Monthly Archives: November 2009

An interesting week

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I saw a side, or sides, of Madison that I hadn’t yet encountered. Wednesday night was the Porchlight Inc annual dinner and awards presentation. Grace Church was very well represented to support our own Russ Boushele who received one of the achievement awards. We met some people, who were often introduced to us, or introduced themselves to us, as former members of Grace. It was a wonderful opportunity to make some connections with people, from across the spectrum. There were people who volunteer at the shelter who made a point of introducing themselves to us.

Thursday night was another banquet, this time Downtown Madison, Incs, annual affair. I went as a guest of Home Savings Bank, our neighbor across W. Washington, and where we do our banking, both as a church and personally. I had a great time getting to know some people and the presentation by the head of Portland, OR’s metro council was very interesting. He focused on the relationship between transportation and urban planning. It reminded me of how very different life is for us here than it was in Greenville. We only have one car, and there are usually several days in the week when it doesn’t leave the garage. Living and working downtown has made an enormous difference in our lives. We have gotten to know other downtown residents as well as people who work and own businesses on Capitol Square. It’s a neighborhood in ways the subdivision we lived in was not.

Friday night, we went to the Symphony concert, thanks to tickets passed on to us by friends. It was great fun, and something of a surprise. We had heard the Nashville Symphony, Spartanburg, and never made it to Greenville’s because, well, we didn’t think it would be worth the trouble. But Madison’s orchestra is quite good and they played a couple of interesting pieces (on the other hand, the concert opened with “The Fountains of Rome”). Afterwards, we went to the cafe on the top floor of the Art Museum for snacks and drinks, and again were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food.

We recognized a few people at all three events, and again, had interesting conversations with random people we met. A vibrant downtown is a wonderful thing, and I keep wondering how we might make Grace an integral part of that vibrant scene, not just scenery that people walk past.

Celebrating success, remembering failure

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As I left the church at the end of the day today, I passed the guys as they waited in the misty evening for the shelter doors to open. I caught sight of Russ’s head, and asked what he was doing hanging around with them. Tonight was the big annual awards dinner that Porchlight puts on, and Russ was one of the honorees. He claimed to be waiting for his ride, but he was an hour early.

As I watched him, and later at the dinner as I continued watching him, it was clear that he was more comfortable with the homeless guys than at the dinner. But when he received the award and spoke, he was himself and beautifully eloquent.

As we ate, I couldn’t help but think of the men I passed on my way home, waiting to get into the shelter out of the cold, damp night, and what they would be eating tonight. Porchlight does some wonderful things and we heard some great success stories. We also got to meet or listen to some of their dedicated staff. It was a moving evening, but even as we ate, and listened, I remembered those men, waiting in line for shelter.

respect the dignity of every human being

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In the baptismal covenant, which we Episcopalians affirm at every baptism, we promise to “respect the dignity of every human being.” What that means, and to whom that vow extends may be a matter of debate. But it shouldn’t be. And that vow is why I am concerned about the treatment of the men who stay at the homeless shelter as well as those people who come to our food pantry. We are not a social service agency. We are the church, the body of Christ. I have said repeatedly that radical hospitality means welcoming everyone in, and treating everyone who comes in our doors with dignity and respect. We are not the federal government; we are not a social service agency. We are the Church, and when we act we must act with the mind of Christ and knowing that we are encountering Christ in the faces of those to whom we minister.

If we do not treat those who come to our doors with dignity, then we are not doing what we are called to do.

In the State Journal article about our sexton, the caption on Russ’s photo reads, “he learned to show respect for homeless people ‘because everyone is human and deserves some dignity’.” There’s nothing more important, more profound, that one can say.

More on communion

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I had a conversation yesterday about “open communion” with a new parishioner who shared with me the story of her journey to the Episcopal Church. She came to Grace from a church in another state where open communion was practiced; that is to say, communion was not restricted to baptized Christians. I have written before on this issue and needn’t repeat myself. Certainly, our practice does exclude people–the unbaptized.

