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January 30, 2010
2409Rev. Carl Gillett - Jan 30 2010
This sermon is available as an audio file (MP3.) The Gospel reading precedes the sermon.
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The sermon Text follows:
IRRATIONAL JOY
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Carl R. Gillett
On the occasion of the installation of the Rev. Matthew R. Dutton-Gillett
As Rector of the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
Menlo Park, California
January 30, 2010
Isaiah 58:6-11 Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16
Matthew 5:1-14
(c) 2010 by the Rev. Dr. Carl R. Gillett
_________________________________________________
As I began preparing for this day two things came to mind, first I could be quite irresponsible by about choosing what to say today because I’ll be leaving town on Tuesday and secondly I am not really a part of this community in any intimate and accountable way. But then, I do hope that over time I will become more connected with this community since it is in this community that our son and his wife are holding two of our grand children hostage. So I decided perhaps I should be a bit more thoughtful about what I was going to say today.
George Bernard Shaw, who lived and wrote before we became sensitive to gender references in our literature, said this: "the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." We heard in the Gospel lesson this morning the words of an unreasonable man. I'm going to invite this congregation today to consider seriously the benefits of becoming an unreasonable church. In fact, I usually edit Mr. Shaw's prose and substitute the word ‘rational’ for ‘reasonable’ and the word ‘irrational’ for the word ‘unreasonable.’ For reasons that I hope will become clearer in a few moments I actually consider Jesus to be an irrational man. Apparently there are others in history who agree with that. There is at least one story in the Gospels about Jesus’ mother and siblings coming to take the poor deluded man home. Then there is the account of his preaching in his home town and nearly being killed.
The concept of right and left brain has become a common part of our social discourse. However, in the purview of history this understanding of the brain is quite recent. One of the early researchers in the field of hemispheric specialization whose name was Gazzangia wrote a book trying to explain the concept of mind. The fact that we don’t know what he said suggests he wasn’t very successful. He concluded that what we think of as rational thought is too slow a process for decision-making. He concluded that we make our decisions at a non-conscious level and use rational thought to explain to ourselves and the world around us why we made that decision. In other words, he concluded that we make decisions in a basically irrational way. People in the advertising business understand that and pitch their promotions to our non-conscious minds.
Whether I like it or not, it appears the many of the most important decisions I make happen outside my conscious awareness, in an irrational part of my self.
I want to tell you a story which is actually a report of an experiment, but I’ll call it a story since I don’t have any statistics or footnotes. I hope this story will lead us into a deeper place and help you see why I am advocating that the church become an irrational institution. Some experimenters constructed a platform of Plexiglas about three or 4 feet off the floor; they attached a Plexiglas tube that was about two feet in diameter and six or 8 feet long to one end to the platform and the other end to a support that held the tube level. They then took some infant children who had just learned to crawl and put one of them on the platform and had the child's mother stand at the other end of Plexiglas tube. Obviously in this situation the child could see mother at the other end and was also aware that it was several feet off the floor. They asked the mother to tell the child with her eyes that it was safe to crawl through the tube. The mothers were instructed to avoid saying anything, making any sounds, or expressing any emotion with their faces and just to communicate with their eyes. As soon as the mothers communicated safety to the children they crawled eagerly through the tube to their mom. Then the researchers took some other children, put them on the platform, and told their mothers to tell the children it was not safe to cross through the tube and again to do it only with their eyes. None of these children would crawl to their mothers. This is taken to be an example of the use of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are specialized neurons that we all have in our brains that enable us to know how someone else feels. Our discovery of these neurons and at least our early learning about how they function are important ingredients in the conclusion that neurology is making that the brain is specialized to be an organ of social interaction. Also notice that this social interaction between the children and their mothers takes place at a non-verbal level, in fact it takes place at an irrational level, at a time when the infants cannot use language. It would appear that science is catching up with the affirmation of that ancient Anglican cleric, John Donne, who taught us centuries ago that no one is an island; that no one lives alone.
