Category: Growth

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“KEEP AWAKE: AN ADVENT MEDITATION WITH INSIGHTS FROM JESUS AND THE BUDDHA”

Under the boughs of the Bodhi tree, Siddhartha Gautama sat motionless, meditating. At once, the solution to the problem that had brought him to sit under that tree came to him. He opened his eyes. He was enlightened. He was awake. That is the story of the Buddha, the name that literally means “one who is awake.”

The Awake One, the Buddha, had set for himself the goal of solving the problem of human suffering. Shortly after his “enlightenment,” he announced to the world that human suffering is caused by “clinging,” that is, holding onto or trying to possess people or things. If we want to put an end to that suffering, he said, we must extinguish all desire.

This is just the beginning of what I could say about Buddha. I have taught numerous college courses on various religious traditions, including Buddhism. My point here is not to discuss the Buddha or the Buddhist tradition in detail but rather to contrast elements of the story of the Buddha with Jesus’ words in the gospels of Mark and Matthew.

The Buddha is the awakened one. The Buddha is awake. Jesus, similarly, urges his followers to be awake. In Mark 13:33-37, Jesus tells his disciples: “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey; when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening or at midnight or at cockcrow or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” Matthew 24:42-44 reinforces this urgency: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

St. Paul also urges the followers of Messiah Jesus to be awake and perennially ready for the return of the Lord. In Romans 13:11-14, Paul writes: 

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Paul echoes this theme in 1 Thessalonians 5:4-6, “But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.”

In the scriptures we read from the Revised Common Lectionary during the latter weeks of the Season of Pentecost and into the beginning of the season of Advent, Christians are repeatedly called to live in constant readiness and preparedness. Our readings often end with the admonition that we remain awake because we cannot know the hour of the Parousia, the return of the Lord Jesus in glory. 

St. Paul urges his hearers, in so many words, to live lives that are blameless, such that if the Lord were to return at this moment would be beyond reproach. The point of these scripture readings is that we should never do anything for which we would not be prepared to give an account or to have to explain if the Lord were to return at that moment. Jesus illustrates this principle vividly in the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids in Matthew 25:1-13, concluding with the warning: “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”

If you are a teenager whose parents trust enough to leave you at home without a babysitter, then you know what I am talking about. If you have ever been a teenager, you know what I mean. You never know when your parents will walk through the door. You can take a chance, but if you are surprised, you will have to explain, even account for, your actions. If you have ever been caught, you will know what I am talking about. We might have some explaining to do, and perhaps we might face a few consequences from our unwise decisions that we had not fully contemplated. Jesus makes a similar point in Luke 12:35-40: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes.”

“Being awake” to the world around us is central to the life of faith. The figurative use of the idea of being awake is found in Buddhism, Christianity, and many other religious traditions. To be awake is to be alive.

Jesus often reminded those who heard him that they had ears, but could not hear, and eyes, but they could not see. Jesus might also have said that although many of his hearers were physically awake, they were nonetheless spiritually asleep. To be faithful to God, we must strive to awaken from sleep and be alive and awake to God.

What would it mean for you to be awake? Let us consider this together.

What is it like to be physically awake but spiritually asleep? We do not have to imagine that. Most of us are well aware of this fact. We know how easy it is to live our lives in a kind of stupor, just going through the motions. We know how easy it is to be bored with so many interesting people, places, and things around us. We know how easy it is to be so tired that we can hardly care about anything or anyone else. We know how easy it is to get stuck and for our lives and relationships to become stagnant. Perhaps you know, from your own experience or from the experience of those you love, how easy it is to become addicted to caffeine, alcohol, food, or something else. The well-known psychologist Rollo May argues in his book Addiction and Grace that being human is, in some way, to be addicted. For some people, the states of exhaustion, depression, and addiction that I have described are medical issues that can be helped by a variety of medications, therapies, or other remedies.

But even so, we cannot solely blame our spiritual ennui on our brain or body chemistry. Many of us often realize that we are spiritually dead and we have no idea how to remedy it.

As the Advent season begins and Christmas looms, we are assaulted by the promises of advertising that the key to personal happiness is to be found in the car we drive, the deodorant we use, or the diamond jewelry we give or receive. We may enjoy the use of our possessions, but sooner or later, we come to realize that they alone cannot supply meaning or purpose to our lives.

