Sermon delivered Sunday, July 19, 2015 (8th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 11, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
(Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)
"Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."
This is what Jesus says to the disciples in today’s Gospel reading. As Jesus’s reputation had grown, their ministry had gotten overwhelming. More and more people were seeking Jesus out, for spiritual advice, for healing, and probably many were coming just to gawk at this miracle-worker. The scriptures tell us that “many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”
I’m sure many of you know that feeling. That feeling of pressure, anxiety – of suffocation, almost – when you realize that you have more to do than can possibly be done. When you’re cranky and irritable and your stomach growls and suddenly you realize you’ve been working so hard you forgot to eat lunch. I know I’ve been there. It’s one of the reasons my husband always reminds me, particularly on Sundays, not to forget to schedule time to eat!
As 21st century American churchgoers, we have two strikes against us when it comes to avoiding that frenzied feeling. The first is our secular work culture, which values productivity above all else, where our worth is measured by how much we can get done, how much money we can make, how many reports we can process in an hour. If that wasn’t bad enough, those of us who seek to be good Christians have the added pressure of a church culture that teaches us that we should always put others before ourselves, that holds up an ideal of “selflessness” and often denigrates any focus on oneself as “selfish” and somehow inherently sinful. This double-whammy of pressure makes it very difficult for most of us to attend to our own needs. Not only should we be accomplishing as much as possible in our work and our ministries, but we shouldn’t give much thought or attention to ourselves, because God has told us not to. I’m sure many of you are familiar with scripture passages like these:
From Philippians chapter 2: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4)
Or this one, from 1 Corinthians, chapter 1: “Do not seek your own advantage, but that of others.” (1 Corinthians 1:24)
Or the words of Jesus in the Gospels, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
In looking up some of these passages online, I found many articles from Christian websites advocating for just the kind of self-denigration I’m speaking of here. One article unequivocally stated, “Self-centeredness and self-love are totally antithetical to the teachings of Scripture.”
Certainly, following Jesus requires a kind of “dying to self,” as the biblical metaphor puts it, a relinquishing of control and the sinful desires that drive us to seek our own gain at the expense of others. But is self-love the same thing as self-centeredness? Unfortunately, the church has all too often assumed that it is, and this has led us to a church culture in which we are not expected to take care of ourselves, in which it is more highly valued for us to sacrifice our very well-being – emotionally, physically, and spiritually – in our desire to serve others than it is to tend to our own health. This overemphasis on serving others, coupled with the Christian metaphors about sacrifice and dying to self, have led to a religious context in which the goal is the flourishing of others at the expense of self, rather than the flourishing of all people, including ourselves.
But I do not believe Jesus ever taught that our call to care for others meant that we should neglect to care for ourselves. This passage from Mark’s Gospel is just one of many places where Jesus encourages the disciples to “come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” and perhaps an even stronger testimony to his endorsement of self-care is that he modeled this behavior himself. The scriptures tell us that Jesus “often withdrew to deserted places and prayed” (Luke 5:16).
Both Jesus’s instruction to the disciples to find quiet time alone for prayer and rest and his own claiming of this time for himself come in the context of overwhelming need. When the crowds are pressing in on him, when everyone is clamoring for his attention, Jesus doesn’t try to solve everyone’s problems or cure everyone’s illnesses. Instead, he takes the time he needs for himself and encourages the disciples to do so as well, despite the endless stream of people seeking them out and waiting for them wherever they go. It is precisely the times when it would have been most difficult for them to take a break that Jesus does so and encourages his disciples to do the same. He doesn’t say, “Well, after all these crowds have dispersed, when we’ve taken care of all their needs, then we can rest and take care of our own.” He doesn’t say this because he knows a fundamental truth of the human experience that is becoming more and more recognized today – that we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. That we can only take care of others to the extent that we are able to take care of ourselves. That we only have something to give when we have taken the time to receive, to refresh and renew our own health, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
This is why we are seeing an increasing emphasis in the church on things like silent retreats and sabbaticals. Contrary to the old model of clergy being expected to be available to everyone 24 hours a day, seminaries are now teaching clergy the importance of self-care, and encouraging us to support it among our parishioners as well. We are encouraged to take time for ourselves and to model for you the importance of doing the same in your own lives. So as we all bid farewell to Monna last Sunday as she began her three-month sabbatical, I hope it got you all thinking about the value of rest, retreat, renewal, and reflection in your own lives. The concept of sabbatical time away from work is becoming more popular, not just in academic and church contexts, but across a variety of fields. Many companies now offer employees sabbatical leave time because they realize that their employees are actually MORE productive and have more to give to the company when they take the time to care for themselves than they are when they sacrifice their own health for the sake of their work. The airline industry has reminded us of the essential wisdom of this truth in their safety videos that instruct us to put our own oxygen mask on first before assisting others. This is not a matter of valuing our own lives more highly than others, but a practical matter of survival. If we cannot breathe ourselves, we cannot expect to help others to breathe either.