You're probably familiar with a concept that is actually derived from the work of Carl Jung. The concept is that personalities have introverted or extroverted characteristics. If I tell you that I am more of an introvert than an extrovert, I'm sure you will know what I mean. A number of years ago I took a group of church folk on a weekend retreat. Now these church folk were all from the United Church of Christ and if you know anything about us in the United Church of Christ, you know that we are not deeply acquainted with many of the traditional spiritual practices. This retreat was to last three days and two nights. At the conclusion of the first day I explained to the participants that they were to keep silent from that moment until after breakfast the next morning. Some of them were bothered about how they were going to get breakfast if they couldn't talk to each other but I assured them they would figure it out. The next morning after breakfast when I invited them to break the silence I was inundated with an avalanche of sound. I was also told in no uncertain terms that we would not be doing that again. I realized that I was on retreat with 40 extroverts and I had just pushed them way outside their comfort zone and into their shadow side. In Jungian terms, the introvert is the shadow side of the extrovert and vice versa. Here is one of the things that Carl Jung had to say about the shadow side: "the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, but adapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but convention forbids!” We are very ready to presume that that which is in the shadow is evil. If you are reading a novel and the authors said that the innocent and beautiful heroine was being approached by a shadowy figure I am sure that most of us would assume that something bad is about to happen. But we are invited by folks like Carl Jung to realize that there is creativity and even blessing to be found in the shadow. The extrovert who invites herself to occasionally play the role of an introvert and the introvert who challenges himself from time to time to accept an extroverted role sometimes are both involved in healthy growth and change. We might allow ourselves to wonder what we are hiding in our own shadow side.
Jesus was a marginalized figure in his society. Most of the time we church folk prefer to ignore a few details about Jesus. For example, a pretty good case can be made for the idea that Jesus was considered to be and was taunted for being an illegitimate child. We sometimes forget that shepherds to whom the coming of the Christ was first announced, at least from the perspective of urban society in Jerusalem, were considered to be marginalized people who were considered to be unclean. We read a portion of the Sermon on the Mount for the Gospel lesson today. Please note how this reading begins: "when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain and after he sat down, his disciples came to him." This doesn't say that all the crowds came to Jesus; the idea that Jesus preached to masses of people from the mountain is a Hollywood interpretation of scripture. In fact I think you could read this as a statement that Jesus separated himself from the crowd and that people who really wanted to learn from him came to him. It is interesting, at least to me, to wonder who chooses to associate with an illegitimate man who stands convention on its head, actually talks to women, and teaches what must have seemed to be an irrational gospel to people.
I think we can discover some interesting things about marginalized people by looking at the people who Jesus calls blessed. They are poor, they are grieving, they are hungry and thirsty, they are persecuted, they are reviled, and they are also merciful peacemakers whose motives are pure. Jesus reframes the suffering of these people and suggests that their poverty and their grief, their hunger and thirst are keys to deeper spiritual life. Jesus invites us to wonder if we can use that which is hidden in the shadow side of our personalities to motivate us to climb the mountain so that we may become disciples of a marginalized Christ. Jesus invites us to wonder what sorts of beauty, truth, grace, and love are hidden in the shadows where the marginalized people in our society must live.
We have a tradition at our house that some time in the waning days of Advent we watch a video of Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. You may recall that the ghost of Christmas Present is a tall figure who carries a torch and who reminds me of Jesus admonition that we are the light of the world. One of the realities which the torch of Christmas Present reveals is the undernourished children beneath his robe who are named ignorance and want. The ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge that the word “doomed” is inscribed on the forehead of one of the children. Scrooge has a hard time trying to deal with this revelation. I wonder if we actually let ourselves become the light of the world and illuminate the shadow places where the marginalized live, if we will shrink at that revelation or if we will embrace the opportunity to join with marginalized folk to overcome want and ignorance and replace doom with hope.
Our epistle lesson today admonishes us to speak the truth in love and thus grow up in every way into Christ. It also seems to me that if we are part of a community that speaks the truth in love that we will also be part of a community that hears the truth in love. If we know that our leader is a marginalized and irrational man we might wonder what truth we will hear from the marginalized and the irrational folk in our midst. If Carl Jung indeed is right in suggesting that there is creativity and innovation in our personal shadow side, then it seems logical to me to suppose that there is creativity and innovation in the shadow side of our society. If we insist that we are going to be reasonable and rational people then we will continue to embrace the social system that forces certain individuals and groups into the shadows; that marginalizes people and suppresses the truth, the creativity, and even the joy that we might have shared with them. Carl Jung reminds us that we don’t reap the benefits of our own shadow resources because “convention forbids” it.
Our research on the brain is telling us that we are designed for loving relationships and that those relationships are established, nurtured, and supported in emotional, irrational, and nonverbal ways. Jesus whole life involved establishing, nurturing, and supporting relationships that defied social convention and rational expectations. Perhaps it is not surprising that we are discovering that human beings are created to manifest the lifestyle that Jesus himself taught us. If we let ourselves grow up and mature by speaking and hearing the truth in love, we are letting ourselves become the people we were created to be. The brain research also tells us that we can stunt our own growth and development by the so-called rational categories that we impose upon ourselves.
