Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Long Time No Posting


Dear Friends,


I see that I haven't posted a sermon since June, and it seems a little funny that when I finally get around to posting one it is about money.  
Here's the thing. 


I really haven't been writing sermons down since June.  I was in Longport for the first three weeks of July and I have always just wandered the aisles and talked to those folks.  I left Longport and went to my first residency with the Shalem program in August, where the subject of my next Sunday's sermon sort of came to me while I was running one morning.  That meant I had a sermon a week before I needed it, which most of you know is pretty rare for me.  By the time that Sunday came around, I had decided to wing it, to work without a net, as it were, and I have just been doing that ever since.  I sometimes have some notes written down, but not something together enough to publish here.  This past Sunday I wanted to talk about money, and I was as nervous about the talking as some of you probably were about having to listen.  At 8:30 I stepped into the pulpit and tried to preach from a text which is part of the sermon that follows here.  Walking in at 10:30, my faithful associate, Elizabeth, mentioned that the sermon could use something more.  As the gospel reading wound down, it became apparent that I just needed to trust and talk.  I had enough of this one written that I was able to post it.  


I will work on some way to record and transcribe in the future.  I'm having fun preaching without notes, and I am sometimes surprised at what I hear myself saying.  Thanks for checking out the blog.  JB
A Sermon for Sunday, October 23, 2011


As I begin this sermon, I am thinking about a legend concerning a Virginia priest who enjoyed working youth camps in the summer.  I have always liked youth and church camp, and I know the challenges involved in opening up discussion lines about tabu subjects.  The story on this priest is that he would gather the kids early in the week and take them into the woods where he would proceed to say all kinds of things that he knew they would never say in front of him and that they never expected to hear a priest say, ever.  The idea was to plow down the barriers to real conversation early in their time together.  I was told all this by a camper who fondly remembered the experience some forty years after his time as a camper.
I think about him because I am up against a tabu subject this week and I have been thinking about how to begin the conversation.   I thought about singing you a song.  The subject is so ingrained in our culture that any number of great songs have been written about it.  The Beatles did one almost fifty years ago.  My favorite is Pink Floyd’s offering on the classic Dark Side of the Moon album.  Unfortunately the one that got stuck in head--the one that has been with me all week is one by Lyle Lovett.  And the verse that keeps playing over and over I hope will leave me after this morning.  No finance, no romance.  That’s how she told me goodbye.  First she took my love and then she took my m-o-n-e-y.  Yes, friends.  It’s time to talk about money.
Most years, when this time comes, I try to work some stewardship ideas into a sermon on one of the propers.  This year I decided to just talk as plain as possible about giving to the church.  I haven’t really paid much attention to today’s readings.  I do understand that many people don’t want their preacher talking so plain about money in church, but we’re going to get through this.  I’m going to try to make it easier on you by looking at all those reasons you might not want me to talk about money.  We’ll get through this.   Breathe.
One of the first objections is the idea that You shouldn’t talk about money in church--That somehow, our spiritual lives and our fiscal lives need to be kept apart.  Nothing could be farther from what Jesus taught.  Jesus talked about money all the time.  He talked about treasure and investments and about the concern caused by one lost coin and about the pitfalls of great wealth.  He talked to anyone who would listen about their personal finances, about how they did or did not share their money and the importance they placed on their savings.  Jesus understood with painful clarity the connection between our money and our spiritual growth and he talked about that relationship in ways that made people uncomfortable.  
When Karen agreed to chair the fall stewardship drive, she thought of getting people together to do some reading.  Last year and this year she handed out books and encouraged folks to read, not about giving or about money, but about their spiritual lives.  She’s been at this for a while and she understands what Jesus was talking about when he said where your treasure is, there will your heart be as well.   
Another objection to this talk is I’ll feel bad about my giving.  I can help you with that.  Let me read you a list of what everyone in this parish gave last year.   Just kidding.  Breathe.  I don’t have a list of who gave what.  I do have some numbers though.  Seventy-two families gave some amount between a few dollars and three thousand dollars.  Twenty-two families gave between three and five thousand.  Ten families gave between five and ten thousand, and four families gave ten thousand or more.    Wherever you fit in this line-up, you have company.  You are not alone.   The folks who gave more have mostly just been at this longer.  Their giving has grown over time.  
Maybe the squirmy feeling we sometimes get when the talk turns to money has to do with another concern closely tied to feeling uncomfortable about our level of giving.  The preacher will ask for more than I can give.  I won’t.  Giving grows over time.  Where you are is ok.  You are on your way.  For the last ten years or so, Mary and I have given somewhere between ten percent of our gross income and ten percent of our adjusted gross income.  We certainly didn’t start there.  My first pledge was four dollars a week when I was in college.  At least one of those checks bounced.  The first time we tithed, we did so by accident.  We opened a business in 1980 and our income dropped to the point that what we gave the church amounted to more than ten percent.  Later, after I’d been ordained, I heard a priest friend giving a talk in which she said that she gave ten percent off the top.  I asked her later,  “you do?  Really?”  and she answered, “You don’t?”  


