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Joy, Laughter, and Delight

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From the Rev. Deacon Carey Chirico, Director of Outreach, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Advent 4 Year C,  Dec. 20, 2015.

Arms thrown wide in welcome. Joy shining from her face, welcome in every fiber of her being.

This is how I picture Elizabeth on that Judean morning. Mary, face flushed from the walk to her cousin’s home, is shy and streaked with tears. Surely this is not the greeting she expected. Pregnancy as an unmarried woman opened her the gossip, criticism and censure of her community. Once again God’s grace and mercy abound. She is to be welcomed when all social conventions say she should be turned away. She is to be welcomed with blessing and song and dancing: Once again, God’s grace is at work and shame is reversed and the shameful is welcomed.

I have deep, deep respect for Joy and the healing power of Joy in our lives—The kind of Joy that comes from an opening ourselves to God, the kind of joy which opened Elizabeth to knowing the truth of Mary’s encounter with God.

This scene became so very real to me during my sabbatical in eastern Africa. I had been asked to lead a conference on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd with the Mother’s Union in the mountains of Matana in Burundi. We had arrived the night before as had some of the participants. The women took their responsibilities to as church leadership very seriously and they came from their farms and their businesses in their most serious dress and decorum. Now the mountains of Burundi are remote and beautiful. People work hard, many subsistence farmers. Families are large. Childbirth frequent. Maternal and infant mortality is high. Women’s lives are difficult and full of responsibility for all generations. Women’s friendships bring a moment of respite and happiness that is evident from most meetings. Yet even with the difficulties and stress of life, the joy that accompanies each birth is profound. Each child is treasured and welcomed joyously.

In fact the word often used for ‘grandson’ means “grandmother’s finance”. There is a wonderful celebration when a child is old enough to be carried on a mother’s back at which they are named – the timing heralds the child’s passing through a time when many newborns die.

At this particular meeting, I was very formally introduced and welcomed with gifts and speeches. The women then began to go around the room to introduce themselves. As we arrived at one modestly dressed woman, she stood and said in her best French, her name and then added that she was about to become a grandmother. Well the room erupted into cheers. Everyone got up and sang and danced and celebrated as only a group of women can do for at least five long minutes before order returned and we proceeded with our meeting.

This is how I picture Elizabeth, standing on top of a hillside ready to welcome her cousin.

Elizabeth, herself elderly and without children yet. She above all others knows the shame and social stigma of a woman who is barren or who is pregnant and unmarried in a culture which one’s status is based on patriarchy and assigned roles. Suddenly expecting a child when it was least expected, she above all knows that God’s grace is actively working, reversing, reordering.

So here she stands, arms out stretched and begins to prophecy and to bless. “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Eulegemenos in Greek, is a word which invites blessing onto someone. But Elizabeth’s use of this word conveys more, she recognizes that this blessing has happened and in the choice of her words conveys that indeed – Mary, herself, is a blessing to God.

Elizabeth, older and childless, is the first to proclaim the great news of the incarnation. Indeed she says, when I heard your greeting the child within me leapt – John the Baptist, the child growing within her is already filled with the Holy Spirit and has leapt with gladness.

Joy, laughter and delight are so powerful because they abolish conventional divisions- boundaries are crossed and proper roles abandoned, say the Christian mystics.

And Joy and laughter pervade this short story. Joy is about what it means to live well, self-giving and other centered.

Benedictine and theologian, Joan Chittester says that it is precisely the journey into joy that the liturgical year is about. Good news of great joy: “It is how and where we are searching for happiness that matters.” Discriminating between what is real and what is fleeting requires intention and choice.

At this moment, God has entered our world so that we might come face to face with the Divine. Soon in Jesus we will come to know the unknowable. Everything about Jesus’ life to come speaks to the wisdom lived out in this little tale of joyful welcome.

Jesus who will see beyond status, education and rank. Jesus who will teach us that it is in living lives of committed purpose, to honoring the Other in our community that brings joy to God. “I seek not do my own will but the will of the One who sent me.” (John 5:30)

In this moment, a path appears and one that will lead us to see that it is not what happens to us, not where we are born, not what we are given that brings happiness but a life lived out in joyful surrender to God’s will in our lives.

By asking ourselves how the life of the Christ child affects our own.

Here at the beginning of the year, we are shown a model of welcoming God into our lives, of being a community in which God is known to be always at work and always looking to the hope of that time when there will be no division between God’s world and this one, when God will be all in all.