But there is a flip side to this truth as well. Just as we cannot help others unless we first help ourselves, we also cannot help ourselves unless we also help others as well. It is not a matter of either/or, but a matter of both/and. It is no better to help ourselves at the expense of others than it is to help others at the expense of ourselves. As leaders of movements for human liberation across the globe have noted, our freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of others. We cannot be free while our brothers and sisters are in chains. We cannot truly live while our brothers and sisters are dying. We cannot morally put our own oxygen mask on and then neglect to help others with theirs.
Lilla Watson, a spokewoman for an activist group of Aboriginal people in Australia in the 1970s, once famously said to those seeking to aid her community, “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” The scriptures put it this way, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12: “If one member [of the body of Christ] suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Corinthians 12:26) We are part and parcel of one another in the body of Christ. What we do affects one another, and as such our salvation is always ultimately communal rather than individual in nature. We can’t reach the kingdom of God without being willing to bring all of God’s children along with us.
Nashville singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel co-wrote a song with Danish songwriter Klaus Caprani that captures this truth. The title of the song is, “No One Gets to Heaven (If Anybody Else is Left Behind),” and it goes like this:
“Last night I dreamed my daddy woke me up and took me by the hand
And walked me down the hill and through the woods to where a little chapel stands
And everyone we knew was there, and they all seemed so happy we came by
The deacon shook our hands and then he led us to our seat beside the aisle
The preacher started talkin’ and everybody leaned in close
He said there is a light in the dark when we need it the most
And there is a way through this world if we keep this in mind:
No one gets to heaven if anybody else is left behind.
No one gets to heaven if anyone is lost along the way
And it’s so easy to doubt it, so now let us join hands and pray
We’ll meet on that beautiful shore in the sweet by and by
And no one gets to heaven if anybody else is left behind.”
Our liberation is bound up with others’ liberation. It is important to remember this precisely during those times when we want to focus solely on ourselves. Sometimes when we are awakened to our need to care for ourselves, we can be tempted to walk away from all other commitments and focus only on ourselves. When things get difficult, we think, “I just can’t handle this anymore; I’ve got to take care of myself.” Although that certainly may be true for a time, and given how serious the imbalance of focusing on others verses yourself has been, you may need a considerable amount of time to focus only on yourself. But even in those times, it’s important to remember that in order to be true to the Gospel and our calling as Christians, we must at some point return to the service of others, using the care and love that has healed us to heal others. Because our healing is bound up with others’ healing. Our liberation is bound up with others’ liberation. No one gets to heaven if anybody else is left behind.
Showing posts with label clergy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clergy. Show all posts
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Adjusting to a new identity
Today, I wore my collar to school for the first time.
I hadn't worn it since my ordination day just over a month ago. The day after the ordination we boarded a plane for two weeks in Costa Rica, and then came back to GOEs and one more week off... and having had no official "deaconing" duties scheduled during that time, I had had no reason to wear it.
At the seminary, there is a tradition of "dressing up" on Wednesdays, which is our main community day. (When I was visiting as a prospective student, someone explained it to me by saying, "Wednesdays are our Sundays at the seminary" -- since many of the students are working in churches on Sundays as part of their field education experience, there isn't an opportunity for the community to gather on Sundays, so the principal worship service of the week is on Wednesdays instead of Sundays at the seminary.) Part of that tradition of dressing up includes those seniors who are ordained to the diaconate in December wearing their collars on Wednesdays for the spring semester, even if they're not scheduled to serve as deacon at the Eucharist that day.
Today was our first Wednesday of the new semester. All five of us who were ordained in December who were on campus (there were six of us total, but one of our deacons is currently on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land) wore our collars today. It was exciting to me to look around the chapel and see my classmates in their collars, looking very official and clerical. Every one of them looked natural and normal in the collar, not a bit out of place, even though this was the first time I'd seen some of them in a collar in real life (I'd seen pictures from the ordinations). My emotion upon seeing them in the collar was pure, unadulterated joy, but my emotions around walking around campus in a collar myself were more mixed.
When I wore the collar for my ordination day, it didn't feel strange at all. I was excited for that day and had tried on the collar several times that fall as I tried to find a clergy shirt that fit me properly in preparation for ordination day. I was excited to wear the collar and it felt natural, I thought, to wear it. But there was something unique about that day -- it was a special day, a special ceremony all about ordination and ordaining. The collar was highlighted that day, literally and symbolically. But today was just another day. A "business as usual" day. And suddenly I was walking around, in normal life, not just on a special day, with a strip of white plastic around my neck that symbolizes an ordained office in the church.
I changed my email signature to "The Rev. Tracy Wells Miller" the day I was ordained, as well as all references to myself on my blog and other areas where my name is listed, and I've had a month to get used to looking at that, and it hasn't felt entirely strange. But somehow it was easier to adjust to the title than to the change in dress. The title was abstract, words on a page. The collar is physical and visible, an outward sign that makes me stand out. And as much as I love attention, there was something unsettling about becoming a physically-marked religious symbol in the world.
