Tag Archives: tradition

Quick and Dirty: Ash Wednesday

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This morning before work, I joined our pastor and another parishioner from Hope Central Church to offer the imposition of ashes at our local subway station. It is an awkward thing to stand on a street corner in Boston.

I blessed two bicycles and a sick dog. Don asked for prayers for his sobriety as he walked to yet another AA meeting. Dulcie, Gloria, and Juanita all asked for ashes on their foreheads. I stood for a photo taken by a commuter who said “this is great. Thank you for being here.” Dry ashes stick to the oily foreheads of teenagers on their way to English High School. Dry ashes mound in the wrinkled skin of old men who can only afford the free newspaper. But before the commuters, we blessed the subway station cleaning crew.

As a fellow parishioner Angela observed:

“The first to receive were those who worked at the subway station. In a capitalist society, religious practice becomes a privilege.”

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether or not Ashes to Go is savvy “liturgical evangelism’ or cheap grace. I too would prefer the luxury for all of us together to sit for an hour in community to hear the full readings and participate in a full liturgy. But for some, the time and freedom to be in a church for an hour is in fact a luxury. Ashes to Go not about convenience, but about outreach to those who will not or cannot walk through the doors of our churches. What we offered was not for those of us inside the Church already, but for those without a spiritual home.Yes, our prayers with commuters, subway employees and the subcontracted cleaning crew may have been quick and dirty compared to the beautiful liturgies of Ash Wednesday, but so are we. We are dirty. Lent is dirty. And so is the man who cleans  from the subway station the garbage that all the rest of us mindlessly leave behind. The least the Church can do for him is show up in his space rather than presume that he always enter our space. While the wages of those who clean up after us may be unjustly low, their lives and work are hardly cheap.

Let us pray:

Almighty and merciful God, you hate nothing you have made, and
forgive the sins of all who are penitent; create in us new and contrite
hearts, so that when we turn to you and confess our sins and
acknowledge our need, we may receive your full and perfect forgiveness,
through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen.

Ashes are marked on the forehead with the following words:
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Hospitality like Massachusetts Highways

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A sermon for the Central Massachusetts District of the New England Conference, United Methodist Church  Worship Revitalization Conference, 1st UMC Westborough, Saturday Feb 2, 2013

21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. ~ Luke 4: 21-30

As soon as she picked up her fork, I knew. She grabbed the fork the way you might pick up a wrench from a toolbox. All four fingers wrapped around the top and her thumb tucked underneath the metal, her whole hand around her fork in a tight fist.  She pushed the tender asparagus from the back of the place forward. When she reached the edge of the place, she last stabbed the food, and with little flick of the wrist, picked it up and moved it towards her mouth. I looked closer and the cloth napkin was still on the tablecloth, not placed gently on her lap. She’s never been to a place like this before.

Phillip asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And the Ethiopian Eunuch replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ How can I unless someone guides me? Will you pray with me…

Everything seems to be going fine. He spoke nice and loud. Even the ladies who sit defiantly in the back row could hear his words. He read very well, I couldn’t hear his accent at all! And he chose such a lovely passage. Jesus’s reading in the synagogue seems to go very well for a time. Maybe we’re even given Luke’s guess at what makes for a good sermon: first the people are praising Jesus’s generous words, or translated another way, “smooth words.” But then it gets a bit more interesting. He asks them some pointed questions. Jesus is the guest preacher, the itinerant who rides in from outta town, shakes it up and then gets outta Nazareth. By the end of the Lectionary passage, the people are trying to run him off a cliff. Beneath those smooth words, Jesus prodded them to consider that the Spirit might just show up beyond the bounds of their tightly proscribed community.

Our work today is audacious goal of changing Church, in seven hours. It says so, I read it on the registration form. 7 hours and we’ll be movers and shakers, transformed by excellent preaching, compelling worship, informative workshops- no pressure anyone. I am grateful for the exceedingly strong Methodist conviction that the Holy Spirit can find her way out Route 9 even if I can’t. We are tasked with revitalizing worship. And yet, somehow at a Methodist revival, you’ve invited a Congregationalist pastor and ecumenical bureaucrat to break open the word and say something profound that will spur you to make change in your community. Here is the truth: my expertise is in going to worship, not planning it. I cannot guide you to building a better worship service. What I can tell you is what it is like to be a guest. Most Sundays, I am visiting some congregation somewhere around Massachusetts, trying to connect all these denominations and congregations who are convinced that what binds us together in Christ is stronger than what divides us. I may get a bit of liturgical whiplash going from Methodists to Episcopalians to UCC to Armenian Orthodox and back again, but I am a professional church visitor.