I recently made a friend. A woman who has been extremely successful in all earthly measures – friends, family and financial wealth. Over dinner one night she shared with me a story – her family story of why her family of observant Jews came to give Christmas gifts each year. Her grandmother arrived in this country in the early part of the last century from Russia. Her husband had come to the United States to escape the pogroms of Russia and to make a home for his family. When he brought his wife and children from the shetel, it was to a poor neighborhood in a foreign country. Her husband worked night and day to support his young family and this young Russian mother struggled mightily to find her way, to navigate shopping, cooking and clothing children in this new world where she spoke not a word of the language. She felt isolated and shamed by her simple habits and lack of understanding and her inability to communicate.

One day and man from her shetel in Russia arrived in the neighborhood who spoke some English. Finally she was able to communicate and ask questions about this new country, to express her fears and concerns to someone who would understand. One day she asked him, why it was that in the time following the feast of Thanksgiving people who normally pretended not to see her on the street would smile at her and greet her. Shopkeepers were more helpful, people much kinder. Used to feeling Invisible to her surrounding community, she was puzzled by this change in their behavior. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have seen it too. I think it has something to do with the birth of this little child.” “Are you joking,” she said. “The birth of that little child is why there are pogroms. That cannot be right. This doesn’t make any sense.”

So the man pointed out to her that across the street from her apartment was a church, happened to be a Baptist church, and suggested that maybe they could answer her question. So she gathered her courage – so great was her curiosity, and went across the street and in broken and halting English asked the minister there if he could explain why suddenly she was treated with such kindness. Now he had been watching this young family, knew they were struggling and from a very different culture and he too was very curious about them. He answered her as best he could. He told her that the birth of Christ marks a time for Christians of remembering the great news of life stripped down to its purest sense – that God came among us to teach us to love, to teach us to care for the most vulnerable, to show us peace for all.

As she walked back across the street, she came to the conclusion that this she would support. That if the birth of this child could make us see each other and bring peace to our world, she too would support this. So each Christmas the strong Jewish mother would gather her children and eventually her grandchildren and great grandchildren and tell them this story and give them each a small token to remind them of deep joy and profound consequences that comes from caring for each other. Just as another Jewish mother held out arms to Mary, seeing past her shame to the wonder of God’s work in the world.

To this day her observant Jewish granddaughter honors her memory and this message by sharing the story personally with her family, a strong, observant Jewish family through handwritten poems and small gifts.

Her action blesses us all.

May we all live lives of joyful witness to love so profound our God would assume the face of one born into this world, may we all live trusting that God comes among us to show us the path, blessing us by taking away all shame by welcoming all our broken places.

And we may we become a community worth of such an amazing gift.

God among us.

God beside us.

God within us.

 

Love Overflowing, More and More

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From the Rev. Joseph H. Hensley, Jr., rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Second Sunday in Advent, Year C, December 6, 2015

In the first century of the common era, a few decades after Jesus, Paul wrote to the Christian community in Philippi saying, “This is my prayer: That your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

“May your love overflow more and more.” Paul prays for a rich, overflowing abundance of love for his friends in Philippi, that they might be pure and blameless. It is the love of Christ that purifies us. It is the love of Christ that forgives us. The love of Christ that produces in us what Paul calls a “harvest of righteousness.” Just as Paul prayed this for the Philippians, so I pray for us St. Georgians: May our love overflow more and more.

We live in a world where there are continued arguments about purity and religion. These arguments go back to Paul, Jesus, and Old Testament times. I think since there has been religion there have been arguments about who is pure and who is not, who is doing it right, who is pleasing to God, and who has some work to do. We live in a world where there are those who think in terms of white and black, right and wrong, either/or, and you’re either on one side or the other and there’s no room in the middle. Then there are others, I think like many of us in this room, who are more willing to live in the grey areas, the areas of ambiguity, paradox, and mystery, but we have to contend with those who have that either/or thinking and would even take the place of judgment and would sit in the place of executioner and say they would commit violence in the name of purity and in the name of what they think is right. I don’t have an easy answer about how we who are more in the middle respond to those who are so extreme. I can only go back to Paul and Jesus and that sense of love overflowing more and more, praying for that wisdom, for that discernment and insight, so that we might know what is best.