As I walked around campus, some classmates and professors commented on the collar. "Lookin' good in that collar!" or "I like the collar on you. It's a nice look." or "Congratulations on your ordination." Others didn't say anything, but I watched their eyes make a brief dip down to my neck before they made eye contact and said hello. Others just interacted with me the same as they ever had, seemingly not noticing the collar at all. But I was aware of it. Every move I made felt different, felt public and scrutinized in some way. I began to think about Muslim women who wear headscarves and Sikh men who wear turbans as outward symbols of their religious faith, and who know what it is like to live as a physically-marked religious symbol in the world.
I thought of Amardeep Singh, Director of Programs for the Sikh Coalition, who appears in the documentary film about post-9/11 hate crimes that I worked with, Divided We Fall. In the film, in speaking about why wearing the turban is important to him, he says,
"Every day when I get up and tie my turban, I'm thinking, 'Be true to the articles. Be a good person.' Because I'm representing not just myself, but my entire community."
I also thought about my friend Susan Werner, an amazingly talented songwriter who calls herself an agnostic but spoke powerfully about faith in her 2007 album, "The Gospel Truth." After writing songs with a Gospel twist, she once told me in an interview for a church magazine,
"Since doing the Gospel project, I’ve had to hold my tongue a few times -- I had to live up to the better messages of the project -- and be a good 'Christian' because I knew I was going to sing these songs that night and I could not let myself be a jerk. Really."
I thought of Susan when I felt myself choosing my words more carefully as I felt the grip of the collar on my neck and thinking twice before I made careless comments or used curse words that have slipped into my vocabulary over the past several years, despite my "goody two shoes" upbringing and my time among evangelicals. I hadn't thought much of it, but now I thought twice. Is this really the image I want to project as a deacon, and as a future priest? Susan's words came back to me. I'm going to have to live up to the faith I profess with my words, the faith I will soon sing as well (in chanted Eucharists!), and be a good priest because I know I'm going to have that collar around my neck and I cannot let myself be a jerk. Really.
Unlike Amardeep, I'm fortunate enough to wear a religious symbol that will be largely respected in this culture, not make me a target for hate crimes. A classmate greeted me today with a respectful nod and a simple, "Reverend." He must have noticed my subtle internal recoil as I laughed, because he responded, "Get used to it!"
In much of the U.S., a collar brings with it respect and deference, sometimes excessively so. "Oh, here, Father, have the best seat in the house," or "let me pay for your lunch," or somehow you wind up with a warning instead of a speeding ticket. These kind of stories I've heard about "special treatment" for the clergy make me uncomfortable, but perhaps I'm naive to think the responses I get will be entirely positive. There are enough people who have been hurt badly by priests and there is enough controversy over women priests that I may need to expect the collar to bring me some animosity. A male clergy friend of mine once told me about a female priest friend of his who was shopping in a Christian bookstore with her collar on and had someone come up to her and say, "Take off that costume, Satan!" I certainly won't be mistaken for a Roman Catholic priest, as my male colleagues will be.
Maybe one day I will be so used to wearing the collar that I won't even notice it. Maybe it will become the "new normal," it will be business-as-usual, just part of my regular identity and I won't think twice about my words or my actions while I'm wearing it. But I hope not. I hope it always rests a bit uncomfortably on my Adam's Apple as I swallow, reminding me, "Be true to the faith. Be a good person. Because I'm representing not just myself, but my entire community."
I hadn't worn it since my ordination day just over a month ago. The day after the ordination we boarded a plane for two weeks in Costa Rica, and then came back to GOEs and one more week off... and having had no official "deaconing" duties scheduled during that time, I had had no reason to wear it.
At the seminary, there is a tradition of "dressing up" on Wednesdays, which is our main community day. (When I was visiting as a prospective student, someone explained it to me by saying, "Wednesdays are our Sundays at the seminary" -- since many of the students are working in churches on Sundays as part of their field education experience, there isn't an opportunity for the community to gather on Sundays, so the principal worship service of the week is on Wednesdays instead of Sundays at the seminary.) Part of that tradition of dressing up includes those seniors who are ordained to the diaconate in December wearing their collars on Wednesdays for the spring semester, even if they're not scheduled to serve as deacon at the Eucharist that day.
Today was our first Wednesday of the new semester. All five of us who were ordained in December who were on campus (there were six of us total, but one of our deacons is currently on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land) wore our collars today. It was exciting to me to look around the chapel and see my classmates in their collars, looking very official and clerical. Every one of them looked natural and normal in the collar, not a bit out of place, even though this was the first time I'd seen some of them in a collar in real life (I'd seen pictures from the ordinations). My emotion upon seeing them in the collar was pure, unadulterated joy, but my emotions around walking around campus in a collar myself were more mixed.
