A Cup of Cold Water
A Reflection for Proper 8A, Matthew 10:40-42, by Laura Grimes
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.
I began this reflection last night somewhere I never expected to be: on a computer in the lobby of a Best Western a short walk from my home, waiting for my husband of nineteen years to pick me up for a Friday night date. The bottle of cold water I took from the small hotel fridge was a source of comfort--physical and emotional alike--after a warm and busy day and in preparation for an exciting and also nervous making evening. It was especially treasured because I recently decided to treat my post-traumatic stress syndrome, long managed with therapy and spiritual resources, with anxiety medication for the first time. The medication is calming, slightly dizzy-making, and can also lead to serious dry mouth, which makes me newly grateful for the unlimited clean, cold, water which was a luxury in the time of Jesus and remains so now for so many people--especially women and children--in this tragically unjust world.
I am in this hotel with one of my most treasured sister disciples--my best friend from college, who babysat the kids during our date. She drove down from Oregon to help us move to a new apartment--just a month or two after a previous move to a place that we thought was perfect but turned out to be so small that, in combination with other stressors, it led to a grave family crisis. My husband is staying in the old place with the kids, and she and I are spending this weekend setting up the new place with skeleton items so we can move in tomorrow after church and manage a gradual move over the course of a couple of weeks. This will also pave the way for my own continued inner work, my husband's tentative but committed beginning of his own, and a renewal and discernment of how our marriage and family will look in this next phase of our life.
Before the hotel, I spent the better part of a week in another place I never expected to be, except as a chaplain: an inpatient psychiatric ward. In the past couple of months, my PTSD was triggered more severely than it has ever been by a combination of factors. The due date of my fourth child, whom I miscarried in the fall, came just a few weeks before the anniversary of the death of my first child, killed in a car accident as a nursing toddler. Both coincided closely with Mother's Day and the anniversary of the death of my grandmother, and in the midst of it all our family moved to a tiny place near the beach that we all felt hopeful about and initially nourished our spirits, but revealed some deep family conflict patterns that need healing and transformation. I had always avoided medication for a variety of reasons: to stay healthy and keep my babies healthy during pregnancy and lactation, to keep my mind clear for my labors as a theologian and clergywoman as well as a mother, and to avoid the deep patterns of addiction in my family of origin. But as the stress mounted at home and the severe anniversary reaction with Julian's due date set in, I realized it was time to seek out an excellent psychiatrist and add medication to the list of healing tools from God that can be appropriately as well as inappropriately used. When that took longer than expected, I made an appointment with my family doctor to begin medication, but had such a severe reaction when I reached the safety of her office that she recommended a brief and immediate phase of inpatient treatment in order to rapidly stabilize me on the right medication.
The days at the hospital were challenging but grace-filled, with a routine that alternately resembled preschool, prison, and a monastery that makes the Trappists look like creampuffs. Spirituality was a major coping technique for many of the patients, many of them in far more acute distress than I; tragically, this was generally seen as further evidence of dysfunction rather than a source of hope and healing. My own explanation that I was a clergywoman with a doctorate in theology was initially disbelieved, and my repeated requests to see a chaplain were disregarded. Fortunately, I was able to find spiritual support through phone calls and eventually a visit for healing prayer and anointing from a local priest acquaintance. I also found strength in weaving remembered bits of the liturgy of the hours throughout my last few days, and reading the bible I gave my son for his first confession during Holy Week, which he entrusted to me when my husband brought him for a brief visit at the beginning of my stay.
I also found tremendous support from the community of little ones in the hospital, the other patients, as well as from some staff members who were able to provide good shepherding within a far-from-ideal system. I had always shared the common stigmatization of mental illness in our culture, and deep fear of people with such disabilities--a living reminder of my own deepest fear: that I would be completely alone and unlovable if and when the brilliant mind I over-identify my self with ever betrayed me. I was amazed to find camaraderie and humor and bravery in the women I shared a room with and the men I shot hoops with in the smoke filled yard on our brief patio breaks. And I marveled at the endurance and courage of people for whom periodic visits to the psych ward are the only vacation and the only retreat they will ever know. Sharing the week with them was a source of deeper conversion, deeper commitment to my own codependence recovery and the transformation of my marriage, and deeper courage to speak the truth of my own struggles with a trauma-induced mental injury that is endemic in our violence-filled world. It also brought about a deep and unexpected hope that that my next CPE unit will, if at all possible, include exploring the daunting but promising world of mental health chaplaincy.
So in this brief snapshot of a place of terror, healing, and resilience, who is the prophet? The disciple? The little one? The righteous person? The giver and the receiver of life-giving water? We all are, of course, in different ways and at different times, and that is the miracle of grace. If any of us were only or always one of the roles we would be tempted to idolatry or despair: to forgetfulness of our beauty and fragility, of our creation in the image of the mothering God who is our loving source, our incarnate redeemer, and our every breath. All glory to her, in the church and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
A Reflection for Proper 7A
A Reflection on Matthew 10:24-39
When reading this passage from Matthew I am reminded of the song ‘Let’s face the music and dance’. As you probably all know it begins ‘There may be trouble ahead…’ and this is basically the message Jesus has for his disciples. Their mission will not be easy, they will be hated and persecuted for following Jesus and they will need a lot of stamina to keep going. In order to show true discipleship the disciple must be like the teacher, but there is a cost involved. In following Jesus the disciples must deny themselves and take up their own cross and we as disciples must do the same. The final portion of this passage from Matthew is perhaps the most difficult of all, it is concerned with loyalty and commitment but also shows us that not all will be ready to follow Jesus. In turning towards God, we may risk turning away from even our closest family and friends. One can only wonder what sacrifices the earliest disciples must have made in leaving their families and jobs to follow Jesus, one can only wonder what a real risk it was. Ultimately life is about risk, and the choices we make, but even today experience shows that one family member can be turned against another because of their decision to follow Jesus. In reading this passage anew I was reminded of my own long journey towards ordination. I grew up in an environment where there was much opposition to the ordination of women to the priesthood. Indeed when I first began to consider my vocation that route would not have been possible. My time in theological college has taught me that many have fought for their vocations against opposition from others. Whether that opposition be from a family member who is opposed to the ordination of women or a partner who has no faith of their own. There may also be struggles within families who have been uprooted for the sake of those who wish to train for ministry. Perhaps in theological college these struggles are intensified, all those who have vocation wrestle with it, but for those who face opposition from within their families the struggle is even more intense. Whatever the struggles of the earliest disciples were, it seems that even today, in a modern society where pretty much anything goes disciples still have to take up their cross to follow Jesus.
But, it is not all doom and gloom, alongside the challenges of discipleship this passage from Matthew also contains words of encouragement and comfort. The words ‘do not be afraid’ recur, bringing reassurance along with the reasons for keeping fear at bay. We must trust in God’s love. One of the Old Testament passages that may be read alongside this Gospel is Genesis 21. 8-21 and in it the redeeming love of God is revealed. At the beginning of the passage woman is set against woman, wife against mistress, and in the process a family is torn apart in much the same way as Jesus predicts for his disciples. Sarah is distressed to see Hagar’s son playing with Isaac and wants her and her son to leave. Abraham is caught in the middle and turns to God for some fatherly advice…the advice God gives him is to listen to his wife! Hagar and her son wander in the desert until the water runs out, Hagar puts Ishmael under a bush as she cannot bear to look on as he dies. It is here that Gods redeeming love is revealed. The family unit of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac may be paramount, Abraham after all is the forefather of the people Israel. But God does not forget the rejected ones, Hagar and Ishmael. It seems to me that here we can see God as mother rather than father, truly understanding the bond between mother and child and saving them both.
What the Gospel passage and the reading from Genesis teach us is that although ‘there may be trouble ahead’, if we are to be true disciples we must trust in the love of God and whatever the trials and tribulations of discipleship ‘face the music and dance’.
Dr Sarah A. Rogers
Ordinand of the Church in Wales.
