Trinity Parish
Sermons
« April 2008 | Main | December 2008 »
May 25, 2008
Beth Foote - May 25, 2008
1 Corinthians 4: 1-5 ; Matthew 6: 24-34 ; Psalm 131
It’s prom season, and our son Colby is renting two tuxes with red vests this year because his girlfriend Noelle has a red prom dress and she lives on this side of the bay. Last weekend they went to her prom and next weekend they’re going to his prom. Although it turns out that both dances are being held at the Julia Morgan Ballroom in San Francisco!
It made me remember my senior prom long, long ago, back in the 1970’s. A little different…I remember Powder blue tuxes and driving in my convertible Volkswagen named Max…no limousines. …And way back when, my prom date quickly figured out that I am a first class worrier. He gave me a hilarious book called “How to Make Yourself Miserable, a training manual,” which I still have today. There are chapters like “How to select a 3 dimensional worry”, and my favorite, a chart that has disastrous possibilities to consider while flying. Six geese could fly into engines simultaneously. Excessive vibration could loosen bolts holding plane together. And my favorite: “disturbed pilot could jump out of plane in fit of pique.”
I’d like to think that I’ve grown out of my worrying ways over the years. But unfortunately, some things are hard-wired. So, being a first class worrier, this passage in Matthew has always been a favorite of mine. What is worry after all? What does it mean to live without worry? How can we do that?
One of the great things about the Revised Common Lectionary, the system of readings we now follow in the Episcopal Church, is that for most of Ordinary Time, we will read through a big chunk of Matthew. So we will get a good sense of the flow of Matthew’s gospel which was written primarily for Jewish Christians, and reflects Jewish customs. Today we look at the sixth chapter of Matthew, a discourse by Jesus on how to pray. I encourage you to look at the whole chapter sometime this week. Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer in this chapter, and advises people to seek an intimate relationship with God through prayer; he says we should not pray publicly for effect. He says we should go into a room in private to pray. Our passage on worry comes after his discourse on prayer and I think it develops out of it; I believe Jesus is saying that to get to the place where you don’t worry, you need to have an intimacy with God.
Several weeks ago I traveled down to UC Santa Barbara to see my oldest daughter. I also wanted to spend a quiet day at Mount Calvary, an Episcopal monastery and retreat house. It sits at the top of the mountains overlooking Santa Barbara.
I got to Mt. Calvary in time for had lunch with the community of 7 monks and their guests at the monastery. I happened to sit next to Brother Roy, who does calligraphy and teaches Centering Prayer. As we ate together, we found we knew people in common in Berkeley, and I told him a little about the many transitions going on in my life. He said simply, “God is in all of it. God is usually in the midst of turmoil” He recommended I walk their labyrinth outside.
The mountains behind Santa Barbara are very dry and rocky, and the Mt. Calvary labyrinth is made out of native rocks. It’s rugged. Dry and homemade. They had a flyer with suggestions on how to walk the labyrinth, and the following stood out for me: “Take the risk of recognizing an emptiness in ourselves that only love can fill.” And “consider the possibility of the new, the miraculous, the transfiguring entering our lives.”
There are three movements to walking the labyrinth: moving inward, centering, moving outward. Moving inward means shedding our roles, our worries, our expectations, and just be.
This is difficult for those of us who are worriers. Worrying really is a way of trying to be in control; if you worry enough, something bad won’t happen, or by worrying enough about the what-ifs, then you’ll cover all the bases. In a way, a worrier is always on guard. At the opening to the labyrinth I struggled to let down my guard. An image came into my mind of coming to airport security where you have to take off your shoes, empty your pockets, in a sense shedding your outer defenses. So I walked into the rocky labyrinth, and I offered my worries up to God.
When I got to the center of the labyrinth I sat there in the dirt for a long time. I watched a California quail and many other birds I would not have usually noticed. Then I began to notice that in between the dry boulders of the labyrinth there were small green plants pushing up shoots. There was a large wild fennel plant that smelled of licorice pushing aside several boulders. People had left pebbles at the center of the labyrinth. All was very quiet. Within my soul and around me on the mountaintop. In those green shoots, those birds, that experience of quiet, at the center of that dirt labyrinth, I found that intimate connection with God, and that experience of being held.
Our Psalm today describes this state. Being like a baby on mother’s breast. Quiet. Absolutely trusting. Perhaps that is what Jesus is talking about here in Matthew. That place without worry. That place where you are in the presence of God, in the now.
I think worry is part of the human condition. Whatever our life situation, there seems to be something to worry about. In contrast to those around the world today who really worry about having enough food, and the fundamentals of living, we are so privileged here in Menlo Park in the early 21st century. Yet we still worry because the bar has been raised, and we’re living at such a high level of materialism that demands so much to maintain. And our culture says that we cannot let any weakness or cracks show in the veneer. Especially perhaps for those of us who are good at the game of making money, and have signed on to the total package. We have so much to lose. Perhaps this reality relates to what Jesus says about serving both God and wealth being impossible.
