Monthly Archives: April 2013

A New Community, A New Commandment: A Sermon for Easter 5, Year C

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Today is an exciting, scary day in the life of Grace Church. After nearly nine months, after several iterations of plans, after dozens of meetings, hundreds of conversations, thousands of emails, we will finally get to see the master plan that has been developed by Vince Micha and his team from Kubala Washatko Architects. Many of us are eager for today’s worship to conclude so we can get on to the main event. Others, I’m sure, are either totally unaware what a master plan might be and how it might affect Grace Church, or don’t care one way or another. Some of you might be thinking that to focus on bricks and mortar is a diversion from what the church really ought to be about. That’s a legitimate concern and unless our renovations are connected to our mission in the world, if our renovations are only designed to make us more comfortable, then we are falling far short of the people God is calling us to be. Continue reading →

Master Plan and Mission

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We’ve been working with Vince Micha and the Kubala Washatko Architects on a master plan for renovations of Grace Church. Today, they made a presentation of plans with budget numbers. In my opening remarks, I sought to connect the master plan with Grace’s mission. Here is what I said:

Where Anglican tradition engages the contemporary world, Grace Church
opens its doors on Madison’s Capitol Square, inviting all to join us in sharing
the love of Jesus Christ in worship and in outreach to our neighbors and the world. –Grace’s Mission Statement

I took a call this week from someone who was looking for space to use on Saturday morning. A group of runners in Crazylegs wanted to gather for prayer before the race. I mentioned the courtyard but pointed out that there was nowhere to sit and because of logistics, we couldn’t offer them anywhere inside the building that day. Later yesterday, in addition to the food pantry in the morning, in the evening AA met. There was also a dance in the guild hall and a free concert in the nave. Yesterday was a typical Saturday in many respects: several things going on, each of them facing obstacles of one sort or another but still drawing in a few dozen or a hundred people, not counting the guests that slept in the shelter last night. But remember, outside our doors on Saturday morning were the Dane County Farmers’ Market and Crazylegs. Thousands of people passed by Grace Church yesterday as they do every Saturday and during all of those weekends when there are festivals or parades or athletic events that wreak havoc with our parking. Thousands of people passed by our doors but did they notice? Did they try to come in? Was anyone in all those crowds trying to make a spiritual connection?

We are gathered today to hear from Vince Micha and his team about their master plan for renovations. We will also have some rough estimated numbers to go with the phases of the plan. At the end of our time together, Senior Warden Mary Ann Cook will speak briefly about the next steps in the process. She will also talk about fundraising. There are important questions about the financial side of this master plan that need to be addressed. The Vestry is working on all of that and will be communicating with the parish about all of those matters. But this meeting will focus on the architects’ presentation and on your questions related to the plan.

The Master planning process began in a desire to renovate and upgrade aspects of our physical space—the undercroft, restrooms, accessibility, and the like. Over the course of the last eight months, many of you have been engaged in sharing your ideas about our space, our needs, and your hopes for the future. The architects have listened carefully as they developed their plans in response to the themes they heard and these plans are both a response to what we’ve said as well as their vision of what our mission and ministry might look like in renovated space.

But that’s not the end of the process or the end of our conversation. I read our mission statement a few minutes ago. We need to ask several questions. 1) does this master plan embody our mission? Does it help us open our doors? Does it help us share the love of Jesus Christ with our neighbors and the world? If it does, wonderful! If it doesn’t or if it could be improved, then let’s work on that.

There’s a second set of questions that we need to ask. As a number of people have observed, the master plan reflects our current mission and ministry, our current programming. Well and good. But what will our mission, ministry, and programming look like in ten years? Is the master plan flexible enough to adapt to our changing needs and a rapidly changing culture? If it is, wonderful. If not, …

There’s often a tendency, well, I’ll call it a temptation, to distinguish between a congregation’s operating budget and physical plant on the one hand and its ministry and mission on the other. As I’ve said before, I think that’s wrong because it fails to take into account the vision of those who built this church and it fails to take into account the role our physical space plays in our community. There was a lot of open space in Madison when Grace Church was built. It could have been located almost anywhere, but this corner was chosen. Also chosen was a particular architectural style that sought to convey a message in the 19th century city landscape. Our fore-parents had a clear vision of what an Episcopal Church was in a 19th-century state capital. Their vision may no longer have quite the relevance it had 150 years ago. It may be that what we are doing is recasting a vision for an Episcopal Church in a state capital in the 21st century.