When reading this passage from Matthew I am reminded of the song ‘Let’s face the music and dance’. As you probably all know it begins ‘There may be trouble ahead…’ and this is basically the message Jesus has for his disciples. Their mission will not be easy, they will be hated and persecuted for following Jesus and they will need a lot of stamina to keep going. In order to show true discipleship the disciple must be like the teacher, but there is a cost involved. In following Jesus the disciples must deny themselves and take up their own cross and we as disciples must do the same. The final portion of this passage from Matthew is perhaps the most difficult of all, it is concerned with loyalty and commitment but also shows us that not all will be ready to follow Jesus. In turning towards God, we may risk turning away from even our closest family and friends. One can only wonder what sacrifices the earliest disciples must have made in leaving their families and jobs to follow Jesus, one can only wonder what a real risk it was. Ultimately life is about risk, and the choices we make, but even today experience shows that one family member can be turned against another because of their decision to follow Jesus. In reading this passage anew I was reminded of my own long journey towards ordination. I grew up in an environment where there was much opposition to the ordination of women to the priesthood. Indeed when I first began to consider my vocation that route would not have been possible. My time in theological college has taught me that many have fought for their vocations against opposition from others. Whether that opposition be from a family member who is opposed to the ordination of women or a partner who has no faith of their own. There may also be struggles within families who have been uprooted for the sake of those who wish to train for ministry. Perhaps in theological college these struggles are intensified, all those who have vocation wrestle with it, but for those who face opposition from within their families the struggle is even more intense. Whatever the struggles of the earliest disciples were, it seems that even today, in a modern society where pretty much anything goes disciples still have to take up their cross to follow Jesus.
But, it is not all doom and gloom, alongside the challenges of discipleship this passage from Matthew also contains words of encouragement and comfort. The words ‘do not be afraid’ recur, bringing reassurance along with the reasons for keeping fear at bay. We must trust in God’s love. One of the Old Testament passages that may be read alongside this Gospel is Genesis 21. 8-21 and in it the redeeming love of God is revealed. At the beginning of the passage woman is set against woman, wife against mistress, and in the process a family is torn apart in much the same way as Jesus predicts for his disciples. Sarah is distressed to see Hagar’s son playing with Isaac and wants her and her son to leave. Abraham is caught in the middle and turns to God for some fatherly advice…the advice God gives him is to listen to his wife! Hagar and her son wander in the desert until the water runs out, Hagar puts Ishmael under a bush as she cannot bear to look on as he dies. It is here that Gods redeeming love is revealed. The family unit of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac may be paramount, Abraham after all is the forefather of the people Israel. But God does not forget the rejected ones, Hagar and Ishmael. It seems to me that here we can see God as mother rather than father, truly understanding the bond between mother and child and saving them both.
What the Gospel passage and the reading from Genesis teach us is that although ‘there may be trouble ahead’, if we are to be true disciples we must trust in the love of God and whatever the trials and tribulations of discipleship ‘face the music and dance’.
Dr Sarah A. Rogers
Ordinand of the Church in Wales.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
A Reflection on the Propers for 6A
Pentecost 5; Proper 6 - June 15, 2008, By Jacqueline Schmitt
"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
Women have always answered this call. When I wrote a history of Episcopal campus ministry, I learned that from the 1920s to the 1950s, the number of women doing campus ministry, as professional church workers, paid by the Episcopal Church Women, equaled the number of men, priests usually, paid from the Religious Education budget, which came from the assessments of parishes and dioceses, of the Episcopal Church. I’m not sure of the exact numbers – I wrote this a few years ago – but I do know that the women and men were peers, equals, in this domestic mission field. This was not remarkable; it was effective. The young adult years are the most fertile time for people seeking to understand their faith and their place in the world, and many, many people found their callings fulfilled in the Episcopal Church during their young adult years.
The 1950s and ‘60s were a different story in American society, and in the leadership of the church. Women got married, stayed home, and men were the priests. Although professional training schools for women church workers were established and thriving, graduates were less and less likely to spend a full career in the ministry. By the late 1960s, the vocation of professional women church worker crashed and burned – due to sweeping changes in social and sex roles, due to the General Convention Special Program which completely rearranged the budget of the Episcopal Church away from funding domestic mission and toward direct grants to people in need, and due, of course, to the ordination of women to the priesthood.
Those two paragraphs were a wild gallop with the broadest brush strokes imaginable, through the history of women’s vocations in the Episcopal Church. Much has been left out, but the point is: the harvest has always been plentiful, the laborers always few, and among those few have always been women.
I just came back from CREDO, which was fabulous. The Church Pension Fund DOES know how to take care of us. A group of 27 priests, one-third of whom were women, met for over a week of rest, vocational retooling, spiritual refreshment and wholistic revitalization. If you’ve been, you know what I mean; if you’ve not been yet, be sure to reply to your invitation right away. The Pension Fund, as we all know, is loaded; they can afford to treat us well, one or two weeks out of our ordained lives. (I heard last week that there is a CREDO 2 on our horizon; I’m already looking forward to it.)
There was a time when the Pension Fund was not the friend of ordained women. It took a few General Conventions for us to get equal treatment in all ways, but now we do. The benefits bring me, who can retire in about five years, after 30 years of credited service, a sense of security for which I and my family are very grateful. Am I at risk of writing a p.r. puff piece for the Pension Fund? Yup. Am I similarly championing the track record of the Episcopal Church and its bishops in the deployment and support of ordained women? Not on your tintype.
Episcopal leadership has, and I think continues to treat, ordained women rather shabbily. Oh, yes, we can be cardinal rectors and bishops etc etc, but when I sat down with the financial consultant at CREDO to go over my estimated pension, she remarked that I am one of the few women who can take advantage of the 30-year option. That was a disturbing fact. I thought, oh, not all that many women have been ordained that long … but then I heard the story of a woman ordained in 1981 (I was ordained in 1980), who has only seven years of credited service. She’ll never be able to take advantage of most of the benefits of the Pension Fund. What made the matter worse is that her first years after ordination, when she was in the employ of the Episcopal Church, her diocese or her bishop or some priest or some combination of the above, advised her NOT to enroll in the Pension Fund. Someone must have assumed that her work in the Episcopal Church would never amount to anything, and so now, in her 50s, it’s probably too late.
"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
Perhaps the line to quote here is another one from the lessons for Proper 6, June 15: “Sarah laughed.”
Women have answered God’s call, even when it was laughably improbable. The rewards of service, vocation, ministry, scholarship, prayer, community are of course far greater than money. Our lives are enriched beyond the wildest dreams we had when we heard those first faint twinges of something calling us. If we only knew what it meant to be as wise as serpents in doing this worthy work. Maybe then we would still be as innocent as doves, or at least able to look forward, in our old age, to shake the dust from our feet.
A postscript:
If any woman reading this is underemployed, paid so little for her work or in such debt that she cannot feel she can take a vacation, I urge her to look into Adelynrood. This retreat center of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross was founded early in the 20th century to give working women a place to go for summer vacation. The earliest visitors were factory girls, but as the Society grew, Companions, too, were working women – church workers, social workers, settlement house workers, office workers, teachers, professors, researchers. Adelynrood became a quiet, hospitable place where all kinds of women found welcome. Today, there is ample scholarship money to underwrite your stay. There is even money to help you get there. Go and find some rest, in this place prepared for us by women for over 100 years. It is a worthy house, a house of prayer, refreshment and peace.
"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
Women have always answered this call. When I wrote a history of Episcopal campus ministry, I learned that from the 1920s to the 1950s, the number of women doing campus ministry, as professional church workers, paid by the Episcopal Church Women, equaled the number of men, priests usually, paid from the Religious Education budget, which came from the assessments of parishes and dioceses, of the Episcopal Church. I’m not sure of the exact numbers – I wrote this a few years ago – but I do know that the women and men were peers, equals, in this domestic mission field. This was not remarkable; it was effective. The young adult years are the most fertile time for people seeking to understand their faith and their place in the world, and many, many people found their callings fulfilled in the Episcopal Church during their young adult years.
The 1950s and ‘60s were a different story in American society, and in the leadership of the church. Women got married, stayed home, and men were the priests. Although professional training schools for women church workers were established and thriving, graduates were less and less likely to spend a full career in the ministry. By the late 1960s, the vocation of professional women church worker crashed and burned – due to sweeping changes in social and sex roles, due to the General Convention Special Program which completely rearranged the budget of the Episcopal Church away from funding domestic mission and toward direct grants to people in need, and due, of course, to the ordination of women to the priesthood.
Those two paragraphs were a wild gallop with the broadest brush strokes imaginable, through the history of women’s vocations in the Episcopal Church. Much has been left out, but the point is: the harvest has always been plentiful, the laborers always few, and among those few have always been women.
