You never know who might walk into the reception area at Grace

Posted on by
Reply

This afternoon, it was people from the United Way looking for a press conference.

“I don’t know anything about it,” I replied. Over the next few minutes, a larger group assembled, the cameras came, and eventually we all made our way downstairs into the Men’s Drop-In Shelter at Grace.

It turns out the press conference was about three local men’s experiences on the street last week. Pat Schneider provides details about local businessman Tim Metcalfe, Michael Johnson of the Boys and Girls Clubs, and Will Green of the Salvation Army, going undercover to experience what life is like for homeless men in Madison.

528ba06c32710.preview-620

The stories they told are heartwarming evidence of a generous community, with passers-by, restaurant managers, homeless people, and shelter staff acting with generosity and compassion.

One thing I learned this afternoon: current sleeping  capacity at Grace and the two overflow shelters is 140; last night 139 stayed in the three facilities. What will the numbers be when it gets cold?

 

Rector’s Annual Report

Posted on by
Reply

This is the fifth time I have come before you at Annual Meeting to give a report. I wonder whether that is as surprising to you as it is to me. In some respects, it seems like only a few days ago that I first walked through the doors of Grace Church; in other ways, it seems like we’ve been working and worshiping together for a very long time. Grace Church will celebrate the 175th anniversary of its organization as a parish in the coming year, and seen from that perspective, my tenure as rector is barely worth mention in our parish’s history. Historical perspective is always humbling.

In many ways, the past year has been consumed with work around the master plan. Later in today’s meeting, you will receive an update on where we are at—many of you have already had a chance to look at the revised plans for a first phase of renovations. We will also hear about the feasibility study for a Capital Campaign that will take place in the coming weeks. Throughout this process, I have challenged us to view any renovations in light of our mission here on Capitol Square. Even more important, we should be asking how our plans might help people in Madison, our friends, neighbors, and strangers, to connect with God, to encounter the sacred, and to develop and deepen their relationships with Jesus Christ. This is evangelism, even if most Episcopalians think that’s a dirty word. It might seem odd to think about our building as a tool for evangelism, but by opening our doors to the community, we are also opening up the possibility of conversations about God and encounters with God.

Evangelism has to be about more than opening our doors. It begins when we go outside our walls and into the community. When I stand outside on the corner before services, I do it to greet you as you enter; but I also greet those who are walking toward other destinations. On Ash Wednesday, when I offer to put ashes on the foreheads of passers-by, I am inviting them to think about the sacred in the midst of their daily routine, to encounter the divine in the middle of their day, in the middle of their week. I am inviting them to ponder time and eternity. When I walk into a coffee shop and the barrista asks me if I am an Episcopal priest, I invite her to enter into a conversation about where she is now, where she came from, and how her life now might be a place where she experiences the love of God. I cite these examples not in order  to invite you to think about how the encounters you have each day, how your daily routine might be a place where your friends, acquaintances, and coworkers might experience the love and grace of God.

A couple of weeks ago, a parishioner told me about a conversation he’d recently had with a co-worker. He was asked, “So, you’re a pretty smart guy, you’ve got it together, why do you go to church?” And he didn’t know what to say in reply. No doubt some of you could share similar stories; some of you might even say that your co-workers, your friends, don’t know you go to church. Now there are several reasons for this. One is that there are large portions of our culture for which Christianity is meaningless. They have no idea why one might go to church. Even worse, if Christianity does mean anything, it means narrow-mindedness, religious and political conservatives, opponents of LGBT inclusion, gay marriage, and the like. In our context, it’s very difficult to know what to say, how to talk about our faith when we’re not sure how it will be heard or whether we’ll be understood. Let’s work together in the coming year on becoming more open to talking about our faith, more open to asking the hard questions, and inviting others to explore those questions with us.