One way of asking this question is “How can Grace Church be a blessing to our community?” We have been blessed with a beautiful building, a spectacular location, a long history of civic involvement, and important outreach efforts. How can this master plan help us bless our community?

I would like to highlight several areas of focus that I think should engage us as we move forward with our masterplan.

1)    Helping people connect with the sacred, to find in Grace and in our programs opportunities to deepen their spiritual journeys. Of course, we already do that, through our worship and other programming. But what more can we do? Can our courtyard can become a place for gathering, even meditation? Can  we find ways of balancing security needs with making our nave or chapel open for visitors during the week? Can we, through redesign and greater accessibility, open our doors for outside groups to use our space more regularly, and at the same time develop worship, fellowship, and learning opportunities that take place at times other than Sunday morning and are attractive to those who live or work downtown, especially perhaps to young adults?

2)    Space to experience beauty—We have built a successful concert program “Grace Presents” thanks to the vision and hard work of Bruce Croushore and others, including the late Steve Smith. How can we foster the arts in other ways? Can we create space for exhibiting the visual arts, perhaps drama, encourage other concerts, even a resident performance group? How can we move beyond being a concert venue and become a community that encourages artists to engage the sacred both for the wider community and for themselves?

3)    Can we explore new ways of engaging the community and fostering dialogue and conversation about the role of religion in contemporary life? Our presence on Capitol Square next to the state capital and in the heart of a vibrant city is an opportunity for us to engage our civic community in conversations about the common good, about meaning and value, about the sort of community we want to create in this city and this state. All of these are contentious issues but the question for us is whether we can imagine Grace becoming a place where people of different points of view and perspectives, people from different segments of our community, with different assumptions and values, can come together for conversations that could seek commonality rather than division, hope instead of despair, and unite around a vision that seeks the good of all, not just of a few.

These are ambitious goals, big ideas. They are a combination of things I’ve heard from you over the past months and years, ideas percolating in the conversations around coffee hour, at vestry meetings, and as we’ve talked about the master plan. We might not be able to accomplish all of them, but if we do, and if the master plan helps us to accomplish them, then we will be a blessing to our neighborhood and to the wider world.

 

A faith that is not of our own making

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Some thoughts on reading the Hebrew Bible. Crossposted from chasingyoder.blogspot.com

A few years ago, when I was still teaching Religious Studies at a liberal arts college in the South, I made an off-hand reference to Adam and Eve in class one day. A student raised her hand and asked, “Who are they?” We live in a culture increasingly alienated from its past. That is as true of Christianity as it is of contemporary secular culture.

Read it all here.

The New Jerusalem: Lectionary reflections for 5 Easter, Year C.

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We’ve been reading from the Book of Revelation during this season of Easter. This is the only sustained engagement of the lectionary with the last book in the New Testament. That’s a shame, I suppose, because the richness of the other readings and the difficulties inherent in interpreting and preaching Revelation divert our attention. Looking back through my sermon files, it’s hardly a coincidence that my sermons in the Easter season rarely deal substantively with Revelation before the Fifth Sunday of Easter. There’s another reason for the sudden appearance of Revelation in my preaching in the Fifth and Sixth Sundays of Easter. It’s because, the lectionary readings for those weeks introduce John’s vision of the New Jerusalem.

As a reminder, on earlier Sundays we heard from the very beginning of the book (Rev. 1:4-8) and two different visions of heavenly worship: Rev. 5:11-14 and Rev. 7:9-17. Taken together, these readings along with those for the sixth and seventh Sundays of Easter do little to provide a full introduction to this complex, important, and enigmatic work. And I can’t do that in a blog post, either. Barbara Rossing’s commentaries on Working Preacher offer some introduction and her books also provide understandings of Revelation that go beyond the sensationalistic end-time prophecies of Hal Lindsey and Left Behind.