A pastor and a church that are beginning a new relationship with one another would do well to consider the importance of establishing a relationship that is primarily an intuitive, felt, and lived reality. I believe we can live our way into being the people we are called to be by exploring the resources in our shadow side and I think that's true of individuals, of societies, and of churches. I believe we will all be richer as we allow ourselves to be more inclusive of all that is within us and all that is around us. However, if we insist on imposing conventional and ordinary expectations upon our life together we risk stunting our growth and losing our connection with the irrational one who invites us to love our own marginalized parts and those whom our society has marginalized. This church, a joint enterprise of pastor and people, is invited to make explicit the hidden and implicit realties cloaked in the shadows that together marginalized people may be drawn to the light which that enterprise will bring to the world.
It is reported that Jesus taught as one who had the authority. Yet it has been pointed out frequently that much of what Jesus taught was contained in what we refer to as the Old Testament Scriptures. What gave Jesus his authority? I honestly think it was the fact that he himself was a marginalized human being. The circumstances of Jesus birth and origins were used by God to empower his teaching. If we are going to join forces with Jesus then we will have to deal with the marginalized parts of ourselves and the marginalized people in our society. The story about the infants crawling through the Plexiglas tunnel reminds us that our rational categories and logical constructs do not begin to explain the fundamental realities of human relationships. When I first encountered that story I found it very hard to believe because it didn't fit my rational categories. That reminds me of how tempted I am to force the facts to fit what I think. We have found it easier over the centuries to make Jesus into a logical, rational person because that perspective causes us less discomfort and fits him into our rational preconceptions. However, it seems to me that we have projected so much on him that we can’t see him or hear him. We have to get back to admitting that we are irrational and often marginalized ourselves in some ways in order to identify with the irrational, marginalized Christ who calls us to reach out to the marginalized people around us.
In the shadows, in the marginalized realities within us, and within and among the marginalized people in our society are dynamic, creative forces that would, as Jung put it, vitalize and embellish our lives. There is irrational joy lurking around the edges and in the shadows. The irrational, marginalized Christ brings joy when he reframes human suffering and hopelessness. Enlarging the circle of our concerns to draw in the parts of ourselves which we repress and marginalize as well as the parts of the society we repress and marginalize will increase our joy and the joy of all who share this world with us. Let us put relationships ahead of rationality and logic; let us put intuition ahead of tradition—let us admit we are marginalized as long as anyone is marginalized and dedicate ourselves to increasing the joy in the world by heartily embracing the leadership of an irrational and marginalized Jesus. Let us embrace life and joy now, latch onto the present and leave the theories for later. Let us join with one another in promoting inclusion, battling discrimination, and celebrating joy instead of wallowing in depression.
Let us commit ourselves to a process of spiritual and emotional discernment—a process of discovering what God, working through our intuitive gifts, is telling us. In that process we will find irrational joy—joy that makes no sense to rational, logical minds, but that offers hope to a world filled with nonsense. Amen.
January 25, 2010
2379Sermon by Julia McCray-Goldsmith -- January 24, 2010
This sermon is available as an audio file (MP3.) The Gospel reading precedes the sermon.
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November 08, 2009
2270Kat Banakis - Nov 8, 2009
This sermon is available as an audio file (MP3.)
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August 02, 2009
2176Kat Banakis - Aug 2 2009
9 Pentecost Year B
Exodus 16:2-4,9-15, John 6:24-35
This sermon is available as an audio file (MP3.)
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A year ago I entered my last year of graduate school, and I started praying for a job. I was specific in my prayer – I wanted a church job in Connecticut, where I was living, or Chicago – where my family lives. Autumn – no job. I put out positive vibes into the universe for gainful employment. I envisioned my successful landing of a job. No job. Winter -- all of my classmates who were going straight onto ordination were heavy in the long job application and interview process. March I started getting notices from the bank that said, “Congratulations on your coming graduation! Your student loan interest rate will be 6.75%!” No job. Spring -- a friend living in Menlo Park called to say that she needed someone to sublet her apartment. I hadn’t thought of that option much at all. Against normal logic, at graduation I had a signed lease in California and no job.
I asked for something in one category, and the closest thing I got to a response was something altogether different. It was as though I asked for blue, God responded, "circle."
God responding with something altogether different than what is asked for is to some degree what’s going on in today’s gospel story from John. To understand this story we have to first understand how much John’s community really, really, really liked Moses. Moses, they thought, had set the Messiah standard. When the Messiah came, he would be like Moses.
