerned for those who are outside our community and to bring them in.  That is what I think the President was trying to tell us in his inaugural address.  I know it is a masterful agenda for the coming years.  May God bless us as we get on with it.

The Role of Religion

           There was a time when churches put signs outside that said “Jesus is Lord”.  I always thought that this was somewhat in response to Paul’s statement in First Corinthians that proclaims: No one can say “Jesus is Lord”, except by the power of the Holy Spirit.  On one level that is an admirable thing.  On another, it is a kind of bragging that “We have the Holy Spirit”.  Mostly the churches that put out that sign seemed to me to be what we called “charismatic” churches.  Churches that were always extraordinarily active in worship, raising their hands in the air and sometimes speaking in tongues in the course of their services.  I think that this is always the way with our worship, we have different styles, depending on our orientation.  Sometimes, we are exuberant, sometimes we are less demonstrative.   There is nothing wrong with either of these, it mostly depends on our comfort.  

            This is another example of how our denominational divisions either accept us, or turn us away.  For example, I’ve never been particularly comfortable in Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian churches, there isn’t the familiar liturgy that I was brought up to love.  Somehow the prayers, the sitting, the unfamiliar hymns don’t bring me the spiritual comfort that I find in liturgy.  I would rather worship in an Episcopal, Lutheran or another of the liturgical churches.  It is simply a matter of my comfort.

            I suppose that is why we have our religious denominations.  I know that we also have myriad theological divisions, there are as many interpretations of scripture as there are theologians.  I have a library of theological books that are sometimes helpful, sometimes not.  The older that I get, the less I am entranced by theological argument.  Sometimes it sounds like politics, points of view that clash and don’t seem to have any resolution.  

           Much of theology is opinion.  Most of it has no definable answer.  We can argue forever about the Virgin birth, or the divinity of Christ, or even the Resurrection, but we will never have any definite proof of these things.  They are dependent on Faith.  Faith, in the final analysis is what religion is all about.  The people who claim absolutes in religion are also those who seem to me to speak less about Faith than others.  Who seem to rely on “knowing” the truth.  I don’t  know factually about much of anything pertaining to my religion.  For me, it has all become a matter of faith.  I have come to understand my God as the Creator and Redeemer of humankind.  I am not really privy to how this all works.  God created this world and all that is in it.  The mechanics of this are frequently revealed by science, and more will be revealed as time goes on, but we will never have a handle on all of it. 

          Ultimately the “truth” lies with our Creator and the intense love that has prevailed since the beginning of time in the way that humankind has been shepherded through the ages.  This will continue until all of us are present before the throne of the God who loves us with an intensity that is only revealed in the magnificence of works like Handel’s Messiah or Beethoven’s symphonies.  There is an eloquence in these works that passes human speech and all of our understanding.  In the course of listening to these marvelous works, I am always put in contact with my God.  This is the closest to “knowing” that I have ever come.  It happens also in the course of the liturgy when the bread and the wine become the Body and the Blood of the Christ.  How does this happen?  I have no idea, except that I am in absolute awe of the mystery..  

Baptism and Ministry

           Some clergy restrict access to the Eucharist.   I have been in Roman Catholic churches for weddings and have been openly instructed by the priest to stay away from receiving communion if I am not of the Roman Catholic faith.  I am always put off by this, even though I expect it when I sit in their pews. 

            The Episcopal church, in its canons, specifies that baptized people ought to receive communion.  I’ve never liked that.  I don’t want to put any barriers up that can possibly keep people away from the most enervating sacrament that we offer.  I think that anyone who is in the church, and even those outside, ought to be able to freely receive the Body and Blood of Jesus with no restrictions at all.  I remember Krister Stendahl, the great Lutheran bishop telling me in a group that when he was acting as a chaplain at Harvard, a Sikh, in his turban, came to the altar during communion, put out his hands to receive communion.  “I gave it to him,” said the bishop. “There was no question in my mind what I had to do.”  I think hearing that was the moment that decided for me that nobody at all ought to be kept from the altar to receive communion.  I remembered this when I did prison chaplaincy.  Sometimes I would smuggle in the consecrated bread and wine and give communion to the members of my group.  I never asked if any or all of them were baptized.  It didn’t seem relevant to me.