I spent a good bit of time during my academic career both as a scholar and a teacher, thinking about apocalyptic literature and the apocalyptic worldview. As a preacher and pastor, I have been especially interested in the contrasting images of human community and urban life presented in Revelation. There are two cities described in the book. One is the city John sees coming down from heaven, the New Jerusalem. We only catch a glimpse of it in this week’s reading but God, speaking for the first time in the book since its opening verses, has this to say:

“See, the home of God is with mortals.

He will dwell with them as their God;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

He will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

A fuller description of the New Jerusalem is provided in later in chapter 21 in 22 (excerpts from which are the reading for next Sunday). The key feature highlighted by the lectionary is the absence of a space set apart for God: “I saw no temple in the city; for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.”

The New Jerusalem is the second of two cities in Revelation. The other is Rome. We see its fullest description in Rev. 17 when John sees a vision of a whore clothed in purple and scarlet, with the inscription “Babylon the Great, Mother of whores.” She is seated on seven mountains, a clear reference to the seven hills of Rome. Revelation is a text that seeks to instruct its readers in the evils of Rome and in its eternal and totalistic enmity toward the Christian faith. John’s readers were meant to receive assurance that their suffering would be rewarded and that at the end God would prevail.

The vision of a city filled with the divine presence and filled as well with people from all the nations of the world joined in their worship of God redeems the overwhelming biblical understanding of the city as evil, from Genesis, where it is said that Cain founded the first city although through to Revelation itself. The New Jerusalem though is a redeemed and re-created city, inhabited by God and mortals, a community where there is no religious, social, or ethnic difference.

We have all sorts of ideas about ideal human community. In the twenty-first century, we might think of the nuclear family as the model for human community and many of us think of the church as “family” as well. I would guess that few of us would imagine a city as an ideal human community. Cities are dirty, noisy, full of crime. But cities are also redemptive and places where God’s grace is present. They might also be places where God is present everywhere and not just within the boundaries of the buildings or boxes within which we try to confine God.

Young men, alienation, religion, and violence

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Early days, yet and a lot of speculation about motivation. Clearly the elder brother was deeply alienated from American society; the younger brother seems by all accounts to a pretty normal kid, well-liked and popular at his school. Attention will focus on Chechnya and on Islam, but what about the possibility that their turn to the violence of extremism was a response to alienation rather than its cause?

In reading about their background and from those who knew them, I’m intrigued by the similar profiles of Tamerlan and other perpetrators of mass violence (like Adam Lanza and James Holmes). Mark Juergensmayer has this to say of these “lone wolf terrorist attacks”:

Some of these were committed by Christians, some by Muslims, and some by those with no particular religious affiliation at all. In almost all cases, though, these have been instances where lonely, alienated individuals have raged against a society that they thought had abandoned them.

Juergensmayer has engaged in research on the relationship between religion and violence for many years and deserves close reading.

A lengthy piece from AP gives background to the two men.

Some thoughtful, preliminary reflections on the two men:

From Ludger Viefhuis-Bailey, who write a book on Columbine:

The Tsarnaevs’ tweets and social media posts make the brothers appear as aimless young men, failing in their professional and academic lives, fascinated by violent sports, saddled with domestic violence, and confused about their place in American culture and society. Instead of being sleeper cells acting out an Islamic terror agenda, the bombers seem more like the killers of Columbine.

Anne Appelbaum sees parallels between the Tsarnaevs’ and perpetrators of bombings in Europe:

Although very little has been confirmed, the behavior of the Tsarnaev brothers looks less like that of hardened, trained terrorists and far more closely resembles the second-generation European Muslims who staged bombings in Madrid, London and other European cities. Educated and brought up in Europe, these young men nevertheless felt out of place in Europe. Unable to integrate, some turned toward a half-remembered, half-mythological homeland in search of a firmer, fiercer identity. Often they did so with the help of a radical cleric like the one the Tsarnaev brothers may have known. “I do not have a single American friend,” Tamerlan Tsarnaev reportedly said of himself. That’s the kind of statement that might have been made by a young Pakistani living in Coventry, or a young Algerian living in Paris.

David Remnick writes of the Tsarnaev family:

When Anzor [the young mens’ father]  fell sick, a few years ago, he resolved to return to the Caucasus; he could not imagine dying in America. He had travelled halfway around the world from the harrowed land of his ancestors, but something had drawn him back. The American dream wasn’t for everyone. What they could not anticipate was the abysmal fate of their sons, lives destroyed in a terror of their own making. The digital era allows no asylum from extremism, let alone from the toxic combination of high-minded zealotry and the curdled disappointments of young men. A decade in America already, I want out.