My giving has grown over the years, but my reason for giving has not changed.  That first pledge was made as my contribution toward the good work and the life a community.  My mother had died when I was a teen, my father was not well.  One sister was married and the other had gone to live with another family.  That first year in college I was wondering how my life would end up.  Where would I find support, people to walk through life with me, people to help me figure things out.  The congregation was my group.  They were my people and I was a real person in the life of that community. I belonged. I have always given, not out of a sense of any obligation, but out of a sense of participation.  
You will hear church folks talking about that ten percent number as if it is the only one that counts, but it is a goal, one Mary and I  have worked toward for our thirty years together.  Ten percent comes from Hebrew scripture where it was held out as the part of one’s production that should be returned to God as a thanksgiving for all the rest.  It is a number written deep in our tradition and it has been a standard and guide for many of us as we work at deepening our sense that God is at the center of our lives.  
Mary and I recently attended a workshop on retirement planning put on for clergy by the church.  We were sitting there with fifty other priests when the financial planner put a budget for retirement on the screen.  He had written in five percent for giving to the church and as soon as it went up, several people in the room said, hey what’s that.  You’ve got that number wrong.  That planner left having learned something.  Ten percent was our number.  It is a good number that has helped shape a lot of people’s faith over the years, but it is not the place to start.  
The best way to approach growth in giving is to look at your giving in terms of what percentage of your income you give and then trying to increase by say, a percentage point.  Even more important than that ten percent number is the concept that what we give is related directly to what we have received.  Thinking in terms of percentage-giving keeps that important relationship in view. 
I won’t ask you to give more than you can.  I will, however,  challenge you just as I challenge myself to work toward giving more.  
And maybe the last question I want to address ties back to that first one about spirituality and money.  The question is what are we being asked to support?  Should we finance buildings and staff and programs or should we be feeding the poor?  My response to that question could go on a ways, so I’ll try to be brief.  I have come to believe that the money I give to support the parish is leveraged by the way lives are changed in a faith community.  It’s like the old adage about giving someone a fish or teaching them to fish.  The worshipping community is where we are shaped over time into people who do more and more out in the world to serve others in the name of the Christ.  We are fed and strengthened for that service in this community of friends and fellow travelers.  We are called to support the life of this congregation for each other and through each other for the world.  
And one last word, not a question as long as I am plain-talking about money.  A word about pledging.  A pledge, of course, helps the leaders know what they have to work with as they plan for the coming year. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of making a pledge.  I want to tell you that a pledge is just an estimate of giving--it can be changed if need be--so maybe “pledge” is too strong a word.  But it can also be more than an estimate, it can be a goal as well.  Stretching to meet your “estimate” can be a part of your spiritual deepening process.  Growth always involves stretching and reaching a little beyond what we have done in the past.  If you have given in the past but but not filled out a pledge card, please consider making a pledge, not just to God and this community, but for yourself.  
In the next few weeks you will receive a pledge card and a return envelope in the mail.  When it arrives, I hope you will see it as an opportunity.   JB

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

June 5, 2011

Acts 1:6-14


Our ministry is out there. In the world. We hear it often. This Sunday worship is where we are encouraged, fed, strengthened for our work. Out there. In the world. This is where we prepare, refresh. Here we are forgiven and empowered. Here we are called back to love, which is our work in the world. In this place we remember that we are loved and in that remembering we find purpose we can take with us as we go to our various ministries. Our ministry--the ministry of Christ’s Church--is out there. Each week in our last prayer together we say, “send us out into the world, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you.” And then we go back to our families and children, our desks, our jobs, our volunteer responsibilities, our friendships, our chance encounters with strangers. Our ministry is in the world. We say it often because our work in the world is at the core of our baptismal covenant and our faith.


What I don’t say very often is that we all have a ministry here in this setting as well. Our work out there is grounded in our common life of prayer and communion, of sharing and celebration. And because it is easy to get confused about what is sometimes called “lay ministry”, I don’t talk very often about the important ministry we have to each other and with each other in the worship we do together.


Too often in the church’s life, “lay ministry” has called to mind the work that lay people do during the service on Sunday. Chalice bearers, ushers, readers of lessons and prayers are all ministers in worship, yes, and since the arrival of the current Prayer Book in the 70’s there has been a strong emphasis on the ministry of the laity in worship. That inclusion is a great gift of what we old timers still call the “new” prayer book. It is just that with a stronger emphasis on lay ministry in worship services we have to be reminded that the real ministry of the people of God is in the lives we lead outside this room and this gathering. So I try to remind us all often that our ministry is out there. But today seems like a good day to talk about the work we share here each Sunday and what the call to love might mean for us as the community gathers to be fed.


When they went to the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.


