Receiving Christmas

Merry Christmas to all this day!

Light and fog are having morning-long conversation over the surface of Job’s Pond this morning.  Directly across the water there  is a rounding of the land where it presses out toward the water.  There, every morning, there seems more light than elsewhere.  The light appears to congregate there.

(Job’s Pond, Portland CT 12/25/15)

It is, perhaps, a ‘thin place,’as the Celts would describe it.  As travel writer Eric Weiner described his recognition of such places in a New York Times piece in 2012, “They are locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the Infinite Whatever” (March 9, 2012 Where Heaven and Earth Come Closer).

Weiner on finding ‘thin places’ around the world.

Whatever one might call it, I am blessed to look out directly at such a place as the light is reborn each morning I am here.  And today, today is such a thin place as well, a thin moment? Christmas Day is a thin memory of a time and place long ago whose import for every other time and place cannot be overstated, nor over-sung, nor over-felt (though I will not rule out over-thinking or over-preaching :-).

The preacher I heard last night* made a point that is saving and true.  We do an awful lot to ‘prepare’ for Christmas.  We all know what those various activities are.  There is never enough time to do them all, and at last we collapse into the day, this day, itself.  Among the most laudable things many of us do is to give.  We give to charities.  We give to relief organizations.  We give to churches.  We give to one another.  All this we do, and rightly so the preacher noted, to honor the Christ.

But there is something amiss even within this best of what we do. Ultimately this thin place is about receiving first of all.  Before anything can be given, we must receive.  As the old theological dictum has it, “Nemo dat quod non habet” | “No one can give what they do not have.”  And what we receive is not given by human hands or mind or heart.  What we receive at this thin place comes directly from the hand and heart and mind and will of God, from the Center of all that is, from the beating Heart of Love that is what is.  Yes, it comes by the cooperation and the courage, the faith and the openness of a young woman.  Praise God for her.

(Painting of Baby Jesus nursing from Mary in the Milk Grotto in Bethlehem)

But there would be nothing to accept, nothing to receive, were it not for the initiative of the Divine.  “All is grace,” murmurs Bernanos’ Country Priest as he breathes his last.  Therese of Lisieux’ last words were “Grace is everywhere.”  But that doesn’t mean any of this is easy.  It does mean that at any and every moment, at the thinnest places and the ‘thickest’ as well, all that is needed is being provided.

Quite often we need to redistribute what is received, as the food doesn’t often come first to the plate of the hungriest, nor the saving therapy first to the body of the one whose health insurance is inadequate.  But still, enough is given freely, in profligate fashion, at every moment this old universe rolls on.  We have enough.

Not only in preparation for Christmas Day, but across our majority culture, this at first apparently comforting truth is an affront and a challenge.  We speak and act and work and run for office as if there were no grace at all, as if all things were done by our hands.  As if we can accomplish whatever we will.

We establish borders so that, if there might be grace after all, we can receive it here and prevent its flowing over to ‘them.’  We strengthen those borders to render a clear boundary as to who is deserving of whatever gifts might be received, if any there are.  We send bombs and missiles and ships and drones to accomplish our will far away.  Even in terms of violence we are too busy giving to ever imagine that we are sowing the seeds of violence to be received as well.

This Day, as comfortable as we have rendered its point of arrival, is meant to be a point of departure.  Every year on this Day, as we stand on the brink of the year’s ending and beginning we need a radical restart.  We need a rebirth.  And every year the need becomes more painfully clear.

Our instinct, if we accept that assertion, is to begin to plan how we will begin again.  And again, we have missed the point.  The beginning point is not to begin again to do.  The beginning is to be.  The beginning is to receive.  The beginning is to accept the gift of rebirth on this day of birth. The beginning is to let go of what we have believed we ‘know,’ and to open to the possibility of knowing something else.  Something ever old and every new.  Something hidden in plain sight in the Gospels.  Pick up one of them (Mark is a quick read!) and let it enter you tonight in the waning hours of this Christmas Day, as if you had never heard it before.

