Weeds

The Hubster dislikes
our Rose of Sharon trees—
he likens them to weeds.

Yet I am convinced
that it is always the “weeds”
who provide the most refuge
without asking anything in return.

In five minutes,
I watched six hummingbirds
zoom around the blossoms
as they jockeyed for a chance
at the waning late-summer blooms.

I watched cardinals
and Carolina wrens fight
over the ripening grape clusters
from the vine
that is supported by not one but two trees
along our fence—
trees that also give us privacy in our yard.

I watched butterflies—
humble little skippers,
but also hairstreaks, fritillaries,
swallowtails,
and oh my God, even a monarch,
once so ubiquitous
but now almost as surprising to see
as a Bengal tiger. 

Even on my deck I could hear
the thrum of probably thirty bumble bees
hovering like tugboats from blossom to bloom,
staying aloft
only God knows how.

We owe our lives
to the “weeds” of this world,
to their humble welcome
and hospitality.

The least we can do is call them beautiful.




Photo taken this morning of a bumblebee on a Rose of Sharon and then using the Angel filter on Prisma.

Living in Jubilee: sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany C

What a difference a few verses make in our understanding of the gospel story of Luke chapter 4. Last week we heard Jesus demonstrate his knowledge not just of scripture but of prophecy. Contrary to some people’s modern claims, Luke depicts Jesus as not just able to read, but able to preach, teach, and interpret. Last week’s reading ended with everyone smiling on Jesus as they heard his gracious words—local boy made good.

Jesus’ reading of the scroll of the prophet Isaiah (which we heard last week) and his claim to be the fulfillment of prophecy shows, once again, that Luke emphasizes that Jesus is a figure who fulfills Old Testament hopes—that he is a good and righteous son of the Torah— habitually observing the Sabbath, both reading and interpreting the Scriptures, and attending synagogue—as well as being the longed-for Messiah.

Here, at the start of his ministry, Jesus publicly claims his place as the Messiah, and although his friends and neighbors speak well of him, they also seem to take Jesus for granted and have the impulse to define him very narrowly as a simple carpenter’s son. They do not see that Jesus is the Son of God. He then challenges his listeners, and speaks of deeds of healing that he has accomplished elsewhere (in Capernaum, which in this gospel actually get recounted right after this—the chronology is very odd). The point is, it is outsiders who are willing to accept Jesus as Messiah, and they receive the blessing of that faith in receiving healing.

Prophets are an important touchstone in Luke, and Jesus specifically identifies himself with prophets. He points out that prophets are often rejected by those who know them best—familiarity breeds contempt. But in a broader sense, prophets aren’t running popularity contests. They say uncomfortable things, they blame you for your own failures instead of conveniently pointing the finger of blame somewhere else, they sometimes even do weird things like lay for over a year on just one side (Ezekiel) or claim to have (perhaps metaphorically) married prostitutes (Hosea) to demonstrate Israel's infidelity to God. 

Just like people everywhere, even now in our time, Israel has a long history of reacting to prophets with disdain, because it’s easier to view prophets as irritants and foretellers of doom than to accept their correction and see it as God’s correcting love in action. Remember, Martin Luther King was largely reviled during his lifetime, and he paid with his life.

Why does what he says infuriate his neighbors? We have to remember to connect this week’s words with last week’s words:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
"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."

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. 

But then in this week, we get the rest of the story. As his interpretation sinks in, he continues with predicting that they will not truly accept his message. And man, does that make them angry! Because in each of the instances he cites, outsiders—sinners, enemies—received the blessing from the prophet, while those in Israel were not healed or helped due to their intransigence. Jesus points the finger of blame—like all prophets do—and those getting pointed at, once they get it, don’t like it, not one bit.

Especially in the ancient world, where one’s birth was generally one’s life-long status, people are unsettled by the thought that someone so great could come from such humble origins. Jesus completely pushes them-- and us-- out of the comfort zone with words of challenge rather than words that seek to soothe. Even Elijah did not heal among his own people. Elisha only cleaned an outsider of leprosy.

It’s important that we overcome the challenges of the weather and single services and time and remember the context of this week’s gospel. What we haven’t heard yet in our readings but has already happened in the gospel story is that Jesus has returned triumphant from being tested in the wilderness. He returns to his hometown. He is known in the synagogue there. Maybe too well known. But when he reads from the prophet Isaiah he reads promises of God’s justice. So the ultimate context should be joy—proclaiming the year of Jubilee.

