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What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown

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As seen on Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown, where just 48 hrs before police with machine guns patrolled.

As seen on Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown, where just 48 hrs before police with machine guns patrolled.

“What the Living Do: A Sermon after Watertown”

St. James Armenian Orthodox Church, Mt Auburn St. Watertown MA

Sunday April 21, 2013 Memorial of the Armenian Genocide Martyrs

”Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” ~John 5:28-29

It was years after his body was in the grave before she wrote the words down. Marie Howe’s brother died in 1989, but it took years to write the words. It wasn’t far from here, just over the town line into Cambridge that Marie Howe had to wake up, brush her hair, and walk out the door of the apartment into that bright, clear New England sun after her brother died of AIDS. When she finally wrote down her experience, she wrote a poem in the form of a letter to her brother:

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.

And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.

It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too high in here and I can’t turn it off.

For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those

wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.

Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

Her poem goes on…this is what the living do.

Many among us have been entombed this week: shut in our houses in Watertown and beyond, encased in grief and fear. Many are bound in their sleeplessness. Many were held fast by their work at a critical time- those who patrolled our streets, tended the wounded, guarded our safety, cared for our children, stayed up for 26 hours straight to report the news. We have been bound up, locked down, sheltered-in-place, held by this strange, harrowing series of events. We have been wrapped tight in our burial shrouds.

In the days after the Easter Resurrection of Christ, the disciples finally left that stuffy apartment in Jerusalem where they’ve been bound by fear and dread, where they had run out of milk and toilet paper. They venture outside, into a world utterly changed. The sun seems brighter, but harsher. The roads seem busier, but scarier. And they did what the living do. They walk along the road to Emmaus. They go fishing. They sit down for breakfast and try to comprehend their new reality.

This is what we Christians do. We are a people of the Resurrection. We are a people of Christ’s resurrection, and we cling to the promise that we will be resurrected too. We know that no grave can hold our bodies down. We’ve been here before. We know that story of a week that begins with a parade and ends with death. We know that buried Hallelujahs will eventually rise. We know that the curtain will open again to reveal to us the altar and the bread of heaven. We are the people who say death does not have the final say. You heard it in the gospel lesson this morning from St. John. Jesus says to them, “Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” We, who have been waiting in our houses watching the clocks tick away, are waiting to hear His voice. We are straining our ears that are burned with the sounds of sirens to hear the voice of God declare for us release.

We are the disciples who leave our apartments in Jerusalem after the shelter-in-place order is lifted. This is the practice of our resurrection. And even if you don’t feel it now, even if you don’t believe it now, this is what the living do. In the hours we were bound to stay inside, huddled around the television or the computer screen, strict New England gave way to early spring. While we were in doors, the early leaves came out on the trees. We step outside with the sky “a deep, headstrong blue,” to go to church, to drive to the grocery store, to go to school or work. This is what the living do.

And this is what your church did. In the midst of chaos of Friday, Fr. Arakel came to the church. He unlocked the thick wooden doors. He escorted the police in to inspect the church, to ensure that this sanctuary was still a place of peace. Your church. Your strong Armenian coffee powered the police who rested in your parish hall chairs. Your electrical outlets powered the phones of the first responders who texted back home to worried families. This place was a sanctuary not just to you who worship here today but to those who patrolled our streets just 48 hours ago. This is the practice of resurrection.

This is what the living do- the mundane, the ordinary acts of living that defy that which would entomb us. This is what the Armenian Genocide survivors did. They crawled from their tombs and rebuilt lives, alive but utterly changed. Their faith was an act of defiance. The raising of children, the singing of the liturgy, the baking of choreg, this is what the living do. This is what the living do to stay living after facing so much death. This is why we remember their names and their faith so that we might be alive too.