This is as real, or moreso, than the campaign for the presidency or the latest efforts to protect ourselves from terror or anything else the news cycle will bring us even today.  Once you look for it, you see it and hear it everywhere.  One example came last week in the words of Martin Sheen in conversation with Krista Tippett at “On Being.”  Deep into their dialogue, when the heart of the matter in his life and faith is revealed as love, as community, as belonging, he speaks these words:

It’s like giving back. But just that embrace — it is so overwhelming, at times, this reality of loving because one is loved that it just brings you up short. You just sit and stare sometimes into a vacuum and say, where did this come from, and why is it so clear, and why is it so simple, and so powerful? And one of the great mysteries that I experience at mass is the reception at communion. How do we embrace that? How can we possibly, consciously understand what that is? And I don’t have a clue. I just stand on line and say, “I’m Ramón, called Martin, your friend, you’re welcome here. And I’m with them.” [laughs] Whoever the crowd is, I’m getting on line with, you just look at the people who are on that line, that community, that is the greatest and simplest expression of overtly trying to explain this mystery I’m talking about, because it is a mystery. It is probably the most profound mystery in all of the universe, this love. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed just watching people on line to embrace that sacrament. It is the most profound thing. I never ever can get over it. It’s just something you have to surrender to. And just saying yeah, I’m with them. That’s the community of saints.

They are on line, together, to receive.  To receive first, so that later, transformed over a lifetime of Christmas Days, changed by their travel past thin places throughout life’s geography, they may finally give.

And even then, the only gift to give is grace.  Pass it on.  Pass on the invitation.

“All Is Grace,” by Shaun Groves, from Third World Symphony

• At Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford CT

Called in Grace; Serving Gracefully

I was invited by Bishop Lawrence Provenzano of the Diocese of Long Island to preach on Saturday, September 12th at the ordination to priesthood of Maxine Barnett and Diane DeBlasio.  I was honored to be asked and did the best I could.  I was blessed to be able to reflect on the many experiences I have had as a priest since ordination on June 11, 1983.  Here is the text of what I preached:

The Ordination as Priests of Maxine Barnett and Diane DeBlasio

By the Right Reverend Lawrence C. Provenzano

Saturday, September 12, 2015

The Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City, New York

Diocese of Long Island

 

Christ at Emmaus, by Rembrandt, 1648 (Louvre)

Scriptures:

Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 100, Philippians 4:4-9; Luke 24:13-35 

My father worked as a school custodian for over 35 years. Sometimes in the summers he used to take one or the other of us to work with him. I remember doing a free-range exploration of the school while Dad was working in another part of the building.

One year around this time, just before school opened after summer vacation when I was between grades 4 and 5, I wandered into a classroom which the teacher had already prepared for the opening of the new year. It was neat and silent and clean, all the desks in strict rows, the blackboard looking like it had never yet been used. Between the two classroom doors was a bulletin board decorated, and on the board I read these words:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge |&| shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast |&| with ah! bright wings.

I hardly understood what I was reading, but in some way those words sent a thrill through my mind and heart and body. They were words that spoke somehow of a hope that could and would endure no matter how messy or pained or seared or bleared or smeared the world became. They were words that spoke of divine faithfulness to this creation and to human beings within it. Always, always, in God’s East light is born and reborn and close to the surface of the earth breathes the Holy Ghost.

I didn’t find those words again for years. And when I did, I discovered that they were words put down by a priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). They were words penned by a man who spent most of his life doing the work that most of us women and men do over a lifetime, whatever be our own special calling. He worked to understand the world around him, himself in it, and the relation between the two. Who am I? Who are you? What are we doing here?

What is the call of a priest? What is the call that Maxine and Diane have felt in the very marrow of their bones and that they have been willing to move heaven and earth to answer? What is this call that Augustine describes as the inner voice of God like this:

Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness.

Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness.

Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee.

I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. . . .

 (Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book X, Chapter XXVII)

 What is that call? In part, it is to do what Hopkins did in that poem he called God’s Grandeur. The priest’s call is to speak haltingly but faithfully of the often hidden and always real presence and action of God among us. It is to attempt to translate into words that sound that broke through Augustine’s deafness, that light that opened his closed eyes, that breath of something that is like nothing else, that changed his life – and still changes lives – utterly and forever.

What is the call of these our sisters, come here today in ancient rites to have their lives re-ordered to a particular place in Christ’s Church?

Is this call not to stand with a terrified Isaiah before the living God? To stand knowing with him the unworthiness we all share and the divine invitation that at once ignores and heals that woefulness? Is it not to stand completely vulnerable before the unsurpassable divine power, that power which expresses itself fully at last by self-emptying and becoming as vulnerable as we, right here on the surface of this planet? Is this call, in a place even of divine voice and smoke and confusion, to yet decide to say, without knowing what lies even one day ahead, “Here I am, send me”?

What is the call that strengthens Diane and Maxine as they answer it?

Is it not heard in the words of the apostle Paul, writing from prison, writing to a community persecuted for its faith, and yet proclaiming joy, joy, joy as he writes? Is that call not echoed in the apostle’s assurance that gratitude, a constant attitude of thankfulness in all and every circumstance, is the key that ushers us into God’s presence?

