How to Save Your Life: A Sermon for Proper 19, Year B

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I have a routine  as I prepare sermons week to week. I try to read the texts as early as possible. If I get a good nap on Sunday afternoon, I’ll look at them in the late afternoon or evening. The gospel reading will echo in my mind all week, as I continue to mull it over. There are a couple of websites I visit to read commentaries and reflections. I look back at sermons I’ve previously preached on the text. I think about what’s going in the world, the city, and in our congregation. I’m always looking for a new idea, a new perspective that will give me a new way of thinking about the text, as well as a way for you to enter into the text as well, and to explore how that text might inform your own life. Continue reading →

Even dogs get table-scraps: A Sermon for Proper 18, Year B

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Two images have dominated my reflections, and the news, over the last week. The first is that image of a 2-year old Syrian boy, his body washed up on the beach. The second is that of Kim Davis, the County Clerk in Kentucky who has been jailed for contempt of court because she refuses to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples. Continue reading →

Madison’s Mayor Trump: The Criminalization of homelessness

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The Philosophers’ Stones are gone; as of October 1, the City-County Building will no longer be a place of sanctuary for homeless people. Mayor Soglin has proposed an ordinance that would make it illegal to stay on a public bench for longer than an hour. has proposed an ordinance that would make it illegal to stay on a public bench for longer than an hour.  has proposed an ordinance that would make it illegal to stay on a public bench for longer than an hour. It seems that the Mayor is putting into action for Madison’s homeless population what Donald Trump is proposing for undocumented aliens–deporting them all. Certainly, he’s been successful in riling up passions (and eventually bringing other politicians into line with him–this was the third vote on the ban at the City-County Building).

But just like Trump’s ideas, criminalizing homelessness won’t work.. In the first place, there are serious constitutional questions about the Mayor’s proposed ordinance. And second, if there is no place for homeless people to sleep, then I suppose they’ll be arrested and jailed (where at least they’ll have a roof over their heads and meals.

The harsh reality is that we don’t have housing for all of the people who need. The vacancy rate in Madison hovers around 2%, and although I’ve heard rumors that there are signs that developers have nearly saturated the market for upscale student housing, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of interest in providing adequate, affordable housing in Madison or Dane County.

And then there’s this statistic from the Salvation Army today. They can accommodate at most 18-21 people in their emergency shelter. On August 31, 2015, 80 women and children sought shelter there.

We know what works. Housing First programs in places like Salt Lake City have successfully cut the numbers of chronic people at a significant cost savings. It’s estimated that on average, a homeless person costs taxpayers around $30,000/yr in services, especially emergency services (ER, police). Mayor Soglin likes to talk about Housing First, but he doesn’t actually want to commit city resources to providing housing for people on the scale necessary. Mayor, that’s sixty women and children who didn’t have a place to stay last night!

Where will Madison’s homeless go? I know the Mayor hopes they’ll all go back to where they came from. My guess is they’ll try to hide and eke out an existence where cops and politicians won’t see them. And if they do, the Mayor will have solved his problem. Out of sight, out of mind.

Baptism: Being Called to Journey into the heart of God’s Love: A Sermon for Proper 17, Year B

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Today we will be baptizing Serena. Baptisms are joyous events in the lives of individuals, their families, and the church. Serena’s baptism is especially joyous for me, because I was privileged to participate in her parents’ wedding, and even more so, because I first met Serena the day she was born. In the nearly eight months since that day, we’ve watched her grow, develop a personality. Though unbaptized, she has already attended at least two vestry meetings where she has delighted, and occasionally diverted, us all. Continue reading →

Abiding in the presence of Christ: A Sermon for Proper 16, Year B

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Today is a historic day for Grace Church. As we break ground officially on our renovation project, it’s important to acknowledge all of the hard work and vision that have brought us to this moment. We’ve been working on this for three years. As I’ve said before, there have been countless meetings, hours and hours of conversation and debate. Almost everyone involved at Grace has participated in some way in the work as we’ve developed, revised, revised, and revised again the Master Plan, saw our Giving Light, Giving Hope capital campaign to its successful conclusion, and helped us prepare our facilities for construction and the move. Continue reading →