So this is what we do. We come to church. We walk outside. We practice normalcy knowing that it is not. You may not feel ready to venture far from home. Everything is not as it was. This week has utterly changed us. We are not going back to lives that are the same. Or normalcy has been interrupted. On Friday, synagogues stayed closed despite Shabbat prayers. On Friday, mosques stayed closed despite Friday prayers. Local Muslims here in Massachusetts have already been harassed, threatened and even beaten. Everything is not as it should be. Trinity Episcopal Church in Copley Plaza is still part of the crime scene. They will worship at Temple Israel this morning, a Jewish synagogue that graciously opened their doors to a displaced people. Old South Church, United Church of Christ is still part of the crime scene. They will worship this morning at Church of the Covenant. The pastor, Rev. Nancy Taylor told the Boston Globe, “The last time Old South Church in Boston was closed for this long was in 1775, during the British siege of Boston.” This is not our life as usual. Our colleagues from the American Red Cross of Massachusetts gave me cards to share with you, with suggestions for how to cope after a time of disaster. They are in the back of the church. Take one as you leave. We have all experienced trauma this week. To be “Watertown Strong” or “Boston Strong” is to recognize when you need someone else to walk with you. To be among the living is to know that we need help to stay alive. Recognize that we do not run this race alone.

This week all began at the marathon, which now seems so long ago. This week, one of the hymns from the African American tradition has been playing in my mind. The songs of our faith has a way of tracing pathways in our minds, to follow well worn paths in times of uncertainty. For the enslaved, spirituals were a way to pass on the faith and defy the death around them.  And so you sang, even as you were running from those who would hold you captive.

I’m not the strongest singer in the world, that’s not why we sing. If you know it, join me. If you don’t know it, you are welcome to join me too. I’ll sing it twice. I know singing and clapping are not standard in an Armenian Orthodox Church, but consider it a gift from the wider body of Christ.

“Guide my feet, while I run this race. Guide my feet, Lord, while I run this race. Guide my feet, while I run this race, for I don’t to run this race in vain.”

In this time of uncertainty and fear, we cling to the sure promises of our God that we do not go on in vain. We tune our ear” for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out.” Even as we grieve, we will remain steadfast in charity, defiant in hope, practiced in forgiveness, and constant in prayer. This is what the living do. May it be so for you in the days ahead. Amen.

The View from the Graveyard

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The View from the Graveyard: Mark 13:1-8

Sunday November 18, 2012 St. John Episcopal Church, Northampton MA

“As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” 2Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

3When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4“Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. 6Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.”

The great myth of archeological detective work (which seems at least partly to be true) goes like this: the Archeologist James Deetz and his friend Ted Dethlefsen sat in the cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. It was a hot, late summer afternoon in 1963. Deetz had returned to Massachusetts to teach at Harvard’s summer session and Dethlefsen was his teaching assistant. After a day in the hot sun digging and excavating, the two men found a spot under the cool trees in the old Concord graveyard. And they scrounged up some cold beers. Leaning back on the trees, looking out over the centuries of gravestones, the men noticed the carvings on top of the graves. Carved in the cool granite, the oldest gravestones had a face of an angel of death, wings stretched out, head like a skull, with “with blank eyes and a grinning visage.” They looked in another direction. The slightly less old gravestones had carved cherubim, sweet baby angels with calm faces and pleasant smiles. The looked in third direction, to the graves from a time in between-and the carvings were mixed- not quite the face of death, not quite a baby angel, but something in between. The heads of death had morphed, changed. The cruel teeth on the skull changed into a sweet, heart shaped mouth. The wings of the angel of death became like a halo of hair. And then it clicked. Sitting under the late summer sun among the dead, cold beer in hand, Deetz and Dethlefsen saw what our 18th century forefathers and mothers had done: “the grim death’s head designs are replaced, more or less quickly, by winged cherubs.” The saw it that day in Concord, and found it in Boston and Cambridge and Plymouth and Stoneham. And then it became clear why: “The period of decline of death’s head’s coincides with the decline of orthodox Puritanism. “As the Christians embraced the great awakening, they turned from the fear of death to the hope of eternal life.