This is a congregation that is, I think, willing to live in the grey area. That means that some people are going to say that we’re crazy, that we’re not pure enough, that we do not understand. At issue here is also our concept of God, for there are those who have a concept of a God who is vengeful and angry and those with a concept of God that is merciful. There are those that would say, “We might be wrong. We’ll admit it, we might be wrong in erring on the side of love; erring on the side of welcoming those whom others will not welcome and if we get it wrong, we hope God will be merciful.” But others have a view of God that is different: “If you get it wrong, you’re done.” I don’t know how to bridge that chasm, but what I celebrate in this place is that we are erring on the side of love, love that abounds, love that flows. So today being the day of our annual meeting, the day we reflect a little on our ministry. As your new rector (I’m going to keep playing that new rector card. I have been here just shy of 11 months) I appreciate the many ways we as a congregation are willing to walk into that ambiguous territory, even though it’s not always easy. We don’t always know whether we’re wrong or right, but we seek to embody the abounding love of God anyway. I want to lift up a few of these places in our life together where we are embodying this love of God, but where we may not be getting it right.

This past year we fed thousands of people through The Table and through community dinners. This is a wonderful community that gathers together in Sydnor Hall, and yet at the same time we wonder if feeding people week after week is changing the system of poverty that keeps people hungry.

We share the Eucharist with all who seek God week after week, but at the same time we know there are arguments on both sides about open communion, whether all should be welcome at this table or only the baptized. We know that we are the exception rather than the rule in the Episcopal Church.

We have a variety of liturgical styles appealing to the variety of people that resulted in great growth in our congregation. We have Rite I, Rite II, Rite III, Celtic, Compline, and Noonday prayers, and at the same time we have a Book of Common Prayer and the traditions of the Episcopal Church by which we are bound, and sometimes we wonder how far we can push the boundaries of what the rules allow.

We have a variety of music here, and I just have to say again how incredible the music is here. We have several choirs of adults, children, and youth, we have a bell ensemble, jazz ensemble, and chamber ensembles. We have an incredible, rich variety; yet at the same time, how do we share what has been handed down to us by those who have sat in these pews for centuries, while at the same time stretch in new and different ways. That is a discernment we’re always having to make and we’re never quite sure if we are there.

We’ve moved into an age of electronic information at St. George’s. We’ve got a new website, a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and at the same time we have folks who have difficulty finding their way onto the Internet, who may feel left behind or left out.

We baptize those who feel ready to make their commitment to God and follow Jesus as Lord, but at the same time we feel that challenge of how we support those persons and families who are baptized yet struggle to stay involved in church.

We’re growing in our numbers, but at the same time we wonder how long our historic and sometimes limiting space will be able to accommodate all these saints.

We welcome children in this congregation in ways that would make other congregations wonder how we do it, yet at the same time there are those Sundays where it can be hard to be together.

We have welcomed lots of newcomers through these open doors, and at the same time we know there is a back door and sometimes newcomers quietly slip away and it is a challenge to find ways to connect with them.

We have a bold statement of welcome that we’re proud of, yet at the same time we know we have work to do to address the barriers of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

We’ve reached out to our Christian, Muslim, and Jewish neighbors; those of other faiths; and those of no faith with a message of loving welcome, and at the same time we wrestle with how we can be honest about who we are and how we’re different and at the same time move forward to actually do something together. For those of us who gathered here on Friday night to pray in the aftermath of the shootings in California, and just to pray with all of the turmoil in our world, we prayed with a lot of our Muslim neighbors. We had a palpable and powerful sense that God’s love is abounding here, that God’s love is flowing more and more, even sometimes especially when we’re not sure where we are in that grey area but are willing to cross the boundaries that divide us. There was a sense of hope in this room and a sense of hope downstairs afterward in the fellowship in the midst of all of the confusion and uncertainty in our world.

As we look forward to the coming year, I pray that we may grow in that hope and that love of God. When we talk about growth, it’s easy to think in terms of numbers and pledges, but as Paul said in another letter to the Corinthians: If I sing in the tongues of angels and have not love, I am a noisy cymbal or a clanging gong (or maybe it was a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal). We can have this place filled to capacity with people, but if we have not love, we have nothing. So I hope that in the coming year we continue to grow in our bonds of love, the connections between members. Our Giving as One stewardship campaign, when we passed the packets around, showed us that some of us have neighbors just down the street who we didn’t even know go to this church. In February of next year, just before Lent, we’re going to welcome a young woman, Natalie Finstad, who is a missionary in the Episcopal Church. She’s a woman with a vision for how churches can grow as beloved communities where everyone’s gifts are honored and where we try to see each other more and more as God’s beloved children. She’s going to be here for a week and I hope all of us have an opportunity to engage with her in that conversation.