When I wore the collar for my ordination day, it didn't feel strange at all. I was excited for that day and had tried on the collar several times that fall as I tried to find a clergy shirt that fit me properly in preparation for ordination day. I was excited to wear the collar and it felt natural, I thought, to wear it. But there was something unique about that day -- it was a special day, a special ceremony all about ordination and ordaining. The collar was highlighted that day, literally and symbolically. But today was just another day. A "business as usual" day. And suddenly I was walking around, in normal life, not just on a special day, with a strip of white plastic around my neck that symbolizes an ordained office in the church.
I changed my email signature to "The Rev. Tracy Wells Miller" the day I was ordained, as well as all references to myself on my blog and other areas where my name is listed, and I've had a month to get used to looking at that, and it hasn't felt entirely strange. But somehow it was easier to adjust to the title than to the change in dress. The title was abstract, words on a page. The collar is physical and visible, an outward sign that makes me stand out. And as much as I love attention, there was something unsettling about becoming a physically-marked religious symbol in the world.
As I walked around campus, some classmates and professors commented on the collar. "Lookin' good in that collar!" or "I like the collar on you. It's a nice look." or "Congratulations on your ordination." Others didn't say anything, but I watched their eyes make a brief dip down to my neck before they made eye contact and said hello. Others just interacted with me the same as they ever had, seemingly not noticing the collar at all. But I was aware of it. Every move I made felt different, felt public and scrutinized in some way. I began to think about Muslim women who wear headscarves and Sikh men who wear turbans as outward symbols of their religious faith, and who know what it is like to live as a physically-marked religious symbol in the world.
I thought of Amardeep Singh, Director of Programs for the Sikh Coalition, who appears in the documentary film about post-9/11 hate crimes that I worked with, Divided We Fall. In the film, in speaking about why wearing the turban is important to him, he says,
"Every day when I get up and tie my turban, I'm thinking, 'Be true to the articles. Be a good person.' Because I'm representing not just myself, but my entire community."
I also thought about my friend Susan Werner, an amazingly talented songwriter who calls herself an agnostic but spoke powerfully about faith in her 2007 album, "The Gospel Truth." After writing songs with a Gospel twist, she once told me in an interview for a church magazine,
"Since doing the Gospel project, I’ve had to hold my tongue a few times -- I had to live up to the better messages of the project -- and be a good 'Christian' because I knew I was going to sing these songs that night and I could not let myself be a jerk. Really."
I thought of Susan when I felt myself choosing my words more carefully as I felt the grip of the collar on my neck and thinking twice before I made careless comments or used curse words that have slipped into my vocabulary over the past several years, despite my "goody two shoes" upbringing and my time among evangelicals. I hadn't thought much of it, but now I thought twice. Is this really the image I want to project as a deacon, and as a future priest? Susan's words came back to me. I'm going to have to live up to the faith I profess with my words, the faith I will soon sing as well (in chanted Eucharists!), and be a good priest because I know I'm going to have that collar around my neck and I cannot let myself be a jerk. Really.
Unlike Amardeep, I'm fortunate enough to wear a religious symbol that will be largely respected in this culture, not make me a target for hate crimes. A classmate greeted me today with a respectful nod and a simple, "Reverend." He must have noticed my subtle internal recoil as I laughed, because he responded, "Get used to it!"
In much of the U.S., a collar brings with it respect and deference, sometimes excessively so. "Oh, here, Father, have the best seat in the house," or "let me pay for your lunch," or somehow you wind up with a warning instead of a speeding ticket. These kind of stories I've heard about "special treatment" for the clergy make me uncomfortable, but perhaps I'm naive to think the responses I get will be entirely positive. There are enough people who have been hurt badly by priests and there is enough controversy over women priests that I may need to expect the collar to bring me some animosity. A male clergy friend of mine once told me about a female priest friend of his who was shopping in a Christian bookstore with her collar on and had someone come up to her and say, "Take off that costume, Satan!" I certainly won't be mistaken for a Roman Catholic priest, as my male colleagues will be.
Maybe one day I will be so used to wearing the collar that I won't even notice it. Maybe it will become the "new normal," it will be business-as-usual, just part of my regular identity and I won't think twice about my words or my actions while I'm wearing it. But I hope not. I hope it always rests a bit uncomfortably on my Adam's Apple as I swallow, reminding me, "Be true to the faith. Be a good person. Because I'm representing not just myself, but my entire community."
Friday, December 16, 2011
Saying "Yes" to God's call
In my baby book, my mother writes about my baptism when I was sixteen months old:
“Pastor Sims baptized you. When he poured the water over your head, you shook your head and said, ‘No!’”
Tomorrow, I will say yes. Twenty-nine years after my baptism, I will be ordained a deacon in Christ’s church and say “yes” to God’s call on my life.