But there are other ways to exclude people. I’ve also been asked by members of Grace why I don’t address people by name when I distribute communion. The answer to that is simple. To do so is to elevate the relationship between priest and parishioner above the relationship between Jesus Christ and the one receiving communion. When I place bread in someone’s hand, or offer them the chalice, I am sharing Jesus Christ with them, not myself. I came across an interesting observation concerning this at Anglicans Online. You may read it here.

But there’s something else even more important. I don’t know everyone’s name who comes to the altar rail. I will never know the name of everyone who comes to receive communion, and to name some people while leaving others unnamed is to create distinction between insider and outsider, between those with whom I have a relationship and those I don’t.

Some final thoughts on the Letter to the Hebrews

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I did little more than make an occasional mention of the readings from the Letter to the Hebrews as we read from it these past weeks. That’s a shame because it is a rich homiletical resource, full of theological and ethical material. In fact, it’s not a letter at all. The epistolary material is tacked on at the end. Instead, it is exhortation, a sermon. It is anonymous, although the tradition attributed to Paul from a very early point, but careful readers throughout history knew Paul didn’t write it. It’s very different in style, language, and viewpoint. And it was probably written in the latter part of the first century; couldn’t have been later than that, because second century Christian texts seem to reflect its ideas.

The Letter to the Hebrews is important to both the theological and liturgical traditions of the Church, with its emphasis on Christ as High Priest, offering himself as sacrifice. One thing that has interested me as I read and listened this fall is the question of the connection between the letter and the destruction of the temple. It’s easy to interpret Hebrews as supersessionist; that is to say, that Christianity replaces (supercedes Judaism). But if the temple sacrifice to which Hebrews refers has ended with the destruction of the temple, then it could be read as an attempt to make sense of the lack of sacrifice in a new historical context. No doubt biblical scholars have lavished hundreds of pages on this question, which I’ve obviously not read, but I do think one can construe the discussion of temple sacrifice as something that has taken place in the past and takes place no longer; thus it requires some sort of symbolic meaning.

Even though I’m an Episcopalian and a priest, I’m not particularly comfortable with the use of language of “sacrifice” in the liturgy, even if it is muted, and often reinterpreted (“we offer you our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving”). I’ve mentioned before that the Latin roots of the word literally “to make holy” which carries a very different sense than our contemporary meaning of sacrifice. Well, perhaps I will have the opportunity to preach on Hebrews in the three years, if not before.

Hospitality, Dignity, and the Work of the Church

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I’ve been at Grace for a little over three months. I’ve repeatedly said, during my interview with the Vestry, and when people have asked me about my attraction to this church, that chief among the things that appealed to me were the presence of the homeless shelter and the food pantry.

Like so many people, though, it’s easy for me to pay lip service to those important ministries, without actually taking the time to get to know them, or to get involved with them. OK, yes, Corrie and I did volunteer at the shelter meal soon after we arrived in Madison, and in the last few weeks, Corrie has become volunteered at the food pantry as well. And yes, I did meet with staff from Porchlight, who actually run the shelter. But the fact of the matter is, I have allowed other things to take precedence over these outreach efforts.

That’s about to change. It may be because of the change in seasons. As of November 1, the shelter observes winter hours, which means that if I leave the office around 5:00 pm, I will encounter guys standing in line, waiting to be let into the shelter. I’ve seen the line before, in the alley, on Fairchild St., but encountering them as I leave is a very different thing.

A couple of days ago, Russ came up to the office and mentioned that the previous night, there were three calls to 911 from the shelter between 8 and 9 pm. That’s outrageous, but a little reflection provides some perspective. They start queuing up around 4:00 pm. They are allowed in the shelter at 5:00; dinner is at 8:00 pm. That means that they are standing around waiting for about 4 hours. Plus, while there is room for around 50 guys at Grace, in fact most nights more than 100 men are housed, including at the two overflow shelters. That means there are roughly 100-150 men waiting for dinner for three hours in a space that can comfortably accommodate 1/3 of that number. It’s a recipe for disaster, which is why disasters occur so often.