We’re looking ahead to 2020, our 300th anniversary. That’s on my calendar, by the way! As we prepare for that special anniversary to share our story, I want us to ask ourselves three questions that come from this letter to the Philippians:

  1. How is God’s love flowing freely in this parish? How can we name that, celebrate, and lift it up?
  2. How can we participate in God’s love more fully? Where are we sometimes cutting off the flow of love?
  3. What gifts do each of us bring that will help us respond to God’s love? Every one of us has gifts to offer. Each person gathered here is essential to the outflowing of God’s love, each of our members, those who are official and those who are unofficial. I told a story at the annual meeting about going to the hospital this past week to visit someone who listed themselves as a member of St. George’s. I didn’t recognize the name, but I went into his room and he greeted me as his minister and said he goes to the community dinner. We are his church, and he has gifts to offer us.

Each of us is essential to realizing the vision of a world where God’s love claims, purifies, and frees our hearts. We may not always know what to say or do in response to those who claim to be pure or want to purify us, but with God’s help, love will abound. With God’s help, we might even love those who would call us Episcopalians crazy. With God’s help we will produce that harvest, those fruits of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ. That righteousness is not going to be self righteousness, it’s not going to be religious righteousness because we did it better than somebody else, because our way is superior somehow. That righteousness will be a right relationship with God and with one another. A God who loves us, a God who calls us to share our faith, our hope, and our love so that love might overflow from this place into the world and back again, more and more — and more — and more.

Peace! All Shall Be Well!

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From the Rev. Joseph H. Hensley, Jr., rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Proper 29 Year B November 23, 2015
Audio:

We prayed today in our opening prayer: “Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule.” Today is the last Sunday in our liturgical calendar and is often referred to as “Christ the King.” As we prepare to begin another year together, we renew our hope in Jesus’ leadership. We face our fears that the world is falling apart and dare to hope that in Christ there can be an end to captivity and division. We dare to hope to be freed and brought together. We dare to hope for the new creation about which prophets and visionaries have testified. We dare to hope for the truth to finally prevail. As we face the terrors and troubles of our times, we dare to hope for a revelation that in Christ, all things will be well.

“All shall be well. All shall be well, and every kind of thing shall be well.” That is one of my favorite quotations from the 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich. Julian lived in one of the worst times in human history. War, plague, famine, economic and political chaos: you name it…the late 1300s in England were pretty nasty. Lady Julian herself, at age 30, nearly died, but during her illness she received several visions, revelations, of Jesus Christ. Her revelations and her hope in them have made her one of the most beloved saints in the history of the faith. We’ll come back to Julian later.

I want to talk a little bit about revelations. Today we read from the beginning of the last book of the Bible, called the Revelation to John. The writer known as John of Patmos was also living in a pretty nasty period of history. The Roman Empire was at its height, and Christians suffered persecution, even execution, for proclaiming Christ as king and refusing to honor the Roman gods. John received a vision, a revelation, of terrible suffering, war in heaven, and evil beasts ultimately defeated by a cosmic Christ. It was perhaps a metaphor for the struggles faced by Christians under the Romans and the hope that Christ would come soon to claim his place as ruler of the kings of the earth. John of Patmos probably knew the revelations of other Biblical writers such as Daniel, Ezekiel, and Isaiah who had witnessed the suffering of God’s people in their own times. The revelations of scripture are filled with awful depictions of terror but also incredible hope in the coming of One who will make all things well.

Terror and hope. We hear a lot about terror these days. But I think that for every news story about something awful that has happened, you can find a story about someone who overcame something awful or found grace in the midst of it. In some ways, we have to be acquainted with some fear in order to know the power of hope which overcomes it. The good news about the revelations in scripture is that they describe our fears, they talk about some of the worst things in the world. Our faith is not one that avoids bad news or lives in some Pollyanna idealistic world. Our faith is one that knows the reality of pain as well as the reality of perfect love that casts out all fear.

I will admit that I, myself, have never had what I would call a revelatory experience. I have not had a vision the way the prophets of the Bible or Julian of Norwich describe it. I have talked with several people, though, who have had revelations. The majority of these people had their vision while in the midst of a major crisis, like a near-death experience. As their bodies were in great weakness, they experienced an overwhelming sense of God’s peace and love, an assurance that all would be well. Many of these people report that they experience less fear after their vision, even at life’s toughest moments. They know, down to the bottom of their souls, that God is holding them, that Christ is indeed ruler of all. A lot of these people are hesitant to tell their story because they figure people will think they are crazy.