In whose voice and accents do the hearts of these our sisters hear this call?

Is it not the voice of the Stranger who approached Cleopas and friend somewhere between big-city Jerusalem and village Emmaus? Is it not the Voice of One ready and willing to listen to their story, but also ready to challenge and correct and teach them? Does their call not become tangible, concrete, ready to be touched and even taken up as food and drink, when they willingly invite that Stranger to table and allow him to serve the meal?

They are called, these sisters of ours. They have heard what Isaiah and Paul and Cleopas and friend heard. And like them, they have answered. And so they are here today. And because they have answered, because that moment is always a moment profound and moving, we are drawn here with them.

There is a wonderful statement embedded in the middle of the Gospel of Luke’s 24^th chapter, from which our good news comes today. In verse 22, the two refugees from Golgotha, broken-hearted, afraid, and on the road away from the death they know Jesus suffered say this:

 “Moreover, some women of our group astounded us.”

Look at these two women with whom we gather in prayer today as they come to be ordained as priests. You who know them well, consider their own Emmaus road which has led to this place and to this time. You know what it has taken in faith, in commitment, in courage, in prayer, in steadfastness, in amazing grace for Maxine and Diane, our sisters, to come to this day. So can we not also speak this day, with absolute truth, with joy, with hope and gratitude the words of Luke 24:22?

“Some women of our group astounded us!”

Diane DeBlasio and Maxine Barnett have astounded us. And likely will astound us again as they take up the ministry of Word and Sacrament, of action and love, of self-sacrifice and grace which is theirs from this day for the rest of their days. The wonderful Greek word in the background in that lucan verse is existemi – to be amazed, to be astonished, to be beside oneself with wonder. This is what women did by giving witness to what they saw on the day of Christ’s Resurrection. And this is what these our sisters are doing for us today. We are beside ourselves with wonder here and now, based on witness given here by these two to Christ’s risen life. We are called today to let that joy, founded firmly on Christ’s life-giving encouragement and energy, flow wide and deep among us.

Now.

Now.

Now. After the final blessing of this Eucharist has been given, and the last hymn sung, and the last piece of cake consumed and all the first blessings given, what follows? What follows then?

I think perhaps something like this.

Like all those who have trod this road before them, Maxine and Diane are given tools this day with which to work. The tools are two: word and gesture. Just as in the sacraments. In baptism there is a word, the invocation of the triune God and a gesture, the pouring of water. In the eucharist, there is a word, the word of Christ over the bread and wine; and the gestures of taking, blessing, and sharing.

These new priests will go forth from this place carrying a word which is not their own, but which has been given to their hearts. It is a word which transforms them first, and invites them then to share that revolution freely.

These new priests will go forth from this place given the responsibility to find gestures – actions, signs, signals, symbols, traces, movements – proper to these times that will carry to those whom they lead and serve an urgent alert that this is our time – our only time – and our opportunity – our one opportunity – to do what Isaiah and Paul, and likely Cleopas and his companion did in their time.

As prayerful and beautiful as this liturgy is, it will be made into something of lasting significance when into the world and onto the streets are carried that word and those gestures.

It will be simple, but it will not be easy. As in every generation, Isaiah’s fear will live again. Paul will languish in prison again. Cleopas and the other disciple will flee again – all in this world now. In this world in which Maxine and Diane, with us, will live and minister in Christ’s name.

There will be times, many of them, that seem to call for extraordinary strength, for creativity, for willingness to step into the breach, for deep compassion for the profoundly poor, for courage to speak an unpopular or worse, ignored word about this seemingly distant figure called Jesus. There will be many times when the world, as Hopkins saw it too, will appear seared and bleared and smeared again. There will be moments when the voice that brought Augustine to wakefulness seems silent again, and the light he saw dimmed, the fragrance he followed faint. I say it again: this is not going to be easy. Nor always done with plenty of supportive company. Living the life of one who went to the cross is not meant to be easy. Following One who held nothing back, but rather gave it all, is never easy when it is genuine.

And you will go at it, Diane and Maxine, with the massive tools of word and gesture! Seems a bit thin on the equipment side, doesn’t it?

How can this be done?