I just came back from CREDO, which was fabulous. The Church Pension Fund DOES know how to take care of us. A group of 27 priests, one-third of whom were women, met for over a week of rest, vocational retooling, spiritual refreshment and wholistic revitalization. If you’ve been, you know what I mean; if you’ve not been yet, be sure to reply to your invitation right away. The Pension Fund, as we all know, is loaded; they can afford to treat us well, one or two weeks out of our ordained lives. (I heard last week that there is a CREDO 2 on our horizon; I’m already looking forward to it.)
There was a time when the Pension Fund was not the friend of ordained women. It took a few General Conventions for us to get equal treatment in all ways, but now we do. The benefits bring me, who can retire in about five years, after 30 years of credited service, a sense of security for which I and my family are very grateful. Am I at risk of writing a p.r. puff piece for the Pension Fund? Yup. Am I similarly championing the track record of the Episcopal Church and its bishops in the deployment and support of ordained women? Not on your tintype.
Episcopal leadership has, and I think continues to treat, ordained women rather shabbily. Oh, yes, we can be cardinal rectors and bishops etc etc, but when I sat down with the financial consultant at CREDO to go over my estimated pension, she remarked that I am one of the few women who can take advantage of the 30-year option. That was a disturbing fact. I thought, oh, not all that many women have been ordained that long … but then I heard the story of a woman ordained in 1981 (I was ordained in 1980), who has only seven years of credited service. She’ll never be able to take advantage of most of the benefits of the Pension Fund. What made the matter worse is that her first years after ordination, when she was in the employ of the Episcopal Church, her diocese or her bishop or some priest or some combination of the above, advised her NOT to enroll in the Pension Fund. Someone must have assumed that her work in the Episcopal Church would never amount to anything, and so now, in her 50s, it’s probably too late.
"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."
Perhaps the line to quote here is another one from the lessons for Proper 6, June 15: “Sarah laughed.”
Women have answered God’s call, even when it was laughably improbable. The rewards of service, vocation, ministry, scholarship, prayer, community are of course far greater than money. Our lives are enriched beyond the wildest dreams we had when we heard those first faint twinges of something calling us. If we only knew what it meant to be as wise as serpents in doing this worthy work. Maybe then we would still be as innocent as doves, or at least able to look forward, in our old age, to shake the dust from our feet.
A postscript:
If any woman reading this is underemployed, paid so little for her work or in such debt that she cannot feel she can take a vacation, I urge her to look into Adelynrood. This retreat center of the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross was founded early in the 20th century to give working women a place to go for summer vacation. The earliest visitors were factory girls, but as the Society grew, Companions, too, were working women – church workers, social workers, settlement house workers, office workers, teachers, professors, researchers. Adelynrood became a quiet, hospitable place where all kinds of women found welcome. Today, there is ample scholarship money to underwrite your stay. There is even money to help you get there. Go and find some rest, in this place prepared for us by women for over 100 years. It is a worthy house, a house of prayer, refreshment and peace.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Proper 5A
A re-telling of Matthew 9:9-13 and 18-26: by Imogen Nay
Jesus was walking in Bishopsgate*, City of London, he saw an investment banker and said ‘come and follow me’. The investment banker got up and followed him. Jesus went and sat with bankers dining in a City restaurant, eating rich and expensive food and wine, with other mega-rich business people. Others said ‘why does he eat with bankers and sinners?’ He replied, ‘those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick’. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
Then a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral came and knelt before him saying ‘My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hands on her and she will be made well’. Jesus got up and followed him and walked through the City to St. Paul’s. On his way a woman who was suffering from HIV saw him and thought to herself ‘if I could only reach him and touch him I will be made well’. Jesus turned, and seeing her he said ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well’. And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the Canon’s home and entered and saw all the people gathered, despairing, he said ‘Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping’. They all laughed at him, but when they had been put outside, he went into her room and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout the City.
*Heart of the financial district, London, UK.
What kinds of responses does such a re-setting draw from you? Does it make you feel that it’s wrong to label the rich and investment bankers, sinners? Does it make you wonder about the nature of miracles and what it might mean to proclaim that Jesus physically heals someone suffering from HIV? Does it emphasise the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ actions: bringing a daughter back to life? I don’t know what your reactions to this re-telling are, positive or negative. But the actual text of Matthew brings out for me challenging and rich questions. Who should the Gospel be preached to? What does healing mean in the Gospels? Is the gender of the two people healed in this passage significant?
The passage indicates some dualisms: faith and law, mercy and sacrifice, sinners and the righteous, disease and healing, death and life. It presents Jesus as physically challenging the boundaries of his culture. He is in the midst of the world, touching, speaking, eating and walking. He calls a tax collect, he eats with sinners, he touches a woman who is ill, and he heals the daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Jesus doesn’t just side with the poor and needy, but calls all sinners, asks for mercy, cures the sick and brings the dead to life. In the context of the other passages set for today (Genesis 12:1-9 and Romans 4:13-25) the theme of faith is at the forefront: Abraham’s faith that led him to believe in the God who promised him a new land and to be the Father of a great nation; a faith that Paul establishes to be the inheritance of all people, in Christ. In the Gospel passage Jesus says to the woman suffering from a haemorrhage: ‘Take heart daughter; your faith has made you well’.
The Genesis and Romans passages set for today tell the traditional patriarchal story of fathers as the founders of nations and from whom we inherit the faith. Jesus altogether expands the vista however, bringing into the picture a broader array of people. In the inclusion of a ‘daughter’ as one who has faith, it can be argued that it is therefore accredited to her also as righteousness, as Paul argues it was for Abraham. Paul’s inclusive vision of Jewish faith that in Christ invites Gentiles to its altar is one that this Gospel tells us establishes women as equal inheritors of that faith too. It is not only the gender divide that is trampled by Jesus however; he also tramples on the divide between the rich and poor, the ill and the well, the dead and the alive. In him the suggestion is that all who have faith, no matter who or what they are, no matter how society views and typecasts them, they too are inheritors of the faith and the faith brings healing and eternal life.
Liberation and feminist theologies respond to real and urgent need for certain people in society who are suffering, oppressed, forgotten and abused. These theologies also need however to be constantly renewed and re-challenged by the Gospel, to keep thinking, ‘yes, but who are we still excluding?’ Jesus didn’t come just for the poor, just for the Jews, just for men, just for anyone. He came proclaiming forgiveness of sins for all people. This, for me, is the theological foundation for ‘inclusiveness’ - a word that is used often today in Britain in relation to describing generally liberal Churches and theologies. Inclusiveness in this context however often becomes exclusiveness: ‘you are included here, if you believe this and this not that and that’. It is extraordinarily challenging to hold together the needs of the marginalised and to prioritise them and to proclaim the Gospel to all. It is hard too to proclaim a Gospel of forgiveness to all, for that means pointing out what my sins are and helping others to see theirs. And the difficulty with this is that ethics is complicated and there is huge debate in the Church regarding what is really sinful. There is no consensus about sex, marriage, what are right relationships what are wrong ones, and the relevant status of women and men. In the Church of England and in the worldwide Anglican communion what causes argument and debate is gay priests and women bishops.
There isn’t an easy message to take from the New Testament to solve these dilemmas. The sexual ethic and gender relations of Jesus’ time are fundamentally different from our own in the West. Those who are against women priests wouldn’t necessarily refute my reading, ‘of course women are inheritors of the faith, but that doesn’t mean they should be priests’, they may argue. The trauma of modernity has meant trauma to established ideas about how men and women relate to one another, particularly in terms of sexual relations, but also in terms of gender roles in society.
What can this Gospel passage tell us that can help with these issues? I think that the specific values we can take are that: Christ brings mercy, a new ethic that challenges the old, a reformed religion that challenges the old, a new understanding of Tradition and a new relationship with God based on old but re-interpreted and forgotten understandings. Christ challenges the boundaries and established norms of a culture and he always brings healing and new life. He is not afraid to mix with anyone. He re-defines righteousness and sin and ultimately redefines God. If we are to meet the ethical and theological challenges of our day we need to try together to do some of these things to be faithful to the Gospel we proclaim.
Imogen Nay
I am currently training to be a priest in the Church of England. Prior to entering ordination training I worked in the voluntary sector. My last job was developing and running services for disadvantaged women for Providence Row Charity, London. I ran drop-in groups, advice and support sessions and developed outreach services for women involved in prostitution and women sleeping rough. I was also involved in campaigning for a change in the way women involved in prostitution are treated in the legal system. I studied English Literature at Univeristy, followed by an MA in Renaissance Studies.