I think that we, as a Church and as an entire world, are ready for a crazy revelation. We are ready for a new vision of hope that is a radical response to the truly insane visions of fear that are so prevalent these days. Fear that has no hope. Fear of terrorists. Fear of refugees. Fear of people who are different from us. Fear of police. Fear of disaster and mayhem. Fear that someone else is going to get what we think is ours. Fear. Fear. Fear. The rulers of this world are preaching a message of fear and mistrust, division and discord. I have compassion for them. The rulers of this world, the real ones and the ones who pretend to have some authority, have a tough job. They are trying to represent and serve the interests of their people. And their people do not want to hear that “all shall be well.” They…WE…want to hear the plan. How are you going to make all manner of things well? How are you rulers going to ensure that no one threatens us? The rulers of this world have an impossible job, and they are human too, so no wonder they focus on fear.

Christ the King has a different job from the rulers of this world. Christ does not come to represent the people. Christ the King comes so that we can represent him. Christ does not come to see after our interests. Christ the King comes so that we can see after his interests: justice and compassion, mercy and love. Christ does not come to outline a plan for making the world a safer place. Christ who is unlike any king on earth comes to reveal the truth that the world is not a safe place but that we can find our real safety when we are vulnerable enough to love.

The word that is sometimes translated “revelation” can also be translated more literally as “apocalypse.” Watch out, because we’re going to talk about apocalypse in an Episcopal Church! That word, apocalypse, just means a revealing, a pulling aside of the curtain. I think we are ready for the curtain to be pulled aside. I am not talking about an apocalypse of the end of times but a revealing of the now, a revealing of the truth of the present moment. Yes we live in awful times. We also live in wonder-filled times. It may be a time when just one misguided person can do a lot of damage to a lot of people. It is also a time when we see the fences that have divided humanity coming down in new ways. No wonder the rulers of this world want to build new fences. No wonder the terrorists want to stop anyone who dares to stray from tradition. We will not get the truth from those who want to rule this world. We will get it from Jesus, our Messiah, the one who stood before Pontius Pilate, one of the rulers of the world at that time, and said, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”

Julian of Norwich, in the midst of her revelation, asked Jesus why there had to be sin in the world. Wouldn’t the world be better off without it? She heard Jesus respond to her with kindness saying that sin is part of who we are, but all will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing will be well. Julian heard that God does not blame us for sin, and eventually we will know more. God does not blame us, because we have a tendency to seek our own will instead of God’s. That’s how we are made. We are made with the capacity to do horrible things. We are made with the capacity to stand by and do nothing while other people do horrible things. I believe God will blame us, though, if we do not realize our other capacities: We are made with the capacity for great love. We are made with the capacity to hope in the face of terror. We are made with the capacity to love even in the face of chaos and trials. We are made with the capacity to be visionaries who can share a revelation of a world in which all are welcome, all are loved, all are fed, all are children of God. I think we are ready for that apocalypse! I think we ready for that vision! God make us capable to testify with Christ who is unlike any other king, that though we are flawed, we can be made whole. What is the plan? The plan is to follow Christ. The plan is to keep coming together week by week for worship and fellowship, service and sacrifice. The plan is to work, pray, and give for the spread of the kingdom of God. The plan is to meet terror with hope, to meet suffering with compassion, and be crazy enough to say with the king of kings and lord of lords: “all shall be well. And all shall be well. And every kind of thing shall be well.”

Take Away the Stone

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From the Rev. Joe Hensley, Rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | All Saints’ Day,  Nov. 1, 2015.

roadsidetomb-jamesemeryFrom the gospel according to John “Jesus again, greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone.”

“Take away the stone,” Jesus says. Jesus comes to the place of death and says, “Take away the stone.” Jesus come to the place of mourning and loss and says, “Take away the stone.” Jesus comes to the place where everyone is weeping and wailing and not seeing any possible hope, and he says, “Take away the stone.” Jesus comes to us in our lives, in the places where we have been laying low, in the places of darkness, and Jesus says to us, “Take away the stone. Come be a part of my work of raising the dead.”

Today is the day when we remember the dead and the living saints. Today is All Saints Day. It is a wonderful day in the church, and we have a special procession and incense to remind us of the great communion of saints and our prayers for one another. We remember the saints with a big “S”: St. George, St. Paul, St. Peter, St. Mary, all the saints. We remember the saints with a little “s”, the folk “just like you and me, and I want to be one too,” all the saints. We remember the great statement of our Faith that we say in the Creed, “We believe in the communion of saints,” that great and holy fellowship seen and unseen, the dead and the living, all gathered together in one holy fellowship. It’s a wonderful day to be a saint. Good morning saints. Please remind yourself that you are saints. Turn to your neighbor and say, “Good morning, saint!”