Jesus says that he has been specially set aside (anointed) to do five things, and they are all based upon restoring justice—God’s justice, based on mercy and restoration, which is often at odds with human justice based on punishment. Jesus proclaims that he is the prophet who has been sent to
1 bring good news to the poor,
2 announce freedom to captives,
3 give sight to those who cannot see (literally as well as figuratively),
4 free people from oppression, and
5 proclaim the year of God’s favor (a Jubilee year).

This "Jubilee" was also promised in Isaiah 49 and in Leviticus 25. I don’t know if you remember this concept. After 49 years, there is set aside a Jubilee year- a sacred time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property, and slaves will be freed to return home. It was a time for the restoration of justice and forgiveness of debts, a time of restoration of that which makes you feel secure and therefore a time of rejoicing. In Hebrew, the word for this year was yovel—“a trumpet blast of liberty.” It is a year of favor that is unearned. Another word for this is “grace.” 

Like grace, Jubilee is such a powerful concept. Once in 50 years—after seven cycles of seven years, a Sabbath of all Sabbaths—all things would rest and be at ease. If you had sold away your patrimony, it would have to be returned. If you had sold yourself into slavery over debts, you would be freed. It was revolutionary. No wonder we have no record that the year of jubilee was ever actually enacted. Yet here Jesus aligns the year of Jubilee with God’s kingdom values. No wonder it scares many who hear of it –especially those who are already comfortable or powerful.

Yet it’s also such a powerful concept that even secular songs are written about it. In Mary Chapin Carpenter’s description in her song “Jubilee,” she portrays Jubilee also as a way to free ourselves from the pains, the doubts, and the fears that hold each of us back. She claims Jubilee not for “them,” but for US, for all of us.

Now, no matter if this is a country/folk Americana song, that’s good theology. She sings:

I can tell by the way you're walking
You don't want company
I'll let you alone and I'll let you walk on
And in your own good time you'll be 

Back where the sun can find you
Under the wise wishing tree
And with all of them made, we'll lie under the shade
And call it a Jubilee.

And I can tell by the way you're talking
That the past isn't letting you go
But there's only so long you can take it all on
And then the wrong's gotta be on its own.

And when you're ready to leave it behind you
You'll look back and all that you'll see
Is the wreckage and rust that you left in the dust
On your way to the Jubilee.

And I can tell by the way you're listening
That you're still expecting to hear
Your name being called like a summons to all
Who have failed to account for their doubts and their fears.

They can't add up to much without you
And so if it were up to me,
I'd take hold of your hand, saying, “Come hear the band!
Play your song at the Jubilee!”

I can tell by the way you're searching
For something you can't even name
That you haven't been able to come to the table
We’re simply glad that you came.

When you feel like this try to imagine
That we're all like frail boats on the sea
Just scanning the night for that great guiding light
Announcing the Jubilee. 

And I can tell by the way you're standing
With your eyes filling with tears
That it's habit alone that keeps you turning for home
Even though your home is right here

Where the people who love you are gathered
Under the wise wishing tree
May we all be considered, then straight on delivered
Down to the Jubilee.

Because the people who love you are waiting
And they'll wait just as long as need be-- 
When we look back and say, “Those were halcyon days,”
We're talking about Jubilee!

The Jubilee is love and freedom—true freedom-- in action. The Jubilee is a time of peace for everyone, because in truth, even the powerful often cling to power because they are afraid, because they instinctively are aware that injustice and oppression make them vulnerable even as they profit from those systems. Jubilee encourages us to break that cycle, for everyone’s good, for everyone’s joy, for everyone’s freedom.

And this is where our reading from 1 Corinthians comes in: we can do all kinds of things in the name of God, but if we do not do them out of love, they amount to nothing. And that’s a message for us today, too. Especially today, when some people use the name of Christian to help them maintain their privilege and look down on others for being what they’ve decided are outsiders, or sinners, in their determination. Who hold that the poor and oppressed deserve their status.