One of the most basic ways we can help each other in our various ministries in the world is to show up here on Sunday. All week long we are challenged in our call to love. What is the right thing to do? Where is justice in this situation? How do I answer him? Do I really need to make that phone call? Why did I respond like that? What should I do now? Our lives are full of questions and they are full of opportunities to be a little more caring, a little more hopeful, to go the extra mile in the service of some good. Every week we will nail some of the questions we live with good answers and actions and we will stumble and struggle with others. We walk through the doors of this place on Sunday looking for grounding, forgiveness, encouragement to go back out and do it all again, maybe a little better. One of the things that can give us courage and hope and strength is knowing we are not alone, that others are struggling and succeeding and growing alongside us. Just showing up here is a sign that you expect to find something here. Showing up is a testimony to what you have found here in the past. Some of us come through the doors each week not sure why we are coming or what we hope to find, and in such times the community becomes the answer. We are all here looking for something--we walk in and see that they are all here looking for something, they must be expecting something, this must be a place of hope. Look around. The people you see right now need your presence. Showing up makes a difference.


All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer. I sometimes hear questions about the relationship between prayer and worship and service to the poor. Someone on the Vestry retreat this year asked what will happen to our emphasis on outreach at St. Aidan’s if the rector signs up for a program centered in contemplative prayer. There are always questions in parishes about whether it is ok to spend money on bricks and mortar when there are so many in need around us. We live in a tension, a good tension between the call to action and the call to prayer. We need to be serious about both.


If you are familiar with the cycle of the Church year, you know what’s coming. Next Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost, the day when Jesus’ followers were empowered by the Holy Spirit for their ministry in the world. Today, though, Luke wants us to know that as they awaited the strength and call to go out and do, the disciples spent their time in prayer. And they prayed together. In John’s gospel today we hear Jesus praying that his disciples may be one as he and God are one. Jesus drew his strength for ministry, his call, his identity from his relationship with God. He was steeped in God in such a way that he found the strength he needed for amazing acts of healing and truth telling and even suffering. I had always heard in this prayer Jesus asking that we might be related to God as he is, but his prayer is that they may be one as we are one. That suggests that the relationship meant to strengthen us for our work in the world is our relationship with this community. The relationship that identifies us as agents of God’s love in the world is our relationship with this community. The prayer life of the community fuels and feeds our work in the world.


The community needs each of us. Who knows what our contributions will be? Who knows where the next vision for St. Aidan’s will come from? Luke’s telling in Acts of the disciples gathering in prayer lists eleven apostles. Before the Pentecost story, the eleven will have elected Matthias to take the place of Judas Iscariot. The company must be complete. Everyone is needed.


And of course, if we are looking ahead to next Sunday, we will be thinking of the day when the Church caught fire and began to grow. If you know something about that tension I spoke of between prayer and action, if you want to see the Church get to work in the world, then you know we need all the help we can get. Just as our presence here on Sundays reinforces the importance of our calling and mission for those we already know, it can serve as a powerful witness to those who are looking for a way to make a difference, in the world and in their lives. Those eleven who gathered in prayer mark a beginning, but they were just the beginning. You and I are a part of the great company who have been drawn into the life of prayer and service that defined their little community.


Everyone is necessary, even people we have never met. Everyone has gifts, stories, dreams. Everyone has troubles, shames, pains. We who would love the poor and the needy must learn to love each other and ourselves. The work of the Church is nothing less than the work of love. That work begins right here where we are welcomed, accepted, and loved, simply because we are children of God. Look around one more time. That is what we share. We are welcome, accepted and loved simply because we are children of God. Let that message sink in in this place over and over again. Then you will be ready to go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Amen

Thursday, May 12, 2011

A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter

May 8, 2011


This morning’s story of the walk to Emmaus is probably my favorite gospel story. It has everything. Clueless disciples, to help us easily find ourselves in the story. It has Jesus whom the disciples don’t recognize even when he is walking next to them, which again sounds all too familiar. And then it has this great message about how we will discover what is most important in the most unlikely ways--in a chance meeting, in the blessing and breaking of bread, and in the whispers or the burning of our hearts. This story does such a wonderful job of opening up a place of mystery and possibility around the risen Christ, that I don’t want to tamper with or set limits on its meaning by dealing with the story as a whole. I’d rather focus today on one little line in the Emmaus story. I’m interested in what the disciples said after their experience with the Risen Christ. “Weren’t our heart burning within us?” They had had a clue about who their companion was and they had missed it. I wonder if we don’t all do that more often than we know. Chances are, we could all use some practice at listening to our hearts.


We spend most of our time in our heads where we plan and calculate and solve puzzles. Our brains are marvelously crafted so that we can keep all sorts of problems in front of us at the same time, working on several levels at once. We can drive seventy miles an hour while thinking about how much fuel we still have in the car as we listen to and maybe even sing along with our favorite driving music, all while noticing that the car we are passing is the one that passed us just a few minutes ago, and oh oh, is that a blue light up ahead….. and isn’t the sun on those tree tops amazing. We rely on our brains and our thinking ability even when we we’re not thinking about our thinking ability. What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable….and think how far we’ve come since Hamlet.