I don’t feel like a saint some days. Maybe you’re with me there. You wake up and you know that you’re part of a holy family, but you say, “I just don’t know if I can do it today, God. I don’t feel very saintly.” How many of you say, “I’m no saint.”

I tried to explain this to children in preschool. I was doing a lesson on All Saints Day and I tried to come up with the best way possible to explain what is a saint. The word saint comes from sanctify, meaning we are holy, we are God’s holy ones and again in a way where the young ones are going to understand that idea of the holy one, so I tried to think what holy means. It means set apart for God. Well even that is hard to get. Special for God. That seemed to work. A saint is someone with the baptism in faith is special for God. Today we are going to welcome another saint into the house of God. He’s already special, we are just going to name it through the visible sign of water and the inward grace of God.

I don’t always feel special for God. There are plenty of times where I’ve got my own agenda, I’ve got my own ideas about the way the world should be, and I’d rather go with those. That might be where Martha, in the story we heard this morning in the gospel, is. The story we are picking up in the middle of things. Martha and Mary of Bethany, their brother Lazarus, was sick, and they sent for Jesus a few days ago and Jesus kind of dragged his feet and got there too late. Lazarus had already died in the place of the tomb. Martha meets him on the way and has some words with Jesus, when Martha makes an amazing confession of faith. “You,” she said, “are the Messiah, the son of God, the one coming into the world.” Martha has an amazing epiphany about who Jesus is, but then just a little while later that same day, Martha is at the tomb. Jesus is saying, “Take away the stone,” and what does Martha say? “It’s going to smell!” She got that idea in her mind about what is going to happen and the way the world works. Lazarus is dead and that is that. There’s no sense in taking away the stone. No sense in causing a stench.

Isn’t that the way we are sometimes in our lives? We think we know how things are going to work. I’ve got this part of myself that I keep in a cave, and I don’t really want to take away the stone because it’s kind of smelly in there. I’ve got parts of myself that I’m not proud of, parts of myself that I’d rather not see the light of day. I don’t want anyone coming in and taking away the stone because that would just stir things up, create more mess.

How many of you have ever said, “My life stinks today?” We’ve had those stinky days. Jesus comes and says, “Take away the stone.” Maybe we have a relationship with someone that long ago was broken, dysfunctional, and we try to hide it safely in a cave, but Jesus comes and says, “Take away the stone. There’s hope for reconciliation.” Or we have some behavior or habit or something about ourselves that we are not very proud of, and Jesus comes along and says, “Take away the stone. There’s hope for healing. There’s hope for change.” Or maybe we have that in our world, we have so many problems, so many ways we have put people in a cave, we have bound people up, we have made people sit in the darkness and there are complicated issues of our world and we have said, “Please let’s not go there. Let’s not talk about politics or race. Let’s not talk about money. Let’s not talk about those issues because there could be a stench. It could be smelly.”

Now I know you all are tired of talking about stewardship and money and giving to the church, but I want to do it one more time. Our relationship with money is one of those things where we sometimes have a hard time connecting our thoughts about money with our thoughts about faith. We hear people go and make testimonials about giving 10%, making tithes to the church, and we say, “Whoa, whoa hold on. Let me worry about my money. Let’s not talk about money in church.” And that just feels impossible, to give 10%. There are things in this world that feel impossible, and Jesus comes and says, “Take away the stone.”

The good news is that Jesus came to the tomb, not to tell them to raise Lazarus from the dead. He didn’t come and say, “Ya’ll raise Lazarus from the dead.” He just came and said, “Ya’ll take away the stone, I’ll do the rest.” He came and said, “I don’t want you to participate with me in this act of raising the dead, just take away the stone.” That’s what Jesus is saying to us, Jesus is not saying I want you to do the impossible. Jesus is saying, “Remove the obstacle that gets in the way of the light so that my light can shine through,” said Jesus. “Remove that which keeps people trapped in the darkness so that together we can set them free. Remove the obstacles that would keep people bound up in the complicated ties of this world so that I can call them out the way I called out Lazarus and I can tell you, unbind him, let him go.”