It is far easier to describe what it is like to be spiritually asleep or dead than to describe what it means to be alive. So, what does it mean to be awake and alive?

First and foremost, to be spiritually awake or alive is to have a vital and life-giving relationship with God. When you pray, do you nurture a real relationship that involves silence and listening, or do you fill your time with “fix it” lists for God? True prayer is not one-sided; it involves building a relationship with God.

To be truly awake, we cannot place our ultimate trust in our possessions or anything other than the living God. Here, both the Buddha and Jesus come to a somewhat similar diagnosis, even if their solutions are somewhat incompatible. The Buddha tells us that clinging to things or people is the cause of human suffering and that we need to let go if we are to find peace within. Jesus tells us not to place our trust in treasures that can rust or spoil, but to place our trust in the living God. As Jesus teaches in Matthew 6:19-21: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Being awake and alive means being engaged in what you do. If stagnation is a sign of spiritual sleep, growth is a sign of being alive. To grow, you will have to open yourself to an uncertain future and trust that if you remain attentive to the relationships with one another and with God, good will ultimately come of it.

Advent is a time of repentance, a time of turning away from the ways and patterns of our lives that keep us from being truly awake before God. To be truly awake, we must let go of the things that try to substitute themselves for God and go in search of the Living God–the God who gives us life and hope.

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“ALL SAINTS DAY IS A CALL TO FAITH IN ACTION”

All Saints Day is a Call to Faith in Action

I am happy to announce that my mediation for All Saints Day appeared as “The Weekly Word” for the non-profit organization, A Faith that Does Justice.

A Faith That Does Justice is an interfaith organization that challenges people to experience God by living their faith intentionally in service to others. We do this by showing how unjust societal structures marginalize people and by acting to help those in need.  Our vision is people intentionally living their faith in action.”

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RETIRED AGAIN?

Photo by Craig A. Phillips

I’m fully retired again. In August, I agreed to fill in for two persons who were going on sabbatical, one a parish priest and the other a college professor.  As a result, the rhythms of life in retirement changed for both me and my wife. I began working on Sunday morning preaching and celebrating at a parish about 40 miles from home and teaching two classes of “Biblical Theology” from Monday to Thursday at St. Anselm College in Manchester, NH, about 20 miles from home. Both of my classes began at 4:00 PM or after, so I spent most of the day prior to class preparing for the next class, grading, and corresponding with students and faculty. All of this had an impact on my wife as well, as she was around while I worked and stressed on my preparations. Our ability to do things together during the day and our ability to travel, visit our children and grandchildren, and other family members was limited by my new work schedule.  

Throughout these somewhat hectic four months, I asked myself, “have I failed retirement?” The answer for me was “no.” After all, I had not returned to full time work. Both positions were part-time. But as anyone who has ever worked part-time knows, part-time often feels just the same as full-time. There was never any question that this was not work.  It certainly was. At the same time, however, retirement gave me the opportunity to do the things I love. Isn’t retirement a time in which one has the chance to do the things you want to do, but do not have to do?  

In a previous blogpost, “Getting the Hang of Retirement,” I wrote, “More than one of my retired friends has told me that it took them the better part of three years to get used to it. So, I am just a beginner. … In three years, I’ll let you know if I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.” 

It has now been exactly two and a half years since I retired from full-time work. According to this self-imposed schedule, I only have six months left to figure it out. I can honestly say that this is a process, much as preparing for retirement is.  It changes from day to day, week to week, and month to month. In six months I doubt I will fully get the hang of it — but I’m on my way. This is a time of life in which there are seemingly endless possibilities and only limited time in which to choose from them. 

For now, we have begun to travel again to see family members we have not seen in a while.  We have two to three trips planned for this year. I also am re-engaging with my academic writing and research in rare books and maps from the early 17th century with an end to publishing a journal article or perhaps a scholarly monograph. I am used to using the pressure of a deadline to focus my writing, but I am trying not to make this another task that feels like work, so I must figure out how to have fun doing it, without the feeling of compulsion that I must write so many pages a week. I often feel that if I am not working on my research and writing that I have somehow failed. Much as with retirement in general, it will take time to figure out how to engage in something that is fun for me to do, without feeling that it is one more task that must be accomplished as it would were it related to my employment. 