When I was a kid growing up, there were lots of those kinds of people hanging around there in the Bible belt. People who were angry, bitter, who referred to this life as a trial only meant to be endured until Jesus’s return or until they got to heaven, people who believed that they followed every minute law in scripture (which is impossible, by the way)—except the biggest one: the law of love. The law of mercy rather than self-righteousness. The one of forgiveness and kindness and shalom.

Jesus speaks words of correction to his listeners—and remember, that’s who we are too. That correction is love—love in action. How do we proclaim good news to the poor, freedom to captives, restoration to those whose physical difficulties isolate them, or freedom to the oppressed, except through love put into action—real, concrete action?

Paul’s meditation on love includes what love looks like not as a feeling but as action. Love never rejoices in the pain or oppression or misfortune of others. Instead listen to the heart of the reading:
Love is patient; love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

These same things align with Jesus’s kingdom values listed in the scroll he reads. Kingdom values we, as Jesus’s followers, are called to enact. Love that leads to the joy of Jubilee- not off in the future but here and now.

May we hear Jesus’s proclamation and let it convict us to do the same: bring good news to the poor, to announce freedom to captives, to provide insight about the Way of Love to those who cannot see it, to free people from oppression, and to proclaim the time of God’s favor --a Jubilee-- by living with joy and abundance in all we do. By putting love in action. For in doing so, we bring freedom and justice and hope to ourselves as well.

That is our sacred calling. To speak and act from love —all as a reflection of our love of God and love of each person created in the image of God. That’s how we claim ultimate joy, ultimate freedom, ultimate witness to the gospel of Jesus--

the gospel of love, mercy, and forgiveness that calls us to Jubilee!

Amen.


Preached at the 505 on February 2, and at 8:00 and 10:15 am on February 3, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

References:
Mary Chapin Carpenter's song "Jubilee" is the tenth track on her superb Stones in the Road album from 1994. I encourage you to listen to this song and indeed this album, and hope that you will even buy it and her other work if you are so inclined. We must support working musicians and poets, and Mary Chapin Carpenter is a treasure.

Bearing Fruit: Speaking to the Soul, April 11, 2018

John 15:1-11, from this morning's daily office

Spring officially began on March 20, but in much of the country you couldn’t tell that. One of my friends on the West Coast was bewailing the fact that it was in the 90s a few days ago where she lives, while those of us trapped in Flyover Country and Eastward keeping getting slapped with shocking amounts of snow and ice. Tender perennials have begun poking the heads up from the frozen ground, regardless, and those of us who are gardeners worry. Will that tender green survive? 

American poet Robert Frost famously started his poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” with the line, “Nature’s first green is gold/her hardest hue to hold.” Yet the vagaries of the weather thus far have me wondering if Frost doesn’t get that exactly wrong, at least in early spring.

Here in the Midwest, Nature’s first gold is green. Starting at the end of February, the bayonet tips of forgotten, somnolent daffodils draw the eye as they appear in late February, shy at first as then as confident as a toddler with a dangerously full diaper, scoffing at disaster looming just ahead. That infant green is so shocking, it almost seems lit from within, and truly is more precious than gold, especially to my winter-starved eyes. It will only be weeks later that the gold of daffodil flowers will grace us—the green comes first, of course.

A few days later, the broadsword leaves of iris slash up three inches, seemingly overnight, putting winter and me on notice, we hope, that its days are numbered. It may be that it will snow tomorrow. But that green teases the heart, and if you are brave enough to wander out on the crisp, sere grass in your bare feet for just a few moments, you can feel the shuddering awakening of the living soil, throwing off its slumber and preparing to resume its hum and thrum. I go out and walk the perimeter of my yard every day now, barefoot if I can stand it, checking for the signs of reawakening, a dog or two patrolling with me, and give thanks for each new precious green thing I find.

Soon the redbud trees around my house will begin to bud and blossom, especially the one my late father gave me from Oklahoma and my then-toddler first-born and I planted in the backyard even though it was, as she chanted just a “stick, stick, baby stick.” The fuschia buds will frost branch and twig of this now- magnificent twenty-year-old tree, and then they too will drop to carpet the hillside as heart-shape leaves take their place and unfurl, softening the percussive clash of bare limbs now when the wind blows in as effectively as muffling a drum.