May we see something new before our very eyes this day. Let us pray…

We joke and speculate about the “signs of the apocalypse” all the time. You heard it before the election: Governor Romney’s nomination was a sign of the end, as were candidates Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, Cain, Paul, Perry. You heard it after the election: President Obama’s election is a sign of the end of America, and thus clearly a sign of humankind as we know it. You hear it from Christian Zionists who point to the violence in Israel and Palestine as signs that Jesus is coming back next Tuesday. You’ve heard, or hopefully you avoided, the crass diagnosing that Hurricane Sandy was punishment for East Coast liberalism, Hurricane Katrina was vengeance for New Orleans debauchery, the earthquake in Haiti was a warning sign against voodoo and the epically offensive fellow Christian Rev. Jerry Fallwell declaring that the attacks on 9/11 were prompted by “ the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America.” In America, we have created a hearty industry for manufacturing signs of the apocalypse and the outrage Olympics that follow. Perhaps you’ve even heard of the closure of Hostess snacks and end of the Twinkie, a food product designed to survive a nuclear bomb, as a sign of the apocalypse. For nearly 20 years, Sports Illustrated magazine has run a column called “Signs of the Apocalypse” chronicling the worst behavior in sports. This past August, Massachusetts even made an appearance in the column when the minor league baseball Worcester Tornadoes’ game was delayed an hour because repo men took the team’s uniforms and equipment for failure to pay a cleaning company. We’ve made a secular sport of reading the signs of our times.

And yet.  And yet, we are called to read the signs of our times. As we approach the end of the Church year and the beginning of Advent, the readings turn darker. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus and the disciples exit the temple in Jerusalem one of the disciples says to him, “Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another, all will be thrown down.” Silence. Say way, Jesus? The Disciples are on a perfectly pleasant tour through the temple, taking photos of the impressive building and Jesus whispers, “ain’t gonna last.” The Disciples are square in the middle of a massive change of the dependable institutions of religious life in their time and they’re looking to the stability of buildings and institutions. Sound familiar, Church?

But then the scene changes in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus moves them to a new place. The disciples are pressed right up against the massive stones of the temple, all they can see is what’s in front of them.  And Jesus takes a step back.  Jesus leads them from the chaos of the city and decamp for the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem. Up the hillside they climb.  If you start to watch the geography of Scripture, it will tell you something about where God is leading God’s people. Take a step back.

We get too close. We get too close to the things that are overwhelming our field of vision. Or put rightly, things overwhelm our field of vision because we are too close And that thing becomes all we see. You know this. You know you have to move back to see things “right-sized.” We who find help in the twelve-step programs learn this idea of getting ourselves and others “right-sized.” But when our perspective is off, dust bunnies on the floor become signs overwhelming signs of lack of consideration from our housemates. Traffic jams when we have somewhere important to go become furious signs of the entire cosmos plotting against us. Final exams become the entirety of our educational career and indicators of all the potential of our whole lives. The woman taking an eternity in the grocery lines is a sign of how little she regards my precious time. A recent acquaintance forgetting our name becomes a crushing sign of our invisibility. When we’re standing right next to this thing in our lives that threatens to overwhelm us, in order to see what it really is and how big it is, we need to step back. The scientist Carl Sagan writes, “It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”  Through a telescope that reminds us how small our own planet is, Sagan finds perspective.  Jesus moves the disciples from their vantage point next to the temple wall to the Mount of Olives to get the right perspective.

Jesus moves the disciples, back away from the thing that’s overwhelming them and up onthe mountain so they can see below. God has gifted this parish with your unique position across from Smith College and overlooking Northampton below. What does that mean for your ministry in this place? Those of us who are thinking about organizational change, turn to Ronald Heifetz’s “The Practice of Adaptive Leadership” that encourages leaders to move between the dance floor and the balcony to get the right perspective.  Or do you remember that final scene from the Secret Garden? Once the spell was broken, her uncle laughing, and the garden was “open, awake and alive,” the young girl Mary’s perspective changes as she declares, “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”  But this is more than just seeing flowers instead of weeds or putting on rose-colored glasses. Sometimes we need the perspective of death.

Jesus moves the disciples up and away from the city, but most importantly he took the disciples up the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem. Even by the time Jesus gets there, Mt. Olivet had already been used as a graveyard for centuries. The graves of ordinary Jews and ancient prophets surround the disciples. Something about being among the graves, among the dead helps get the perspective right. A colleague tells the story of a fellow priest who used his simple wooden casket as a cedar chest for blankets and sweaters. Maybe that’s living a little too close to death. And because I’m a guest preacher, and I doubt any of you heard this story from earlier sermon, I can tell you my best story of living with the perspective of death: My friend Ashley’s grandmother drove around with death in her trunk.  Next to the shovel and first aid kit, in the back of that cavernous Cadillac trunk, sits a granite headstone. When Maureen’s first husband died, the gravestone carver offered her a deal if she purchased her headstone at the same time. And as a good Yankee, she took the deal. Maureen keeps her gravestone in the trunk of her car, needing only to fill in the final date, driving around Connecticut with this weight in the back so that she has a little more traction on slick winter roads.You can drive around with death in your trunk if you’ve got resurrection before you.