And specifically he would be like Moses in three ways. First, the Messiah would do nature miracles, just like Moses parted the red sea and made water flow from a rock. Second, the Messiah would talk to God and God would talk back. Third, the Messiah would make manna or bread. As written in the rabbinic literature, “As the former redeemer causes manna to descend… so will the latter Redeemer cause manna to descend.” And the Messiah wouldn’t just make bread once, no, like in the Exodus stories, bread would come again and again. Those three things – nature miracles, two-way conversations with God, and making bread – were the key characteristics of the Messiah.
In our story from John today we’re not too far into Jesus’ ministry, but already Jesus has turned water into wine – nature miracle. Already Jesus has claimed that God is his father and that he regularly communicates with God. And in last week’s story Jesus makes enough bread to feed five thousand people. Making manna – maybe. Jesus has only made bread once. Jesus can be the Messiah, they think, if and only if, he can made bread again.
When the crowd gathers around and asks Jesus to “Do the bread thing again,” they didn’t all conveniently forget their wallets and lunches a second day in a row. They ask Jesus for a sign of bread again to see if Jesus really is the Messiah; to see if he is the answer to generations of prayer.
And Jesus tells them, “It was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.” Ouch. This community had been holding up Moses as the pinnacle, and Jesus corrects their understanding by saying that Moses was merely a vessel through which God worked. Then Jesus continues, “I am the bread of life.”
What a completely illogical response! John’s community has been praying for generations for the second Moses, the Messiah who will make bread come like dew each morning, so they ask Jesus for bread. And he offers himself. Elementally bread and people are different. Just like water and rocks are different; just like water and wine are different. Jesus is categorically different than bread.
The Israelites ask for one thing and get something altogether different. They ask for bread and get Godself in human form. In today’s reading we find that God doesn’t necessarily give us what we ask for. Which we all know. We feel ignored or like we didn’t use the right words in praying – maybe didn’t say please enough. Or maybe the silence on God’s part is because God is angry or too busy.
But we learn something about God in John 6 today. We learn that sometimes God does respond to our prayers, but because it doesn’t look the way we expect, we don’t recognize the response. When we pray for bread and God gives us a person, it doesn’t seem like an answer to prayer. But the fact that the response doesn’t turn out the way that we think it should does not mean that God does not answer prayer. It doesn’t mean that God ignores us. It means that God is God. Who God is is the one who gave Jesus when people asked for bread. Who God is is the one who surprises us and answers prayers in a way that might appear to be illogical and non-sequitur.
Maybe it was a totally unforeseen response to prayer that happened this summer in Iran. It seemed as though Iranians were hoping that the 2009 elections would mean the end of a culture of violence and control. But when the votes were tallied the government announced that President Ahmadinejad had been re-elected. And during that time the government kept trying to block communication between citizens. Cell phone service and news broadcasts were interrupted. Internet sites were taken down. But no matter how hard it tried the government couldn’t ultimately keep people from using technology to communicate with one another. One Iranian used his cell phone video recorder to capture government violence and brutality on film. Protests were planned in 140 characters or less over Twitter texting. It could be that the Iranians prayed for change in the form of a person but what they got instead was democratized communication with one another. Maybe they prayed for a president, and God gave them Twitter.
I don’t necessarily like that I pray for one thing and God might give me something altogether different. I like to get what I ask for, and I like to be able to return things when I don’t want them. One birthday I remember getting a package shipped to me from my good friend. I carefully split the packing tape, trying to protect whatever was inside. I expected something special and indulgent but that I would never get for myself. And I opened to find… a paring knife. That was definitely something I would not have purchased for myself. But she didn’t include a receipt, so I was stuck with the knife. And wouldn’t you know, years later, I use that knife almost every single day. It’s that way every birthday. This friend gives me things I wouldn’t never get for myself, don’t particularly want, and yet they are perfect, and I need them and use them.
Jesus Christ is the perfect gift humanity didn’t ask for. One theologian says that Jesus is the perfect gift for the world because humanity did not ask for him in detail. If we had asked for him in terms of specifics, Jesus wouldn’t have been a gift. God would have just picked him off our preset registry. But we do not issue an RFP to God and set the confines of response. God gave humanity Jesus who we did not design or ask for, and God responds to our prayers in ways we don’t design or ask for.
Maybe God has responded to you in a way you didn’t expect. This week I want to invite you to think about what you’ve praying for a long, long time. What have you been lifting up to God again and again that never seems to have been responded to at all? Maybe even write it out or draw it. And then write out or draw what you thought that the answer to that prayer should look like. Then step back and see if perhaps that prayer has been answered already, completely outside of your categories and expectations of what you thought God would respond. See if just maybe the response has come as something you never thought you wanted.
After the lease was signed, after graduation, I got a job. The end isn’t nearly so exciting as the beginning. But all year I felt like God ignored my plea for employment. But being here with you today – it is pure gift.