Almost by definition, we are insiders. We are the kind of people who know what an introit is. We are the kind of people who know to laugh and nod knowingly when someone makes a joke about hearts being strangely warmed. We are the kind of people that go to conferences on worship on a Saturday, filled with ideas of how to rearrange the pews and add drums and encourage meaningful participation. We are the people who hear what’s going on in Caperneum and want to try it at our church. I hear that the First United Methodist Church of Caperneum has a worship service at 6:37 on a Tuesday with an upright bass, a video screen, liturgical dancers, and a labyrinth. Maybe if it works in Caperneum, then it’ll work in Shrewsbury and Tewksbury and Sudbury. We are the well-meaning people in the synagogue who ask Jesus “Do here also in my hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” But Jesus presses us. He asks more of us. He asks us to look again with the eyes of an outsider.

The faithful worshipers in the synagogue get angry when Jesus starts to push them beyond their familiar space. Jesus tells them the stories of the prophet Elisha healing Naaman the Syrian and the prophet Elijah interacting with the widow at Zarephath, which I think is out past Winchendon. It’s not the hometown crew, but the outsiders that has the good view of who is invited to worship this God who keeps extending invitation to the furthest of outsiders.

Carlo Rotella, a Chicago native transplanted to Boston wrote this week in the Globe: “If you live in the Boston area and you’re not from around here, you receive frequent reminders of your non-belonging.” You should just know that route 9 starts in Boston south of the Mass. Pike and then crosses north of it somewhere in the wilds of Framingham. You should just know that 128 is the same thing as 95, except when it’s not, and for extra inaccessibility sometimes 128/95 North is also Rt 3 South. You should just know that while 495 ought to be a North/South highway, it starts moving east in Bolton to the North and Franklin to the South. You should just know that Suffolk is actually north of Norfolk County. And if you can even pronounce it, you should just know that Worcester has a Lake Quinsigamond, a Quinsigamond community college, Quinsigamond avenue and Quinsigamond village … no two of these four places are anywhere near each other! You should just know that the ‘H’ is silent in Amherst and Needham. And in Boston, You should just know that East Boston is actually North, the North End is just a little north of Southie, Southie and the South End are two different places, but Southie and South Boston are the same thing and both Southie and the South End are further north than Dorchester (h/t Rev. Hank Pierce). You should just know to sit during the postlude.

You should just know what a postlude is. How could a stranger know, unless someone guides him? This is the danger with our worship services. You should just know how to pronounce Leominster or Worcester or intinction or apocrapha or Caperneaum.

We keep talking about the rise of the religious ‘nones,’ people who have no religious identification and yet we aim to invite these very people to worship that requires presumed knowledge. We genuinely want to be “seeker-friendly” but we’re filled with bits of code, frequent reminders for your non-belonging. It’s not road signs that say Stop! Do Not Enter! but the absence of signs. Things you should have known. Cues you should have picked up. Napkins placed in your lap and your fork held gently with just your fingers as you delicately pick up your bite.

The transplant Rotella writes “But if you live anywhere long enough, the way of life there, the lay of the land itself, will sink into you.” The way of life sinks in. The roads without road-signs become familiar. You do it a few times, and you know how to get to Logan without looking at your map. And it becomes oddly hard to give anyone else directions. It’s not malice or anger, it just familiarity. That’s as true about knowing how to drive to the airport as it is about how to go to church. It doesn’t matter if your worship bulletin has a helpful note instructing guests to use “trespasses and trespass against us” or “debts and debtors” if you don’t even know the words to the Lord’s Prayer in the first place! Printing the words of the Doxology means nothing if you don’t know what a Doxology is and what tune it might be set to or that there’s some secret choreography where the entire congregation turns towards the cross? And this strange ritual about passing plates and putting money that’s cued up without much explanation? I’ll be so bold to say that every time we take the offering without testifying about what an offering is and why as Christians we give back to God, we fail to teach our children and our guests how to follow Christ. We invite newcomers back to coffee hour in rooms mysteriously named after the faithfully departed with no indication of where those rooms are, and then wonder why they can’t find their way. Where are our missing road-signs? How could they know unless someone where to teach them?

What breaks us out of this sinking familiarity is something new. Someplace new. I have come to believe that ecumenical awkwardness is a spiritual discipline. We see our own worshipping community with new eyes when we go somewhere else for a bit and see how much is presumed. You will learn many good and important things at this conference today. You may even want to try some new ideas at home. And you should. But to see how strangers experience our worship, you yourself have to become a stranger. Go somewhere else. Worship in another tradition. Ask the people in your congregation who were formed by communities other than Methodist churches what they find strange or confusion.  We have to become as strangers to look at our own worship and see how we are preventing people from participating. Jesus turns their eyes to Sidon and Syria. He tells stories of when God shows up in outsiders and unexpected places, implicating the good people in the synagogue who have sunk into their familiar ways of being community. Luke writes “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.” You would have thought that Jesus took the American flag out of the sanctuary on the fourth of July, they were so angry.

