A Little Less Hellish...

Sabbath Day Lake, Maine

1900 Fruit Trees

150 graves, one marker

3 living Shakers

We talk a lot about the Kingdom of God. It's something that Jesus talked about all the time, so we do too. All too often, the goal of Christianity has been understood to be getting to heaven when we die, but that wasn't the message that Jesus proclaimed. He proclaimed that God was doing a new thing, that all of creation was being re-formed into what God created it to be, and that new thing began with Jesus coming to be with us (aka the Incarnation).

Some of us like to talk about "building" the Kingdom of God. Others like to talk about "building for" the Kingdom of God. Still others talk about "revealing" the Kingdom, since the building is really done by God. Of course I realize that sometimes these theological nuances can get tedious. I think Tom Wright's explanation of the point of the Christian life is helpful. We are called, as Christians, to help "move the world from where it is to where God means for it to be." There are many ways to do that - big ways and small ways, and, as Mother Teresa taught, small things done with great love are perhaps the most important. But if you are like me, some days it's difficult even to focus on small things that build for the kingdom. I get so caught up in my own problems and stress that I can't even see beyond the end of my nose. That's when the Shakers come to the rescue.

 

The last report I heard listed the number of living Shakers at three. Three persons total, living the Shaker life at the Sabbath Day Lake community in Maine. The community is home to 1900 fruit trees, 150 graves with a single marker, and 3 living Shakers. Fortunately, Shakers have never been too invested in numbers. Shakers are celebate, so that makes it harder to self-perpetuate.

 

Interestingly, the couple of active Shakers still living say it's not celebacy that is the reason why converts don't stay, it's obedience. Obedience for them isn't focused on a leader but on the principles of the Shaker life. Like other religious communities, especially Benedictines, Shakers are committed to a life of prayer, work and worship. Their work, which is familiar to many of us in the form of elegantly simple Shaker furniture and crafts, is considered a form of prayer. Most of the people who’ve tried Shaker life and left haven’t been able to handle an ordered life. Loving one’s brother and sister has also been a stumbling block for many of them, as was explained to Bob Abernathy in an interview for Religion and Ethics News Weekly a couple of years ago:

 

SISTER FRANCES: I wouldn’t have been here all my life if I didn’t love this life, but I can’t say that it has been a heaven on earth. I can’t say that there aren’t days when it’s far from heaven.

 

BROTHER ARNOLD: I’m not a fool to think that it is, but the concept, the whole life is to live the heavenly life.

 SISTER FRANCES: As much as possible.

 BROTHER ARNOLD: And, as we have also been told, to make it as little hellish as possible for everybody else. When I was a young believer, I had a problem with somebody in the community, and my elder told me—I said, “I just can’t love them—I just don’t like them,” and he said, “Well that’s your problem. You don’t have to like anybody. You just have to love everyone.” That is probably the greatest advice I’ve ever had in my whole life.

When I heard this interview, the idea of making life “as little hellish as possible for everybody else” really struck me. There are many all too human days when I feel unlovable and unloving, so getting at the idea of loving others from the positive end of the stick is a challange. The difference between that and making it “as little hellish as possible” may just be semantics, but sometimes it’s easier to get at. It’s not as daunting. If all of us were to try to make life as little hellish as possible for others, we might find that we have actually made it much more heavenly. And I’m not talking about the angel-on-a-cloud-eating-Philly-cream-cheese-heaven, I’m talking about the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven heaven. One way for us to reveal the Kingdom of God is to do whatever we can to banish hellishness, in whatever ways we can. If we practice it hard enough, then one day we may find that we have begun living a kingdom life.

A few years ago, I met up with my parents in our hometown. We spent a few days visiting various relatives. One day, I asked my mom if we could stop by the Roman Catholic church where I was baptized  as a 16-day-old infant. I’d always wanted to see the font where, like Archbishop Michael Ramsey said “my Christian life began.”

We went up to the church, and, not surprisingly, found it locked. After hunting around, we found the secretary who graciously let us in to look around. We wandered around for a while, trying to find the illusive baptismal font. Finally, I said to my mother, “Look at that! I know I wasn’t baptized in that!”

My baptism took place in early 1965, long before the liturgical revolution that changed the way we look at baptism. An explanation of that liturgical movement would be a whole other blog in and of itself, but suffice it to say that many traditional catholic churches made a move in the seventies to go back to the practices of the early church – baptism at the Easter Vigil and full immersion among them.  The current baptismal font really looked a lot like a spa tub.