Jesus is saying here that worry is wasteful. Worry fills up our mind with useless and essentially hopeless white noise. When we worry we’re distracted from the centrality of God because we’re focused inward on worrying.
Worry diminishes, faith grows. Worry closes us down, faith opens us up to God’s abundance. When we are faithful rather than worry full, there is a sense of God’s time, God’s depth and breadth. God’s possibilities that are always bigger than any we could worry into existence and beyond our imaginings. Faith brings us into connection with the “Wow, I never thought of that.”
The Spirit moves in surprising ways. Worry closes us off to only what we know and can personally imagine. Perhaps this is what Jesus means by the Kingdom of God. “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.” The Kingdom of God, the place of surprises, is a hard place for worriers to enter because we’re always thinking up our own kingdom of known possibilities, our own kingdom of worry, and we miss the exit into wonder and surprise.
These days we hear a lot about being good stewards of the earth, about being green. Let me suggest that as Christians we can be good stewards of our relationship with God, too. In our reading from Corinthians, Paul suggests that ministers are to be servants and stewards. When we move away from worry and move towards God, we becoming better servants to God and better stewards of our relationship with God.
This has been a challenging time for us here at Trinity, and I think this passage also speaks to where we are as a parish. Collectively, we may be worried about the direction Trinity will take. What’s going to happen now? Can we withstand more change? Who will be our interim? Who will be our new rector? How will all of this play out? How will we get through it? One could really make a 3 dimensional worry, a first-class anxiety out of all of this.
Yesterday as an alum, I attended the graduation at CDSP, my seminary in Berkeley. Retired Professor Bill Countryman preached. He spoke about how the Holy Spirit is like a great storm, stirring up everything in her path, including the Episcopal Church as a whole. I agree. The Holy Spirit is not a tame little flame from a bic lighter, she can be a storm, a whirlwind that often feels destructive and chaotic when she’s moving through. Certainly, the Holy Spirit has been roaring through Trinity as of late. Professor Countryman also said that the Holy Spirit does not leave a barren wake of destruction, though, like Hurricane Katrina. She clears the ground, and then seeks out raw recruits to rebuild in a new way. In the context of the graduation, he pointed to the new seminary graduates as the raw recruits. In the context of Trinity, I think we who are here are all the raw recruits.
How do we know our marching orders? Jesus recommends we do not worry about it, but pray about the path, the labyrinth ahead. The instructions for walking the labyrinth said, “Take the risk of recognizing an emptiness in ourselves that only love can fill.” And “consider the possibility of the new, the miraculous, the transfiguring entering our lives”
AMEN
May 05, 2008
Beth Foote - May 5, 2008
The Rev. Beth Foote; Acts 1: 6-14; Psalm 68:1-10,33-36; 1st Peter 4:12-24, 5:6-11; John 17: 1-11
The Ascension has always been a mystery to me, as I’m sure it was to the apostles. I can imagine them saying, “but wait!” Everything seemed to be coming together: Jesus had risen from the dead. He revealed himself to them on the Road to Emmaus, and in the breaking of the bread, to Thomas, and then there was the breakfast on the beach. Then up on the Mount of Olives, they ask him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” I can imagine them thinking, maybe it was all going to make sense now.
Jesus replies, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem…” And then he ascends. And they are left with a question mark.
I can hear them saying, “but wait a minute!” Now we’ve seen it all! And he leaves us here…and as usual, we don’t know what he means.
At that moment, the apostles enter into in what I recognize, somewhat painfully, as transitional time and space. They have lived through so much, and given it their all, and now, they don’t know what’s next. They don’t know that Pentecost is coming right up for them. They just know they are where they are, The Upper Room.
Transitional time. There’s also transitional space. Have you ever noticed that we don’t have narthex or lobby here in our sanctuary? It makes for strange Feng Shui in here. We walk directly from the social space of the courtyard into the sacred space of the church with no transitional space to get ready for worship. Last week I took the Godly Play storyteller training, and we learned about creating sacred space in the classroom and how to prepare the children to be “ready” for hearing the story. Adults need that, too. Transitional space creates a place where people can get ready for encountering the sacred.
A transitional time and space. That is, in fact, where we are as a parish. Betwixt and between rectors. We need to ponder what has happened, to grieve for whatever we need to grieve for, and it will be different for each one of us. We will need to determine who we are as a parish now that we have been changed and enriched by Father Mike’s ministry, before we can move on to the next stage.
Like the apostles, I think we would rather be zooming ahead to the next chapter, and the new, rather than be in this in between place.
Because it is rather uncomfortable to be in this transitional space.
I know something about this transitional thing myself, since I have been in the transitional time and space of the ordination process in the Diocese of California or 4 plus years. There are many steps to being ordained a priest. It’s a whole labyrinth of its own. I’m going to digress a bit here to fill you in a little on how it works.