You who struggle like all us sinners to practice the Christian life know that we have to go through Good Friday to get to Easter Sunday. And in our death denying culture, we do the most radical thing: Proclaim that death is not the end. We declare that the grave is not our final resting place. Though we grieve, we push ourselves to proclaim that even though buildings will crumble, and stone will fall upon stone, our trust is not in buildings and stones, but in the Risen Christ. We are the people who first carve the angel of death onto our graves but move to chisel out images of cherubim and seraphim.

Those first colonial gravestones anxiously warned the living with such epitaphs as “my youthful mates both small and great/ come here and you may see/an awful sight, which is a type of which/you soon must be.” But, later gravestones, with pleasant angels hovering over the dead, proclaimed “here cease they tears, suppress thy fruitless mourn/his soul—the immortal part—has upward flown/on wings he soars his rapid way/ to yon bright regions of eternal day.”

The discipline is getting yourself to a place where you can see things right-sized. Some find that’s a place of silent prayer when you can let all those crazy thoughts run through your head and get clear. Sometimes it’s the silence of church, or library, or bedroom or per. We have some wisdom from our fellow Christians and our tradition. But only you know where your Mount Olive is. Where do you need to go to see life and death clearly? The good news is that Jesus wants to lead his disciples to a place where we can see clearly, a place where we can see clearly where we are to put our trust.  (preach resurrection)

In the depths of despair, from the graveyard, we practice the discipline of resurrection. We practice and sing it and say it and live it until it becomes true in our live. In 1871, the attorney Horatio Spafford lost all his financial holdings he invested in property in the great Chicago Fire. His only son died later that year. In 1873, Spafford sends his family ahead of him on a family trip as he stays behind to attend to these financial losses. His four daughters drowned in a ship crossing the Atlantic to England, leaving only his wife alive, who sends back the telegram reading “saved alone…” And yet. And yet, he wrote the text for the hymn, “It is well with my soul.” Not because it was yet true, but so it would be. If you’d like, join me.

When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
 When sorrows like sea billows roll;
 Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, (it is well),
With my soul, (with my soul)
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

From the graveyard we see. From the graveyard we sing. May it be so, Hallelujah Amen.

Rev. Dr. Horace Allen & Ecumenical Innovation

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The Massachusetts Council of Churches

2012 Knapp Award: The Rev. Dr. Horace T. Allen, Jr.

4/28/12

A few weeks ago, with the help of the Holy Spirit and a bit of advanced planning, I had finished writing my sermon fairly early on Saturday night. That week, Jesus was flipping tables in the temple and, with significantly less drama, I was guest preaching the next morning at a nearby Lutheran church. I scanned the screen for any last typos and toggled over to Facebook. There were everyday posts about dinner, the glorious but frighteningly warm weather in New England, and the second chapter of John. I watched two clergy friends post back and forth discussing the conclusions for their respective sermons. They were from two different denominations, serving churches thousands of miles apart. Their exchange was theologically deep and public. And they were talking about the Revised Common Lectionary readings for the week. And that strange foretaste of Christian unity would never have happened without the life and ministry of the Rev. Dr. Horace Allen.

It is with great joy that I stand to tell you about Horace. When Rev. Dr. Tom McKibben and the Nominating Committee recommended Horace to the Board, there was unanimous affirmation. The Forrest L. Knapp Award, named after the Massachusetts Council of Churches Executive Director 1953-1969, was created in 1977 to honor those who have “contributed significantly to the advancement of ecumenism in Massachusetts.”  The criteria for the Knapp award says ‘ a strong preference will be given to expressions of sustained commitment.’  Indeed, all of this is true of Horace.