“Well, the old font has to be around here somewhere,” I told my mom. We looked and looked and finally went back to find the secretary. She was outside talking with a parishioner. When we asked our question they looked at each other with one of those “uh-oh” kind of looks.

“Is it in the garage?” asked the parishioner.


“Yes, I think so,” replied the secretary.


“Garage?” I asked.


“A while back, one of the priests had the old altar taken down and the marble turned into that “jacuzzi” in the church. He wasn’t very popular.”

Clearly these two ladies were long-time, maybe even life-long members who’d seen lots of priest come and go. So I asked, cautiously, if it would be possible to go to the garage to “where my Christian life began.”
Oh sure, they said, and took us back into the building. On the parking lot side, there was a large 4-car garage. The secretary opened the doors for light and then pointed to a dark corner, behind a lot of debris. My heart sank. There, in a corner, behind a lot of junk, covered with dust and cobwebs, was the font were it all started for me. I managed to swallow the comments that came to mind, and exchanging a few glances with my mother, asked the secretary if she thought the priest would want to sell it. I left my name and phone number, but haven’t heard anything. That might be a good thing, because when I got back into the car, it began to dawn on me that it would be awfully hard to move a big hunk of marble and I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I would do with it if I had it.

When this quest started I had planned to take a picture of the font and hang it in my office above my ordination certificates as an object lesson that baptism is more important than ordination. I hope you have heard that before. If not, let me say it again: baptism is more important that ordination. We are born as creatures. Baptism is what makes us Daughters and Sons of God. Baptism is what seals us as Christ’s own forever. Baptism is our fishing license in the Kingdom of God.
Baptism is, as appropriate to this time of year, what makes us saints. A saint isn’t a person who was better at being a Christian than anyone else. A saint is a person who has been justified by Christ, whose sins have been forgiven in the waters of baptism and who has been adopted into the family of God. Sure, there are people we call Saint with a capital S: St. Margaret, St. Stephen, St. Andrew, to name a few. But contrary to what you may have been taught, All Saint’s Day isn’t about just the capital S Saints. It’s “For all the Saints.” Have you ever noticed the tune name at the bottom of the page of that great hymn? Ralph Vaughn Williams titled the tune Sine Nomine: without name. Or, witness my other favorite All Saints’ Day hymn:

They lived not only in ages past,

there are hundreds of thousands still,

the world is bright with the joyous saints

who love to do Jesus’ will.

you can meet them in school

 or in lanes or at sea,

in church or in trains,

or in shops, or at tea,

for the saints of God are just folk like me,

and I mean to be one too.

Although I’m still disappointed about my baptismal font, I know I need to get over it. Being married isn’t about just that moment of standing in front of the altar. It’s about living in what author Gail Godwin calls “the grace of daily obligation.” It’s about shooting for the mark of being faithful to another to the best of one’s ability, and seeking the good of the other above one’s one. Likewise being baptized, i.e. being a saint, means living in the “grace of daily obligation” to God. We are called to try, to the best of our ability to love God with our whole heart and to try to do God’s will in the world. That’s what being a saint is all about. And I mean to be one too!

It always tickles me to see how very young children behave before, during, and after receiving “the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.” Little-bitty children who can’t talk yet reach out their hands, clearly knowing that I’m bringing them something very special. At our early service a couple of years ago, we had a young child, not quite two, who would sneak out of the pew before I was done with the prayer of consecration. He'd come over to the side of the altar area and quietly stand in front of the communion rail, hands outstretched, waiting for me to finish. Like the other children, he knew, in some way or another, that what he was participating in is special and that it has something to do with being loved.

One of my favorite memories of giving communion to a small child, is of a little girl in my last parish named Mackensie.  She was the first baby I ever baptised. We didn't know it at the time, but she was born profoundly deaf. I was with her parents in the recovery room after she had her first cochlear implant. She was two years old at the time, and when she woke up after her surgery, I had the great blessing of being there when she heard her parents' voices for the first time. I also was there when she was in church the first time after her surgery. That first church service that she could hear just happened to be our St. Andrew's Day celebration, and it included bagpipes!

It was rare that I ever saw Mackensie without a huge, joyful grin on her face, and that was how she always approached the communion rail. When I put the host in her hands, she wouldn’t say the customary "amen" or even "thank you" the way some children do. Silently, she would start pointing vigorously at the person next to her at the rail. At first, I thought it was just that she wanted to make sure her daddy got the bread of heaven too, but then I noticed that she did the same thing, even when someone she didn't know very well was on her left. No matter who it was, she was always eager and concerned that her neighbor get to have communion too. Clearly she wanted her neighbor to share in something that gave her so much joy.