One of the things that has struck me about Grace’s uniqueness is the presence among us every Sunday of people who are visiting for the first time, or perhaps second or third. Even last week, when many of you stayed away because of the Marathon, there were people at both 8:00 and at 10:00 who were relative, or absolute newcomers. Some Sundays, especially in the summers, I’d guess that up to 20% of our 10:00 attendance are people who are unknown to me. That’s quite remarkable. Now, many of those who visit us are here for a short time—the weekend, a business trip, what have you. Many others are trying us out or have come because there’s something going on in their lives that makes them want to attend services, seeking God. We do a pretty good job welcoming visitors. Some of you have taken responsibility to seek out unfamiliar faces, introduce yourselves, and engage in conversation. What we’re less effective at is bringing visitors into our community. We struggle at incorporating those new people into the body of Christ. In the coming year, I hope to make this a priority for the new vestry and I also encourage you, if this is something that you’re interested in, to contact me about how you might get involved.

Outside our doors is another immense opportunity. The thousands of young adults who make Madison their home, college students, of course, but also grad students, young people who have chosen to make Madison their home because of its opportunities for interesting work, outdoor activities, and vibrant culture. I’ve probably mentioned this age group in every annual report. They weigh heavy on my heart because I believe that Grace can offer young adults a rich spiritual life, opportunities for outreach, and connections with other demographic groups that are rewarding and fulfilling. I’m calling on those of you who share this passion to work with me on developing new opportunities for worship and community that would focus on young adults.

The entire report is available here: Annual Report_2013

Hope among the ruins: A Homily for Proper 28, Year C

Posted on by
Reply

We have an old travel poster from the 30s. It’s an image of Berlin showing that city’s main shopping district, the Kurfürstendamm, looking toward the Kaiser Wilhelm’s Memorial Church. That church was constructed in the 1890s as a memorial to the first ruler of a united Germany, Wilhelm I. The image that appears on my travel poster no longer exists. Largely destroyed during WWII the original church’s tower remains, surrounded by a new church built in the style of modern architecture. Now the church stands as a memorial to all of the victims of WWII and also as a warning of the cost of war. When I was studying and travelling in Germany as a college student in 1979, one could still see visible signs of the destruction of World War II in many places. Occasionally, as with the Gedächtniskirche, the ruins remained as memorial and caution. But in many places, especially in the East, the rubble remained because of the lack of funds to rebuild and the uncertainty of what might replace the old. Continue reading →

On My Reading List: Flannery O’Connor’s Prayer Journal

Posted on by
Reply

Marilynne Robinson’s review in The New York Times Book Review:

It is the religious sensibility reflected in this journal that makes it as eloquent on the subject of creativity as it is on the subject of prayer. O’Connor’s awareness of her gifts gives her a special kind of interest in them. Having concluded one early entry by asking the Lord to help her “with this life that seems so treacherous, so disappointing,” she begins the next entry: “Dear God, tonight it is not disappointing because you have given me a story. Don’t let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story — just like the typewriter was mine.”

Casey N. Cep writes about it for The New Yorker:

The journal reflects a single year in the life of a believer—it includes just under fifty pages of prayers from a lifetime filled with them. It is the attempt of a young writer to reconcile her worldly ambitions with her heavenly understanding. The task she set for herself, to invigorate her dulling faith, was accomplished by the deliberate, contemplative practice of praying in her own words. By refashioning the prayers she inherited and practiced every day at Mass, O’Connor was able to find new language for belief.

Paul Harvey explores it as well:

Flannery O’Connor’s prayer journals provide a beautiful glimpse into a vulnerable soul open to the rigor of life, confident that God would use trials to shape and press her into something more. Those prayers were answered through O’Connor’s life of fighting disease and practicing her craft of writing. Her strong irony did not lead her to doubt that God was with her.

The model of Flannery O’Connor challenges the prevailing ideas of modern life and challenges us to personally assess how we reconcile our own beliefs with our scholarship and use of irony. O’Connor wielded irony as an effective weapon in her writings. Her prayer journals demonstrate her ability to harness the power of irony without allowing it to define her soul. Such an approach today would be threatening to the culture of cheap irony that surrounds us.