I am now completing a degree in Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge University. I have a particular interest in feminist liberation theologies.
Jesus was walking in Bishopsgate*, City of London, he saw an investment banker and said ‘come and follow me’. The investment banker got up and followed him. Jesus went and sat with bankers dining in a City restaurant, eating rich and expensive food and wine, with other mega-rich business people. Others said ‘why does he eat with bankers and sinners?’ He replied, ‘those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick’. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’
Then a Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral came and knelt before him saying ‘My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hands on her and she will be made well’. Jesus got up and followed him and walked through the City to St. Paul’s. On his way a woman who was suffering from HIV saw him and thought to herself ‘if I could only reach him and touch him I will be made well’. Jesus turned, and seeing her he said ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well’. And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the Canon’s home and entered and saw all the people gathered, despairing, he said ‘Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping’. They all laughed at him, but when they had been put outside, he went into her room and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout the City.
*Heart of the financial district, London, UK.
What kinds of responses does such a re-setting draw from you? Does it make you feel that it’s wrong to label the rich and investment bankers, sinners? Does it make you wonder about the nature of miracles and what it might mean to proclaim that Jesus physically heals someone suffering from HIV? Does it emphasise the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ actions: bringing a daughter back to life? I don’t know what your reactions to this re-telling are, positive or negative. But the actual text of Matthew brings out for me challenging and rich questions. Who should the Gospel be preached to? What does healing mean in the Gospels? Is the gender of the two people healed in this passage significant?
The passage indicates some dualisms: faith and law, mercy and sacrifice, sinners and the righteous, disease and healing, death and life. It presents Jesus as physically challenging the boundaries of his culture. He is in the midst of the world, touching, speaking, eating and walking. He calls a tax collect, he eats with sinners, he touches a woman who is ill, and he heals the daughter of a leader of the synagogue. Jesus doesn’t just side with the poor and needy, but calls all sinners, asks for mercy, cures the sick and brings the dead to life. In the context of the other passages set for today (Genesis 12:1-9 and Romans 4:13-25) the theme of faith is at the forefront: Abraham’s faith that led him to believe in the God who promised him a new land and to be the Father of a great nation; a faith that Paul establishes to be the inheritance of all people, in Christ. In the Gospel passage Jesus says to the woman suffering from a haemorrhage: ‘Take heart daughter; your faith has made you well’.
The Genesis and Romans passages set for today tell the traditional patriarchal story of fathers as the founders of nations and from whom we inherit the faith. Jesus altogether expands the vista however, bringing into the picture a broader array of people. In the inclusion of a ‘daughter’ as one who has faith, it can be argued that it is therefore accredited to her also as righteousness, as Paul argues it was for Abraham. Paul’s inclusive vision of Jewish faith that in Christ invites Gentiles to its altar is one that this Gospel tells us establishes women as equal inheritors of that faith too. It is not only the gender divide that is trampled by Jesus however; he also tramples on the divide between the rich and poor, the ill and the well, the dead and the alive. In him the suggestion is that all who have faith, no matter who or what they are, no matter how society views and typecasts them, they too are inheritors of the faith and the faith brings healing and eternal life.
Liberation and feminist theologies respond to real and urgent need for certain people in society who are suffering, oppressed, forgotten and abused. These theologies also need however to be constantly renewed and re-challenged by the Gospel, to keep thinking, ‘yes, but who are we still excluding?’ Jesus didn’t come just for the poor, just for the Jews, just for men, just for anyone. He came proclaiming forgiveness of sins for all people. This, for me, is the theological foundation for ‘inclusiveness’ - a word that is used often today in Britain in relation to describing generally liberal Churches and theologies. Inclusiveness in this context however often becomes exclusiveness: ‘you are included here, if you believe this and this not that and that’. It is extraordinarily challenging to hold together the needs of the marginalised and to prioritise them and to proclaim the Gospel to all. It is hard too to proclaim a Gospel of forgiveness to all, for that means pointing out what my sins are and helping others to see theirs. And the difficulty with this is that ethics is complicated and there is huge debate in the Church regarding what is really sinful. There is no consensus about sex, marriage, what are right relationships what are wrong ones, and the relevant status of women and men. In the Church of England and in the worldwide Anglican communion what causes argument and debate is gay priests and women bishops.
There isn’t an easy message to take from the New Testament to solve these dilemmas. The sexual ethic and gender relations of Jesus’ time are fundamentally different from our own in the West. Those who are against women priests wouldn’t necessarily refute my reading, ‘of course women are inheritors of the faith, but that doesn’t mean they should be priests’, they may argue. The trauma of modernity has meant trauma to established ideas about how men and women relate to one another, particularly in terms of sexual relations, but also in terms of gender roles in society.
What can this Gospel passage tell us that can help with these issues? I think that the specific values we can take are that: Christ brings mercy, a new ethic that challenges the old, a reformed religion that challenges the old, a new understanding of Tradition and a new relationship with God based on old but re-interpreted and forgotten understandings. Christ challenges the boundaries and established norms of a culture and he always brings healing and new life. He is not afraid to mix with anyone. He re-defines righteousness and sin and ultimately redefines God. If we are to meet the ethical and theological challenges of our day we need to try together to do some of these things to be faithful to the Gospel we proclaim.
Imogen Nay
I am currently training to be a priest in the Church of England. Prior to entering ordination training I worked in the voluntary sector. My last job was developing and running services for disadvantaged women for Providence Row Charity, London. I ran drop-in groups, advice and support sessions and developed outreach services for women involved in prostitution and women sleeping rough. I was also involved in campaigning for a change in the way women involved in prostitution are treated in the legal system. I studied English Literature at Univeristy, followed by an MA in Renaissance Studies.
I am now completing a degree in Theology and Religious Studies at Cambridge University. I have a particular interest in feminist liberation theologies.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
The Foundation
A reflection on Matthew 7:21-29 for Proper 4A by the Rev. Terri C. Pilarski
Jan Richardson from The Painted Prayerbook offers this reflection:
“ When a friend of mine was ready to build a house on the land he had purchased in eastern Kentucky, he sent out a request to some friends. Scott invited us to offer an object, a tangible blessing that he would bury in the ground upon which he would build the house. He recalls that “Folks were amazingly thoughtful—some of the items included tea, Legos and puzzle pieces from my childhood sent by my mother, guitar strings, a bit of climbing rope, a bit of granite from my home town (Lithonia meaning roughly “rock place”), a wine chalice from my potter friends, shells from our childhood vacation spot, herbs, bits of plants and dirt from various parts of the country, and chocolate.” After all the gifts arrived, Scott gathered with some friends for a ceremony on his property. Placing the gifts in the ground, they offered a blessing for what would take root in that place. Married now and with young children, Scott and his family flourish in the house built atop the buried blessings.”
Think about it. Building a house on the foundation of gifts of others including prayers and many blessings. When I read this I thought immediately of our churches. Our churches are built on the generosity of others – the people who have gone before us and the gifts they have given the church in leadership and financial support.
Of course having a solid foundation for our finances and buildings is only part of the foundation that Jesus is speaking of in our Gospel. He’s pointing us to see that it isn’t enough to shore ourselves up, there is more to be done. There is more to be done than just hearing the word of God, which is like shoring ourselves up… What Jesus is saying in this conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount reminds us that hearing the word of God is good. Building solid stable finances is good. But it isn’t everything. There’s more…we have to do something.
In my ministry I have served two churches as the rector. In both cases I have followed strong male leaders who built up the church and left a lasting impression. These male rectors were focused, by and large, on building the foundation for financial support and church buildings. They led from a bureaucratic style that was common for that generation. But, like the world around us, the way of the church is changing and the leadership style of the past is not as effective now.
In their book, “The Web of Women’s Leadership” Susan Willhauk and Jacqulyn Thorpe discuss the impact of women’s leadership in the world and in the church. They surmise that although women’s leadership in church remains relatively low (they cite 12.3 % in 1996, and I think its now about 20%) women have had a big influence on leadership style. They use the image of a web to convey this impact. “Who has not marveled at the hair-like thinness, as well as the tremendous strength, of the strands of a web? We want to dispel the myth of the spider as an evil conniving creature. Spiders are, in fact, graceful, diligent, determined, industrious, creative, artistic, consistent and persistent creatures. Their webs can teach us about and be symbols of new, far-reaching, and inclusive ministries.”