There are only so many years when we will be able to travel and so many years left to write what I hope to write. How will I make the best use of that time? That question is important for all of us, no matter our stage of life. How will we best use the time that is given to us? That is a question to ponder again and again. Asking this question in retirement is different only because it comes after years of working, when we did many things that we did not really enjoy doing, but nonetheless had to do. Now we who are retired must answer that question anew in light of our circumstances. 

I know that I must be retired again when I can’t remember what day it is, and everyday seems to feel like Saturday. Now there is time to do the things I love to do. Let’s go and see what happens!  

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CRITIQUE AND EDIFICATION

Photo by Wendy Wei on Pexels.com

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ (Ephesians 4: 11-13).

St. Paul describes the church as the body of Christ in which those within it are given gifts to use to build up that body so that every person is brought to Christian maturity. 

May 1, 2022, marks the 41st anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. When I graduated from seminary in 1979, I felt called to ordained pastoral ministry and to a ministry of teaching. I have not always found it easy to combine these mutual vocations. After graduation, I spent one year in clinical training as a hospital chaplain. Following that, I was placed in charge of two congregations in rural Oklahoma as a lay vicar. Five months later, and four days after our first child was born, I was ordained to the diaconate. During this time, I wrestled with the idea of a vocation that combined both ministry and teaching.   Six years later, after working in St. Louis for a couple of years, I decided to go back to graduate school to pursue a doctorate in theology and ethics at Duke University. Within a few months of my arrival in Durham, North Carolina, I began to serve as regular supply priest in rural congregations. Soon I was serving in part-time interim ministry, sometimes in more than one congregation at a time. My working life was divided between teaching at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill and work in interim parish ministry. I mention this because these experiences provided me with a perspective from which to see the church in a different light. 

The purpose of the church at its best is to build us up so that we become knitted together in the body of Christ. Its purpose, therefore, is to edify us, that is, to build us up, both personally and communally. Moving between these two environments in my career provided me with the insights I would like to share with you here. 

The purpose of the university at its best is to critique every idea or procedure and from that process to arrive at new understandings in every area of our lives, from the medicine we need to heal our bodies, to an understanding of our universe in all its complexity, to questions concerning the meaning of our lives.  

In the academic world a distinction is made between “criticism” and “critique.” Criticism points to minor errors and inconsistencies in the work under examination. Critique, on the other hand, seeks to find if and how the entire work under examination is inconsistent with its own principles, and whether as a result the work or project is flawed from the start. In graduate school, students are taught how to tear academic positions on any topic to shreds. They are taught, in other words, to critique everything they read or hear. Graduate education teaches students to categorize thought and quickly make suggestions as to the error, faults, and even the impossibility, or utter contradiction in the work under examination.  

I remember a particular graduate seminar I taught at Temple University in which we examined the work of the French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu.  I was trying to make a point using an idea suggested by Bourdieu.  My students rushed in to condemn the way in which Bourdieu constructed his argument. I tried to defend the usefulness of his position despite its inherent weaknesses, but my students would not hear of it. When I reflected later in the day on the feeling and emotion behind their arguments, I realized that they were only doing what they were being taught to do. They were demonstrating to me that they could engage in a vigorous philosophical critique of their assigned readings.  

This emphasis on critique is why university professors and other academics are often charged with being nihilists. If every position is equally flawed, then how can one ever endorse any position or idea? How then does one live her or his life? That is one of the dilemmas one faces in the university environment.

The life of the university thrives on critique, that is, on the process of challenging dominant assumptions and formulating in their place different and oftentimes unpopular ways of looking at things. This is an important task and I by no means want to belittle it. New ideas and approaches to more ancient problems, more often than not, are enriching and enlivening.  

In contrast to the university, the central task of the church is neither critique nor criticism, although that is how life within it often feels for lay and clergy alike. At its worst the church is a critical and unsupportive place. Because we all are imperfect people, it is not surprising that we often see the fault in others, before we see that same fault in ourselves.  Jesus recognized this when he asked his hearers, “why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” 

At its best, the task of the church is not to tear us down but to edify and to build us up. If we want the church to become a supportive place, we must pay attention to the ways in which we respond positively to the needs and desires of others.  If we ourselves want to be supported, we first must learn to become supportive of others. Together, and only together, can we grow “to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

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LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF

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“If we look to the bottom of the raging dissatisfaction that characterizes so many people today, chances are it all goes back to a dislike of self that has a way of poisoning everything else one perceives.”