One birthday my friend sent me a book of poems I didn’t want by Carl Dennis. In one poem, Dennis writes that you might imagine God to be "No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend No closer than the actual friend you made at college." And yet God is wise and infinite and knows how we are hungry.
AMEN.
April 19, 2008
1740Patti Powell - Homily for Fr. Mike's Memorial
Saturday April 19 - Memorial for Father Mike Spillane
Julie, Mike’s beloved wife, has ordered me to be funny. And short.
Now, I’m a lawyer—and as a race we lawyers are not known for being funny or short. I am profoundly honored to be asked to speak and profoundly sad to speak. A few days ago Julie said she was “fine” and “awful” at the same time. And we all know what she meant. This time together today, to honor and remember our Splendid Spillane---as he was known at St. Brendan’s in the Bronx as the varsity football and baseball hero--is both a greeting, a time of storytelling and getting to know Mike better and a time of letting go—so in the face of these great dichotomies, to help us make sense of them—we have Jesus’ words: “Do not let your heart be troubled nor let it be fearful.”
So Julie & Brendan and Kim—Mike’s sweet Irish mother Kathleen, his very funny brothers Kieran and Brendan, Deirdre, the people they love-- Julie’s family her mom & dad and brother Jack and Holly, Bishop Marc Andrus, Bishop Richard Garcia, Mike’s Clergy colleagues, Mike’s brothers and sisters in Christ & all the rest of us Mike’s faith family—our faith family—that huge group of people who knew and love Mike Spillane we begin this time of greeting and letting go. This time of grateful hearts because we have been blessed by Michael James Patrick Spillane - this time of storytelling remembering that God, is the author of all stories.
A few weeks ago I went up in a balloon. My boys had given me the balloon ride as their Christmas gift, knowing that a balloon was on my list of things to do. So on a freezing early morning in March, lit by a late winter blazing sun I found myself 1300 feet in the air standing in a wicker basket. The views of the Idaho mountains and the Boise river were amazing and it was so quiet—geese honked beneath me. And then the terror. The microsecond of terror—I’m in a wicker basket—standing in the middle of the sky. The ground is so far away. So I looked at the horizon and thought of my boys’ love, and tamped down the fear —and entered into the thrill of the experience.
It was a bit like that last night, about 20 of Mike’s family and friends plus nine kids of various sizes did a hostile takeover of a Palo Alto restaurant. Chianti flowed, stories were told, laughter and love surrounded and embraced the table. The baby was passed among the women, Brendan and his friends bolted their food to make it to the Stanford soccer game and Kim in her new pair of white heels and her friends giggled and charmed the unfortunate people who had been seated near this tribe. I watched—I saw the warmth in Kathleen’s eyes, the love for her son, her oldest and then --like those microseconds in the balloon –the flash of her thought, “What are we going to do without him?” And as Brendan & Kieran told stories, each, for a second, seemed to looked around for brunt of their jokes --Mike. The one who once fell off a moped and claimed to be really hurt and then that same night was mocked by a comedian at a New York comedy club. “Hey, you in the sling? What happened? Mike tried to explain and the comedian stopped him. “ You fell off a moped—and got hurt? The brothers told us that was good for about 20 minutes of New York laughter at Mike’s expense.” And the microsecond look in Kieran’s eyes, “Mike should be at this party.” And then, someone would laugh, and the love would rise again, another platter of food would be placed on the table, and the peace of Christ would save us again.
Bruce Deal said yesterday that in Mike’s essay “My Spiritual Journey”, his gift to Holy Trinity in the search process, Mike seemed to have written his own eulogy. I urge you read it—again and again. As usual, Mike did a better job than anyone can do of giving us the words and stories of his life, a life being chased by the Hound of Heaven—the life that was shaped by Thomas Merton’s life and words. The challenge in the next few moments is not to draft the Wikipedia version of Mike’s life but to prime the pump of storytelling-in the best Irish tradition. So that these stories- what they tell us of him, flow out of this place into the courtyard today and into our lives as we remember and continue learn from and be inspired by this Splendid Spillane.
Many of us know the facts of Mike’s journey. He grew up – tough using that phrase. Not sure Mike ever did grow up. He spent his first 11 years in Manchester, England. He lived and breathed the red and white of Manchester United. On Sundays after mass he’d carry his little autograph book down to the practice field of his idols hoping one would sign his book. When it was time for his family to move to American in 1964 Kathleen tried to book passage from Liverpool the closer and less expensive port. With the family’s tickets bought and in her hand, Kathleen heard the travel agent said, “ah, Manchester United to sailing to New York on the Queen Elizabeth out of Southampton. None of your family happens to follow Manchester United do they?” Kathleen sighed and simply handed back the tickets from Liverpool and rebooked the family on the more expensive Queen Elizabeth. And each day, 11 year old Michael, in his own private heaven, stood on the polished teak deck as his heroes strutted and kicked & scrimmaged in front of him. So very close.