James Parker also reflects on her use of irony and her life of prayer:

Where the Word was operational, for O’Connor, it was always disruptive: in its presence, one’s head was supposed to explode. Her short stories, especially, reengineered the Joycean epiphany, the quiet moment of transcendence, as a kind of blunt-force baptismal intervention: her characters are KO’d, dismantled, with a violence that would be absurdist, if the universe were absurd. But the universe is not absurd. “There is an interaction between man and God which to disregard is an act of insolence,” wrote the rabbi and theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, her contemporary, in The Prophets. “Isolation is a fairy tale.” The upended moment, the breaking-in or breaking-through of a vagrant, unbiddable reality: this is the grace of God and the sign of his love.

Responding to Typhoon Haiyan

Posted on by
Reply

Sean McConnell of Episcopal Relief and Development has this to say:

When Typhoon Haiyan struck, a colleague and I were packing our bags for a visit with our partners in the Philippines. Initially, it wasn’t clear if the typhoon would set things back since the Philippines experience around 20 typhoons a year, and as a result have built a capacity for responding resiliently in their wake. So, we were cautiously on stand-by until it became clear yesterday that our visit might be more hindrance than help. By the time the typhoon hit, I had already posted to Facebook that I was departing for the Philippines, so friends and colleagues naturally reached out to find out how Episcopal Relief & Development would respond. I explained that Episcopal Relief & Development takes the long view on disasters response and recovery.

 

Press releases from ERD are available here.

You can donate to ERD on their website (to designate funds for Typhoon Haiyan, click on the Disaster Response button).

New conversations about same-sex blessings in the Diocese of Milwaukee

Posted on by
Reply

This isn’t exactly news but we’re talking again about how we might move forward on blessing same-sex relationships in the Diocese of Milwaukee. The Standing Committee announced a two-part approach as it seeks to discern the perspective of congregations and clergy. I’ve shared with members and friends of Grace our plans to discuss the questions posed by the Standing Committee next week. Here’s what they want to know:

Please tell us how the authorization of a provisional rite for the blessing of same-gender relationships, as well as Bishop Miller’s position not to allow the use of such rites in the Diocese of Milwaukee factor into life in your parish and the surrounding community.

 

  • What pastoral issues does the ability/inability to bless same-gender relationships raise in your community?
  • What theological questions does it raise?
  • What challenges does the issue of same-gender blessings and the ability/inability to bless same-gender relationships pose to evangelism and church growth in your context?
  • With respect to the issue of blessing same-gender relationships, what voices within your parish and within this diocese do you believe are not being heard?

I’m rather struck by the similarities in tone between these questions and those being asked in the Vatican’s world-wide survey of Catholics. We are not being asked what we think of same sex marriage nor what we think of the proposed rites. Rather, we are being asked about how a decision about using the rites might affect pastoral care and evangelism.

To put this in a bit of context, two images:

BY0Z2r7IIAIPa6Ka cartoon from the Wisconsin State Journal

And courtesy of Integrity, USA, a map showing dioceses where same-sex blessings are allowed.

Wisconsin stands out in both.

Meanwhile, across the pond, there are rumblings that a high-level report will recommend that the Church of England develop liturgies for same-sex blessings (though not marriage) although there are other rumors that deny this. I suppose we’ll have to wait for its publication.

This past summer, after Bishop Miller announced his decision, I wrote the following in a letter to the parish:

I am your pastor. I seek to be the pastor of everyone who enters our doors in search of God’s grace and love. I know both the power and fragility of the love of two people and I know how important it is that a couple can find support for their relationship in the body of Christ. That there are couples among us whose relationships cannot be acknowledged and blessed publicly saddens me to the core. It goes against my theology, my experience of the Gospel, and my model of our life together in Christ. I will continue to try to welcome, affirm, and be pastor to everyone—singles, couples, widowed, divorced—who seek to find and live out the love of Christ in their relationships as best and creatively as I can while keeping my vow of obedience to the bishop. And I will continue to pray and work for a deeper and fuller realizing of Christ’s love in all that we as a Church are and do.