As I was recklessly doing that just a couple days ago, before yet another snowfall was predicted here in Missouri, I noticed that the grape vine along our fence remained stubbornly barren. This came back to mind this morning in the daily office, as we were presented with Jesus’s teaching about being the true vine in John 15:1-11. “I am the true vine,” Jesus reminds his followers, “and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to bear more fruit.” Every time I read those lines, I am reminded of my need to prune away the things in me that bear no fruit: anger, fears, worries, frustrations that do nothing to help me lead a more God-centered life, but instead trap me in a cycle of winter within my heart and mind that clings stubbornly to me as the winter weather patterns are right now. The dead branches that are the inevitable risk of living, but that can get out of control if we let them.

Here during Easter we are called especially to remember that God’s life within us cannot be contained: that even in the midst of sorrow we are surprised continually with the truth of resurrection. Christ opens that door for us as surely as those blades of daffodil and iris will return each spring, poking their heads stubbornly up from the sleeping earth regardless of what madness the weather has unleashed overhead. “My Father is glorified in this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”

I like the fact that this passage from John reminds me of the need to have faith in the green within me, just as we have to have faith in the green reappearing all across the landscape, especially at this time of year.

One of the things that I have started doing since my ordination that has fed me spiritually has been deliberately spending more time reading and writing poetry again, a discipline that skittered away from me during the years I was so busy raising and tending to my family and pursuing my first career as a teacher. I have started collecting poems, prayers, and songs and storing them on a blog so that I can find them even when I am out and about—which came in handy last Sunday when I realized I had misplaced the blessing I was planning to use at the end of a Eucharist I was supplying at a friend’s parish as he took a well-deserved post-Easter trip. And one of the poems I have been thinking about that I collected there also came to mind this morning, as this morning’s passage from John 15 rubs against and enlivens our Sunday Easter readings about faith in resurrection. This poem, called “Easter Week,” written by 19th century English priest Charles Kingsley, also encourages us to continue pruning away even as our hearts awaken within us, as the April birds call us to prayer even before the sun. They know better than I do that spring really is here, that winter WILL relax its grip soon both in the world around us as well as in my heart:

See the land, her Easter keeping,
          Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
          Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices;
          Fields and gardens hail the spring;
Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices,
          While the wild birds build and sing.

You, to whom your Maker granted
          Powers to those sweet birds unknown,
Use the craft by God implanted;
          Use the reason not your own.
Here, while heaven and earth rejoices,
          Each his Easter tribute bring –
Work of fingers, chant of voices,
          Like the birds who build and sing.



This was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 11, 2018.


Image: Bleeding hearts outside St. Augustine's Chapel, Vanderbilt University, April 2017.

New Every Morning: Speaking to the Soul, March 29, 2017

Morning Prayer at dawn on the beach, Matanzas, Cuba, 2017.

Yesterday was a hard day. I went to bed exhausted, emotionally and physically spent, having presided at the funeral of a dear young man and neighbor, and right before bed being informed of the death of a long-time friend and mentor from my teaching days. But in my ten years’ journey toward ordination, one of the blessings that has sustained me and guided me has been the cultivation of a rule of life, a set of spiritual, mental, and physical practices that have helped shape my identity as a Christian, as well as as a pastor, deacon, and minister.

The grace of having a rule of life is that, after giving myself a few hours’ sleep, even while still a bit heart-sick and tired, I rose as I do every morning and prayed morning prayer. What a blessing to see that today is the feast day of John Keble, one of the leaders of a 19th century reform and revival movement in the Church of England known as the Oxford Movement, which, besides encouraging the recovery of practices and traditions that drew the Church of England back to its Catholic roots, inspired and shaped the spirituality of Christina Rosetti, the poet.

Keble, besides helping to launch the Oxford Movement, is himself one of the finest poets in the Anglican tradition, and wrote a book of poems entitled The Christian Year, which was intended to inspire devotion to the Prayer Book, that most Anglican collection of worship and theology. Each Sunday and holy day of the Church Year receives a poem, as well as holy days. At the beginning of this beautiful work, Keble wrote two poems, “Morning” and “Evening,” in reflecting on morning and evening prayer. Some of the stanzas from “Morning,” were used for hymn 10 in our hymnal, often used for morning prayer. So after I prayed morning prayer this morning, I listened again to these beautiful words, and let them seep into my heart:

New every morning is the love
Our wakening and uprising prove;
Through sleep and darkness safely brought,
Restored to life, and power, and thought.