We create machines as if they were extensions of ourselves, from Swiss watches to smart phones we prize that which functions swiftly, dependably and with great precision. We rely on our ability to use our heads. We expect so much from ourselves, and those around us. The one-word office sign you used to see sometimes said it all…..THINK! It is as if that is the commandment for our species in our time. THINK! Our brains can be fine tuned, taught, filled, sharpened. What a piece of work indeed.


Our hearts…..our hearts on the other hand are messy. While we can take charge of our heads and train them in the ways we would have them go, as it were, our hearts are almost by definition, unruly. They will not be tamed or taught. Hearts feel pain and love and yearning and joy. Hearts leap and break, they swell and ache. Our hearts speak to us in a language we don’t always understand, in a language we are not even sure we want to learn. Our hearts can surprise us, interrupt us in our daily routine, they can change the course of lives we have carefully put in order. Maybe the best defense we have against the messy incursions of our hearts into our ordered lives is to try to ignore our hearts as much as possible.


We can fill our time with all sorts of busy-ness in order to try to drown out the calling of our hearts. We can keep moving, drive to the store, watch TV, read the paper, manicure the lawn, twitter, read the statuses of a hundred of our closest friends, surf the internet. We can oil and tune our brains, work our way up to evil level Sudokus. We have a million ways of tuning out the voice that speaks from deep within and still it tries to get our attention like my cat scratching at the back door. “Go away, you can’t come in.” “Then I’ll just sit and stare at you through the glass.”


Of course we all live and work out of a mix of head and heart. We practice caring for others, we work at relationships, we sometimes seek out a friend or someone else to talk to, someone who can listen with us to what our hearts are trying to tell us. But in the busy, business world of high achievement, in the day to day world of simple chores, our hearts can can be drowned out by the storm of all that has to be accomplished in a day. And because our hearts are so uncontrollable, we can’t easily imagine how they can help us get our work done, so we turn up the radio and get back to work.


But here is the thing. It is precisely because we can’t control our hearts that we need to listen to them. Our hearts aren’t meant to be used as tools, they’re not meant to be trained or focused by us, they are meant to instruct us….to lead us…..to speak speak to us about deeper, less graspable things. Heart does speak its own language, and we can practice, not so much to change and shape our hearts, but to let them change and shape us. It is in our hearts that God is creating us, singing to us, whispering deep truth that we might miss unless we are very attentive. I find it interesting that the disciples who walked with Jesus that day were involved in a deep discussion about scripture and all the while they missed the message their hearts were trying to deliver. It is in our hearts that God touches us, becomes real for us, greets us.


John Wesley said of his profound experience of deepening faith, “my heart was strangely warmed.” St. Augustine said “our hearts are restless till they rest in thee.” And Mary treasured the promise of God delivered by the angel in her heart.


We don’t have to choose between head and heart, we have been given both because we need them. It’s just that since we spend so much time in our heads, most of us could use some practice learning the language of our hearts.


So…. and I hate to say this as the days are getting pretty and the beauty of nature is beginning to call, but I am beginning to understand those who tell me that they can be with God in their gardens just as easily as they can in church. In the quiet of such times we have a chance to listen deeply, to be aware of the one who is always with us. I have no doubt that many people encounter God in the garden or at the beach. They say the same thing about golf, but I don’t believe them. I’ve played golf. Learning to recognize the language of our hearts involves spending some time in solitude. If we can commit just some of our time to being present, available to God--if we take our hearts out for a walk or sit with them in silence or let them fall open as we pull wild onions, we, like those disciples on the road, may discover our divine companion right there beside us, known, familiar, greeting us as friend. We desperately need the council of the voice only our hearts can hear. Only by giving our hearts some room in our days can we ever come to trust them. Only by believing in our hearts can we come to know that the messages they would bring us are as important as anything else in our day.


“Were not our hearts burning within us” they asked. Would that it were so for all of us.






Sunday, May 1, 2011


A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter

May 1, 2011


Today we have the story of Thomas. One of my favorites. I have always loved Thomas the skeptic, the pragmatist who isn’t going to be taken in by wild stories and emotional outbursts. Thomas who’s motto is, “seeing is believing.” My people come from the show-me state so I’ve always liked Thomas because his story suggests that there is room in this faith of ours even for people like me.


So...every year on the second Sunday of Easter I get to go off about the great contributions doubters and skeptics have made to Christianity down through the ages. I like to use this Sunday to remind all you doubters and skeptics in the congregation that you--that we--are a necessary part of the mix, that we are welcome here and needed.


So when I realized I was preaching this Sunday, I was all ready to get on my soapbox again and do my doubters-are-faithful-too routine. But then something happened and I find myself paying attention to Thomas in a new way this year. I’m not even sure after all these years if this story really has that much to do with doubt and skepticism. Maybe it has more to do with how difficult it can be to reveal and claim our deepest longings, and to hold any hope that they might be realized.