Although in my adult life I became a critic of infant baptism and delighted in the baby book witness that even as a one-year-old, I was against having something chosen for me that I did not choose for myself, I later discovered that the date of my baptism – February 27 – was the same date that I had an evangelical “conversion experience” in high school and the same date that I first started volunteering with the Outdoor Church in Cambridge, Mass., the homeless ministry out of which my calling to the priesthood emerged. So I can’t deny that something must have happened at my baptism, however much I did not choose it for myself at the time.
And as I approach the eve of my ordination, which marks my transition from being a lay person to being a member of the clergy, a transition in identity which can never truly be reversed – an ontological change, if you will – I am reminded of all the ways in which I did not choose this call for myself. Yes, I am assenting to it of my own free will, but it was not simply an individual, personal choice. The Episcopal Church does not allow people to take on ordination solely of their own choosing – the community has to affirm that they see the call as well.
The authority that will be given to me at my ordination is not mine to take, but the church’s to give, and I accept it with a measure of humility and honor and gratitude. The priest who led our pre-ordination Quiet Day told us a story of how the priest in her home congregation used to always have members of the congregation put his vestments on him before the Eucharistic liturgy, symbolizing that he could only be vested and serving them as priest by virtue of their assent and their choosing him as their representative leader. I like the metaphor that we cannot vest ourselves, just as we cannot celebrate Eucharist alone – there must be a community present to assent to the words that the priest offers on their behalf.
There have been times during the formal discernment process and my seminary career when I have wanted to shake my head and say, “No!” to this “odd and wondrous calling,” as UCC pastors Lillian Daniels and Martin Copenhaver refer to it. But after giving the matter serious thought and prayer, tomorrow, I will choose to say yes even to something that I have not entirely chosen for myself. And as a reminder of that, at the ordination tomorrow, under my collar and out of sight from everyone else, I will be wearing a tiny gold cross with a thin, short chain that barely fits around my neck. It is a delicate necklace made for a baby: my baptismal cross, the cross that was chosen for me by parents I did not choose as a keepsake for a sacrament that I did not choose – but that somehow has transformed my life, even without my consent.
“Pastor Sims baptized you. When he poured the water over your head, you shook your head and said, ‘No!’”
Tomorrow, I will say yes. Twenty-nine years after my baptism, I will be ordained a deacon in Christ’s church and say “yes” to God’s call on my life.
Although in my adult life I became a critic of infant baptism and delighted in the baby book witness that even as a one-year-old, I was against having something chosen for me that I did not choose for myself, I later discovered that the date of my baptism – February 27 – was the same date that I had an evangelical “conversion experience” in high school and the same date that I first started volunteering with the Outdoor Church in Cambridge, Mass., the homeless ministry out of which my calling to the priesthood emerged. So I can’t deny that something must have happened at my baptism, however much I did not choose it for myself at the time.
And as I approach the eve of my ordination, which marks my transition from being a lay person to being a member of the clergy, a transition in identity which can never truly be reversed – an ontological change, if you will – I am reminded of all the ways in which I did not choose this call for myself. Yes, I am assenting to it of my own free will, but it was not simply an individual, personal choice. The Episcopal Church does not allow people to take on ordination solely of their own choosing – the community has to affirm that they see the call as well.
The authority that will be given to me at my ordination is not mine to take, but the church’s to give, and I accept it with a measure of humility and honor and gratitude. The priest who led our pre-ordination Quiet Day told us a story of how the priest in her home congregation used to always have members of the congregation put his vestments on him before the Eucharistic liturgy, symbolizing that he could only be vested and serving them as priest by virtue of their assent and their choosing him as their representative leader. I like the metaphor that we cannot vest ourselves, just as we cannot celebrate Eucharist alone – there must be a community present to assent to the words that the priest offers on their behalf.
There have been times during the formal discernment process and my seminary career when I have wanted to shake my head and say, “No!” to this “odd and wondrous calling,” as UCC pastors Lillian Daniels and Martin Copenhaver refer to it. But after giving the matter serious thought and prayer, tomorrow, I will choose to say yes even to something that I have not entirely chosen for myself. And as a reminder of that, at the ordination tomorrow, under my collar and out of sight from everyone else, I will be wearing a tiny gold cross with a thin, short chain that barely fits around my neck. It is a delicate necklace made for a baby: my baptismal cross, the cross that was chosen for me by parents I did not choose as a keepsake for a sacrament that I did not choose – but that somehow has transformed my life, even without my consent.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Ministry Fellowship Re-Cap
Earlier this week, I attended the "closing retreat" for the 2010 Ministry Fellows. The 19 other people who had the same fellowship as I did came together at a conference center just south of Atlanta to share with each other what we did with our summers.
The projects were wonderfully diverse, addressing issues including modern-day slavery (sex trafficking), treatment of undocumented immigrants on the border in Arizona, acceptance of LBGTQ people in the Black Church, healing "moral injury" among returned combat veterans, farm-church relations in rural Vermont and New Hampshire, developing multi-cultural community in churches, the inclusion of Asian-American or Pacific Islanders among the clergy in different churches, and issues of God's presence during the "dark night of the soul" and healing of mental illness.