Isn’t that really what stewardship is all about? Sharing what comes to us from God (everything does) with the world around us? Fortunately for Mackensie, three-year-olds aren’t too preoccupied with the kinds of things that drag us down as grown-ups. But basic needs are important to kids, as is getting a share of what everyone else is getting. What made Mackensie’s response remarkable is that before she would partake of her own share, she wanted to be sure the person next to her had something too. My prayer for the Mackensies of this world, is that they keep that generous spirit as they grow older. My prayer for myself is that I become less preoccupied with having enough for myself, and more focused on what I can share with others.

 O Lord, giver of life and source of freedom, we know that all we have received is from your hand. Gracious and loving Father, you call us to be stewards of your abundance, the caretakers of all you have entrusted to us. Help us to always use your gifts wisely and teach us to share them joyfully and generously. Send the Holy Spirit to work through us, bringing your message to those we serve. May our faithful stewardship bear witness to the love of Jesus Christ in our lives. We pray with grateful hearts, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Not long ago, a one of the young people who joined us recently said “I had no idea there was a church like this. I wish I’d known about this a lot sooner!” Like many of you, I’m not a cradle Episcopalian. Two-thirds of Episcopalians are adult converts. I joined the Episcopal Church right out of college, almost 25 years ago. I spent most of my college career visiting churches with friends, but never found one that had the right combination of ancient traditions and intellectual freedom.

I actually could have come into the Episcopal Church sooner. I remember sitting at a stoplight one evening, at the beginning of my senior year, looking over at a smallish gothic church with one of those square Norman tours. The west window was lit up from the inside. It was really beautiful. I looked at the sign and thought to myself “Episcopal....hmmm...that’s like Anglican. I’m an Anglophile. Maybe I should go there?” But by time the light changed, I’d decided that that was a really dumb reason to join a church, and crossed it off my list.

 

About a year later, one of my friends in the German House began attending the same church. Every Sunday Mark would come home and tell me about it. “You really should come,” he always said. Finally, one day I did.

Initially, I was pretty intimidated because the rector was a very traditional Anglo-catholic. That church still has its altar against the wall, and the priest still presides with his back to the people. Despite the high threshold, I quickly fell in love with the place. The combination of the words of the Book of Common Prayer, the beautiful music, and a liturgy that was full of meaning and tied to the earliest practices of the Christian church was thrilling. This was a church where we got to have Eucharist and take the Bible seriously. This was a church where people were both proud of their heritage and good at poking fun at themselves.

I soon found that I’d walked into a church that not just tolerated but encouraged people to think on their own about issues. No one there was about to tell me that drinking, dancing, or card playing was going to earn me a ticket to hell. In fact, drinking, dancing, and card playing happened at church! No one was going to push me to profess that the earth was made in seven 24-hour days. Gay people actually came to church and were treated like everyone else. In a university town, this was the church that scientists and professors attended.

At first, it was a little strange to be in a church where I wasn’t being handed a list of rules. But eventually I figured out that the church did shape our thinking through the liturgy, preaching and Christian formation. However, instead of spelling everything out, we were being influenced by Big Picture ideas like these:

- God created the world and saw that it was good, so we start from a “glass-half-full” view of the world.


- Every person is made in the image and likeness of God and deserves our respect and love.


- God loves each of us more than we can ask or imagine.


- We have a responsibility through our baptismal ministry to make to make the world a better place when and where we can.


- God gave us minds to think, hearts to love, and hands to serve, and he means for us to use them.


- We can refer to God as “she” if that works better for us. No one is going to burst into flames.


- There are no outcasts in the Episcopal Church (especially meaningful during the early years of AIDS).

Listening to people who are glad to have found us makes me wonder if we are doing a good job of letting our own young people know why this church, this crazy wonderful Episcopal Church, is worth loving? Are we telling our children why this was our choice, why it’s meaningful for us, and why we hope it will be for them too? Are we explaining to them that climbing walls and skate parks and coffee shops in church are cool ideas but that at the end of the day it’s those big picture ideas that are going to give meaningful shape to our lives?

If you wonder too, and wonder how to communicate that, I commend to you to small books, 101 Reasons to be Episcopalian and Those Episkopols. 101 Reasons comes from a website where Louie Crew has invited people to send in their reasons. At this point, there are over 500 reasons. The most popular reason? “God loves you, and there is not a thing you can do to change that.” - The Rev. Tom VanCulin, Honolulu.