Sometimes it takes us going to another community to be as a stranger to see worship with a stranger’s eye, and sometimes it takes a brave stranger in our midst to help us see what we presume. The church where I am a member was full on Easter Sunday. After the bread was broken, the wine poured, the prayers recited, our pastor said “Come, for all things are ready.” And the servers reverently and mindfully walked forward to pick up the bread and the cup. From about 10 pews back, a young woman rushed forward, first in line. Her face was flushed. She looked like she had been crying. All the polite people in the first nine pews had not even stood up yet and formed orderly lines to receive. How could she know, unless someone guides her? All things are ready, the pastor said it! But it wasn’t quite true. But she was ready, even if we weren’t. May the Holy Spirit make us so bold to move to the altar too. Amen.

Bon appétit! Julia Child & the Bread of Heaven

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First Church in Wenham (UCC) - Sunday August 19, 2012

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; the bread that I give for the life of the world is my flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves,  saying “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Thos who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.  Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats bread will live forever. ~John 6:51-

“We’re having vegetarians for dinner!”

This past Wednesday would have been Julia Child’s 100th birthday.  Nearly forty years ago, not far from here , Julia began filming the WGBH television series “the French Chef.” She introduced a generation of Americans to French cooking at a time when the standard fare in the US was tuna casserole garnished with fried Durkee onions from a can, tv trays of Salisbury steak, and broccoli so overcooked as to turn gray. Instead, this 6’2” charming woman was teaching Americans how to prepare the chicken for coq au vin and what beef to purchase for boeff burgonion.  But it worked. People watched. The show took off and has had an enduring influence on how we eat and how we think about food.  Many of those old black and white episodes have been digitized and put up online. I watched a few this week in honor of Julia. One of the later episodes, when color television had just begun and the colors appear too bright to be accurate, starts with Julia saying, in that distinctive accent of hers, “We’re having vegetarians for dinner tonight. I mean we’re not going to eat them, but I have to make vegetarian dinner,” and off she went with her task of creating a vegetarian meal.   “We’re having vegetarians for dinner tonight!” and the joke turns on the idea that Julia could cook up the human vegetarians just as she would cook up a leg of lamb. Isn’t that the same confusion we run into with John’s text this week?  Jesus says “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever; the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” And then the Judeans disputed among themselves saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” It doesn’t make logical sense, he’s standing here in front of us, how can he give us his flesh? Living Bread? What does that even mean? Since Jesus’s time his followers and critics have been debating back and forth what he possibly means by this teaching.

And in reality, it’s an odd text. It’s a strange thing to say. Jesus in John’s gospel is poetic, somewhat cryptic.  He says things like “I am the living bread.” He says things like “my body is true bread and my blood is true drink,” which sounds strange to us now and must have sounded nearly nonsensical to his first century Jewish audience. And the original Greek is even stranger! In this passage, the first three times Jesus says “eat” he uses one verb, but by verse 54- he’s using a different verb. Jesus says “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.” In verse 54, that verb that we translate as “eat” is more fleshly, more graphic- it means to chew, or to gnaw. It’s language that’s even more embodied, more fleshly. Those who gnaw, who consume, who devour me have eternal life.” It is a strange passage. And it would be easy to get stuck in the strangeness. We see the Jewish leaders here get lost in translation, quarreling among themselves. What does he mean by this? Does he really mean his body? It’s easy to get stuck here, trying to figure out what precisely happens when we partake in Christ’s body and blood in communion. Our ancestors in the faith have used a lot of ink debating back and forth what happens here. This sacrament created to unite us to God and one another instead divides us every time we attend a baptism, a wedding, a funeral where we cannot receive at the common table. The Church as a whole has divided over this very issue of what happens during communion. Is the communion bread consubstantial with the body of Christ? Does the bread become the body? Is it a memorial feast? Can Christ’s body be present at the communion table when we claim his body has risen? How can he be in two places at once? It’s easy to get stuck here, in the translation, in the details. It’s understandable, even. Jesus is asking an odd thing of us- to believe that partaking in his very life gives us eternal life. It’s easier to parse and dissect and examine this strange promise than it is to live in the fullness of Christ.  It’s easier to get stuck than to come forward and eat this living bread that we don’t understand.