Eight of us traveled internationally, with visits to Spain, Hungary, Greece, Albania, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Nigeria, South Sudan, South Africa, and China. The fellow who traveled to South Sudan was there when South Sudan was declared an independent country this summer and got to witness "the birth of a nation." The projects that were not specifically issues-focused were mostly centered on addressing personal needs for healing, pilgrimage, prayer and renewal, providing a model for the importance of self-care in pastoral ministry.
Hearing my fellow Fellows' stories and their journeys was inspiring and gave me hope for the future of the church. But the best thing that came out of our conference, in my opinion, was that our group covenanted to continue meeting with each other in the future, maybe bi-annually, as a support system for one another as we go forward into church leadership.
In preparing for my presentation, I wrote the following reflection on the development of my project and the outcomes of it. I spoke on these themes and then shared the book of images and poetry I created with the group, and also posted an "exhibit" of some enlargements of my photographs on the wall in the conference room. I was surprised to find that many people asked if my book or the enlarged images would be available for purchase, so I am working on how to make that possible. I will post information about that on this blog when it is available.
Here's my "re-cap" of my Ministry Fellowship experience and what I presented to the group this week. Thanks to all of you who followed my journey this summer.
Ministry Fellowship Re-Cap
The issue I engaged with in this project had to do with participation in and with people of other religions in religious practice. It started with a story about an interfaith conference I attended where we all participated in worship services from different traditions. Rather than try to plan a generic, “interfaith” worship, they opted to offer many different worship services that were very specific – a Muslim Friday prayer service, a Jewish Sabbath service, Hindu meditation practice, and a Christian Eucharist, which was led by an Episcopal priest. I found that Eucharist very moving because all these people of different faiths were participating in the most sacred ritual of my tradition. I learned later that it is against the official rules of the Episcopal Church to offer communion to non-Christians, so what the priest did that day was in violation of her ordination vows. This all got me thinking about the value of boundaries between traditions as well as the ways in which we can experience God in and through religions and religious services other than our own.
My original idea for the project was to make an interfaith pilgrimage with my friend Valarie Kaur, who is a Sikh and who has been to churches with me and has received communion in the Episcopal Church. The idea was for us to visit each other’s holy lands – for me to go to India with her and for her to come to Israel with me. She was not able to travel with me, however, so I ultimately chose to make the pilgrimage alone, and to travel just to Israel instead of India – because I could not afford to travel to both places and from what I could gather, it would be safer and more manageable for me to travel alone in Israel than in India.
I still planned to make an “interfaith” pilgrimage by visiting sacred sites from different traditions – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Baha’i – and by meeting and talking with people involved in interfaith work in the Holy Land. The “dissemination piece” of the project was to chronicle my journey on my blog and to document the trip artistically through photography and to create an exhibit of my photos for display at my seminary and my home parish once I returned.
Although I did visit sites from different religious traditions, there were often restrictions against non-Muslims or non-Jews or non-Baha’is visiting except during certain hours or under certain circumstances, and I found that I spent most of my time visiting and meditating on Christian sites. I found myself more shy or hesitant about just walking in to a mosque or a synagogue (the ones that WERE more open and less restricted). I did visit the White Mosque in Nazareth, which was open to the public, but no one was there except one man praying in the corner and I felt very out of place and feared it would be obvious I wasn’t a Muslim and people someone would wonder why I was there if they came in and saw me. I walked through the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem but did not enter any of the historic synagogues I came across, even though they were likely open. I simply did not feel comfortable just walking in to a religious place of another tradition like I did walking into any of the churches I visited. On a visceral level, I felt that I did not belong there, that it wasn’t my holy place.
This was strange for someone who usually feels very comfortable visiting places of worship of many different traditions and has spent a good bit of my adult life working in interfaith work. I realized, however, that I had not often visited other religions’ places of worship entirely on my own. I was either going to do research and had an appointment to speak with someone, or I went with friends who were followers of that faith, to accompany them to a service or event. I had visited mosques and synagogues in Turkey and Greece and Italy on my foreign study trip in college, but I was with a large class and a guide every time I entered the places. Although I know some people draw from many different traditions in their own personal spirituality, for me as someone deeply grounded in one particular faith, I came to the somewhat obvious but still very insightful observation that I can’t be “interfaith” by myself – that a crucial element of “interfaith” is actually engaging with a PERSON of a different faith and encountering that faith through that other human – and that without that personal engagement, my encounter with sites from different religious was less meaningful and even intimidating.