As a church, we have a responsibility to see to it that programs we support treat human beings with dignity, and if that doesn’t happen, that we do everything in our power to see that it does. Matthew 25 includes Jesus’ famous words about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. “Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.” We are not treating the homeless, or indeed those who visit our pantry, as if they were Jesus Christ. We should.

I have already said a great deal about hospitality in the time I’ve been at Grace. I am going to have to say more.

20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

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I suppose I need to write about this, if only because I experienced a tiny bit of the German Democratic Republic in 1980, and visited Berlin in 1991, after reunification. When I studied in Marburg in 1979 and 1980, one of the stark realities I immediately confronted was the Cold War. I remember walking in the countryside not far from the border with East Germany and having “tank traps” pointed out to me by my hosts. I remember conversations with a dorm-mate who was an officer in the Bundeswehr reserve. His unit’s mission was to hold the line for twenty minutes in case of Soviet invasion, to give the Amis ample time to shoot off their nuclear missiles. I remember living through NATO exercises, the daylong drone of tanks driving on the autobahn through Marburg.

Most memorable of all was the week-long visit to East Germany. We toured Dresden, Leipzig, and some of the countryside. It was gray, depressing, and lifeless. Everyone we talked to spouted regime propaganda, and we had two tourguides whose job was to make sure they each stayed in line.

I followed events in 1989 with great interest and was excited about the prospect of experiencing the final events of reunification in 1990. We took the train from southern Germany to Berlin in February of 1990 and were fascinated by what we saw. Reunification meant people purchased cars and satellite dishes, but buildings remained in disrepair. It reminded us a great deal of travelling through the South where one might see a satellite and brand-new car outside of a derelict house trailer.

One of my lasting memories is pulling into a train station in the East–it might have been Jena, but I don’t remember. On the platform opposite were lots of people standing waiting for another train. They had piles of stuff; luggage, trashbags full of personal items, furniture. I even saw a toilet commode. As Corrie and I watched a train pulled in. It was marked with the insignia of the Soviet Army. Apparently, it was families of Soviet soldiers waiting for the train that would return them home. As we later learned, Soviet soldiers and their families stripped their bases of everything that was moveable.

When we got to Berlin, the changes were obvious. There were only a few places where the wall still stood. Checkpoint Charlie, which I remember passing through in 1980 was no longer used. It was as if history was being erased in front of our eyes.

For a few months in 1989 and early 1990, there was a sense that something new might emerge from the wreckage of the Soviet Bloc. That was true in Czechoslavakia as well as in East Germany. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. At the time, many referred to reunification as “Anschluss” the term Hitler used to refer to the integration of Austria into the Third Reich.

Widows and Orphans

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Widows and Orphans

Proper 27, Year B

November 8, 2009

 

 

I hope that as you listened to the reading from the Book of Ruth, you were filled with questions and puzzlement. There’s a whole lot there in those few verses that doesn’t seem to make sense from a contemporary perspective, and it seems like we’re missing a whole lot of the story. Well, we are missing much of the story. Had we not been celebrating All Saints’ last Sunday, we would have heard the first few verses of the book of Ruth, which might have helped to put today’s reading in context.

The book of Ruth is a fascinating and compelling piece of literature, and to give it its due, we should have read the whole thing. It is set in the period of the Judges, before the formation of the monarchy, and one of its purposes is to provide a small bit of King David’s genealogy. Ruth and Boaz are the grandparents of David’s father Jesse. But it’s much more than that. It is a story about love and loss, about friendship and commitment, and about humans’ responsibility to provide for the weak and defenseless.

A man and his wife move from Bethlehem to the neighboring country of Moab during a time of famine. They have two sons, and the sons marry Moabite women—one is named Ruth, the other Orpah. The man dies, leaving his wife, Naomi, a widow. Ten years later, the two sons die, leaving their wives childless. Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem since the famine is over, in hopes of finding refuge with relatives. She tells her daughters-in-law to remain behind, but one of them, Ruth refuses. The words she says are among the most familiar in all of biblical literature: “Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

The drama of the book of Ruth gains urgency because of the extremely vulnerable position in which childless widows were placed in ancient patriarchal societies. The Torah stipulated that if a married man died without an heir, his brother was responsible for marrying the childless widow and ensuring the dead man’s name would live on. It is, from the twenty-first century perspective, a frighteningly patriarchal rule, dependent on the notion of wife as property and her value only in giving birth to male heirs.