John R. Claypool, The Preaching Event

The way we treat ourselves is the way we will treat others.  The counsel of Jesus to “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” both begin with a love for the self as a unique and wonderful creation of God.  We often miss the fact that we have to respect ourselves before we can respect others. In order to love our neighbors, following Jesus’ advice, we first have to drop the harsh and often hostile manner with which we treat ourselves.

The recognition that you will only be able to love your neighbor as you learn to love yourself is an important insight into the words of Jesus. The pattern you develop in dealing with the person you deal with most often, — yourself — becomes the pattern by which you will begin to relate to everyone else. If you don’t like yourself and are critical of yourself at every juncture, you begin to see others only in a critical way.

The hostile, critical, dissatisfied way we treat others becomes the way we perceive and begin to act toward others. One escape is to try to find heroes whom we imagine are not like us. They are super-humans without our flaws and imperfections. “If only we could be like so and so,” we say. And so, in our raging dissatisfaction with ourselves we try to become someone else, rather than learning to love the person we are.

The parables of Jesus are wonderfully good news for us if we could truly believe that what Jesus says is true. His parables tell of a God who accepts all of us as we are, without condition, in spite of who we are and where we have been. The doors to God’s acceptance are flung wide open. All are invited to enter, the poor, the marginalized, the unworthy—even you. Entrance is free and welcome to all who will enter. The parables tell of a God who is even willing to come out and search for the lost, the wayward, and the lonely. The doors to God’s acceptance of whom we are right now, in spite of our flaws, are open to all. 

Why do so few go in through these doors? Is it because, in our critical way of dealing with ourselves, we know ourselves to be unworthy, undeserving of that kind of love—the love we really need?  

What would happen if you believed these stories just for a minute and, foolish as it might seem, you went in? You might find that knowing you are loved and accepted will allow you to be a little easier on yourself. At the same time, you may become less critical of others and more willing to love them as you love yourself. 

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A REFLECTION ON KATHERINE MAY’S WINTERING: THE POWER OF REST AND RETREAT IN DIFFICULT TIMES

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For the past few weeks, I have been engrossed in the book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May.[1] I was attracted to the book by the title and ordered it right away. Not every title has that kind of immediate appeal. 

The book is an extended secular meditation on the fallow periods in life in which we can retreat, rest, and recover. May’s reflections are part memoir and part elegantly written investigation of the metaphorical concepts of “winter” and “wintering” that she invents to describe our way of dealing with our fears and anxieties. The book is deeply autobiographical. At the same time, it is written in such a way as to leave space for its readers to identify and reflect on their own experiences of “wintering.” That is the great strength of this book.

Reflecting on the falling leaves in October, May writes: “Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish, and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing bare bones. Given time they grow again.”[2]

“Wintering,” May explains, “is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you are cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. …Wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful….We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be an eternal summer. ” Life is not like that. 

Reflecting on an illness that struck her, May states bluntly that “winter blanked me, blasted me open. In all that whiteness I saw the chance to make myself new again.”[3]  

The book, she tells us, is about “learning to recognize the process” of wintering, “engage with it mindfully, and even to cherish it.” We might never choose to winter, but, but once we understand our experiences in light of that concept, she maintains, we are more likely to be in the place in which we can choose how we do it.[4]

In November and December, I experienced a wintering of my own.  Who knew that a slight twist of my spine unloading the car would lead to two successive surgeries on my back in the same place where I already had a previous surgery? It seemed like nothing at the time, so much so that when my back began to hurt the following day, it took me three days to remember that I had twisted it earlier that week. 

This event began two months of excruciating pain down my right leg all the way to my toes. The cause turned out to be a herniated disc in much the same place that I had had back surgery three years ago. This led to an additional surgery. My surgery went well and a couple of weeks out things looked promising. But that was not to be. Three weeks after surgery, I found myself back in the hospital  for an additional week with an infection that required opening up one of the surgical sites and cleaning it out. Because no visitors were allowed, I spent the week alone in my room. Of course, it was a hospital, so I was never really alone, but due to the state of the COVID-19 pandemic I was allowed no visitors. My hospital stay was followed by three weeks of IV antibiotics and then a couple more weeks of oral antibiotics. 