This pilgrimage raised awareness for me about the importance of developing interfaith friendships and relationships, and how that really has to come through person-to-person engagement, not just through learning about other religions in a book or visiting other places of worship. While I think it’s great that some churches participate in interfaith “tours” of their cities or towns, where a group from the church will visit the local synagogue or mosque, I think these trips are largely in vain if they are not also accompanied by very real opportunities for the people from those two congregations to develop relationships with each other – which doesn’t happen naturally when they’re both serving in an “ambassador” or “host” role for their house of worship and their tradition. Programming social and outreach events with other religious communities where Christians can interact in more “normal” settings with Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’is, and others is crucial for the future of interfaith leadership in the church, in my opinion.
My encounter with Palestinians in the West Bank through a one-day trip I took to Bethlehem also opened my eyes to the very real dangers of “exceptionalist” theology that asserts that we are God’s chosen and either implicitly or explicitly justifies degradation and violence toward other groups. I wrestle with how to preach certain passages from the Old Testament about Israel as God’s chosen people and God giving the land to the Jews in light of the ways that theology has caused the suffering and subjugation of the Palestinian people.
My encounter with the injustice in the West Bank made me question the significance of my original plan to produce an exhibit of photos as the "outcome" of this trip. Who cares about my "pretty pictures" when there are people suffering in the world? I wondered. I felt like my presentation and the outcome of my trip should be entirely about Palestinian advocacy -- to focus solely on an artistic response seemed not important and serious enough.
A poetry reading in Sewanee this summer after I returned helped to change that response. Nick Flynn's integration of his experiences traveling to Turkey to meet with Iraqi people who had been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib into his poetry made me realize that art can be used for advocacy, and the two need not be mutually exclusive. (I know I had known this before, but that poetry reading was a helpful reminder and example of the ways in which advocacy can be done through art.) This helped me to move forward with my plans to create an exhibit and I even decided, at the suggestion of my husband, to try my hand at some poetry myself to accompany the images.
Re-engaging with my creative side through this project also reminded me of the importance of nurturing the creative arts among the clergy. Seminaries are very good about teaching students book knowledge and even hands-on knowledge of ministry experience, but overall are not so good about teaching the creative arts, at least not from what I’ve seen. Since the Bible itself is largely poetry and literature, and many essential religious truths cannot be expressed in rational prose but are communicated best through art, I think clergy have an obligation to nurture their own creative sides and think about how to use art to preach the Gospel. My exhibit of photographs and my book of images and poetry that came out of this project is one small step towards doing that in my own ministry.
The projects were wonderfully diverse, addressing issues including modern-day slavery (sex trafficking), treatment of undocumented immigrants on the border in Arizona, acceptance of LBGTQ people in the Black Church, healing "moral injury" among returned combat veterans, farm-church relations in rural Vermont and New Hampshire, developing multi-cultural community in churches, the inclusion of Asian-American or Pacific Islanders among the clergy in different churches, and issues of God's presence during the "dark night of the soul" and healing of mental illness.
Eight of us traveled internationally, with visits to Spain, Hungary, Greece, Albania, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Nigeria, South Sudan, South Africa, and China. The fellow who traveled to South Sudan was there when South Sudan was declared an independent country this summer and got to witness "the birth of a nation." The projects that were not specifically issues-focused were mostly centered on addressing personal needs for healing, pilgrimage, prayer and renewal, providing a model for the importance of self-care in pastoral ministry.
Hearing my fellow Fellows' stories and their journeys was inspiring and gave me hope for the future of the church. But the best thing that came out of our conference, in my opinion, was that our group covenanted to continue meeting with each other in the future, maybe bi-annually, as a support system for one another as we go forward into church leadership.
In preparing for my presentation, I wrote the following reflection on the development of my project and the outcomes of it. I spoke on these themes and then shared the book of images and poetry I created with the group, and also posted an "exhibit" of some enlargements of my photographs on the wall in the conference room. I was surprised to find that many people asked if my book or the enlarged images would be available for purchase, so I am working on how to make that possible. I will post information about that on this blog when it is available.
Here's my "re-cap" of my Ministry Fellowship experience and what I presented to the group this week. Thanks to all of you who followed my journey this summer.
Ministry Fellowship Re-Cap
The issue I engaged with in this project had to do with participation in and with people of other religions in religious practice. It started with a story about an interfaith conference I attended where we all participated in worship services from different traditions. Rather than try to plan a generic, “interfaith” worship, they opted to offer many different worship services that were very specific – a Muslim Friday prayer service, a Jewish Sabbath service, Hindu meditation practice, and a Christian Eucharist, which was led by an Episcopal priest. I found that Eucharist very moving because all these people of different faiths were participating in the most sacred ritual of my tradition. I learned later that it is against the official rules of the Episcopal Church to offer communion to non-Christians, so what the priest did that day was in violation of her ordination vows. This all got me thinking about the value of boundaries between traditions as well as the ways in which we can experience God in and through religions and religious services other than our own.
