Anyway

Sermon preached at the Thursday evening community Eucharist at the School of Theology at Sewanee. Text: Jeremiah 7:23-28

"So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." (Jeremiah 7:27)

Does this sound like a job you'd be willing to sign up for? God tells Jeremiah to proclaim his words to the people of Israel, but tells him ahead of time that the people aren't going to listen to him. Apparently God didn't get the memo about effective ways to motivate your employees. Imagine what a business meeting would be like if the president of a company took this approach: "Well, we've done the research, and all indicators say that the market is going to reject our product," she'd say to her employees. "We basically have a zero chance of making a profit. Now, your job is to devote your life to producing this product."

People aren't usually too willing to go along with a plan they know is going to fail. We might try something that seems unlikely to succeed simply because we never know what the results will be; since we're not omniscient, there is always a chance the statistics and projections are wrong. But coming from God, there is no uncertainty in the claim: "I'm telling you up front, Jeremiah -- these people aren't going to listen to you." Gee thanks, God. I bet Jeremiah could have done without some of that omniscience there.

So what's the point? Why does God call Jeremiah to speak words of warning to the people and call them to repentance if he knows they're not going to listen anyway? Or, to make it a bit more personal, why are we called to proclaim the Gospel when we know many will reject it?

I think the simple answer is, we do it because it's who we are. We do it because we can't not do it. We do it because God calls us to do it.

Working for the kingdom of God is not always a results-oriented kind of endeavor, as much as we would like for it to be. We speak of "sowing seeds" that we may never see sprout as a metaphor that helps us make our peace with the fact that we may not see any visible results or effects of our ministry in the world around us. We "keep on keepin' on," because we believe in faith that those seeds will someday sprout, even if it's not for many, many years… maybe not even until Jesus comes back.

But sometimes, we can feel a little like Jeremiah must have felt when given the instructions he was given in today's reading: like we've been given an impossible task that we know is going to fail, that no matter what we say and how much we say it, the people will just not hear.

Some of us may have felt that way when the Sewanee Chautauquans blog surfaced last spring, with all of its anti-black and anti-gay rhetoric. People who work with those living in poverty and homelessness may feel that way when the same people never quite seem to be able to get their lives together, or when people with whom they've developed long-term relationships betray them. My friends in the interfaith movement and I felt that way when we saw the video released last month of a protest outside a Muslim charity fundraiser event in California, where violently angry women and men shouted insults at the Muslim men, women, and children who arrived for the fundraising dinner.

In situations like these, we may find ourselves asking, "What's the point?" Why am I giving my life to anti-racism training when there continue to be hate crime shootings every year in my neighborhood? Why am I feeding these people when they're only taking advantage of the system? Why have I spent the past ten years in interfaith education and advocacy only to watch a crowd of people waving American flags yelling, "Go home! We don't want you here, you terrorists!" to Muslim children under the age of of ten, whose only existence in this world has been in the context of post-9/11 fear of Muslims?

Perhaps at times like these we can remember the prophet Jeremiah. "So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." And yet, you are still to speak -- to speak the words of faith and love. You are still to call -- to call the people to repentance and reconciliation with their neighbor -- even when you know they will not listen. You do this for the same reason that a mother would throw herself in front of a train to try to protect her child, even if she knew that that action would kill them both. You do it because it's who you are. You do it because you can't not do it. You do it because God calls you to do it, regardless of the results.

There's a famous set of "paradoxical commandments," often attributed to Mother Teresa, but actually written by Kent Keith, a speaker and advocate of servant leadership, that I think say it best. Keith wrote them while a sophomore in college, and they advocate a stubborn faithfulness to love against all odds that I, for one, think is what the church should be all about. Here are a few of them:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

I return to these "paradoxical commandments" whenever I feel discouraged about the seeming impossibility of the tasks to which God calls me. Yes, people may continue to be hurtful and angry and bitter and use one another and kill one another -- and they may do those things in the name of God. But we are to continue to preach peace and to speak truth to power and to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God -- anyway.