A Hymn for the Feast of the Transfiguration and Hiroshima Day

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Today is August 6. In the liturgical calendar, we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, remembering when Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah (Mk. 9:2-8). Today is also the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima. It’s a horrific confluence of commemorations as the gospels’ description of the event: Jesus’ face transfigured, his clothes dazzling white, and at the end, a cloud descending upon them, eerily mirrored by the power and devastation of the atomic blast. Here’s a hymn for the day, from Aelred-Seton Shanley, posted at Company of Voices:

  

An honest and humble atheist: Mark Vernon reviews John Gray’s “The Soul of a Marionette

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Church authorities confuse God’s mission in the world with a plan for their church designed to halt numerical decline. Or they feel that Christianity requires them to seek global solutions to intractable issues such as immigration or poverty. The Christian task is at once much simpler and more demanding: it is to show compassion to those who are cursed by political, social and religious systems. That’s harder than nurturing fantasies such problems can be solved – the whole of history shows they can’t – because it leads in one direction: to the cross.

Read it all: 

How #Ferguson changed me

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Jamelle Bouie has a piece on Slate in which he reflects on the year since Michael Brown’s death and how it has changed America.

As I read it, I began thinking about how I had been changed by Ferguson. I think it was this photo (shot by Whitney Curtis of the New York Times) that did it:

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That photo captures a key dynamic in contemporary America: a militarized police force that apparently regards African-Americans as the enemy to be subjugated by means of any force necessary. It’s a photo of White Supremacy and racism exposed for what it is. It’s a photo of our America, an image I can’t get out of my mind because it reveals all of our hypocrisy as well as the evil at the heart of American culture and history.

I went back through my blog to look at how I’ve addressed racism over the years. It’s quite telling. Before the release of the Race to Equity report that detailed the horrific racial disparities in Madison and Dane County, there’s a smattering of references to racism on my blog. Since Ferguson, it’s probably the dominant topic. I’ve preached about it, written about, participated in demonstrations. I’ve read more about racism in the last year than I had in the decades since taking a course on African-American history in college. Racism and America’s culture of violence will be a major focus of our programming at Grace in the coming year.

Boo goes through the litany of deaths and protests and at the end of his recitation, he points out how politicians, mainstream media, and corporations have been forced to address issues of racism. At the end of it all, he writes:

If Ferguson was an earthquake—a tectonic shift in our arguments over race and racism—then a year later, we’re not just feeling the aftershocks. We’re preparing for the next blow.

Bouie did not mention how Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatter have changed American Christianity and I’m looking forward to reading similar retrospectives from theologians and religious commentators.

 

 

Sharing the Bread of Life: A Sermon for Proper 13, Year B, 2015

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This past week, I had an interesting encounter with a young homeless man. He came to the reception desk at Grace and asked to speak to me. He said he needed assistance and counseling. I brought him up to my office and began asking him questions, trying to figure out what he was looking for, what he needed. Eventually, he told me that he needed money to go somewhere. The story he gave me was rather flimsy, so I ended up not providing financial assistance.

I remembered that he also had asked for some counseling, so I tried to engage him in conversation around his life, the struggles he was having. Whatever had led him to ask for counseling, by the time he got into my office, he was not about to share anything substantive about his life. So I led him out of the building and sent him on his way. But a few minutes later he was back. This time, he wondered whether we had a computer he might use. Of course, we don’t, but I pointed out to him that public computers are available in the Central Library, and that Bethel has a computer room as well.` Continue reading →

Moving the men’s drop-in shelter from Grace

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An article by Pat Schneider provides some background on the potential move. It is an exciting prospect for the future of homeless services in Madison, and for Grace Church, too. If the shelter moves, we will engage the community and our congregation in a conversation about our future ministry and mission in a spot where we have been worshiping and serving God for over 150 years. At the same time, we will continue to advocate for “the least of these.”