Mary and I have this great new screened porch with a couple of rocking chairs. That porch and rocker have already made a great difference in my spiritual life. It’s a great place to sit and meditate and read. A place for thinking about sermons. Recently I have been reading a collection of articles written for the Shalem News by Gerald May. The Shalem Institute here in Washington has provided support for contemplative living and leadership for thirty years. They train lay people and clergy in deepening their personal spiritual lives and connecting that spirituality with their work in the community. Gerald May was a teacher, mystic, and writer in the area of contemplative theology and psychology. I have been reading the articles he wrote for Shalem because I will be doing some work with Shalem over the next year and a half and I want to find out more about what I am getting into.


As I was reading the other day, I found myself pulling back a bit from the words on the page. Something there was a bit uncomfortable, and I soon realized it had something to do with his talk about love. May was talking a lot about love. He used the word a lot. He was talking as if love was really at the heart of everything. He was speaking in such a personal way about love that I thought I was hearing things I shouldn’t be hearing. And then I heard myself ask a question that surprised me. I asked, to no one there on my back porch, “do guys really talk like that?” Now let me assure you right now that this isn’t going to be a sermon about men and feelings and the need to open up and all that sort of thing. I just mention the reaction because it surprised me. Soon I was thinking about all the ways that love can mean trouble. I thought about all the ways that love can change the landscape of one’s life and realized that I was going to have to get past some barriers if I want to get serious about deepening my spiritual life.


Thirty years ago, before I started courting Mary, I got my pilot’s license. I had a couple of friends who flew for the airlines and who owned little planes. We would sometimes spend a whole Saturday out by a little grass strip, tinkering with engines and wires and such and flying over the farms and fields of northern Mississippi. One of my flying buddies, Jim, reacted when I told him about Mary. I said I had started dating someone and was in love. He said, oh that’s too bad. “Love’ll really screw up your flying.” And of course he was right. My relationship with Mary really cut into my flying time. I haven’t flown in over twenty years.


As I wondered about my reaction to Jerry May’s articles, I began to think about love and how much trouble it can be. I thought about all the great love-is-hard songs. Great country moaning songs about the pains of love. Folk, country, rock…..Love is a hard waltz…..Love Hurts….and the songs of encouragement….Give yourself to love…. If you listen to the radio at all, or read or are awake on the bus, you know that our culture talks about love all the time. It fascinates, frustrates, wounds and woos us. We can’t let go of the idea that it holds something we need…..that it can make us...complete us.


And…..


We are smart, self-reliant people who know enough to protect ourselves. We have all been fooled at some point and we aren’t going to be taken in easily. Loving too quickly can expose us to pain. Loving too broadly might demand too much of us. Love is...and I love this word...fraught. Some of us discover the depths of love for the first time when it is lost, a death...a leaving. Having loved someone to the brink of sobriety, a relapse exposes love’s danger. Love makes us vulnerable, so we tend to be cautious. We are advised to be cautious. But if everything does depend on our opening up more and more to love, then how do we ever get there? In our Easter story, Jesus helps us by giving it all up first. The story is that Jesus loves us until it hurts, until it does him in completely, and in the end that ultimate kind of love is redeemed.


So as I pondered my reaction to Mays writings, I was put in touch with how much I long for the call to a deeper level of love….and….I was very aware of my defenses against that same love. And then I thought about this sermon and looked at today’s story from John’s gospel. There stood Thomas, not unbelieving, but torn between his deep hope that there might be some truth in the others’ story about the resurrection that there might be something real to answer his longing--caught between that hope and the habit of protecting his heart from disappointment. Sometimes the strength of our hesitation is directly proportional to the depth of our longing. And then something finally tips. For Thomas it took a lot of help and an invitation from Jesus. Touch me. Feel my side. Your longing is not in vein.


So that’s where I was as I turned the corner with this reading. Thinking about that invitation from Jesus. Wondering where this sermon would end up. I went back to my rocker read a little further. Instead of telling you about what I read, I just want to read it to you.


May says about this piece: At the end of a Shalem, Psychology/Spirituality Day I read some words that seemed to be whispered by God to me.


I know what is inside your heart.

I see your courageous impotent love, and your fear,

and the tears you would cry if you could.

And I do so love you.


I feel how you hate your own selfishness.

When you see the poor ones in the street,

I melt as you detest your defenses against them.

I feel your deep heart-secret:

You wish you would not run away

but could embrace those poor ones, kiss them,

love them completely, caress their souls.

And I do love you so.

I know how you feel, deep, so deep,

when you bar your doors and secure your house

and invest your money and try to enjoy your possessions.

I know your dis-ease, your unrest,

And I love you.

and I drink from your discomfort, and find it good.

No, it is not guilt, nor shame;

I know the tastes of them, and spit them out.

It is your impotent love, your stifled love, your helpless love,

your yearning love that feeds me,

Yet I starve, I thirst. With you.


You are so rarely aware of me,

how I embrace you as you read the morning paper,

My arms cradle you, my breath is on your hair

as you listen to the news.

I know your unspoken feelings, for II am closer to your heart than

you are now or will ever be.