            This week is the time when we recognize the baptism of Jesus by John.  There was a lot of conversation between the two of them before the baptism.  John told Jesus, “you should be baptizing me,” but Jesus told him to do it, that it was the right thing to do.  And certainly it was.  If Jesus was going to take on the character of all of us, including our sin, it was essential for him to be baptized.  Luke’s gospel tells us the dramatic moment of the baptism, that when Jesus came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove and a voice from Heaven called out, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” 

  
          I think it important to remember that the baptism of Jesus wasn’t a “Christian” baptism.  It was a Jewish rite.  We have a habit of assuming that being baptized somehow makes us “Christians”.  I don’t think so.  I think we become Christians when we follow the Christ.  Baptism is only a first step.  Receiving the sacrament is another, and I always think that those moments known only to us when the Holy Spirit touches us are the real moment of our consecration as members of the flock of God.  This isn’t something that happens publicly, most often it is in quiet moments when we come to an understanding of who we are and what our lives are intended for.

                   For me, it was my calling to the priesthood.  After the television station where I had been working closed up, and I was without a job, I thought about what I ought to do with my life.  For a long time, I had been attracted to the church, but I put it off and continued in my broadcasting career.  This time was different.  Somehow, I knew the direction that my life needed to take.  It wasn’t much time before I spoke to my rector, and the bishop and was enrolled in seminary.  That was a profound moment of baptism for me.  I know that there are others who plan for ministry all of their lives, take pre-theological courses in colleges and build a whole academic course toward ministry.  For me, it was more sudden, and I have appreciated that with great awe.  I know that God spoke to me, although I couldn’t possibly share the words that were used, only the impetus toward what I eventually did.  I thank God for that moment, for my baptism and for my ministry.

The Gift of God's Love

         My computer died this week.  This isn’t a plea for sympathy, although it is certainly traumatic in this age of technology to lose the connection that I have to everyone.  In all honesty, it isn’t a really big deal.  I was able to get another computer and can continue to do what I want to do on line and through e-mail and Facebook and all of those things that seem to be so darned important anymore, but it made me think about how we live our lives these days.  How we need to be connected to each other, even when we are driving.

          There is a part of me that loves this.  The more that we are in contact with each other it would seem that the better our understanding ought to be, but it doesn’t seem to work like that.  This society is more divided than ever.  We can’t decide in congress about much of anything.  We spend our time watching elected representatives bicker constantly until the atmosphere becomes so polluted with vitriol that we can hardly stand it.  Fox news and MSNBC face off against each other just about every day.  How can we provide for our society the things that we desperately need when we can’t agree on simple things.  I get tired of the name calling and the refusal to accept each other on human terms.  Since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, the racist comments, mostly implied, haven’t stopped.  The “birthers” insist that he was born in Kenya and is not eligible to hold his office, but he has been elected twice to that office, but they still don’t shut up.  I am certain that if his race had been different, a lot of the racist clatter would never have happened.  But that is only my opinion.  Watching all of this has not been easy.  I think we are a better people than this.

            This is the season of Epiphany.  In the biblical tradition, this is the time when the sages from the East came to worship the newly born child in the manger born to Mary and Joseph and hailed as the Savior of the World.  Including these easterners among those included in the company of salvation is a significant event.  It tells us of God’s intent to include all of humankind in his love;  to open the Kingdom of Heaven to everyone on earth.  This was by no means the common understanding in Bethlehem, or for that matter anywhere.  It was, and still is an “us and them” world.  “We” are in, and “them” are out.  God loves us and doesn’t love you.  That justified a lot of the fighting and the turmoil in those days.  It still justifies it in our time. 

            What we need to see is that God’s love is infinite.  In includes everyone, even those whom we would classify as enemies.  This cuts through our finite judgment and allows us to see those around us as God sees them.  When we do that, inclusion becomes automatic and our belligerence lessens and we can get on with our lives without so much turmoil. 

            I spent twenty-two years as a part-time chaplain in a penitentiary.  I heard many stories about how hatred and self-centeredness resulted in horrible crimes.  My job was to make God’s love apparent even to these men who had committed these crimes.  Is forgiveness possible for them?  If it isn’t, it isn’t possible for any of us.  The reality is that God’s love penetrates even our most arrogant egos.  None of us are perfect and our sins add up.  Whether or not we are willing to forgive the sins around us, God is perfectly willing.  That is why he sent the sages with the gifts to the Christ Child.  Not only are those sages included in God’s Kingdom, but also Herod and his soldiers and all of those who through the ages have denied God’s presence in this world.  I know that God’s love reached into the depths of human life.  I have seen it over and over again in the lives of the men in my group in the prison, and in the lives of the people in my parishes.  We need not worry about that Love.  It is absolutely secure.