It all starts with a call to ordained ministry, that then needs to be conveyed to your community. You begin the ordination process as an aspirant and must receive the sponsorship of your parish. Then you enter into a long series of interviews and assessments by the Commission on Ministry and the Bishop of your diocese, and others. And you do a three year graduate degree in Divinity at a seminary. The progression is, you become a postulant, then a candidate, then you’re ordained a deacon, then a priest. You must be at each one of those stages for at least six months, and each one has its special steps. My favorite was the three day psychological exam. (I was relieved to know that I am certifiably sane.)
For me, the step between postulancy and candidacy was the sticky one. I bombed my candidacy interview with the Commission on Ministry. I was so nervous being interviewed by twelve people at once that I completely clammed up. They said that I should come back in six months. I disagreed; I thought I was ready to move on. But now I think they were right.
It was a difficult time for me, and it happened the week before I started my position here at Trinity. I had done everything I was supposed to do…got the good grades, did hospital chaplaincy for 10 weeks, and then look what happened. I felt over my head. Angry. And stuck.
The reading from 1st Peter reading for today describes well how I felt then, it felt like a “fiery ordeal…a testing …something strange was happening.”
The 1st Peter reading has relevancy to our situation at Trinity Parish, too. We are in that transitional space. We are being tested by this strange thing that has happened to us. It’s almost unprecedented that a rector dies in office in their first year at a parish. Extraordinary. It takes time to absorb something like that and make meaning out of it. It takes transitional time and space.
Let’s go back to the narthex for a minute. Maybe it’s a coincidence that we don’t have one and then again, maybe it isn’t. This place was built in 1950, a time when there was great confidence in modernity and reason; and new things were best. And part of that ethos was that we could throw out traditional things that were old-fashioned and mystical. That meant it was ok to skimp on that transitional space of a narthex. The absence of a narthex says to me that those in charge thought the sacred was easily accessible. Just walk right into it. Find your pew. At that moment in time, 1950, the world of progress had such momentum, moving forward as fast as possible “made sense”, and this absence of a narthex speaks to that, moment, I think.
I think we’re not so different from those folks. Like those at Trinity Parish in 1950, we in 2008 are do-ers and like to keep things moving. It’s daunting to think of being in the in between stage again. Is it really necessary? Isn’t it old-fashioned and churchy? Let’s march right in and do what needs to be done. I’ve been having those thoughts myself.
Well, I’ve come to realize that transitional space and time is not wasted space. It’s essential. It’s a time to learn, reflect, and grow. It’s a gift. My rocky patch in the ordination process made me dig deeper and accept my vulnerability in answering my call. By doing the work of ministry here with you I better understood my call. And, my second candidacy interview was a home run. I also learned it’s best to be in a transitional space with others together as a community of real people linked together by God’s love.
And that is what we see in our Acts reading as well. Here they are, the original parish, the apostles and the women, huddled together after Jesus ascends. What are they doing in the Upper Room? They were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.”
As I was writing this sermon, I received my email newsletter from the Episcopal News Service, and it had a blurb for a new book called “The First to Follow” by John R. Claypool. I quote it because it seemed to arrive at just the right time.
“One of the first things that Jesus did in his ministry was to reach out to twelve individuals and draw them into a circle of close companionship with him. This series is about those twelve apostles, their relationships with Jesus and with each other, and what the dynamics of that community can teach us…Jesus did not wait for people to be perfect in order to call them into the circle of God's love. As we look at those that Jesus called, and consider ourselves as part of that enlarging circle, we gain not only a deeper sense of our own reality, but also a deeper sense of how Christ would like to work with us.”
“An expanding circle. Those Jesus selected… Jesus did not wait for people to be perfect in order to call them into the circle of God’s love and a deeper sense of how Christ would like to work with us.” In this transitional time it is good to remember that none of us is perfect and God calls to us in our brokenness, where we are today, to call us into the circle, into God’s service.
We are part of that expanding circle. We have all been called here. As many of us found out yesterday at the National Brain Tumor Walk, we are Team Trinity.
In the last few months, as uncomfortable as they have been for me with Father Mike’s illness, I have come to understand that I’ve been personally called to be here at Trinity for some reason. It’s mysterious but true.
On Monday I met with Bishop Marc in his office at Grace Cathedral, and we had a wonderful conversation. I realized it was the last step in the transitional time called the ordination process. Afterwards, I walked through the cathedral by myself and imagined how it will be to be ordained there. I imagined all of you there. And so many other people, from Christ Church, and other parts of my life. I felt God’s love manifest in all those relationships. It was a little overwhelming. I had a good cry. I realized I was moving forward into a new phase of life and ministry.
And Trinity will, too.
In the last two weeks I’ve been reminded by clergy friends all over the diocese that so many of our sister parishes are praying for us, and have been for many months. We are not in the Upper Room alone. The whole diocese is praying with us in this sacred, transitional space, in this uncomfortable Upper Room. And good things will come to us in God’s time. Christ wants to work with us. The Holy Spirit is coming. Amen.