If you’ve been following the Revised Common Lectionary readings, that common set of Scripture texts that unites Christians around the world in reading the same Bible passages each month, you’ll see that for the last month we’ve been in John’s Gospel talking about bread. 5 Sundays of Jesus saying something or another about being the bread of life, eternal bread, bread that came down from heaven, bread that will not perish.  This whole discussion about bread kicked off at the beginning of John 6 with the story of the feeding of the 5,000.  With five loaves and two fish, Jesus and the disciples feed the people with food left over. But there are people who come back for more- to see more magic tricks. Come on, Jesus, tell how you did it. Do it again! Do something else!  In verse 26 Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.” Jesus seems less concerned with explaining how he is the bread of life than demonstrating to whom this eternal life of offered. The good news is this: you don’t have to know or believe or trust how Jesus is the bread of life, you just have to come to the table. Jesus isn’t asking for our philosophical assent before offering us food, he’s just offering it widely, generously.  Week after week here, Jesus is intentionally redundant for an audience that is more focused on figuring out how on earth his body gives us life abundant. Don’t get stuck in the technicalities, just eat. You don’t have to know the chemistry behind how out how the bread rises before you sit down to eat. You can bring your confusion, you concerns and just set them down in the kitchen. Just eat. You don’t need to wait for your full party to arrive in order to be seated, just eat. You don’t need to make a reservation or pay the check, just come and eat.  I am the bread of life for all. Just come to me all you who are hungry. Just eat he says, just gather together and eat bread and wine, participate in this mystical experience of my body and blood. You don’t need to have it all figured out before you sit down to the table. Just eat.

And yet, we’ve managed to take much of the embodiment, the fleshliness, the materiality out of our contemporary practice of eating the bread of heaven.  You know that old joke about communion wafers? You can convince me that this wafer is the body of Christ, but you can’t convince me it’s actually bread. Jesus says take this and remember me and we offer up crust-less white bread cut into cubes that mush under warm fingers and plastic shot glasses of grape drink colored with red dye #7, as if we did everything in our power to keep the bread and wine from even resembling bread and wine! But something is shifting as the church changes. I became a Christian in a UCC church that had communion once a quarter, during college went to a UCC church that had communion once a month, and now attend a UCC church that has communion once a week.  Remember, before the late 1970’s churches like the Episcopal Church and the Greek Orthodox church did not have weekly Eucharist. A frequent, embodied communion practice is part of the liturgical renewal that can happen. One of the great privileges of my ministry is that I get to travel to congregations around the state, to see their life and be with them in worship. More and more, communion is more robust, has more taste, more scent. I’ve always wondered what it would do for our children’s Christian formation if when you came to church, you could smell the baking communion bread. What if the bread of life smelled heavenly? What if the bread of eternal life tasted a little less like Styrofoam and a little more like heaven? What if the living bread of heaven tasted a little more like Julia Child’s brioche?

The French Chef: Brioche

It’s a treat to watch Juila, through a black and white screen, make the brioche. It’s such a physical activity as she pounds the butter with a rolling pin to warm it up. She kneads the yeast dough, heavy with eggs into a sticky mess. And then she starts throwing it. High in the air, she drops it down on to the marble slab with a thud. Again and again. In that distinctive voice again, she tells you, you’ll know when the dough has been properly kneaded “when it has what the French call ‘du corp’ or body.” It’s vigorous work and she’s breathing heavily during the 5 minutes of kneading and tossing, without a commercial break. What if we craved the bread of heaven that sweet taste of satisfaction of our lives lived in Christ the same way that we rushed for Julia’s brioche, fresh out of the oven?

I saw it once. I witnessed someone taste the bread of eternal life, when she was so hungry for grace.  This past Easter at Church, after the bread was broken, the wine poured, the prayers recited, our pastor said “Come, for all things are ready.” The communion servers were mindfully walking forward. From about 10 pews back, a unfamiliar young woman rushed forward, first in line. Her face was flushed. I think she had been crying. All the polite people in the first nine pews had not even stood up yet. But for her, there was urgency to get to the table. This is why I love church. This woman rushed forward not because “all things were ready,” but because she was ready to be transformed, she was hungry, she could taste the bread of heaven- a witness for all of us who no longer hurry to the table or think we no longer need to be fed. I doubt she had it all figured out about what happen to Jesus’ body. I’m not sure it matters. I don’t remember what the bread tasted like that day. And maybe it doesn’t matter either. The bread of life had been offered and she went to feast on this promise.  When Jesus says he is the “living bread,” the accent mark is on “living.” I am the living bread. Come, eat and taste the living bread. Living.  It’s something of Julia Child’s mantra to keep going, keep cooking and feast on the bounty set before you. Jesus Christ might say Amen. Julia Child might say ”Bon appétit!”