After all, God loved us "anyway" -- despite our shortcomings, despite our sinfulness, despite our rebellion against the love of God. Contemporary Christian artist Nichole Nordeman captures this in her song, aptly titled "Anyway," in which she compares the Christian life to the process of restoring an old painting:

A gallery of paintings new and paintings old
I guess it's no surprise that I'm no Michaelangelo...

But you called me beautiful
When you saw my shame
And you placed me on the wall
Anyway

"So you shall speak the words of God to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." Speak anyway.

Can we (future) clergy be both shepherds and sheep?

Sermon preached to my seminary colleagues at Morning Prayer, Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee, Tenn. 2 Lent, Wednesday, Year One (Jeremiah 3:6-18, Romans 1:28-2:11)

Acknowledge your guilt, repent, and return to the Lord. Jeremiah and Paul are saying essentially the same thing in our readings this morning.
 
How will the ways we hear these passages be different when we’re the ones called upon to preach repentance to our people from the pulpit? As ordained leaders in the church, will we be as quick to repent as we will be to call others to repent?

I think this question is of utmost importance to our integrity and effectiveness as future clergy. There is a danger for those in positions of ordained leadership in the church to start identifying a little too closely with the voice of God and the voice of the prophets in the Scriptures and forget that we are also one of “the people” who are called to repentance.

“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding,” God says, through the prophet Jeremiah.

Though the “shepherds” Jeremiah was referring to were probably kings of Israel, the shepherding metaphor has been passed down through the ages to church leadership – seen in the ubiquitous use of the term “pastoral” with regards to our ministry. Thinking of ourselves as “shepherds after God’s own heart,” who will “feed [the people] with knowledge and understanding” can set us up for a kind of blindness to our own need to be taught and fed – not only by God himself but by “the people” whom we think we are teaching and leading.

As clergy, will we be only prophets and shepherds, or can we remember how to be people and sheep as well? We hear a lot these days about “prophetic preaching,” about how to effectively call our congregations to live out the Gospel in their lives. But what about the value of responsive living? That is, patterning our own lives in response to the Gospel, to not only be the proclaimers but the receivers of the message that is ultimately not of us, but of God. As Paul says, we cannot pass judgment on others while doing the very same things we condemn. We cannot proclaim the message effectively if we do not live it out in our own lives.

Certainly, as priests, we will need to call our congregations to repentance – both in a routine, “it’s Lent so it’s time for repentance” kind of way and in a more specific, “there’s a particular issue in our community life for which we need to repent” kind of way. But how we do this is of utmost importance. We're fooling ourselves if we think our parishioners can't tell the difference between a call to repentance that comes out of self-righteousness and insecurity and a call to repentance that comes out of true humility and a deep familiarity with our own sinfulness.

This is why Mother Julia taught us in Pastoral Theology that a priest should not hear confessions regularly if he or she is not making his or her own confession regularly. We cannot effectively call others to repent if we are not also repentant ourselves – and I would add, not just inwardly, but outwardly – willing to publicly admit our wrongs and to “acknowledge our guilt” before the congregation -- being humble enough to apologize and acknowledge when we mess up, rather than trying to “save face” because we’re “the priest” and therefore somehow must be faultless in the eyes of our congregation.

As Paul reminds us this morning, “God shows no partiality” – not between Jews and Greeks, and not between clergy and laity. We may be called to preach the words of the prophet, but let us not forget to listen to them as well.

St. Luke's Community House, Nashville

On Friday, March 4, our urban ministry class visited two locations in Nashville, Church of the Holy Trinity and St. Luke's Community House.

The St. Luke's Community House is an Episcopal community center in West Nashville that provides meals, a food pantry, a place for individuals to meet with social workers and case managers, a day camp, scouting troops, income tax assistance, English classes for immigrants, and much, much more. The place is essentially a one-stop shop for community needs in this low-income area, and has been part of this community since 1913, and physically located in the same area since 1920.