Over the past few months after the second service Mike would sit outside in the courtyard with parishioner Chris Golker, who experiences the same type of brain cancer as Mike. Their heads would be together in quiet talk, and a circle, almost an aura would surround them and people thought, “what pastoral words must go be going between these men. What thoughts of God.” Actually, the conversation usually consisted of Mike saying, “Dammit, Manchester United lost again last night.”
A couple of years ago, when Mike was serving Holy Nativity in Meridian Idaho, Deacon Paula Egbert (you may remember Paula, she gave the homily last September at Beth’s Ordination & Mike’s installation as your rector)—Paula was officiating at a wedding at a rural farm house. The key to this story is that the farm house, the wedding was about 25 miles from the Simplot soccer fields in Boise. Paula could do the ceremony but only a priest can do the nuptial blessing and the couple wanted the nuptial blessing. Mike had agreed to share in the service with Paula and do the blessing for the couple. Now, you almost have to close your eyes for this one. Paula is standing in the home’s large living room filled with well dressed people—charming couple in front of her. She’s nearly finished with the vows and the prayers and there’s no Mike—Brendan had had a soccer game. So Paula starts to speak slower and slower as if her power was being shut down. She could see out the back window which none of the wedding party or guests could see—and suddenly out of the corner of her eye she sees Mike’s car, throwing up dust as it roared into the driveway and braking. Mike leaps out of the car, pops open the truck and grabs his black trousers and pull them on over his soccer shorts. He grabs his robes and is vesting on a dead run up the walk way, enters the house looking cool, greets the young couple, smiles at the gathered loved ones, patted the shoulder of Deacon Paula to get her blood pressure down, pronounces the nuptial blessing over the couple, leaned over to Paula, whispered in her ear, “See you later. Brendan’s got another game, bye.” Paula watched him thru the window pulling off his vestments as he trotted to the car. It looked like the film Paula had just seen was being rewound and she was watching in reverse. Ripped off his trousers –jumped in the car and drove, probably like a maniac back the 25 miles to Simplot soccer fields in time for Brendan’s second game. That was Mike. So caring as a friend to Paula, so dedicated as a priest, so loving as a father.
There’s one more “pants” story. As a London Bobbie, one day this American Mike Spillane was chasing some miscreant who had made the erroneous decision of acting badly in front of Copper Spillane whose beat was the Paddington area. As Mike ran he punched the shoulder radio’s button to call the matter into the station. “In foot pursuit down Elgin Avenue, suspect wearing blue pants.” The response came over the radio, “you mean the man’s not wearing any trousers????” Mike had forgotten that in British speak “pants” means underpants. He was a long time living that one down with his police friends.
Images of Mike—especially during children’s sermons--sometimes you couldn’t see Mike for the sea of little doll baby faces—shiny little faces that listened to his stories and after church followed him around like little magnets drawn to his iron faith and his iron love.
Mike was rarely on time for anything—although strangely he was constantly aware of time. If someone else was preaching, a Bishop perhaps—Mike would start to get nervous—he’d push back the sleeve of his alb and look at this watch and the longer it went—first the toe would start to tap and then the whole leg would move and by the time the sermon was finished, Mike’s leg would be bouncing up and down like he was doing his own liturgical dance.
I’m not sure some writers’ descriptions of heaven as ‘eternal rest’ fit our Splendid Spillane. Mike’s heaven is an action filled one. Meeting people and playing games and running marathons and eating lots of bread—his favorite food. There was motion in Mike. He constantly moved the lectern. Didn’t matter where it was or how it was set. He stood behind it and moved it. Even if he had pre set it, on the rare occasion when he would have time before a service to do something—he’d still move the lectern when he stood behind it. Yes, there’s motion in Mike’s heaven.
Mike described his spiritual auto biography as “one we are writing each day of our lives recognizing at each moment or at later moments how God is present in our lives. And how we respond to God’s presence. This day is part of Julie and the kids’ spiritual autobiographies; it is part of all of ours, this faith family of Mike Spillane. It’s also part of Mike’s. Throughout Mike’s writings, his homilies, his conversations he wrote and he knew “God is calling me”. “God is calling me.” Mike responded to hearing that call with passion. He took chances. He took risks. He made that leap of faith each day. As a son, a brother, a priest, a husband who fell in love at first sight, a dad, a friend. A man who could do two soccer games and a nuptial blessing in a Saturday afternoon and do them with joy.