I feel your love, screaming out against injustice,

bleeding, wounded from the pain of others,

love become revulsion when the agony is too much,

The starving children, the hungry homeless, the tortured innocent,

and all the broken, broken hearts.

You cannot bear it, so I must

almost alone.

I drink up what I can from your love

in little sips, but I starve, thirst, and ache for you.


And I love you and cry for you when you cannot,

And I love you and cry in you when you must turn away

and go about your business.

ANd qwhen you can cry, I kiss your blessed tears

and drink them.

You feel my pain, you see my beauty,

You ache for my goodness,

And that is me, loving you and birthing in you,

Again and again, coming to you

in utter surrender.

Oh how I wish you could know

How completely I am surrendered to you,

For if you knew that, even just a little,

You could not help but surrender to me.

Your love would awaken

And we would become a mountain spring and a sparkling ember

And we would grow, into river and flame,

into ocean and lightening

Cleansing, searing, burning, renewing the earth.

Your love would grow wings of power and wisdom

And together in unbearable passion we would fly and die and fly again;

Our courage would encompass the heavens.

Knowing nothing but our love we would look

straight into the heart

of every broken being, every creature,

every plant and mountain

And live in them and caress their wounds,

and bring them nourishment,

and die for them and with them.

We would be relentless, my love.

We will be forever.


Gerald May in Living in Love, 2008 Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation


Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Sermon for Easter Vigil, 2011

Matthew 28: 1-12


In this morning’s Washington Post, David Waters asks what seems to be a very strange question. He asks whether ordained people should seek public office. “To put it bluntly,” he says, “the question is can ordained people serve God and government.” David used to write for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis where I read him often. These days he lives in our area and writes on religion for the Post, including a blog where I’m sure his question has been tossed around all day. The flaw in his question is so basic that when I read the teaser for the blog I was surprised he had asked it. My guess is he was fishing for a particular answer and he posed the question expecting to slyly sit back and let his readers make his point. Being an old-fashioned newspaper reader, I’ll probably never go to the blog, but I am glad he printed the question in the version of the paper that lands on my lawn. It feeds right into what is speaking to me this year in Matthew’s telling of the resurrection. But we’ll get there in a minute. First I want to deal with David’s question.


The question suggests that faith orders the lives of ordained people differently than it does the lives of lay people. Otherwise, he would have asked whether people of faith can serve in the government and of course, we all know they can and do--thank goodness. The question he asks suggests that somehow clergy have a more pressing commitment to the moral and ethical demands of their faith than those who are not ordained--that somehow people with collars are more deeply formed Christians than those without collars. Well I’m here to tell you that just isn’t the case. If I thought that was how this business worked I’d be out of here tomorrow. The vows that clergy take have to do with specific service in a specific capacity among the faithful. The vows that might--that should--affect the way we approach our public lives and our work are the ones we will hear and renew this evening. I know we just sprinkle water on people’s heads these days, but the symbol of the water represents a full-immersion rite that makes us Christian from head to toe. You will never be any more Christian than you are when you are baptized.


So my answer to David’s question is, Yes. Of course ordained people can serve God and Government. This faith of ours belongs in the world. In fact, everything we do here in this place of worship is meant to fuel us and feed us so that we can live our faith well when we leave here. That seems to be the message for this evening, for we hear tonight that it is out there, in the world where we can expect to find Jesus.


Three times in the resurrection story we just heard Jesus’ followers are told that he will meet them in Galilee. Not here, but out there. Not right now, but out in their future. Tell them to go, he says, I will meet them.


Years ago I read a commentary that suggested Galilee was not the best of neighborhoods. Some people in the gospel story ask about Jesus whether anything good can come from such a place. I have had some fun over the years playing with the idea that Jesus was from the wrong side of the tracks. This year, when I looked up Galilee in another source, the Oxford Companion to the Bible, the Oxford folks made a point of saying there was no basis for thinking Galilee was some sort of unappreciated backwater. Galilee, they said, was home to many devout Jews as well as Gentiles, it was known for good and abundant produce, and in the first century after Jesus it became a home to schools and communities of pious Jews. They made Galilee sound like a pretty ordinary place, not much different from anyplace else in that part of the world at that time. I felt a little sad reading that because I had always liked the other version, where Jesus had that rebel-outsider stain to heighten his irritation of the rich and proper. Jesus told his disciples, go to Galilee and I will meet you there. And Galilee turns out to be nothing special at all. Maybe that’s the point.


Tomorrow we will fill the room with flowers and sing great hymns of praise about the amazing thing that God has done in raising Jesus from the dead. Tonight, though, we are told that our meeting Jesus is yet to come and we are told that meeting will take place in the most everyday parts of our lives. Matthew, Luke and John all tell stories in their gospels about Jesus appearing to the disciples. Mark’s gospel, the earliest, has several endings in the ancient texts. The shorter and supposedly older version has no appearance of Jesus. Just a young man sitting in an empty tomb telling the disciples that Jesus would meet them later in Galilee--out there, in the plain old, ordinary world where they would live their lives, where we live our lives.