It is possible by only one way: by grace.  As a dean of our school of theology here at Garden City wrote in sweeping, radical, all-out words a generation ago:

Trust him. And when you have done that, you are living the life of grace. No matter what happens to you in the course of that trusting – no matter how many waverings you may have, no matter how many suspicions that you have bought a poke with no pig in it, no matter how much heaviness and sadness your lapses, vices, indispositions, and bratty whining may cause you – you believe simply that Somebody Else, by his death and resurrection, has made it all right, and you just say thank you and shut up. . . . it is Jesus who is your life. . . . You can fail utterly, therefore, and still live the life of grace. You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe. Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead – and for him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you his cup of tea.

(Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three).

If I might put it a little less grandly. You will find, if you pause often to look for it, that the Kingdom of God is present in every moment, not only those bright and beautiful. You will find that any road can be the road to Emmaus, the road to encounter with the risen Christ, the road to abiding nourishment and astounding news.

Emmaus is the point of arrival, at table with Jesus. That is where word and gesture, rendered well, will bring us all. It is fascinating to realize that no one knows exactly where the village was to which Cleopas and the other walked that Sunday evening. We only know it was linked to Jerusalem by road. By word and gesture we invite and lead our contemporaries to that place in the company of Jesus, to that village which now can be anywhere and everywhere, to that village that we build up by our commitment to Christ and our ministry in His Name.

Our part: bring them to Jesus. Despite our weakness, despite what we lack, despite our failures, what we can do is to introduce them – all those we encounter over a lifetime – to Jesus. Bring them to his table. Invite them to sit and get comfortable. The rest is God’s work.

So it is not easy, no. But it is simple.

The work my Dad did for 35 years, like yours, was also a calling. Our word ‘custodian’ comes from the Latin custodi – one who cares. One who protects, escorts, guards and attends.

Maxine and Diane, be good custodians of the treasure that is placed in your hands and hearts. Be loving companions of all God’s people along the road from death to resurrection. Be channels and avenues of God’s ever-generous grace. Entrust your weakness to divine care and speak and act with confidence beyond yourself.

So you will see this world charged ‘with the grandeur of God.’ You will find words to speak of it and gestures to show it. You will see God’s dawn breaking in the east of life and you will be upheld on the ‘bright wings’ of the Holy Ghost.

So may it be!

~ John P. McGinty+

The Fruit of the Spirit | Frederick Buechner Center

In our blog post each Monday we select a reading from the Revised Common Lectionary and pair it with a Frederick Buechner reading on the same topic

via Weekly Sermon Illustration: The Fruit of the Spirit | Frederick Buechner Center.

Slaves of Jesus Christ: Be Stretched

Hagia Sophia ; Empress Zoë mosaic : Christ Pantocrator; Istanbul, Turkey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I was honored to be asked to preach yesterday at the ordination of Marie, Lauren, and Fred as deacons yesterday at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York.  Here follows my offering.  I will not provide the scriptural citations as they are quoted within the sermon. 

 

May the ministry of these three in Jesus’ name be long, happy, and graced!

 

 

 

Bishop Provenzano, deacons, priests, holy people of God:

 

I remember lying on the floor on the day I was ordained a deacon as the voices of the people gathered prayed.  I remember the strange feeling of lying face-down there, the sound of prayer above and surrounding.  I remember the old carpet on which we lay was dusty.  It had been swept in a vain attempt to clean it up by brooms made of great lengths of straw, some of which had come out of the brooms and remained on the carpet, and now they jabbed and stabbed us as we lay there in the middle of that community of prayer.  We were stretched out, one with the community and very much alone, apparently at rest but vigilant, every bone and muscle tensed as the prayer continued and the stubble from the brooms poked us.

 

The same ancient word of God to young Jeremiah that we have heard this morning was read that day as well.  To the prophet’s protestation that he was not ready to prophesy, the God of Israel responded, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you and shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”

 

The same hope we prayed moments ago in Psalm 84 beat in our hearts that day too: “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose hearts are the highways to Zion, Who going through the barren valley find there a spring, and the early rains will clothe it with blessing.  They will go from strength to strength . . . .”

 

We took, as Lauren, Marie, and Fred do today, Saint Paul’s description of the ministry as our own: “We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.”

 

Like you this morning, we pledged anew that day, in a quite particular way, to follow Jesus the Christ.  Our hearts were filled with the desire to learn from him, and with him and through him and like him, to be within the community of disciples “as one who serves.”

 

With my fellow ordinands I lay on that dusty rug that morning with openness of heart and sincerity of mind.  We hardly knew it then, but we had no idea to whom we would be sent, what we would be commanded to say, and just what it was that we were being told we need not ever fear.  We did not know how barren some of the valleys we’d pass through would be; how long we would feel the wait for the blessing of God’s rain, nor how going from strength to strength would sometimes feel like the acrobat waiting for the next trapeze to appear after she’d let go of the last and hung in mid-air, foolishly faithful and faithfully foolish.  We hardly knew then how the temptation to proclaim ourselves rather than Christ Jesus would be real, because we knew more  – or so we thought – about ourselves than about him, and because our commitment to know him more deeply would wax and wane through the years.