I stand by those words.

 

On Veterans’ Day: What does it mean to honor our vets?

Posted on by
1

The platitudes and patriotism are easy. Honoring veterans with brass bands, politicians, and lots of flags takes little time, money, or energy. What’s hard is taking care of vets who are suffering the long-term effects of their service on battlefields. The physical wounds are one thing; the psychic and spiritual wounds quite another. On this Veterans’ Day, I’ve collected a few stories about veterans struggling to put their lives together after serving their country.

From David Finkel, author of Thank You for Your Service, a story of one vet’s struggle with PTSD. 

Here’s a link to an earlier story on PTSD and meditation.

Recent veterans (those who have served since 2001) continue to face double-digit unemployment. The rate hasn’t changed in the last year. One important reason: the fact that the number of those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan is now around 1 million, and the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is 13.2%

18 veterans die each day from suicide (Harpers Index, Feb, 2012)

About 1 million vets are on SNAP (food stamps). House Republicans honor vets by proposing to cut benefits for 170,000 of them.

I’ve previously blogged about homelessness and veterans here and here.

Mark Sandlin expresses my feelings:

If we want to truly thank our veterans, we need to give them justice when they return home, we need to remember the real cost of war and we need to grieve with their families.

In my mind, today should be more of a day of mourning than a day of celebration. I’m not advocating to turn it in to another Memorial Day as much as to be more aware of its realities. We need it to be a real reminder of the real costs of war. We must not forget. We must not forget the lives lost. We must not forget the limbs lost. We must not forget the mental stability lost. We must not forget the veterans on the streets and those who pull up chairs to empty plates. War is hell – and frequently the other side of war is a living hell.

We must not forget.

A prayer for veterans and those who serve in military service:

Merciful and Almighty God, whose Son came among us and laid down his life for us, showing us the fullness of your love for all people: we remember with prayerful and thankful hearts before you this day the veterans and active military of this country, who have given of themselves in love for the sake of peace. We pray for the living, the departed, for those still serving, and their families – with gratitude and for healing. We pray, Lord, that you would make us grateful for the peace they sought by making each of us more peaceful. So Lord, as you taught us, we pray for our enemies: that all people would come to know the unending love and joy of the Prince of Peace, our Savior Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (via Jonathan Melton)

Resurrection: It’s not about zombies! A Sermon for Proper 27, Year C

Posted on by
Reply

Every Sunday evening these past few weeks, my Twitter feed and facebook page have filled up with messages about a TV show called The Walking Dead. Given that many of those I follow on Twitter are younger and hipper than me, perhaps that’s not surprising. What did surprise me was when an Episcopal bishop I know declared on twitter and facebook that he was settling down this past Sunday night to watch the current episode. In case you don’t know, and I only know thanks to social media, The Walking Dead is something of a cult hit. It’s about a zombie apocalypse. A guy wakes up in his hospital bed and discovers that everyone is either dead or has become a zombie. I watched an episode yesterday so I could talk about it and I’ll admit that I used to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and when I was a teenager I loved the Creature double feature on Saturday late night TV that was hosted by the Ghoul. Our culture, film and tv are awash with tales of the undead, vampires, werewolves, and zombies. We seem to be fascinated by the prospects of life after death, even if we find it hard to believe in it. Continue reading →

The Annual November scramble to help the homeless survive winter

Posted on by
1

We are in the midst of the annual last-minute ritual in Madison to try to patch services and shelter facilities together in an effort to provide for our neighbors who have nowhere to sleep and nowhere to find shelter during the days. This year is worse than previous years because the temporary day shelter that was provided the last two years is not happening. Instead, city and county politicians are hoping to provide funds for some services this winter: bus tickets, showers, storage, and the like. They’ve also funded some outreach activities in the newly-renovated Central Library. You can read more here.