Today is All Saints Day and it is a day for us to all be called out of whatever tomb we sometimes feel like we want to crawl into. You know, Lazarus could’ve stayed in the tomb longer! Jesus calls out “Lazarus, come out” and Lazarus could have said, “I’m doing fine in here.” He had to participate as well in that act of coming out into the light. Those words that Jesus uses when he says take away the stone, “take away”: he uses them also in Chapter 5 of John’s Gospel, with the man by the pool of water. There’s a man who has been waiting there for years on the mat, he’s terrorized and he just wants someone to stick him in the healing pool, the waters are all stirred up and he keeps complaining about, “I only want to sit in the pool.” Jesus comes along and says, “What do you want?” He says, “I just want someone to put me in the pool.” Jesus says, “Take up your mat and walk.” Those words “take up” are the same words that mean “take away.” Take away your stone, take up your mat, and participate in God’s healing work. Be the saints of God.

There is a quote that is sometimes attributed to Nelson Mandela because he used it in a speech once. It was actually written by a woman named Marianne Williamson. You may have heard it before. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.”

So on All Saints Day today, we may be asking ourselves, “Who am I to be a saint?” Who are you not to be? We are children of God. We are called to be saints so today is our great saint coming out day. Come on out, saints! Come on out and be part of Christ’s holy mission. Come out and be healed, come out and be part of the healing of this world. Take away the stone so that those who have been bound may be set free. So that we may unbind them and we all may go free. It’s time for the saints to go marching in, and we want God’s grace so as to be one of that number. When we take away the stone, God can heal more than we can ask or imagine. When we clear the way and we open the way of God’s grace, we open the way for new life.

I was yesterday in Washington, DC, at a service of prayer for our new presiding Bishop Michael Curry, and there was a lot of talk about saints and ancestors, the men and women who came before, who brought us here to this point. We are connected to so many saints, ones past and ones present and ones yet to come. We are the saints. We have been brought here by so many in past generations, and we are the ones who will continue this place going forward. We are the ones who will continue what Bishop Curry calls the ‘Jesus movement’ going forward we are called to be saints. We are called to be one body in Christ. We are called to give. We are called to love. We are called to serve. We are called to take away the stone.

Brothers and sisters, let us take our place in the great communion of saints. Let us hear the words of Jesus, “Take away the stone” Take away the stone so that all may come to the light and all may be unbound and all may be free and all may love and all may give and all may share and all may praise the greatness of God that all may see God’s glory. Take away the stone!

Fail Magnificently: A Stewardship Sermon

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From the Rev. Joseph H. Hensley, Jr., rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Proper 24 Year B October 18, 2015

Text of the sermon as prepared (may differ slightly from recording): 

It is easy to laugh at Jesus’ disciples, especially in the Gospel according to Mark. They are like a bunch of clowns running around trying to outdo each other and failing miserably. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come to Jesus asking for the seats of honor when he comes in his glory. They just don’t get it. It’s not about glory; it’s about service. It’s not about the honored place; it’s about honoring God. Ha ha! Those silly disciples.

We laugh perhaps because we don’t understand the importance of honor in that ancient culture. In those times honor was everything. You measured your life by how much honor you could accrue. The scales of life were calibrated in terms of honor and shame, and you did everything you could to tip them in favor of honor. That is not so much how we see things today, so it’s easy to chuckle at the disciples arguing over who gets the honored seats. We have our own scales, though. Instead of “honor” and “shame,” we often weigh the worth of our lives in terms of “success” and “failure.” We praise people who are successful. We avoid becoming a failure or a “loser” (as the younger generation might say). Jesus laughs at all of us, because he has come to reverse the scales completely. He says to seek the role of a servant. Seek the lowest place, the last position, so that you may be first. If you want to become great, be a servant. If you want real honor, be ready to endure shame. If you want true success, then seek something the world would consider to be failure.