 

We knew little then, really, about what it means to serve in the church or even what kind of servants the church would need.  And if I am entirely honest, I don’t know that much more today than I did then.  Like you, I got up off the floor and wiped myself off.  I took a first step, and life happened.  Ministry happened.  Service and preaching and sacraments and connecting to people on the streets happened.  Hour followed hour.  Day followed day, and year followed year.  Joy came, and so did tragedy.  Clarity came, and so did profound confusion.  Sin came and forgiveness followed.  Hunger came and Eucharist nourished.  The world turned and the church changed.  The proclamation of the Word went on, and amazingly, that Word has had something to say to every place, to every person, to every parish and ministry, to every situation, to every Sunday everywhere since then.  And it still does.

 

That Word has been living and active all along simply and marvelously because the One who spoke it remains living and active.  God spoke the day my class was ordained.  God speaks today.  We believed, as I know you do, that we meant everything we said that day, that our words were true.  But that mattered infinitely less than the fact that what God spoke that day, and this, and what God will speak tomorrow is true.  True and transformative and saving.

 

The beautiful prayers of this liturgy, in the words of the Bishop and in your responding affirmations, offer you the church’s guidance in the ministry of deacon which you take up today.  “A special ministry of servanthood,” with service especially to “the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely.”  For them and for us all you make the love of Christ known.  You make certain that the church remains attentive to the needs of the world.  You as deacons, in the words of the second century martyr, Justin, whom the church recalls today, bring the body and blood of Christ ‘to those who are unable to be present at the Eucharist.’  You remind the church, constantly in your very being, that the church’s vocation is to be servant in the name of Christ.  Servant to every need known and every pain shared.

 

As vans belonging to one communication company constantly remind us along our streets and, it seems, at every stop light: “This is huge.”  This is tremendous.  This is a tender, personal, demanding, sustaining, communal, huge calling: to be ‘a slave for Jesus’s sake.’  Neither you nor I nor anyone could do it at all unless we belong entirely and lean daily on the One who is first among us as One who serves.  But belonging there and leaning there, you will do it every day for the rest of your lives.

 

There is a wonderful moment early in Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead.  Three generations of preachers, each named John Ames, are gathered in one place – at the grave of the senior Ames, somewhere in Kansas.  The older man’s son and grandson have sought out that resting place.  They found it in an unkempt and lonely place.  They set about cleaning up the grave of their loved one and the whole graveyard.  As they finish the work, the middle generation Reverend Ames closes his eyes in prayer.  His 12-year old son with him there, his own calling and ordination still in the future, finds his father’s prayer much too long.  He opens his eyes, and we read this:

 

At first I thought I saw the sun setting in the east; I knew where the east was, because the sun was just over the horizon when we got there that morning.  Then I realized that what I saw was a full moon rising just as the son was going down.  Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them.  It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or as if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them.  I wanted my father to see it, but I knew I’d have to startle him out of his prayer, and I wanted to do it the best way, so I took his hand and kissed it.  And then I said, “Look at the moon.”  And he did.  We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up.  They seemed to float on the horizon for a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn’t get a clear look at them.  And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them, which seemed amazing to me at the time, since I hadn’t given much thought to the nature of the horizon.

 

My father said, “I would never have thought this place could be beautiful.  I’m glad to know that.”

 

This calling of yours will stretch you, not only today on a cathedral floor, but it will stretch you in every way all your days, asking you to reveal more of what you can be, and to allow grace to unwrap its unexpected gifts in you for the sake of the others.  Jesus, who lay stretched in a manger and later on a cross in generous love, who gave everything for you, will not ask you for less than everything.

 

This can be frightening.  Although we are told to never fear, I know it has been frightening to me.

 

But my friends, know that we stand together exactly where the three generations of the Ames family stood that evening.  We stand as custodians of the past, of what has been handed on to us.  We stand on the foundation of the past. We tend its monument and honor it.  We stand in the present, in prayer and focused on what surrounds us, with our attention fixed on the future.  But most importantly, we stand together, and though day end and night come, we are never in darkness.  We are always together, and together in the marvelous eternal living light that is the face and the voice and the gentle hand of the God who bids you today and tomorrow and the day after, to serve.

 

John P. McGinty

 

June 1, 2013