The web as a metaphor for leadership describes a system that replaces a hierarchy with a circular system that includes concentric circles “bound together by….axial and radial lines that criss-crossed the structure in a kind of filigree.” The web as a model gives us an image for leadership from the center rather than leadership from the top down. The web also provides an image for leadership from the edge, from the margins. In essence leadership can flow in and out from the margins to the center, and from the center to the margins. This has been a distinctive mark of women’s leadership which focuses on relationships, collaboration, and a shared vision that rises up from the group rather than the leader.
In both my calls as rector I have found a congregation yearning for this style. People who no longer want the bureaucratic, highly structured style of years past, but want an open shared ministry. I think this may be why women are becoming leaders in the church. It’s partially the times we live in. But I also think it is a movement of the Spirit calling forth the gifts of women. Obviously I believe that God remains active in this world and is influencing the times we live in. Therefore the Spirit is calling the Church into a new way of being with the influence of women’s leadership paving the way.
Now of course the ability to lead as a web is not limited to women. Men are growing into this style of leadership too. And the church will benefit from this new round of leaders be they clergy or lay. The outcome for the church, I think, will be a renewed focus on ministry to the world. We see this in the importance of the Millennium Development Goals and the many other ways churches are responding the needs of this broken world. As we do this we will move from a focus on building finances and church buildings to a focus on seeing the Other in our community and world.
We need to have a solid foundation, stable finances, and relatively comfortable buildings. But Jesus reminds us that it is not enough to hear the word, it is also not enough to just build for ourselves. In my experience churches that are struggling financially benefit when they put their energy into helping others in the world, even in a small but consistent way. Each of us, small church or large, needs to do something that impacts the world around us. This kind of work, moving out from ourselves and into the world, also needs a strong foundation. It needs to be grounded in the belief, that no matter how little we have we can still be a generous people. The foundation for this work needs to be grounded in prayer and collaboration and innovation. Perhaps it is a foundation that looks less like the concrete slabs we build our homes on and more like a spiders web. Perhaps its strength needs to come less from its hardness and solidity and more from its flexibility and roundness.
Like the creative foundation upon which Scott built his house in the Jan Richardson reflection may the foundations we build be a blessing to us and all we meet.
The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski serves as rector at St. Francis-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church in Green Valley, Arizona.
Jan Richardson from The Painted Prayerbook offers this reflection:
“ When a friend of mine was ready to build a house on the land he had purchased in eastern Kentucky, he sent out a request to some friends. Scott invited us to offer an object, a tangible blessing that he would bury in the ground upon which he would build the house. He recalls that “Folks were amazingly thoughtful—some of the items included tea, Legos and puzzle pieces from my childhood sent by my mother, guitar strings, a bit of climbing rope, a bit of granite from my home town (Lithonia meaning roughly “rock place”), a wine chalice from my potter friends, shells from our childhood vacation spot, herbs, bits of plants and dirt from various parts of the country, and chocolate.” After all the gifts arrived, Scott gathered with some friends for a ceremony on his property. Placing the gifts in the ground, they offered a blessing for what would take root in that place. Married now and with young children, Scott and his family flourish in the house built atop the buried blessings.”
Think about it. Building a house on the foundation of gifts of others including prayers and many blessings. When I read this I thought immediately of our churches. Our churches are built on the generosity of others – the people who have gone before us and the gifts they have given the church in leadership and financial support.
Of course having a solid foundation for our finances and buildings is only part of the foundation that Jesus is speaking of in our Gospel. He’s pointing us to see that it isn’t enough to shore ourselves up, there is more to be done. There is more to be done than just hearing the word of God, which is like shoring ourselves up… What Jesus is saying in this conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount reminds us that hearing the word of God is good. Building solid stable finances is good. But it isn’t everything. There’s more…we have to do something.
In my ministry I have served two churches as the rector. In both cases I have followed strong male leaders who built up the church and left a lasting impression. These male rectors were focused, by and large, on building the foundation for financial support and church buildings. They led from a bureaucratic style that was common for that generation. But, like the world around us, the way of the church is changing and the leadership style of the past is not as effective now.
In their book, “The Web of Women’s Leadership” Susan Willhauk and Jacqulyn Thorpe discuss the impact of women’s leadership in the world and in the church. They surmise that although women’s leadership in church remains relatively low (they cite 12.3 % in 1996, and I think its now about 20%) women have had a big influence on leadership style. They use the image of a web to convey this impact. “Who has not marveled at the hair-like thinness, as well as the tremendous strength, of the strands of a web? We want to dispel the myth of the spider as an evil conniving creature. Spiders are, in fact, graceful, diligent, determined, industrious, creative, artistic, consistent and persistent creatures. Their webs can teach us about and be symbols of new, far-reaching, and inclusive ministries.”
The web as a metaphor for leadership describes a system that replaces a hierarchy with a circular system that includes concentric circles “bound together by….axial and radial lines that criss-crossed the structure in a kind of filigree.” The web as a model gives us an image for leadership from the center rather than leadership from the top down. The web also provides an image for leadership from the edge, from the margins. In essence leadership can flow in and out from the margins to the center, and from the center to the margins. This has been a distinctive mark of women’s leadership which focuses on relationships, collaboration, and a shared vision that rises up from the group rather than the leader.
In both my calls as rector I have found a congregation yearning for this style. People who no longer want the bureaucratic, highly structured style of years past, but want an open shared ministry. I think this may be why women are becoming leaders in the church. It’s partially the times we live in. But I also think it is a movement of the Spirit calling forth the gifts of women. Obviously I believe that God remains active in this world and is influencing the times we live in. Therefore the Spirit is calling the Church into a new way of being with the influence of women’s leadership paving the way.
Now of course the ability to lead as a web is not limited to women. Men are growing into this style of leadership too. And the church will benefit from this new round of leaders be they clergy or lay. The outcome for the church, I think, will be a renewed focus on ministry to the world. We see this in the importance of the Millennium Development Goals and the many other ways churches are responding the needs of this broken world. As we do this we will move from a focus on building finances and church buildings to a focus on seeing the Other in our community and world.
We need to have a solid foundation, stable finances, and relatively comfortable buildings. But Jesus reminds us that it is not enough to hear the word, it is also not enough to just build for ourselves. In my experience churches that are struggling financially benefit when they put their energy into helping others in the world, even in a small but consistent way. Each of us, small church or large, needs to do something that impacts the world around us. This kind of work, moving out from ourselves and into the world, also needs a strong foundation. It needs to be grounded in the belief, that no matter how little we have we can still be a generous people. The foundation for this work needs to be grounded in prayer and collaboration and innovation. Perhaps it is a foundation that looks less like the concrete slabs we build our homes on and more like a spiders web. Perhaps its strength needs to come less from its hardness and solidity and more from its flexibility and roundness.
Like the creative foundation upon which Scott built his house in the Jan Richardson reflection may the foundations we build be a blessing to us and all we meet.
The Rev. Terri C. Pilarski serves as rector at St. Francis-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church in Green Valley, Arizona.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Pentecost 2, Proper 3
A Reflection on the Matthew 6:24-34 by The Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy
In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus repeatedly says “Do not worry, do not worry do not worry.” Have no anxiety. Not about your money or your life, or your food or drink, not about your clothing or even your tomorrows. You cannot accomplish anything with worry, we are reminded. It does not give us control over anything, and worry and anxiety can only make us slaves to the false gods we think will give us the fast fix. As a therapist I am intimately acquainted with the wages of anxiety. Worry and stress, allowed to run rampant through our bodies narrows our arteries, swells our waistlines and shortens our lifespan. It is hard to quell those anxious thoughts, especially when they come calling in the wee hours, taunting us with worry about life, finances, health, and the future. All things that seem so very important. All things that we can do nothing about by worrying over. All things that we am sometimes tempted to evade by doing what one of my therapist friends calls the “spinning behaviors” of things like spending or gambling or drinking or working to exhaustion. All things that can easily become our masters if we allow them to.