Josh Marshall writes in “Young men are weird”):

When we saw those pictures on Thursday it wasn’t clear there would be a foreign connection. To me, frankly, they looked like frat guys. It even occurred to me whether the perpetrators had consciously put on this sort of get up to disguise themselves. Knowing what we know now, that seems unlikely. But when I did see those pictures and see what looked more like frat kids than jihadis or white supremacists the thought that came to mind to me was Columbine — no clear ideology just the hard underlying precipitate of young male alienation, cockiness and aggression.

…

However that may be, and speaking in general as opposed to about this particular case, I don’t think we should see these as mutually exclusive explanations. Particularly in America and with young men like this I think these ideologies are something more like sheaths into which the same young unattached male toxicity is poured.

Is alienation from society combined with aggression more responsible for the Tsarnaevs’ actions than Islam? It’s interesting that reports from Muslims in Cambridge suggest Tamerlan was a problem for the local Muslim community.

Reviving our Souls: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 2013

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Reviving our Souls

 What a hard, hard week it’s been. There was the shock of the bombings at the Boston Marathon followed by the manhunt and the surreal day Friday with one of the great cities of our nation, the city Corrie and I still consider home in many ways, on lockdown. There were the suspected letters containing ricin sent to President Obama and other politicians. There was the devastating explosion at a fertilizer plant that killed at least fifteen people, most of them emergency personnel, with many more still missing. There were earthquakes in Iran, China, New Guinea. The national epidemic of gun violence continues unabated with 8 shootings in Chicago on Thursday alone. Our own wider community struggles with grief and all sorts of pastoral issues at well, including very serious illness. Continue reading →

Pray

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For West, Texas

For everyone in Boston

For all of us

Psalm 23

1 The LORD is my shepherd; *
I shall not be in want.

2 He makes me lie down in green pastures *
and leads me beside still waters.

3 He revives my soul *
and guides me along right pathways for his Name’s sake.

4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

5 You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; *
you have anointed my head with oil,
and my cup is running over.

6 Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

 


A Prayer for Victims of Terrorism

Loving God, Welcome into your arms the victims of violence and terrorism. Comfort their families and all who grieve for them. Help us in our fear and uncertainty, And bless us with the knowledge that we are secure in your love. Strengthen all those who work for peace, And may the peace the world cannot give reign in our hearts. Amen.

A Prayer for First Responders

Blessed are you, Lord, God of mercy, who through your Son gave us a marvelous example of charity and the great commandment of love for one another. Send down your blessings on these your servants, who so generously devote themselves to helping others. Grant them courage when they are afraid, wisdom when they must make quick decisions, strength when they are weary, and compassion in all their work. When the alarm sounds and they are called to aid both friend and stranger, let them faithfully serve you in their neighbor. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.- adapted from the Book of Blessings, #587, by Diana Macalintal

For the President of the United States and all in Civil Authority

O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We commend this nation to your merciful care, that, being guided by your Providence, we may dwell secure in your peace. Grant to the President of the United States, the Governor of this state, and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do your will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in your fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

For Peace

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

A Prayer Attributed to St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

For the Human Family

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For Quiet Confidence

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray you, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Jesus, you knew pain, you knew the loneliness, the weakness and the degradation it brings; you knew the agony.
Jesus, your suffering is the only hope, the only reconciliation for those who suffer.
Be with those in West, Texas and in Boston as they grapple with the pain they suffer now.
Be a promise to them, and to us, that this present suffering will cease; be the hand that they can hold; be present, Savior, for we need you now. –From A New Zealand Prayer Book

 

 

 

A rainy spring means hard times for the homeless in Madison: But a ray of hope…

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I’ve not written about homelessness issues recently because the situation for homeless people seems to be about as bleak as the weather we’ve been having. The day shelter closed last month; the overnight shelters went to summertime (!) hours and summertime policies and local government remains intransigent with regard to those who choose not to seek shelter in the shelters. The rays of hope are about as common as rays of sunshine.