New mercies, each returning day,
Hover around us while we pray;
New perils past, new sins forgiven,
New thoughts of God, new hopes of Heaven.

If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes will lovelier be,
As more of Heaven in each we see:
Some softening gleam of love and prayer
Shall dawn on every cross and care.

The trivial round, the common task,
Would furnish all we ought to ask;
Room to deny ourselves; a road
To bring us daily nearer God.

Only, O Lord, in Thy dear love
Fit us for perfect Rest above;
And help us, this and every day, 
To live more nearly as we pray.

Even though the morning light has not yet broken through the shroud of night, nonetheless, the gift of a new day reminds me of the love that is our foundation through Christ our Savior—love that binds us together in one beautiful and mystical body. Even when sitting alone at my desk to pray my prayers in the morning, I am never alone. In every moment as I pray, others all over the world are praying too, and where two or three are gathered together in love, there is Christ also.

We are drawn upward into a great cloud of saints, whose witness to God can be found in something as profound as writing beautiful poetry or as mundane as helping a friend find something lost or placing a gentle hand in the hand of one awash in grief. The tide of love will always come in, and rosy-fingered dawn caresses our hearts, drawing our eyes and hearts upward as we prepare to walk through this day.

The Spirit tugs at my sleeve as I read these words, reminding me of the grace of God that upholds all of us, especially when weary, restless, or heart-sick. Heaven is all around us. This moment is a gift. The face of the Holy One is there before me, shining from all those I meet, beloved, whether friend or stranger. The Lord of Love embraces us in our despair and mourning as much as in our pleasure and rejoicing. This is the day that the Lord has made, and this is the Love that fills my heart and shines out even from where the brokenness is healing by grace and mercy. Come, Lord Jesus. Help me this and every day to live more nearly as I pray.

(This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, March 29, 2017.)

Prayer 1525: Morning by morning your mercies I see

The path towward light

(inspired by the poetry of John Keble)

In thankfulness for the light
singing its way into being,
we give You praise, O God,
for your unfailing mercy and love.

You abide with us
in both sorrow and in joy,
in anxiety and in rest;
your mercies are new every morning.

Awaken us to see your face, Lord Christ,
in all your beloved creation,
in those known and unknown to us.

Help us to amend our hearts and steps
to walk in your beauty and light,
upholding us all our days.

Help us remember that heaven is our home,
and our home is beneath our feet,
in this good earth filled with light and love.

Dear Jesus, guard the hearts and hopes
of all those who turn to You,
sustaining us by your grace,
as we make our prayer to you.

Amen.

Prayer 1368- a prayer for rising

Morning mist rising like a prayer.

O God, early in the morning we open up our hearts to You;
renew our questing hearts every morning in your love, we pray. 

In stillness, in peace, thankfulness wells up 
like a spring of clear water is absorbed into thirsty ground.

Let your holy wisdom take root within us, Lord Christ:
let us prepare the ground of our hearts to welcome your word. 

Nourished by your grace, restored by your mercy,
lead us into reconciliation with each other.

We pray that all have love enough,
and bread enough,
that all may dwell in peace and plenty in your care,
O Most High.

Forgive us for the hearts we've broken rather than set free,
and the walls we've built up to shut ourselves in.

Look upon us with tenderness, we pray,
and help us cast away our vanity and pride.

Lord Christ, let your prayer of love be prayed within us
and draw us into heaven's banquet of fellowship.

Let your Spirit of healing come down
and give rest to those we remember before You. 

 Amen.

Poem: Denise Levertov's "Annunciation"

Annunciation

Denise Levertov

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.

       The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

                  ____________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?

         Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often
those moments
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,

  only asked

a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

                     Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–

but who was God.

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.

John Vernon Taylor- A Prayer of Daily Dedication

Lord Jesus Christ,
alive and at large in the world,
help me to follow and find you there today,
in the places where I work,
    meet people,
    spend money,
    and make plans.
Take me as a disciple of your Kingdom,
to see through your own eyes,
and hear the questions you are asking,
to welcome all men with your trust and truth,
and to change the things that contradict God’s love,
by the power of the cross
and the freedom of your spirit. Amen. 

-- John Vernon Taylor

no great cathedral...

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor
of hurrying cities - i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
- i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

--- e. e. cummings