I am a worrier by nature. I was raised to be one by the combination of an anxious mother who, in striving to protect me from all things that might possibly harm me, completely unintentionally gave me the message that the world is a really scary place and my religious upbringing and it’s metaphors for God. When I think back on the God-metaphors of my very strict Roman Catholic upbringing, they are much more related to the idea of a God as judge who kept track of sins. The God of my upbringing who was not a God of comfort but one of judgment. If there was a “father” God, he was a stern and exacting father, not a gentle one, and certainly no “mother” metaphors for God himself would ever have crossed my mind. Fortunately for my tender soul, I did have Mary for that. She was the one who nurtured me, the one to whom I took my fears, cried my childish tears, begged intercession with her son Jesus and even with God on my behalf. If there was any soft place to land in those days, it was with the God-bearer, who was also the bearer of most of the religious warmth I experienced as a child. “God is love” was a term I had heard, but at best it was a corporate kind of concept, and had no bearing on me personally. I had no sense of myself being beloved of this stern and distant God. And unlike my Protestant friends, I lacked the mitigating influence of “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Our Catechism studies were focused more on the knowledge of making sure we did not disobey God’s laws by sinning. The metaphors were less about a loving relationship than they were about pleasing an exacting taskmaster. Learn the rules, do things right and He will be pleased. Mess up and you have to do things to earn your way back into favor. When we did pray for God to intercede in our lives it was from the mindset of a God that was outside of time and space and nature.
There were spatial-relational metaphors as well Humans were “down here” on earth and God was “up there” in heaven, a vast distance away, not only in time and space, but in the sense of interrelationship. God that “swooped in and swooped out” arranging things to His purposes. God was in charge, giving or not giving you what “He saw fit.” Like the master of the machine, He could alter your little life at any moment by throwing a new switch. If we complained too much that things were not going well, we were reminded that this world was really not to be our focus, because everything that mattered was going to take place in the next, anyway. Suffering here, our own, and others, was for some greater good, “earning our crown in heaven” and thus could be offered up to this God who “counted our sufferings as stars in our crowns.” It seemed there was a vast gap between man (sic) and God. Those who breached that gap were special, set apart, saints and martyrs, certainly not ordinary mortals like me. Other than the lives of those saints and a few Bible stories, I was not exposed to a lot of Scripture growing up, so I didn’t really get to hear the rest of the story until a whole lot later. Given that I felt that God was far from me, judging me and or moving impersonally in and out of my life to arrange things to His own almighty purposes (missing the almighty grounding in love factor) is it any wonder there was a rather significant amount of spiritual anxiety! Of course we know that those limited metaphors for God that I was raised with are not in tune with the biblical view of the divine nature. The idea that God is in complete control of everything, with creation having no power, plays into the idea that God is outside creation and misses the point of just about everything that we learn in scripture about the dynamic, loving and absolutely relational nature of God.
This view of God that I grew up with is problematic far beyond the production of spiritual anxiety in small in Catholic girls. As the Rev. Rick Marshall writes, “If God is omnipotent, and the nature of that divine power is coercive, it leads to metaphors of a unilateral “strong” God, a Dictator, a Warrior, an Emperor, one who uses force, even violence, as a means to divine ends. If one is called to represent and emulate this God in the world, it then means to embody this kind of coercive power that leads to wars and rumors of wars. An ultimate religious act can then be often an act of violence. Waging a war in God’s name, or harming another in God’s name is often justified as an act in tune with God’s nature. Of course this is a caricature of male power. The traditional theology view of God has become part of the problem of our world. Bullets and missiles and phalanxes of troops “inserting’ themselves, “dominating” the enemy, “penetrating” into hostile land; “Shock and Awe” is the measure of success. It is a patriarchal world where domination is the rule. Male over female, master over slave, adult over child, rich over poor, human over creation, Father God over the world. It creates a world filled with fear and anxiety.”
These stories and the emotions they engender can become our masters. We can so easily become their slaves. The metaphors we live by, the stories of our lives are what feeds them. So very far back in time God was telling a story of love and faithfulness, of covenant and relationship. Not a God who is far from the Beloved people, but of one who has “inscribed you on the palms of my hands.” Not a God who is outside of human life, distant and detached but who holds us closer than a mother. A God who is intimately connected to us in love, “closer to us than we are to ourselves.” These metaphors change things! These metaphors make it possible to consider the lilies and the birds and the grasses. They make it possible to consider that I, that we, are beloved, are called, not in spite of some sinful human nature, but because our humanness is so wonderful that God in Jesus desired to become part of it, into relationship with a God who has loved us from all eternity. The one Isaiah knew, and Moses and David. The one known by Ruth and Naomi, Rebecca and Leah. And Mary, my own comfort in the scary years, all along, she knew too, that the other story was the real one. This is the story that Jesus, too, knew, the God with whom he was intimately joined and could tell with unique authority. As for us, sometimes we need to remember, to take time to stop and remember to breathe and heed the wisdom in Jesus’ words to us today. It’s healthier that way for our bodies, our minds and our spirits.
Marshall, Rick, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, Proper 3, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy serves as one of three priests (all women) on a Total Ministry Team in a small congregation in rural Minnesota, where she also works as a clinical psychologist at the community mental health center. She has taught as an adjunct faculty member in the Psychology department at the local University. She enjoys being active in the Diocese, serving on the Commission on Ministry, as Secretary for her Region and as Communications Coordinator for the Diocesan MDG Team. She is a self-defined “liberal, evangelical, feminist, mystical, mindful, slightly Anglo-Catholic leaning Episcopalian-by-grace.”
In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus repeatedly says “Do not worry, do not worry do not worry.” Have no anxiety. Not about your money or your life, or your food or drink, not about your clothing or even your tomorrows. You cannot accomplish anything with worry, we are reminded. It does not give us control over anything, and worry and anxiety can only make us slaves to the false gods we think will give us the fast fix. As a therapist I am intimately acquainted with the wages of anxiety. Worry and stress, allowed to run rampant through our bodies narrows our arteries, swells our waistlines and shortens our lifespan. It is hard to quell those anxious thoughts, especially when they come calling in the wee hours, taunting us with worry about life, finances, health, and the future. All things that seem so very important. All things that we can do nothing about by worrying over. All things that we am sometimes tempted to evade by doing what one of my therapist friends calls the “spinning behaviors” of things like spending or gambling or drinking or working to exhaustion. All things that can easily become our masters if we allow them to.
I am a worrier by nature. I was raised to be one by the combination of an anxious mother who, in striving to protect me from all things that might possibly harm me, completely unintentionally gave me the message that the world is a really scary place and my religious upbringing and it’s metaphors for God. When I think back on the God-metaphors of my very strict Roman Catholic upbringing, they are much more related to the idea of a God as judge who kept track of sins. The God of my upbringing who was not a God of comfort but one of judgment. If there was a “father” God, he was a stern and exacting father, not a gentle one, and certainly no “mother” metaphors for God himself would ever have crossed my mind. Fortunately for my tender soul, I did have Mary for that. She was the one who nurtured me, the one to whom I took my fears, cried my childish tears, begged intercession with her son Jesus and even with God on my behalf. If there was any soft place to land in those days, it was with the God-bearer, who was also the bearer of most of the religious warmth I experienced as a child. “God is love” was a term I had heard, but at best it was a corporate kind of concept, and had no bearing on me personally. I had no sense of myself being beloved of this stern and distant God. And unlike my Protestant friends, I lacked the mitigating influence of “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Our Catechism studies were focused more on the knowledge of making sure we did not disobey God’s laws by sinning. The metaphors were less about a loving relationship than they were about pleasing an exacting taskmaster. Learn the rules, do things right and He will be pleased. Mess up and you have to do things to earn your way back into favor. When we did pray for God to intercede in our lives it was from the mindset of a God that was outside of time and space and nature.
There were spatial-relational metaphors as well Humans were “down here” on earth and God was “up there” in heaven, a vast distance away, not only in time and space, but in the sense of interrelationship. God that “swooped in and swooped out” arranging things to His purposes. God was in charge, giving or not giving you what “He saw fit.” Like the master of the machine, He could alter your little life at any moment by throwing a new switch. If we complained too much that things were not going well, we were reminded that this world was really not to be our focus, because everything that mattered was going to take place in the next, anyway. Suffering here, our own, and others, was for some greater good, “earning our crown in heaven” and thus could be offered up to this God who “counted our sufferings as stars in our crowns.” It seemed there was a vast gap between man (sic) and God. Those who breached that gap were special, set apart, saints and martyrs, certainly not ordinary mortals like me. Other than the lives of those saints and a few Bible stories, I was not exposed to a lot of Scripture growing up, so I didn’t really get to hear the rest of the story until a whole lot later. Given that I felt that God was far from me, judging me and or moving impersonally in and out of my life to arrange things to His own almighty purposes (missing the almighty grounding in love factor) is it any wonder there was a rather significant amount of spiritual anxiety! Of course we know that those limited metaphors for God that I was raised with are not in tune with the biblical view of the divine nature. The idea that God is in complete control of everything, with creation having no power, plays into the idea that God is outside creation and misses the point of just about everything that we learn in scripture about the dynamic, loving and absolutely relational nature of God.