What do the movies Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually, and the t.v. show The Vicar of Dibley have in common? They all feature the song Love is All Around. Maybe you’ve heard this goofy love song:
I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
Love is all around
and so the feeling grows.

Every time I hear that song, it reminds me of two things. This first is bread making. Back when I was in college in the 80’s, I decided to learn to make bread, and I bought a couple of books on the subject. The first book, Mary’s Bread Basket and Soup Kettle, was very simple and straight forward, and I still have it (incidentally, Mary was a famous Tulsan). The other book, Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, was extremely technical - not to mention California groovy. To this day, I still remember one recipe that did not call for packaged yeast or any other commercial leavening agent. Making the bread was a three-day process, because the yeast for the recipe was “wild yeast” (no, I’m not making this up). Apparently, the air around us is filled with wild yeast, and if the right conditions are set up, the dough mixture will avail itself of this wild yeast and it will rise without any other help.

I think the reason why I still remember this obscure method of bread making is because of the notion of wild yeast being all around us. It reminds me of God’s grace (as does the song I mentioned). Remember, the catechism’s definition of grace is “God’s favor towards us, undeserved and unearned.” Grace is all around us. It’s there whether we choose to accept it or not. But if we do choose, all we have to do is have an open heart and pray. God wants the best for us, although we don’t always understand what that is. That’s what we mean when we talk about being blessed. But part of being blessed is hopefulness: expecting that, if we are faithful and trust in God, we are and will be blessed.


Living in our post-modern, post-Christendom era, it seems that hope and faith are often in short supply. In my last parish we had a business owner, who, when discussing church finance, was always expectant of the graciousness of God (not nearly as common an attitude in northern Illinois as in Tulsa). Someone else once remarked “Is that how she runs the business?” Well, as it turns out, the answer is a resounding yes. This person, despite living in an age of skepticism, had seen the power and grace of God at work in the world about us. This person understands that we are an Easter people.


As a church, if we are going to more than just barely survive, if we want to thrive, we must focus on being an Easter people, a resurrection people.   Kennon Callahan’s book, Ten Keys to an Effective Church, has been a classic for a while now. In it, Callahan says this:

(the Christian message)… begins in fresh, new ways with the open tomb, the risen Lord, and new life in Christ. The disciples thought they had placed their hopes on a sinking ship when Christ’s body was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb. With the resurrection, they discovered anew that they were part of a winning cause.

The Gospel writers knew the end of the story. In fact, they saw the end as a new beginning. Because they knew of Christ’s resurrection, they traced back from the resurrection to tell of the incarnation, life, and death of Christ. It is quite clear that the Christian community that gathered during that first century lived with an abiding confidence in a risen Lord. It is as a result of their acceptance of the risen Lord that we understand what took place on Golgotha.

Christ invites you to live as a risen person. Christ invites you to new life. Christ invites you to live life at its fullest and best…Christ’s death on the cross is an act of generosity and grace. Yes, it is an amazing sacrifice. And yes, in even larger and richer ways, Christ’s death on the cross reveals the generosity and graciousness of God’s love. This grace is even more fully advanced with our risen Lord.

I am encouraging you to have a theology of resurrection as well as a theology of the cross. I am suggesting that you invite people to their risen life in Christ…Help them focus on the meaning of the open tomb, the risen Lord, the new life in Christ, and the winning cause of God’s mission on this planet.

Grace is, indeed, all around us. Our task is to make sure that the conditions are right for God’s grace to work in and through us. What are those conditions? Prayer, hope and faith make for a good start. Those things aren’t as hard as they sound. We don’t have to be perfect or proficient, we only have to be willing to try, even in the face of skepticism. After all, we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain!



A couple of years ago, I went on a tour of Italy. I saw some wonderful things: a 900-year-old baptistery in Pisa, a basilica in San Gimignano that has an amazing series of floor to ceiling frescoes depicting stories from the Old and New Testaments along the wall of the nave, and the relics of several saints, including the tombs of St Francis and St. Clare. I even got to see the Pope and the t.v. travel show host and writer Rick Steves.

As wonderful as all of these things wer, for me, one of the more significant moments of the trip was getting to have a conversation with our travel guide about the state of the Church in Italy. In a nutshell, like all Europeans (except, notably, the Poles) Italians don’t go to church anymore. Remo was an excellent guide – very knowledgable without being dry, and he was able to field all sorts of questions. So one day, I asked him if I could speak to him privately about the Church in Italy. I knew what he had to say might upset some of our traveling companions who might not already know something about the subject.