I am persuaded by those who say that the stories of the resurrection appearances in the the gospels have a lot to do with the experience of the early Church. I can imagine people discovering the truth of that simple message--you will meet Jesus in the world--and telling all kind of stories. I have stories of meeting Jesus, of being loved better than I deserved, of being called out of myself by another’s need, of being challenged to amend my life, of being touched by awe. I have had heated, impassioned, intimate conversations with someone nearby and unseen, real and present. I have been surprised by Jesus in the the strangest, most ordinary moments. I’m pretty sure Jesus has asked me for spare change, and I know he has asked me to contact my congressman. Out there. In the real life world. Do Christians belong out there in the real world. We have been sent there by the one who promised to meet us there. We had better run for office and more.


So, Robert, Grant, Vance. The good news is that being baptized tonight won’t keep you from becoming president some day if that’s what you want to do. Being baptized will make you a Christian, though, as much a Christian as anyone can every be, just as much as a bishop or even a pope. And the promise that Jesus makes to you as the water is poured over you is that you will encounter him, in this moment yes, but most importantly, in the life that lies ahead of you. Keep your hearts and minds and eyes open and you will see him. In Galilee. In the plain old every day world. JB




Sunday, April 17, 2011

Sermon for Palm Sunday

April 17, 2011


There is a lot going on here today. First we welcome Jesus into town with great flourishes of palm waving and music. The celebration doesn’t last long though, for as soon as we are in our seats the tone of the day shifts as we hear Isaiah’s suffering servant say that he has “set his face like flint” knowing he will not be put to shame. Then Paul tells us that Jesus humbled himself and emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. And then comes the story we all know, the story that is so difficult to listen to and to hear.


One minute we are hailing Jesus as king, inviting him into our lives and the next we are standing with the crowd yelling “crucify him.” I find it a little hard to get my bearings on Palm Sunday.


Maybe it will help to remember what this faith of ours is about on the larger scale before wading into the stories of the day. What seems to me to be the center of the Christian message, the good news that we are to spread into the world in word and action is this: that we are all loved by God who will never quit working with us to love us into being the best people we can be. That kind of sums it all up for me. I find room in that explanation for sin and forgiveness, transformation, spiritual awakening, solidarity with the poor, self-giving--all of those are a part of God loving us into being new, more complete, more God-grounded people. The gospel is about love and change. I think it is that “change” part that sets the stage for what happens here today.



Now when I say that God loves us into being the best people we can be I assume that we have a good ways to go--that we are not and will not be, in this life at least, the best we can be. I also suspect that the best out in front of us--what we may yet become--involves becoming what we may not even be able to imagine. Maybe we will find somewhere down the road that we are made happy by things we would rather avoid at this point in our lives. Who knows, maybe growing into the full stature of Christ--that’s how Paul talks about our being changed--maybe growing into the full stature of Christ could even involve becoming the kind of people we don’t really like right now, or becoming the kind of people we think are silly. Maybe we will become like people who are on the other side of the political spectrum or whose religion seems strange to us. One of the concerts we had here at St. Aidan’s featured the group, We’re About Nine. In one song the speaker is explaining to a friend that, yes, he has changed in unexpected ways. He says, “the people we called obnoxious, the ones that we thought were funny, live the dreams that I aspire to now.” The trouble with change is that it doesn’t happen to us until it happens. And, when it comes right down to it, most of us are more comfortable with what is familiar than with the idea of moving to some new place we’ve never been. Change means losing something we have known and most of us don’t sign up quickly for change and loss.


Jesus rides into town, hailed as a king. He ends up outside the city on a cross.


Sometimes it is easy for us to embrace the idea of Jesus, or growth, or spirituality, or changing our lives, but then comes the reality that in order to move in any of those areas we have to give something up. Some part of ourselves has to die in order for the “new” to come. A little “God” in the areas we want to improve is one thing, but a god who wants to weigh in on our whole life can be troubling. C.S. Lewis likened God to a dentist. He said we go in with some problem we want taken care of and that part goes ok, but then the dentist starts poking around and picking at other teeth we’d just as soon not have to work on. As soon as the pain we came in with is gone we want out of the chair. Dentists, though, are by nature concerned with the whole patient. So is Jesus. The people who welcomed Jesus wanted something, but in the end, they weren’t sure they could take what Jesus had to offer. That seems to be the theme of Palm Sunday and the theme of our lives as we work in the tension between the old life an the new one.


Of course part of the story is that the Jesus who ends up on the cross is the emissary of the one who is determined to love us into being. Jesus is living out to the extreme the transformational relationship of love he had heard about all his life. That love was the heart of the faith in which Jesus grew up, the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jesus went to the cross knowing about the patience and persistence of the God of love. Those who had known him and who saw him die came to understand that Jesus embodied the love of God in a way no one had before. Even Jesus was called to change, to leave his old life behind in hopes of living a new and promised life.


The good news is that God is determined to love us into being, that we will be changed. The hard news is that we will be changed, and sometimes the cost--to God and to us--of bringing about that new life is almost to much to imagine. JB

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

March 13, 2011


So if you’re a Christian, raise your hand.