This view of God that I grew up with is problematic far beyond the production of spiritual anxiety in small in Catholic girls. As the Rev. Rick Marshall writes, “If God is omnipotent, and the nature of that divine power is coercive, it leads to metaphors of a unilateral “strong” God, a Dictator, a Warrior, an Emperor, one who uses force, even violence, as a means to divine ends. If one is called to represent and emulate this God in the world, it then means to embody this kind of coercive power that leads to wars and rumors of wars. An ultimate religious act can then be often an act of violence. Waging a war in God’s name, or harming another in God’s name is often justified as an act in tune with God’s nature. Of course this is a caricature of male power. The traditional theology view of God has become part of the problem of our world. Bullets and missiles and phalanxes of troops “inserting’ themselves, “dominating” the enemy, “penetrating” into hostile land; “Shock and Awe” is the measure of success. It is a patriarchal world where domination is the rule. Male over female, master over slave, adult over child, rich over poor, human over creation, Father God over the world. It creates a world filled with fear and anxiety.”
These stories and the emotions they engender can become our masters. We can so easily become their slaves. The metaphors we live by, the stories of our lives are what feeds them. So very far back in time God was telling a story of love and faithfulness, of covenant and relationship. Not a God who is far from the Beloved people, but of one who has “inscribed you on the palms of my hands.” Not a God who is outside of human life, distant and detached but who holds us closer than a mother. A God who is intimately connected to us in love, “closer to us than we are to ourselves.” These metaphors change things! These metaphors make it possible to consider the lilies and the birds and the grasses. They make it possible to consider that I, that we, are beloved, are called, not in spite of some sinful human nature, but because our humanness is so wonderful that God in Jesus desired to become part of it, into relationship with a God who has loved us from all eternity. The one Isaiah knew, and Moses and David. The one known by Ruth and Naomi, Rebecca and Leah. And Mary, my own comfort in the scary years, all along, she knew too, that the other story was the real one. This is the story that Jesus, too, knew, the God with whom he was intimately joined and could tell with unique authority. As for us, sometimes we need to remember, to take time to stop and remember to breathe and heed the wisdom in Jesus’ words to us today. It’s healthier that way for our bodies, our minds and our spirits.
Marshall, Rick, Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, Proper 3, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Kate Hennessy serves as one of three priests (all women) on a Total Ministry Team in a small congregation in rural Minnesota, where she also works as a clinical psychologist at the community mental health center. She has taught as an adjunct faculty member in the Psychology department at the local University. She enjoys being active in the Diocese, serving on the Commission on Ministry, as Secretary for her Region and as Communications Coordinator for the Diocesan MDG Team. She is a self-defined “liberal, evangelical, feminist, mystical, mindful, slightly Anglo-Catholic leaning Episcopalian-by-grace.”
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Trinity Sunday Reflection
A Reflection on the lessons for Trinity Sunday by Janine Goodwin
Over the last eight months or so, I’ve done some of my best praying while looking at pictures on www.GalaxyZoo.com, a remarkable effort started by astronomers who work on images from deep space. They have discovered the best possible instrument for the task of distinguishing galaxies from other celestial phenomena, and for distinguishing spiral and elliptical galaxies from each other, is the human brain. Building on that discovery, the scientists put up a website and invited volunteers to look at galaxies. A web forum began, and a community emerged, as communities do any time there is something for people to share. There are threads where people can post especially beautiful objects and puzzle together over what the strange ones might be. There are now social scientists who are doing research on the GalaxyZoo phenomenon. When I log on to GalaxyZoo under my pseudonym, I am part of a galaxy of minds moving around a task as stars move around a galactic core. We are all connected.
I always begin a galaxy-classifying session with the opening sentence from Evening Prayer on page of the Book of Common Prayer, modified for inclusive language: “Seek the one who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into morning, and darkens the day into night; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth.” When a particularly beautiful object flashes onto the screen, I am amazed by the glory and the immensity of the universe. I am astounded at the creativity of the one who made the Pleiades and Orion. It doesn’t surprise me that I can tell a spiral from an elliptical better than a computer can, even in fuzzy images from deep space, but it delights me. God made us both. As St. Francis might say, the galaxy is my sister. It is a joy beyond measure to remember that anything we can perceive is only a fraction of the greatness of God, the God who has become known to me, as to Paul, as a God of grace, love, and communion, a God who creates lavishly. That God is both personal and beyond my comprehension: personal because I am part of creation and thus a recipient of grace, love, and communion, and incomprehensible because the more I learn, the less I can be certain I know exactly what God is doing. I am more inclined to praise, to trust, and to listen, less inclined to insist that I can speak for the Creator. Is the spectacularly beautiful collision of two galaxies a tragedy for worlds we will never know? What is God doing? How are we connected?
In today’s readings, we find the same insistence on the connection between the cosmic and the human. The first reading is the story of creation, one of the two stories that were chosen to be passed down as authoritative in our tradition, one of the many creation stories in our world. We human beings have a talent for making such stories, just as we have a talent for identifying galaxies. Creation stories always link the cosmic and the human, and the Creator is always in touch with human creatures in these stories. It is worth remembering that our tradition has chosen to put more than one story into the anthology of God stories that we call the Bible. There may be more than one right way to tell any given story, and our tradition tells the stories of God in a wide variety of voices, in stories told more than once and with differing emphases. The Bible is not a monolith, but a conversation made up of centuries of individual and group voices, and when we read it, we join that conversation. We are connected, through time and space, with the others who have shared our faith. We must listen with respect, study with care, and beware of making those voices sound too much like our own.
The psalm puts the human and the cosmic together, asking who we are and where we belong in creation. We have been given the power to change the earth. The psalmist, living in a world that did not yet bear the scars of large-scale human destructiveness, can celebrate human dominion; we may not have that ability anymore. When we confront what our dominion has done to the earth, we are more likely to lament than to rejoice. Our increased knowledge of how the world works and of what our heedless actions have done gives us an increased responsibility to do better. Many of us are beginning to believe that the God who made us as part of a good world is calling us out of our wasteful ways and toward repentance and change of direction in the ways we deal with the earth. Our connection with the fruitful earth has not always brought forth good fruit.
The way God deals with us is the way we should deal with each other. In an early example of Trinitarian thinking, Paul invokes “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.” God contains grace, love, and communion. God is a conversation, a phrase I first found in the works of Martin Smith. God wants to include us in that holy conversation. This passage comes at the end of a tough letter, and contains words of challenge and warning. The life of faith is not easy, and the way to live it is not self-evident. It is not always easy to find the grace to show love, the way to live in communion. When we fail to see how we are connected, or when our connections become unhealthy, we begin to lose the presence of the Christ who refuses to break connection with any of us. Are we showing grace, love, and communion to each other?
Finally, there is the Gospel. Here, again, is the formula that the Church later recognized and developed as our understanding of the Trinity grew. Here, also, is the beginning of a mixed and painful history. The Gospel of Matthew ends with this charge to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This is a passage that breaks my heart because of what Christians have done with it. Too many times (and once would be one time too many), Christians have used this passage to betray the Jesus who said, “Come and see,” the Jesus who questioned and listened, the Jesus who was always willing to look outside his own group and his own tradition for evidence of the reign of God. Those who claimed to act in his name have often replaced conversation with coercion, respect with contempt, openness with violence. This is a passage that has been used by empires to justify the conquest and destruction of cultures. Jesus, who would not allow his disciples to use violence to defend him from death, has seen his name used falsely to make war seem holy; used for the destruction of lives in inquisitions and witch hunts; used to justify slavery and oppression.