Remo, who is a little older than I, explained to me that much of what is happening is that the people are tired of double-standards and corruption, but even more so, they’re tired of a church that has no relevancy for them. The Church has a lot of rules about things that seem focused on non-essentials. Like so many other Europeans, they also are tired of having to be forced to pay tax to support the Church, although they now have the opportunity to designate the tax to go towards other charitable causes. Most European governments still support the Church through taxes.

None of this surprised me. I’ve heard similar things from young Germans. The Good News of God in Christ isn’t getting heard anymore. Since they don’t have a compelling, life-changing, hope-building reason to go to Church, they don’t go. Period. My father and I walked into a church in the small village we were staying in last time we were in Germany. As we walked down the center aisle, I noticed about a dozen chair cushions, the likes of which you would have on your kitchen or patio chairs, scattered on the pews. I elbowed my dad, pointed, and said “that’s a bad sign.” He said, “you mean the pews are uncomfortable?” and I said, “no, I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of how many people still attend this church!” If it’s possible to stake out your spot permanently with your own cushion, then there must not be too many people vying for a place to sit. I hate to have to say it, but unless something significant happens, I’m pretty sure that most of the churches I have visited in Germany, Austria, and Italy, are just one generation away from not having anyone worshipping in them at all, unless they come to worship art.


Not long ago, I was talking to a bishop about the state of Christianity in Europe. He told me that whatever the trends are in Europe, they usually happen here eventually, but that it doesn't have to be that way. As much as I feel badly that all those parish churches which used to be the heart of every town and village across Europe are largely empty today, I understand that the real tragedy is not empty buildings but millions of hearts and minds that do not know the light of Christ. Even here in America, younger generations are becoming increasingly unchurched. It's no longer possible to assume that young people know even the most central stories of our faith.

We have an imperative. Everything in our faith as Christians calls us to share the good news of God in Christ. When Remo told me about the issues that young Italians had with the Church, I was able to say, "It doesn't have to be that way. Let me tell you about my church." It was good news. It was the Good News. And when I got done, he asked for my business card...

Entertaining Angels

A couple of years ago, we began hanging icons on the wall behind the altar.  They are changed seasonally.  In the summer, beginning with Trinity Sunday, we hang up an icon that shows three angels sitting around a table. It is a copy of what is called the "Rublev Icon." It was "written" (icons are written, not painted) in the 15th century by Andrei Rublev. It's a scene from our Old Testament lesson the past Sunday. In it, God, in three persons, visits Abraham and Sarah when they are encamped at the Oaks of Mamre. It is at this point that God tells them the Sarah will, despite her advanced years, have a child before a year has passed.

It's clearly a story about faith and hope and doubt, but it's also a story about hospitality. According to the custom of the desert, Abraham welcomes the strangers as guests. He promises them water to wash their feet and bread, but delivers a lavish feast. But in Rublev's icon, there is more to the hospitality story than what Abraham delivers.

When you look at the icon and see how the three angels (a very thinly veiled reference to the Trinity) incline their heads and a physically present to each other, it's clear that there is hospitality happening among the members of the Trinity. St. Augustine wrote in On the Trinity, that love is the energy that passes from the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit. That divine love is, in fact, the Holy Spirit and the basis of all creation. As ones who are created in the image and likeness of God, we are called to live in that divine love.

All of this got me to thinking about what goes on sometimes in churches, not just St. Dunstan's, but most churches. We often become compartmentalized in our own small groups, seeing ourselves as our own entity rather than members of one body. At one of our vestry retreats, we did a Bible Study on I Corinthians 12: 12-26. The key verse in this passage about how we are all members of one body is the verse that says "The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’"

To paraphrase, 'the choir cannot say to the property committee, 'I have no need of you', nor again the altar guild to the outreach committee, 'I have no need of you.' The important thing that we all need to remember is that we are members of one body -- the Body of Christ, and that we are all called together build God's kingdom. Although we may have individual goals and interests, our common goal is what is most important, and if we are not working together then whatever we are doing is just plain not working.

A couple of us were talking the other day about how it takes, literally, all kinds to be a church: artsy people and detail people, big picture people and focused people, physical people and thinking people, and on and on. And of course, there are people who have more than one kind of gift. We need all of the gifts that our people have to offer if we serious about being the Church. We need to be both willing to offer our own gifts and gracious about the gifts that others bring.

When we are graciously inclined towards one another, open and present to what each brings to the table, we truly are living in the divine love that spoke the world into being.  And that's the kind of transformational love that changes the world.