That’s good.

Some hands flew up. Others came up a little more slowly. Some of you, I’m sure, might have thought it was a trick question, as in ‘what comes next if I raise my hand?’ I asked Mary last night how many hands would go up if I asked that question and she said she thought everyone would raise their hands. This is a pretty safe place, maybe the safest place in all of our worlds to claim our identity as Christians. We all have some idea of what we are about in this setting. We can be reasonably sure that the people around us are here for reasons similar to ours. This is the place where we come to remember our life in God and our connection to God through Christ. We come not just because we are Christians, but to mark ourselves as Christians again so that at the end of the hour we can head out into the world again, newly confident in our identity as Christians. This identity thing is so important for our spiritual lives and for our work in the world, but living into even an identity we have chosen can be difficult.


A few weeks ago I spent a day praying and chanting and talking about faith with a group of clergy from many traditions up at the Shalem Institute in the city. As we began the day we went around and introduced ourselves and were asked to give our name, what faith community we belonged to and one other important thing about ourselves. When my turn came I told them my name and I mentioned this community and then I told them I was a painter. I don’t think I’d ever actually used those words to describe myself before. I said, “I’m a painter.” I had gone to Shalem hoping for a safe place to spend a day just being part of the congregation. I was hoping for the kind of spirit-friendly setting where unspoken ideas and truths find their way to the surface and are met by grace. I was a little surprised at myself as I heard the words coming out, I am a painter.


Though I have painted most of my life and was an art major for a while, I have never called myself an artist or a painter. Several reasons come to mind. I have always thought you had to be a good painter, maybe a commercially successful painter to call your self a painter. I have admired the works of painters and wished I could be one, but the gulf between my work and theirs always seemed very wide. I sometimes paint out in public, I set up my easel along the trail and paint the marsh or I go downtown and set up. People walk up to me when I am painting and for some reason--I mean they see the paints and the canvass and all--they will ask, “are you a painter?” I guess I figure if they can’t tell at that point then I must not be one so I usually say something like, “Oh I paint a little on my day off” and try to move them along. I think too that I have thought being an artist would make painting easy. If I were really an artist, I wouldn’t be scraping this onion off the canvass for the fifth time trying to get the color in that shadow right.

I have always been able to see the reasons I shouldn’t be called an artist and I had somehow come up with the idea that that identity would be conferred upon me by others or in response to the wonderful work I hoped to do someday. What I heard that day at Shalem was my own voice claiming the identity of artist, knowing somehow that claiming that identity was a necessary beginning to growing into it. Maybe I was able to say that about painting because I had gone there knowing I needed to give some attention to growing into my identity as Christian.


Maybe it is true that there can be no separation between who we are and who we are becoming.

If our identity as “Christian” is an unfinished business, not just a description of who we are but also of the life to which we aspire, then we need to be reminded from time to time that becoming who we are takes some effort. We are at the same time Christians and we are not yet finished becoming Christians. The identity we have taken on is one we must live into intentionally. The season of Lent reminds us that we still have work to do.


We hear in the readings today just how hard it can be to live into the identity we have chosen. Adam and Eve discover honoring a relationship isn’t automatic, that we humans are quite capable of choosing to do the exact wrong thing, even with our eyes wide open and in the best of situations. Paul is sure that there must be something in our DNA that causes us to miss the mark when we set out to be the people we know we want to be. And Jesus knows that even the desire for good things like food and safety and some power over our lives can lead us into danger. In the seasonal cycle of the Church year we are reminded today that it is time to apply ourselves, take stock of where we are and do whatever it takes to fit ourselves for the next part of our journey. Welcome to Lent.


The main reason I wanted to talk about identity today is that in this season of Lent we will be hearing as we always do, quite a bit about sin. I think sin reads differently for people who understand that they have at the same time already claimed their identity and are also living into that identity. We have all probably heard that sin separates us from God. Scripture doesn’t seem to bear that out. In the stories of our faith God just doesn’t give up. That is the message of our tradition. Sin does, however, show us where we need to be working. Lent isn’t the season of realizing that we are somehow cut off from God and in need of salvation. It is the season in which the God who has called us into our true lives pulls up alongside us on the path and asks, “how’s it going?” God may listen for a while and then ask again, “No, really, how’s it going?” expecting us to get honest about our answer. There may be sins and omissions of which we are not proud, but the promise of Lent is that checking in and getting real about our lives is a part of moving forward. We have all promised to follow Jesus. We have all promised to live into the God life. Lent asks us, How’s it going?


Maybe I was helped in claiming my artist-hood at Shalem by my reading the writings of some of the great artists. Robert Henri, the Amercian painter in his fine book, The Art Spirit, and Twyla Tharpe the great choreographer, in her book The Creative Habit, both say the same thing. In order to call yourself an artist, you have to know yourself to be a student. To be an artist is to be in the process of becoming an artist. So I ask you now, who in this room is still learning to be a Christian. Amen.