This makes no logical sense! Yet, it is a theme that runs through the whole of scripture. God’s people are often the butt of the joke, the least and the last. Even in the glorious days of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the best rulers were the ones who acted like servants. What, then, does it mean to be a servant? What does it mean for us to follow Christ, who came not to serve but to be served and to give his life so that we might be free of these categories of success and failure, honor and shame? We often interpret servanthood in terms of helping others. Helping others is very good, as we focus on the needs of others instead of our own. Helping others can liberate us from selfishness and open our hearts to grace. I think there can be an additional twist, though–another facet to Jesus’ call to servanthood. I think it could be expressed as a call to “embrace failure.” Embrace failure. I know that sounds crazy. The way to free ourselves from worshipping the idols of honor and success is to turn these things upside down. Become a servant. I said earlier that the disciples sometimes look like clowns, but Jesus is the best trickster of all. Jesus comes and tells us that up is down, last is first, and the order we want to see in the world is falling apart. He shows us, like the best clowns, that falling down does not have to be an ultimate tragedy. When the clown falls down, the audience cheers. Failure becomes a success. When Jesus takes the lowest place, when he is lifted up on the cross, that crucifixion ends in resurrection. The failure of Christ to become the earthly king everyone wanted becomes the greatest success story of the world as he rules in our hearts for eternity. Embrace failure. Seek the lowest place, become a servant…this is good news. We don’t have to climb and claw our way to the top. Our call is not to be upwardly mobile but downwardly mobile. What a relief! What a joy and liberating feeling. Many of you know that I went to clown school once upon a time. The lesson they taught us over and over again was, “if you are going to fail…fail magnificently.” When you fall down, really fall down. When you make a mess, make it a big, glorious, hilarious mess. Embrace failure.

I say all this as we embark on our annual stewardship campaign – inviting everyone to make a financial pledge to support St. George’s in 2016. It’s certainly not the time when I want to be making a big mess! But I have to laugh that right now the public radio station is holding their pledge drive. Maybe you are like me and try to avoid listening to them beg for money. You might have even been hearing it on the way to church, and now we are going to talk about money here too! By the way, we have coffee mugs in the back that we will just give you. You don’t have to make a pledge! But the difference between our church stewardship campaign and the public radio fundraiser is that we are not raising funds, we are raising stewards! A steward is a kind of servant, one who cares for the sacred gifts that came from and already belong to God. As we heard in the lesson from Job today, God tells Job, “Where were you when I was laying the foundations of the earth? Are you the one who tends to all this creation?!” We are raising the awareness that our gifts are gifts from and to God as an act of thanksgiving and trust.

Yes, those gifts of money will enable us to continue Giving as One (our theme this year), to GO as one body to all who seek a place to encounter the beloved community, the kingdom of God. They will support the worship, music, learning and sharing, the exploration of serving, praying and caring…all the things that go on here. And while the monetary gifts are important, it is also important that we invite each other to give them as an act of faith and trust in God. We invite pledges as a spiritual practice, not just to make the church budget.

The fear every year, in every church that I have ever been a part of is that the campaign will fail. What if we don’t get enough pledges? What if we don’t real our goal? What if we don’t…succeed? Which program or staff will have to be cut? And the fear that often operates in our hearts as we consider how much to give wonders, “What if I can’t pay my pledge?” “I can’t possibly pledge 5 or 10 percent of my income, because that will cause me to FAIL financially.” These are not necessarily unrealistic fears. I’m not making light of them at all. The good news, though, is that we do not need to be controlled by them. When we are afraid, when we are tempted to run back to the categories of success and failure as the measure of our lives, Jesus is there to tell us: become a servant. Measure your life according to service and love. In the midst of our fear we can still serve. In the midst of our failure, perceived or real, we can serve. I can’t tell you the number of people I visit in the hospital and they feel useless because their bodies have failed them. I tell them, “you can still serve.” You can still serve through your prayer, through your kind smile to a doctor or nurse, through your very presence; you can be a wonderful servant.

Now I am not saying that we should TRY to fail. If you have a test to take tomorrow, I recommend that you study! The point is that when we fail (and we will fail), it is not the end. Ultimately, we face the failure of these earthly bodies, and death is not the end. Even in death, particularly in death, Jesus served. Jesus gave his life, he failed, so that he could reveal to us the way of new life. Jesus gave his life so that we could be free from our bondage. A failure is an opportunity for resurrection.

I do hope this stewardship campaign will be a success. I hope more of us than ever will experience the leap of faith that giving in and through the church can be. I hope our format will be successful as we act as stewards of the pledge card passport folders around our neighborhoods. I hope it will work, but if it fails along the way, then let’s fail magnificently and have a wonderful time doing it. I hope we will receive more than enough pledges to continue and expand the ministry of this embassy of God’s kingdom we call St. George’s. BUT…to truly succeed, to truly sit in the places of glory and greatness…it is not ours to control. God is preparing us to receive grace beyond our imagining. God is preparing us to give in ways beyond our conceiving. We may find that grace in moments of success. We will more likely, I think, find them in moments of failure and vulnerability. We will most certainly find that greatness and grace in acts of love and service, acts of generous giving and sacrificial sharing, whether we succeed or fail. May God give us what we need to receive that grace so that we might be servants and stewards with Christ.