Raised outside of Philadelphia, with his father as an elder at the Sharon Hill Presbyterian Church, the first plane flight Horace ever took was to the 2nd World Council of Churches Assembly in 1954 in Evanston, Illinois. As a youth steward, Horace gathered the autographs of the church leaders in his Who’s Who book and after the assembly snuck off with the blue and white placard for the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.  From that point on Horace said, “whatever my ministry, it is unthinkable that it will not be ecumenical.” Horace described himself as a “devout but suspicious Presbyterian” with “a long history of fighting with the Presbyterian Church.”  The first in his class graduate of Princeton University, Horace began his seminary training at Princeton but graduated from Harvard Divinity in 1957. In 1966, Horace became the first Ministerial Warden of the Iona Abbey in Scotland, making him the ‘successor-in-place to St. Columba’ and ‘the Keeper of the Graves to the last Kings Macbeth and Duncan.’ In Iona, Horace soaked up the liturgical possibilities for his church.

Horace returned to the US for doctoral studies at Union Seminary, writing his dissertation on the new Presbyterian Book of Common Worship. In 1970, Horace was appointed the first director of the Joint Office of Worship and Music for the General Assemblies of the United Presbyterian Church (Northern) and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (Southern).  When discussing whether this new post should be housed in Philadelphia or Richmond, Horace proposed that his office be housed in a railcar, allowing him to criss-cross the country introducing Presbyterians to their new WorshipBook.Before there were social networks, there was Horace.  But what Horace deftly snuck into that WorshipBook were the few pages in the back that proposed a systematic way of reading the Bible in worship through the year. The timing was perfect for ecumenical innovation. In 1969, the Vatican released the English texts for the new Roman Lectionary. Horace and others saw an opening, an “ecumenical wedge” as he called it, to graft the free churches onto this growing liturgical consensus. Now because of the work of Horace and other dedicated liturgists, Christians across the world hear the same Scripture texts on the same Sundays.  Through the common lectionary of the Consultation on Church Union, they realized they had a chance to introduce a new wrinkle in the Protestant worship. From 1975 through 1997, Horace Represented the Presbyterian Churches on the North American Consultation on Common Texts and co-chaired the English Language Liturgical Consultation. The common lectionary is a relatively new innovation, with the trial period beginning in 1983 and the Revised Common Lectionary published in 1992. As Horace quipped, for Protestant worship a common liturgy gave the Congregation “not the wisdom of the pastor on Friday night, but the wisdom of the Church.” Horace and his ecumenical counterparts introduced this innovation at the right moment as biblical scholarship, new hymnals, an ecumenical spirit of cooperation and an emerging liturgical renewal were moving across the Church.  Now twenty years on, this ecumenical innovation in our common life has sparked countless ecumenical study groups in town clergy associations and online innovations like the Text this Week blogs, WorkingPreacher.org, and The Revised Common Lectionary Facebook group . Only 20 years out, we have not fully gleaned all of the ecumenical fruits of this innovation.

In 1978, Horace was called by Boston University to be the first Professor of Worship, a position he held until retirement in 2003 with the title Professor Emeritus.  He taught 200 classes in preaching, church music, architecture and liturgy. He was the first Christian Cleric to teach at a Chinese University since the Maoist Revolution. A 32-yr member of the Boston Minister’s Club (and with many of those friends present), Horace is a prolific writer with such publications as “Where (again) the Medium is the Message,” “Catching up to Calvin,” “Is there an emerging Ecumenical Consensus Concerning  the Liturgy,” and  “Bach is a Four Letter Word.” There is much, much more to say about Horace’s generous teaching, writing and ministry.  When I sat down with him to talk about this award, he said I feel vindicated.

The Massachusetts Council of Churches presents

The Rev. Dr. Horace T. Allen, Jr.

The 2012 Forrest L. Knapp Award

In recognition of a lifetime of ecumenical service to the Church, a sustained commitment to robust common worship, and the vision to help create the Revised Common Lectionary.

Presented at the 110th Massachusetts Council of Churches Annual Meeting

Wellesley Hills Congregational Church- Saturday April 28, 2012

The Rev. Laura E. Everett, Executive Director

The Rev. Joel Matthew Anderle, President