God’s call continues. For us. For Splendid Spillane. God’s call has simply taken him closer and nearer to that still small voice. It’s simply the next answer to God’s call. And as Paul wrote-- just for us today-- “We are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.” Amen
September 16, 2007
1434Patti Powell - Sept. 16 2007
Menlo Park September 16, 2007 Luke 15:1-10
And then it was August and the skies were still ashen and it was still horribly hot—but September seemed a bit closer. So I started to quibble with a priest---never wise. I said, “Uh, Mike—the lessons better be easy - and if it’s St. Paul telling wives to be subservient to their husbands—you’re on your own this September 16th. And as Fr. Mike is wont to say -- and we do keep believing him, “Oh, it’ll be easy.” So I read today’s gospel. And relaxed a bit.
"Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, doesn’t leave the ninety-nine and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he comes home, he calls together his friends, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost. Let’s open a fine cabernet & celebrate' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not turn on the tasteful tract lighting & gets out the hose for the central vac, sweeps the house, and searches carefully until she finds it? When she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Most of us are lost at one time or another—in great need of repentance. Sometimes we know it. Sometimes we don’t. What does it mean when something is lost? Usually when something’s lost the question is: “Where’s the…” and the question ends with “cat”…. or “clicker for the TV” or “my keys”. Those moments of “lostness” happen every day and we approach them somewhat logically. Lost things simply are not where they ought to be or where we think we left them. So in huge mall parking lots people push the alarm buttons on their key rings to find their cars.
But sometimes the lostness has nothing to do with cars or keys or cats. Sometimes at night—during those 4 AM wide-awake with the seething brain times, we realize was true lostness is. In his parable today Jesus is saying people as well as sheep and coins can be lost and our lostness is much more subtle and at times profoundly despairing. At those times we find ourselves not really caring particularly about God, or, perhaps searching desperately for God and not finding him. At those times, we are lost.
There are other times of lostness in life. When I get lazy. Forget to pray. Miss church. Blame the bishop because he’s ticked me off about something and I get arrogant. Stop consciously thinking about God. When we’re lost like that—those times of blurry focus—when there’s no clear sense of the right direction, we feel lost. Or, when we selfishly forge ahead or do what we are bound and determined to do regardless of what God may be saying or regardless of how it might hurt other people, we are lost. Or, maybe we’ve failed and we just want to curl up and die. That’s lostness.
We do sometimes shop in odd places to cure our aching souls— We’ve all stood at the a counter of Macy’s and asked the sales clerk, “What would you suggest to fill the dark, empty spaces in my soul?” Searching for this cure we overeat, over drink, over spend, over work, over anything.
Sometimes in our lostness we run away from God as hard and as far and as fast as we can. But the psalmist reminds us that we can’t really run from God. When Fr. Mike was first called to Trinity your website posted his spiritual biography. Who couldn’t identify with his story of the Hound of Heaven chasing him throughout his life? No matter how hard and far we run from God—he keeps after us—wooing us, enticing us, courting us. Asking us to come home. Coaxing us back from our lostness.
The whole of Chapter 15 in Luke is about the lost being found. The prodigal son & his cranky, hard-working brother. The sheep: the coins. And the joy at people and things being found. Being redeemed. There is a passion and joy here for wholeness and inclusion that the Pharisees and scribes listening to Jesus that day simply don’t get. They're too busy worrying about who’s supposed to be left out and excluded. They don't seem to get that when something or someone lost comes home, or is found, joy is the result. Wholeness and inclusion produce joy for anyone with a heart open to embrace it.
The same is true for our lives, isn't it? When people we love are away or missing, we don't feel whole. There’s this ache. We're incomplete. I love the opening & closing credits of the movie “Love Actually.” The real life scenes filmed at Heathrow Airport in London and people finding each other. Old friends and new lovers and little children and their moms & dads and these jigsaw puzzle images of hugging arms and huge smiles. You can see the love in their eyes and their arms & their hearts. It is God’s grace and His passion for wholeness that you see.
Wholeness and inclusion. They produce joy. In a society today that is seemingly intent on division and exclusion, and focusing on our differences, this is an important message. And this joy cannot be complete without God’s love.
“I heard a man say that without God’s amazing grace, the whole world would be nothing but one big Kennedy airport on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.” Not the scenes of homecoming from “Love Actually” -- but cavernous rooms filled with huge crabby lines formed by sweating, angry, tired, sheep-like people whose flights have been cancelled.