The food pantry at St. Luke's

The Community House was founded in 1913 by a group of women who were all members of the Episcopal women's order Daughters of the King, from different parishes in the diocese. The original need was to provide a place for women and children to stay and receive meals and medical attention while visiting men incarcerated in the nearby prison. Today it has blossomed into so much more, but the one constant service that has been provided by St. Luke's since its inception in 1913 is childcare. St. Luke's now houses a state-of-the-art preschool that is an official United Way preschool center and uses the "Read to Succeed" curriculum that is standard in United Way preschools to get the children ready to enter kindergarten in the area public schools.

On March 4, our class met with St. Luke's Executive Director Brian Diller, who gave us an overview of the center's programs. He told us that the preschool is particularly important in this neighborhood: the zip code where St. Luke's is located -- 37209 -- has a 40 percent high school drop-out rate, and the two lowest-performing high schools in the state are located in that area. The extra attention and quality education that the children at St. Luke's receive before they ever even enter the public school systems helps to increase their chances of success once they get there.

A St. Luke's staff member gives our class a tour of the preschool.

Brian told us that 46 percent of the children in the preschool come from "very diverse backgrounds," by which I assume he meant either immigrant or recent immigrant families. He listed Vietnamese, Mexican, Latin American, and Eastern European (Croatian) as some of the ethnic backgrounds of the students at the preschool. Vietnamese are a particularly large population at St. Luke's; West Nashville is an center of Vietnamese refugee resettlement. The Vietnamese population is so large in this area that the library at St. Luke's preschool provides books in Vietnamese in addition to English and Spanish.

Bumper sticker seen on a car in St. Luke's parking lot

But the majority of our time with Brian was spent talking about the flood in Nashville last May (2010). Still recent history for the people of this neighborhood, which was one of the hardest hit in the flood, the memories were clearly fresh and poignant for Brian, who told story after story about how the community came together in the wake of the flood to provide for the needs of the neighborhood. As I listened to Brian, I was reminded of stories of disaster relief in New York post-9/11, or in New Orleans post-Katrina. The story of the community coming together in the midst of crisis was the same here as it was in those other places. St. Luke's itself was turned into a triage center for six weeks or so after the flood, and a local restaurant donated three meals a day for weeks at no charge to guests at the center. Because St. Luke's was such a well-known name in the community, it was a natural central gathering place for people to come to in the midst of a tragedy. It was a real testimony to the benefits of building long-term, proactive relationships with a community so that the structures needed for crisis response are in place when they are needed.

Church of the Holy Trinity/Church in the Yard, Nashville

On Friday, March 4, our urban ministry class visited two locations in Nashville, Church of the Holy Trinity and St. Luke's Community House.

The Church of the Holy Trinity is an Episcopal parish located right outside downtown Nashville, in a more industrial area and just down the street from one of the city's largest homeless shelters. It is an historic church, first established in 1849. In 1907, it was designated as "the" black Episcopal church in Nashville. Now, the church has an average Sunday attendance of about 60 people, most of them retired older African-American people from the area -- many of them former professors at the historically-black universities in the area (Fisk and Tennessee State).

But the story that drew our urban ministry class to visit Church of the Holy Trinity isn't directly connected to what the Rev. Bill Dennler, priest at Holy Trinity, refers to as the "inside congregation." It's the larger and fast-growing "outdoor congregation."

On Sundays at 2 p.m., Church of the Holy Trinity offers an outdoor Eucharist in the church yard, aptly called "Church in the Yard," followed by a community meal. The model is similar to The Outdoor Church I was a part of in Cambridge, Mass., which was a branch of Ecclesia Ministries in Boston, but Trinity's outdoor church is not officially affiliated with Ecclesia.

Trinity's outdoor church was born of a local initiative to feed the homeless started by a local chef at an upscale restaurant in Nashville. He was disturbed by the amount of waste thrown away at the restaurant each night, and wondered why those living on the streets shouldn't be able to have just as fine of a meal as the customers in his high-ticket restaurant. So, he started taking leftovers from dinner each night and creating magnificent concoctions -- soups and stews of all sorts -- and serving them in a back parking lot in downtown Nashville to homeless people.