My original idea for the project was to make an interfaith pilgrimage with my friend Valarie Kaur, who is a Sikh and who has been to churches with me and has received communion in the Episcopal Church. The idea was for us to visit each other’s holy lands – for me to go to India with her and for her to come to Israel with me. She was not able to travel with me, however, so I ultimately chose to make the pilgrimage alone, and to travel just to Israel instead of India – because I could not afford to travel to both places and from what I could gather, it would be safer and more manageable for me to travel alone in Israel than in India.
I still planned to make an “interfaith” pilgrimage by visiting sacred sites from different traditions – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Baha’i – and by meeting and talking with people involved in interfaith work in the Holy Land. The “dissemination piece” of the project was to chronicle my journey on my blog and to document the trip artistically through photography and to create an exhibit of my photos for display at my seminary and my home parish once I returned.
Although I did visit sites from different religious traditions, there were often restrictions against non-Muslims or non-Jews or non-Baha’is visiting except during certain hours or under certain circumstances, and I found that I spent most of my time visiting and meditating on Christian sites. I found myself more shy or hesitant about just walking in to a mosque or a synagogue (the ones that WERE more open and less restricted). I did visit the White Mosque in Nazareth, which was open to the public, but no one was there except one man praying in the corner and I felt very out of place and feared it would be obvious I wasn’t a Muslim and people someone would wonder why I was there if they came in and saw me. I walked through the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem but did not enter any of the historic synagogues I came across, even though they were likely open. I simply did not feel comfortable just walking in to a religious place of another tradition like I did walking into any of the churches I visited. On a visceral level, I felt that I did not belong there, that it wasn’t my holy place.
This was strange for someone who usually feels very comfortable visiting places of worship of many different traditions and has spent a good bit of my adult life working in interfaith work. I realized, however, that I had not often visited other religions’ places of worship entirely on my own. I was either going to do research and had an appointment to speak with someone, or I went with friends who were followers of that faith, to accompany them to a service or event. I had visited mosques and synagogues in Turkey and Greece and Italy on my foreign study trip in college, but I was with a large class and a guide every time I entered the places. Although I know some people draw from many different traditions in their own personal spirituality, for me as someone deeply grounded in one particular faith, I came to the somewhat obvious but still very insightful observation that I can’t be “interfaith” by myself – that a crucial element of “interfaith” is actually engaging with a PERSON of a different faith and encountering that faith through that other human – and that without that personal engagement, my encounter with sites from different religious was less meaningful and even intimidating.
This pilgrimage raised awareness for me about the importance of developing interfaith friendships and relationships, and how that really has to come through person-to-person engagement, not just through learning about other religions in a book or visiting other places of worship. While I think it’s great that some churches participate in interfaith “tours” of their cities or towns, where a group from the church will visit the local synagogue or mosque, I think these trips are largely in vain if they are not also accompanied by very real opportunities for the people from those two congregations to develop relationships with each other – which doesn’t happen naturally when they’re both serving in an “ambassador” or “host” role for their house of worship and their tradition. Programming social and outreach events with other religious communities where Christians can interact in more “normal” settings with Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Baha’is, and others is crucial for the future of interfaith leadership in the church, in my opinion.
My encounter with Palestinians in the West Bank through a one-day trip I took to Bethlehem also opened my eyes to the very real dangers of “exceptionalist” theology that asserts that we are God’s chosen and either implicitly or explicitly justifies degradation and violence toward other groups. I wrestle with how to preach certain passages from the Old Testament about Israel as God’s chosen people and God giving the land to the Jews in light of the ways that theology has caused the suffering and subjugation of the Palestinian people.
My encounter with the injustice in the West Bank made me question the significance of my original plan to produce an exhibit of photos as the "outcome" of this trip. Who cares about my "pretty pictures" when there are people suffering in the world? I wondered. I felt like my presentation and the outcome of my trip should be entirely about Palestinian advocacy -- to focus solely on an artistic response seemed not important and serious enough.
A poetry reading in Sewanee this summer after I returned helped to change that response. Nick Flynn's integration of his experiences traveling to Turkey to meet with Iraqi people who had been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib into his poetry made me realize that art can be used for advocacy, and the two need not be mutually exclusive. (I know I had known this before, but that poetry reading was a helpful reminder and example of the ways in which advocacy can be done through art.) This helped me to move forward with my plans to create an exhibit and I even decided, at the suggestion of my husband, to try my hand at some poetry myself to accompany the images.
Re-engaging with my creative side through this project also reminded me of the importance of nurturing the creative arts among the clergy. Seminaries are very good about teaching students book knowledge and even hands-on knowledge of ministry experience, but overall are not so good about teaching the creative arts, at least not from what I’ve seen. Since the Bible itself is largely poetry and literature, and many essential religious truths cannot be expressed in rational prose but are communicated best through art, I think clergy have an obligation to nurture their own creative sides and think about how to use art to preach the Gospel. My exhibit of photographs and my book of images and poetry that came out of this project is one small step towards doing that in my own ministry.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
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.
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.
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