But, what if in Luke this Sunday morning we’re not the sheep? What if we’re not the silent silver coin stuck under the cushion of the couch. What if we’re the searching woman—the seeking shepherd? What if part of what we are to do with our lives is to help Jesus find the lost? And help the lost find our Lord.
Oh no. Not that dreaded word “evangelism.” Please don’t make me bring someone to church. Episcopalians don’t like “sharing” or “fellowshipping” or “witnessing”. We don’t like or trust anything that smacks of spiritual nudity. There’s no spiritual nudity in the Book of Common Prayer. We are like St. Peter who when asked by a good Episcopalian if he could enter heaven said, after he looked in his book of great sins, “uh, no—you may not enter heaven.” And the former senior warden said, “Why” and St. Peter replied, “At the last vestry dinner you ate your salad with the fish fork.” Episcopalians understand decorum.
So maybe we’re not arm-waving evangelicals -- but we are here. We sit in our pews most every Sunday and we listen to God’s words and to wise men and women who help us understand what God wants us to do during these brief days of our brief lives. And we attend the prayer services and we walk the labyrinth and we ponder deep mysteries of faith. And we write checks and bring covered dishes. Isn’t this enough?
A few years ago the letters WWJD seemed to appear everywhere. “What Would Jesus Do?” confronted us from billboards and plastic bracelets. I could never figure that one out. It wasn’t really helpful. Jesus was without sin. I am a mass of sins. How can one begin to emulate Him? How was wearing a bracelet going help? Then Fr. Mike told me to read everything by Cardinal Basil Hume-a great holy man who was Archbishop of Westminster. And this gentle humble white-haired English Catholic named Basil sorted it out for me. He wrote: We must be Theo-centric, Christo-centric, rather than a little group concerned with its own small world, it own small problems.” Cardinal Hume was telling us what we already know. Christ is our center. We say that every Sunday. Each time we approach the communion rail with ours hands out seeking Him we acknowledge his centrality in our lives. This isn’t a bracelet with “What Would Jesus Do?” This is our own quiet voice asking once, twice, a half a million times a day, “What would Christ want me to do?” To help. Help this situation, this person, this church, this town, this state, my family, my friend, this person who drives me nuts, this enemy.” What would Jesus have me to do?
Where do we start? Maybe it’s ok to start with the easy stuff. First, it’s as if someone tells us, “Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.” Christ tells us to love. Love the lost. Love our enemy. Love our neighbor. And ask Jesus for help doing this. And expect his help. We’ve experienced this. We know what it feels likes. When we say to a friend or a stranger or our God, when we quietly or angrily or sadly say, “help me” and “please.” That is precisely when Jesus is with us. I’ve had friends and people I hardly knew become Jesus for me. And maybe, at times of grace, we have been Christ for others. For our kids when we chose to love & forgive instead of yell, for the sad woman in the Albertsons check out line who needed a few cents more and you dug around in the bottom of your purse for the change. The homeless man you served dinner to. Tiny acts. Tiny familiar acts become beautiful when they are performed with love; that is when Jesus comes to us when Jesus helps us share his love with others. When we realize we had a holy hand in finding the missing coin, the errant sheep.
Jean Paul Sartre wrote a play called “No Exit”. The three characters find themselves in hell and one says a line I’ve never forgotten because through all my years of sadness and joy and work and hope I’ve learned how wrong the line is. The woman says, “Hell is other people.” Through the people I’ve loved and known and my years, I am sure that just the opposite is true. Heaven is other people. Those times when we reach out to help those we know and those we don’t know—those times when we’re at our best, when we do the simple, the familiar, the small, the helpful, and we do those things with great love for each other. It is at those times when we are with and serving our loving Jesus.
What would Christ want me to do just to help a bit: Fr. Hays wrote a prayful answer:
The redemption of the world,
The removal of injustice
And the spread of unity among all people
is beyond my limited abilities.
Lord, help me to examine
How I have failed to redeem that small part of the world
That did touch my life today.
Help me be part of you, part of part of your work, part of your love, the love that keeps the universe going.
Father Mike left the Church of the Holy Nativity and came here to Trinity Church Menlo Park. In his place we have a wonderful interim priest Pastor Alice, a wise and sensible and loving person who ministers to us continually. From her I bring this ending –this benediction:
Life is short…
And we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us.
So be swift to love,
Make haste to be kind.
And as we go, may the blessing the peace, the love and the joy of the Holy One who is in the midst of us be in our hearts this day and forevermore. Amen
January 15, 2006
727Coryl Lassen - Jan 15, 2006
Rev. Coryl Lassen substituted for us on short notice, this week, and did a wonderful job. The audio is from the 10am service this weekend.
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