Christians in history, and Christians now, have too often gone forth with the loving intention of spreading the Good News and then tried to coerce rather than to converse. Some missionaries (not all) have assumed that the culture in which they learned the Good News and the way that news was given to them is the only way that Good News can be told. They have not entered into conversation with the cultures they encountered, seeing what God has done there, but have tried to impose their ways. They have confused the medium of their particular culture with the message of Jesus, and the results of that confusion have caused tremendous destruction.
This is true in everyday life as well. We can all name instances in which “gospels” of hatred and exclusion have replaced the Good News of inclusive love. “Christian” has become a word that turns people off because they see it as synonymous with bigotry and hostility. I have friends who cannot discuss their faith with me because of the damage done to them by Christians who tried to force them to believe, or, worse, who acted abusively toward them and used faith as a tool for that abuse. I have learned to wait in silence until they ask a question, and then to answer briefly and listen to their stories. Some of them may never be able to ask and talk. I pray that God’s love will find them, and I must accept that that may happen in ways I cannot understand and might not recognize. Loving relationships cannot be forced or manipulated, and the very people who thought they were bringing others to faith have brought about distrust, anger, and fear.
The God of grace, communion, and love has been obscured by the actions of those who would dominate, and so end, the conversations of faith. Too often, evangelization has not produced disciples who follow willingly and with creative joy, but subjects of a reign that is not God’s wild and vivid creation. Once again, there is repentance and repair work to do before we can recognize our connection to each other and reach out to each other in grace, in love, and in communion. The damage runs deep; sometimes is so great that it would be easy to despair, but the God who made the Pleiades and Orion waits to bring us all back into the loving conversation that is the beginning and end of creation, the basis of all that is.
Janine Goodwin is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader who lives with her husband, dogs, and cats. She holds a B. Mus. and an M.S. Ed. in Special Education from the University of Oregon and an M.A. in Theology from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. When she is not working with words, she makes jewelry and rosaries.
Over the last eight months or so, I’ve done some of my best praying while looking at pictures on www.GalaxyZoo.com, a remarkable effort started by astronomers who work on images from deep space. They have discovered the best possible instrument for the task of distinguishing galaxies from other celestial phenomena, and for distinguishing spiral and elliptical galaxies from each other, is the human brain. Building on that discovery, the scientists put up a website and invited volunteers to look at galaxies. A web forum began, and a community emerged, as communities do any time there is something for people to share. There are threads where people can post especially beautiful objects and puzzle together over what the strange ones might be. There are now social scientists who are doing research on the GalaxyZoo phenomenon. When I log on to GalaxyZoo under my pseudonym, I am part of a galaxy of minds moving around a task as stars move around a galactic core. We are all connected.
I always begin a galaxy-classifying session with the opening sentence from Evening Prayer on page of the Book of Common Prayer, modified for inclusive language: “Seek the one who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into morning, and darkens the day into night; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth.” When a particularly beautiful object flashes onto the screen, I am amazed by the glory and the immensity of the universe. I am astounded at the creativity of the one who made the Pleiades and Orion. It doesn’t surprise me that I can tell a spiral from an elliptical better than a computer can, even in fuzzy images from deep space, but it delights me. God made us both. As St. Francis might say, the galaxy is my sister. It is a joy beyond measure to remember that anything we can perceive is only a fraction of the greatness of God, the God who has become known to me, as to Paul, as a God of grace, love, and communion, a God who creates lavishly. That God is both personal and beyond my comprehension: personal because I am part of creation and thus a recipient of grace, love, and communion, and incomprehensible because the more I learn, the less I can be certain I know exactly what God is doing. I am more inclined to praise, to trust, and to listen, less inclined to insist that I can speak for the Creator. Is the spectacularly beautiful collision of two galaxies a tragedy for worlds we will never know? What is God doing? How are we connected?
In today’s readings, we find the same insistence on the connection between the cosmic and the human. The first reading is the story of creation, one of the two stories that were chosen to be passed down as authoritative in our tradition, one of the many creation stories in our world. We human beings have a talent for making such stories, just as we have a talent for identifying galaxies. Creation stories always link the cosmic and the human, and the Creator is always in touch with human creatures in these stories. It is worth remembering that our tradition has chosen to put more than one story into the anthology of God stories that we call the Bible. There may be more than one right way to tell any given story, and our tradition tells the stories of God in a wide variety of voices, in stories told more than once and with differing emphases. The Bible is not a monolith, but a conversation made up of centuries of individual and group voices, and when we read it, we join that conversation. We are connected, through time and space, with the others who have shared our faith. We must listen with respect, study with care, and beware of making those voices sound too much like our own.
The psalm puts the human and the cosmic together, asking who we are and where we belong in creation. We have been given the power to change the earth. The psalmist, living in a world that did not yet bear the scars of large-scale human destructiveness, can celebrate human dominion; we may not have that ability anymore. When we confront what our dominion has done to the earth, we are more likely to lament than to rejoice. Our increased knowledge of how the world works and of what our heedless actions have done gives us an increased responsibility to do better. Many of us are beginning to believe that the God who made us as part of a good world is calling us out of our wasteful ways and toward repentance and change of direction in the ways we deal with the earth. Our connection with the fruitful earth has not always brought forth good fruit.
The way God deals with us is the way we should deal with each other. In an early example of Trinitarian thinking, Paul invokes “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.” God contains grace, love, and communion. God is a conversation, a phrase I first found in the works of Martin Smith. God wants to include us in that holy conversation. This passage comes at the end of a tough letter, and contains words of challenge and warning. The life of faith is not easy, and the way to live it is not self-evident. It is not always easy to find the grace to show love, the way to live in communion. When we fail to see how we are connected, or when our connections become unhealthy, we begin to lose the presence of the Christ who refuses to break connection with any of us. Are we showing grace, love, and communion to each other?
Finally, there is the Gospel. Here, again, is the formula that the Church later recognized and developed as our understanding of the Trinity grew. Here, also, is the beginning of a mixed and painful history. The Gospel of Matthew ends with this charge to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This is a passage that breaks my heart because of what Christians have done with it. Too many times (and once would be one time too many), Christians have used this passage to betray the Jesus who said, “Come and see,” the Jesus who questioned and listened, the Jesus who was always willing to look outside his own group and his own tradition for evidence of the reign of God. Those who claimed to act in his name have often replaced conversation with coercion, respect with contempt, openness with violence. This is a passage that has been used by empires to justify the conquest and destruction of cultures. Jesus, who would not allow his disciples to use violence to defend him from death, has seen his name used falsely to make war seem holy; used for the destruction of lives in inquisitions and witch hunts; used to justify slavery and oppression.
Christians in history, and Christians now, have too often gone forth with the loving intention of spreading the Good News and then tried to coerce rather than to converse. Some missionaries (not all) have assumed that the culture in which they learned the Good News and the way that news was given to them is the only way that Good News can be told. They have not entered into conversation with the cultures they encountered, seeing what God has done there, but have tried to impose their ways. They have confused the medium of their particular culture with the message of Jesus, and the results of that confusion have caused tremendous destruction.
This is true in everyday life as well. We can all name instances in which “gospels” of hatred and exclusion have replaced the Good News of inclusive love. “Christian” has become a word that turns people off because they see it as synonymous with bigotry and hostility. I have friends who cannot discuss their faith with me because of the damage done to them by Christians who tried to force them to believe, or, worse, who acted abusively toward them and used faith as a tool for that abuse. I have learned to wait in silence until they ask a question, and then to answer briefly and listen to their stories. Some of them may never be able to ask and talk. I pray that God’s love will find them, and I must accept that that may happen in ways I cannot understand and might not recognize. Loving relationships cannot be forced or manipulated, and the very people who thought they were bringing others to faith have brought about distrust, anger, and fear.
The God of grace, communion, and love has been obscured by the actions of those who would dominate, and so end, the conversations of faith. Too often, evangelization has not produced disciples who follow willingly and with creative joy, but subjects of a reign that is not God’s wild and vivid creation. Once again, there is repentance and repair work to do before we can recognize our connection to each other and reach out to each other in grace, in love, and in communion. The damage runs deep; sometimes is so great that it would be easy to despair, but the God who made the Pleiades and Orion waits to bring us all back into the loving conversation that is the beginning and end of creation, the basis of all that is.
Janine Goodwin is a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader who lives with her husband, dogs, and cats. She holds a B. Mus. and an M.S. Ed. in Special Education from the University of Oregon and an M.A. in Theology from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. When she is not working with words, she makes jewelry and rosaries.
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