This went on for a while, but as these things usually do, it drew attention -- and not positive attention -- from the neighbors and the city officials. Soon the officials were telling the chef he couldn't continue to serve these meals in public without a permit. And surely his motley crew of folks didn't meet with federal cleanliness guidelines!

So the priest at Church of the Holy Trinity, Bill Dennler's predecessor, volunteered to help out. "Come hold the meal on our church grounds," he told the chef. "They can't kick you off private property."

So Holy Trinity became the refuge of this renegade chef and his feeding program, and the congregation of Holy Trinity became unwitting hosts to around one hundred homeless and poor people each week. Eventually, the priest decided to start offering a service in addition to the meal, and eventually the church took over providing the meal as well as the worship service. Now, volunteers from churches around the city take turns providing the meals each week, so Holy Trinity is only responsible for one meal per month. Many volunteers from suburban churches welcome the opportunity to come and serve the "urban poor" that they do not see in their own neighborhoods.

The unfortunate part of the story is that the congregation at Holy Trinity was never really consulted in the beginning phases of this partnership, so that they still do not see Church in the Yard as part of "their" ministry as the community of Holy Trinity. From what Fr. Bill Dennler described, the relationship seems to be more of a "tenant-landlord" relationship rather than a sense of ownership over the ministry as a Holy Trinity ministry. Fr. Bill hopes to change that, and says that some people from the "inside congregation" at Holy Trinity have indeed begun to become involved with the outdoor service and meal.

Fr. Bill (second from left) with Vanderbilt nursing students who offer foot care and clean socks to the congregants of Church in the Yard. Photo from Vanderbilt Reporter.

The outdoor church and the outreach to the homeless is an issue near and dear to Fr. Bill's heart: he himself has been homeless, served time in prison, and is a recovering alcoholic, and is open about his past with his congregation. He has a kind of clout with the homeless population because he's "been there, done that," so to speak -- he can relate to the struggles many of them are going through with addition and other destructive behaviors.

The Church in the Yard is growing at much faster rates than the "indoor congregation." While the Sunday morning congregation either remains stable at 60 or is declining, the Sunday afternoon congregation continues to grow exponentially. When we met with Fr. Bill on March 4, he told us that they were currently seeing 100 people for the service, and another 100 people who show up just for the meal afterwards. Church in the Yard is beginning to define Holy Trinity's existence and put it "on the map," so to speak, both for the homeless people in the area and for other churches who want to help with this ministry.

Interestingly enough, Fr. Bill reported that a large number of "young people" from non-denominational churches come to volunteer and unexpectedly, seem to enjoy the Episcopal liturgy. These people are real "prayer warriors," Fr. Bill reported, spending a lot of time in one-on-one intercessory prayer with the homeless people who attend the service.

Our class returned to Holy Trinity on Sunday, March 27, to experience the worship service first-hand. I missed that session, since I am currently doing my field education on Sundays at a church near Sewanee. (I am the only student in the class who is a second-year student in the middle of field education work; the rest are all seniors who are finished with field education and one junior (first-year) student who has not yet started her field education.) However, I had already been to Church in the Yard several times, during my first year at Sewanee.

After meeting Susanna at the "Come and See" weekend at Sewanee when I came to look at the school, and realizing how much she "got it" in terms of outreach to the poor and homeless, I had been in touch with her to see if she knew of any groups in Chattanooga or Nashville that were similar to the outdoor church I'd been a part of in Cambridge. She referred me to Church in the Yard, and my husband and I had attended services there several times. I even thought about doing my field education there as a summer immersion experience, but wound up deciding to try something different -- small-town, small-church ministry -- for my field education instead.

Nevertheless, it was exciting to me to see this kind of ministry happening so close to my new home. Like with Church of the Common Ground in Atlanta, I haven't gotten up to the Church in the Yard as often as I would have liked to during my time here, but visiting a few times, and being back through the visit with our class, has affirmed my sense of calling to this kind of ministry. There's something about seeing a priest celebrate Eucharist outdoors in the midst of a crowd of homeless people that just seems to me to be a living icon of what church is really about.