There’s another side to the story, however. As vulnerable, weak, without any connection to family, a widow’s plight was dire. This is obvious in that, when left widowed, Naomi chooses to return to an uncertain home and urges her daughters-in-law to return to their families, where they might be welcomed back. When they come to Bethlehem, Ruth forages for food. Torah explicitly commanded that when farmers harvested grain, they were to leave some for the destitute, so that they might glean it.

Ruth gleans in Boaz’s fields, comes to his attention, and he ensures that she gathers enough for both her and Naomi. He is a kinsman of Naomi, and the text suggests that he comes to see the two widows as his responsibility, that the responsibility of levirate marriage extends beyond brothers, to all male relatives. In the text we heard today, Ruth and Boaz are married, and become the grandparents of King David.

It’s remarkable that such a story is in the Bible; perhaps it was told and preserved because of the connection to King David, but to have so much space in an ancient text focused on the lives of women, especially widows is worth pointing out. As I said, widows in ancient culture were the most marginal of people, Ruth, because she was an alien, was even more marginal. Yet Hebrew scripture took note of her, and Israelite law, Torah, cared for her and all those like her. Again and again in scripture, a law setting a preference for the widow, orphan, or alien, is based on the Hebrews’ experience as foreigners in Egypt: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest… you shall leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the Lord your God.”

It is a concern the prophets come back to again and again, Amos and Isaiah, for example repeatedly criticize the Israelites of their day for oppressing the poor, for neglecting the obligations of the law for the aliens and the outcast. But that such laws were continually ignored is shown by Jesus’ very similar teachings.

In today’s gospel, we see another widow, one who didn’t benefit from all the legal requirements on behalf of widows and orphans. It is a dramatic scene from the closing days of Jesus’ public ministry. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus enters Jerusalem (the triumphal entry) on Sunday, goes to the temple to look around, then goes back out of the city to spend the night. Each following day, he returns to the temple where he engages in teaching and disputation with opponents. In fact this is one of those moments of confrontation.

Jesus threw out the money-changers the day before. Today he has had a series of encounters with leading religious figures—Pharisees, scribes, Sadducees. And then comes this little incident with the widow. Jesus sits down, opposite the treasury, and watches everyone coming in to give donations. Note that he does not criticize their actions; he doesn’t rail against the wealth and opulence of the treasury and all that it represent. Instead, he draws his disciples’ attention to this woman who gives two almost worthless coins, everything she had.

There’s a powerful irony here; perhaps you noticed it. Jesus has just criticized the scribes “who devour widows’ houses and say long prayers.” Now, moments later, no doubt in the presence of such scribes and others who are making their ostentatious donations to the temple treasury, comes one of these widows to make her tiny, but all-significant donation.

It’s an act that challenges us and our faithfulness to Jesus Christ to the very core. We might be tempted to read it, as Christians have so often done over the centuries, as Jesus’ simple and straightforward commendation of a widow’s actions. And so it is. But it is also, clearly, a continuation of Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes. He has just mentioned that the scribes destroy widows’ houses, was hers one of those? And note that in fact Jesus does not here condemn those others who give out of their abundance—that’s all well and good, but the widow, she gives all.

We, too, most of us, give out of our abundance and there’s more than a slight chance that we receive a pang of guilt when we hear the story of the widow who gives all. In fact, studies reveal that in contemporary America, the poor give a much larger percentage of their income to charity than do the wealthy. The same is true of giving to churches.

But there’s another question confronting us in this text. Our focus is naturally drawn to the widows’ actions; but what about Jesus’ condemnation of the scribes, for destroying widows’ houses? What actions, what aspects of our lives and lifestyles are dependent on the abject poverty of people in much of the world? What is our responsibility to them? What is our complicity in their oppression?