Joe Tarr reports in this week’s Isthmus about how shelter providers are planning for significant increases in the numbers seeking shelter this winter. The reasons for the increase in homelessness in Madison are complex, debatable, and in part beyond the control of anyone in our community.

But there are things within our control. With a rental vacancy rate of under 2% and recent changes that limit the restrictions on landlords, it is very difficult for people with limited income to find housing in Dane County. There’s a boom in construction of apartments across Madison but none of that construction is going to be affordable. The city and county are working to build some single-room occupancy apartments and providing other options but those are long-term solutions. Meanwhile, I learned this week that the number of homeless students in Madison’s Public Schools is 848 and certain to rise in the coming months.

There are signs of hope, however. I toured a facility yesterday that the County is hoping to purchase for a permanent day resource center. The building isn’t available now and will need renovations so it won’t be a solution for this winter. It’s not a great location but in light of the fact that no other site has been identified over the last year, it will probably have to do. And there’s movement on providing medical respite for homeless people as well.

Perhaps by November 2014, the annual ritual I mentioned will no longer take place and our energies can focus on trying to solve some of the systemic problems faced by individuals and families who lack adequate housing.

Resurrection and the Authority of Scripture: Lectionary Reflections for Proper 27, Year C

Posted on by
1

This week’s readings are here.

The Gospel reading this week is one of the most interesting pericopes in any of the gospels. It offers a view into the world of first-century Judaism and the lively debates that were occurring over the nature of scripture, of scriptural authority, and of the doctrine of the resurrection.

First, a little background. Jesus has come to the end of his lengthy journey to Jerusalem (it began back in chapter 9 of Luke’s gospel; for us it began back in June). We’ve jumped over the Triumphal Entry and the Cleansing of the Temple. Luke has returned to Mark’s chronology here and like Mark, he has Jesus teaching in the Temple. As he teaches, he is confronted by various groups of his opponents–Pharisees, for example. They pose questions to him, they are seeking to trap him in some way so they can bring him up on charges.

In this week’s gospel, the group challenging Jesus are the Sadducees. They are aristocratic, well-connected, conservative. It’s likely that they are among the chief beneficiaries of Roman rule. As leaders of the Temple cult, they are also in position to benefit economically from their position. We know relatively little about them; in fact, much of our knowledge derives from what the gospel writers tell us in this incident. They reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. It’s also the case that they believe only the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible are authoritative. That narrow understanding of scripture helps to explain why they reject the doctrine of the resurrection. It’s very hard to find evidence for that doctrine in the Pentateuch.

They come to Jesus trying to force him to take sides on the resurrection (it’s common belief among the Pharisees, for example). So they use the example of Levirate marriage; the custom that if a man dies without an heir, his brother is obligated to marry the widow and provide an heir.

Jesus doesn’t take the bait (he never does in these confrontations). He points out that life in the age to come is qualitatively different than life in this age–that there is no marriage, or taking in marriage. It’s interesting, though, how he argues against the Sadducees. He quotes from Exodus (one of the books of Torah), to make the case that “God is the God of the living and not the dead.” He appeals to Exodus because the Sadducees consider it authoritative. Had he quoted this week’s reading from Job, or any of the other texts in the Hebrew Bible that seem to imply resurrection, the Sadducees would not have considered it valid because they didn’t think those texts were authoritative.

What makes this text so interesting is that it opens up the internal debate within first-century Judaism over the nature of scripture, of scriptural authority, and over the resurrection. It’s easy for Christians to read the Hebrew Bible and Jewish history through the lens of 2000 years of Christian history and theology and to assume that ideas that are now considered central doctrines were contested in earlier centuries. The resurrection of the dead was a topic of much debate in first-century Judaism for one simple reason. It was an innovation. We can see its origins in Daniel and Ezekiel (remember the dry bones?) but even centuries later, in Jesus’ day, it remained a controversial doctrine.

And so it remains today. I wonder how many “good” Christians really believe that one day their physical body will be raised and reunited with their souls.