But there are rays of hope. We’ll be meeting tomorrow to gather more info about the needs related to providing medical respite. In the coming weeks, I’ve also got meetings scheduled with people from the VA. And all of those people who continue to do good work and care for the homeless continue to do what they do at great personal sacrifice, with courage and love.

Which brings me to a remarkable story that’s transpiring this week at Grace. On Tuesday, I learned that a guy had been hanging out in the bus shelter on the corner of W. Wash and Fairchild during the day. A couple of people (our staff and volunteers) had reached out to him. His legs have been amputated and although he has prostheses, he also uses a wheelchair. Apparently, it had been stolen and one of his prostheses was causing some pain or perhaps an infection. Because the day shelter had closed and he was virtually immobile, the bus shelter was pretty much where he could be. Folks brought him sandwiches and drink and someone finally called 911.

A police cruiser came. Again, I’m just reporting what I’ve been told second-hand. The patrolman apparently took him to a hospital to get checked out, knowing that he would be back in the shelter in the evening. But the homeless man told the police officer that his wheelchair had been stolen. After dropping him off, the cop drove to the St. Vincent’s thrift store, bought a wheelchair with his own money, and brought it back to Grace, where we stowed it for the day and made sure it was there when the man came back.

But that’s not the end of the story. This morning, the cop came back by to check on the homeless man; to make sure he had received the wheelchair.

Now, there are all sorts of things about this story that are gut-wrenching and offensive.  I will own up to Grace’s participation in the outrage.  Our only defense is, how much more do Madison and Dane County expect us to do? But there are also broken shards of light in this story, in the response of our (and Porchlight) staff and volunteers. But especially there is the witness and actions of a police officer, who went out of his way and at his own expense, to buy a wheelchair and make sure that the man who needed it got it.

I will be sending a letter to the mayor and to the chief of police about this incident, praising the officer (whose name I know) and asking them whether they have the heart, the political will, and the courtesy to reach out in similar ways and to change the structures that make tragedy like a homeless man without a wheelchair and a minimally accessible shelter a daily occurrence in Madison.

Oh, and by the way? How about somewhere homeless people could find shelter from the rain?

Pray

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In the hours since the first reports of the explosions in Copley Square, many of us have been frantic to learn more and we’re distracted from whatever other tasks we might have had on our to-do lists. We want to reach out to friends, family, and acquaintances. We jump at every tidbit of news and at many rumors as well. Among the things we can, should, and need to do, is pray, but we may find words difficult at times like this. Here are some prayers from Unapologetically Episcopalian:

• Prayer for Victims of Terrorism

Loving God, Welcome into your arms the victims of violence and terrorism. Comfort their families and all who grieve for them. Help us in our fear and uncertainty, And bless us with the knowledge that we are secure in your love. Strengthen all those who work for peace, And may the peace the world cannot give reign in our hearts. Amen.

• A Prayer for First Responders

Blessed are you, Lord, God of mercy, who through your Son gave us a marvelous example of charity and the great commandment of love for one another. Send down your blessings on these your servants, who so generously devote themselves to helping others. Grant them courage when they are afraid, wisdom when they must make quick decisions, strength when they are weary, and compassion in all their work. When the alarm sounds and they are called to aid both friend and stranger, let them faithfully serve you in their neighbor. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

– adapted from the Book of Blessings, #587, by Diana Macalintal

• For the President of the United States and all in Civil Authority

O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We commend this nation to your merciful care, that, being guided by your Providence, we may dwell secure in your peace. Grant to the President of the United States, the Governor of Massachusetts, and to all in authority, wisdom and strength to know and to do your will. Fill them with the love of truth and righteousness, and make them ever mindful of their calling to serve this people in your fear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

• For Peace

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

• A Prayer Attributed to St. Francis

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Tragedy at the Boston Marathon

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I’m deeply distressed by the news coming out of Boston–the horror of it and how close it hits home for me. I lived in Boston for twelve years, walked Boylston St. thousands of times; did my field ed at First Baptist Boston which is only a couple of blocks away from the finish line.

Marathon Day was always special even if you never were a spectator. The day’s excitement was infectious even if you spent it in class or at work instead of along the route. It’s been changed forever, a reminder of the suffering, pain, and evil in the world.

Pray for Boston. Pray for our nation. Pray for the world. Pray for the human race.