Once again, the gospel leaves us, not with warm, fuzzy feelings, but with challenges, in a very hard place. For us who would be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, we have to ask not only what is he calling us to do, but what is our responsibility to those who are less fortunate than ourselves. Is it simply to give a little something from our abundance? Or should we, like Jesus, challenge those in authority to create a society that is more just, that takes care of the widow and orphan, the weak, the oppressed, the alien.

 

The Book of Ruth

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It’s a pity that last Sunday was All Saints’ because we missed the chance to hear the first reading in the lectionary cycle from the Bok of Ruth. This week’s proper (27) provides a brief synopsis of the denouement, of Ruth’s marriage to Boaz and of their son Obed, who would become King David’s grandfather.

Ruth is a wonderful piece of literature, a short story, or novella, full of drama and written with great skill. Scholars debate when it was written. There are those who argue for the monarchic period because it provides David with a genealogy and because it bears considerable similarity to the Book of Judges, which is when the story takes place. Other scholars argue for a post-exilic origin. Their rationale is that it seems to challenge the post-exilic opposition to intermarriage. And it does spectacularly by giving David a foreign great-grandmother.

It seems to me the provenance is unimportant. What is important is what it tells us about the author’s values. Yes, marriage between Jews (Israelites) and non-Jews is acceptable, but more important still is the treatment of those foreigners, and of widows, the marginalized. Naomi and Ruth are left homeless, without a safety net, but Jewish law provides them with one–the opportunity to glean what hasn’t been harvested from the fields, and the obligation of male relatives to take care of widows.

There is a strong patriarchal bent to the story. Levirate marriage (the requirement that a brother must marry his brother’s childless widow, in order that the family name might be preserved) is predicated on the priority of males, and the notion that a wife is in some sense property. But perhaps in the ancient near east, the alternative was even worse. A widow, who was brought into her husband’s family, could be turned out of that family if she had no sons, and might not be welcomed back by her parents and siblings.

Levirate marriage is alluded to in the gospels as well, in fact in Mark 12:18-27, the Sadducees pose a question of Jesus that presupposes Levirate marriage although it in fact is challenging Jesus about the resurrection of the dead.

The week at Grace

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One of the things I knew would be very different about serving at Grace from my most recent work at St. James Greenville, and at Furman, would be the many encounters with people on the street, and with people who came by the church looking for help. At St. James, we had a few regulars–people who would come by looking for financial support every six months or so–which was the limit we placed on such help. We also dealt with “cold-callers,” people who phoned every church in the Yellow Pages, until they got a positive response. What we didn’t get, or very often at least, were people who just dropped in because they were in the area.

That’s not true at Grace. There’s a constant stream of people coming to the door, looking for help. We’ve got a relationship with a social service agency who screens our requests for us, but still there are people who will show for help on a regular basis. Usually, such requests are simply routine–they need money for a bus ticket, for a utility bill, or for gas. But sometimes, the requests, and the stories behind them are remarkable. And sometimes, people come to Grace, not because they need financial help, but because there’s nowhere to turn.

We’ve had a couple of the latter in the past few weeks, and watching how Grace’s members respond in situations like this is amazing. One African-American family, whose story included both 9-11 in Manhattan AND Katrina, ended up at Grace looking for food. In the few weeks since they first visited, they have been welcomed in, embraced, and have pitched in. Now, the parents have jobs, they’ve moved from a shelter into an apartment, and things seem to be normalizing.

One recent Sunday after services, a parishioner encountered a woman trying to find a way into the church. It turns out she and her husband were visiting from the west coast, and he had a major medical emergency while in Madison. He was in ICU and the prognosis wasn’t clear. She’s been taken in, quite literally, by members of Grace, cared for and helped along the way.

The point is, if Grace weren’t where it is, neither of those encounters would have taken place. Our location can be a burden at times (especially when the square is closed off for an event), but we are in a unique place to do ministry and mission. People come to us; and our only response can be to welcome them in. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Grace so far is how welcoming the people of Grace are to almost anyone who comes in our doors.