Throughout this ordeal, I took things as they came, calmly and in stride, never finding myself to be upset about much of anything. I can’t say that it’s always been that way when I have faced adversities like this in the past. This time, however, I seemed to have the resources necessary to cope with my circumstances, when at other times in the past I did not. Working from home, a loving family, a supportive church community, not going out as much as I had before the pandemic, time to rest, and taking time to read at night before going to sleep, had given me resources I never knew I had until they were needed.

Rather than fleeing from the difficult times in our lives, May maintains, we need to learn to embrace them —“we must learn to invite the winter in”— so that we can learn from them and grow.  She writes: “Once we stop wishing it were summer, winter can be a glorious season when the world takes on a sparse beauty and even the pavements[5] sparkle. It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order.”[6]

After recovering from her own illness, which May interpreted in a metaphorical way as form of wintering, she writes, “ Winter is asking me to be more careful with my energies, and to rest a while until spring.”[7] That is advice I needed to hear. And it is advice, that you might want to take to heart. 

“At its base,” May concludes, the book “ is about noticing what’s going on and living it. That’s what the natural world does: it carries on surviving. Sometimes it flourishes…and sometimes it pares back to the very basics of existence in order to keep living…. It winters in cycles, again and again, forever and ever. For plants and animals, winter is part of the job. The same is true for humans.”[8]

We cannot move on from our metaphorical winter, without embracing it first. When we invite the winter in, we are not necessarily overtaken by it. Rather, we enter it so that one day spring will arrive for us, with all its possibilities for new life and growth.

[1] Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. (London: Penguin/Random House, 2020). The book was highlighted for the 2020 Wainwright Prize, sponsored by the National Trust in England, that celebrates the best in English Nature Writing.

[2] Wintering, 78.

[3] Wintering, 10

[4] Wintering, 12.

[5] American, “sidewalks.”

[6] Wintering, 13.

[7] Wintering, 84.

[8] Wintering, 269-70.

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JUDGE NOT THAT YOU BE NOT JUDGED

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Judge not that you be not judged…. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)


In the album “The Final Cut” by the British rock group Pink Floyd, Roger Waters questions the “post-war dream,” asking whether the period of Western prosperity following World War II was worth it all. Roger’s father, a RAF pilot, was shot down fighting the Japanese in the battle of Leyte Gulf when Roger was a very young child. In this album and in other albums by the group we find glimpses of his tortuous life growing up fatherless in Britain after the war.

This recording was released at the time of the Falkland Islands war between Argentina and Great Britain. The questions raised by this conflict parallel Water’s own questions about the Second World War. What I am interested in here, however, is not so much his views on war, but the way in which he expresses the hurt he has felt in his life.

The complexity and poignancy of the lyrics of this album were not appreciated by all of their listeners who quickly, and I might add prematurely, concluded that it was one of Pink Floyd’s worst albums. This may be because it contained a cry of anguish too personal or threatening to contemplate. Roger Waters, the creative genius behind this group, you see, is no stranger to personal anxiety and sadness. In the title song of the album, the vocalist asks (his partner) in anguish:

If I show you my dark side, will you still hold me tonight?

And if I open my heart to you and show you my weak side, what will you do?

Would you sell your story to Rolling Stone?

Would you take the children away and leave me alone?

And smile in reassurance as you whisper down the phone?

Would you send me packing, or would you take me home?


These lyrics reflect the fear of telling another, even our closest friends and loved ones, our deepest pain, sadness, and faults. This fear arises for a number of reasons. The first is the possibility of rejection by the other. Another is the fear that if we tell someone how we really feel, or who we really are, it could be used against us. Yet another is the fear that we might have to change. Because of the fear of admitting who we really are and what we really feel, we often keep our deepest hurt and pain to ourselves. It is so much easier to tell others of their inadequacies than to look deeply at ourselves. We are often afraid that we will be found out—that others will discover that deep down we are inadequate and imposters at what we do. And so we, afraid to admit who we really are, locate our own faults in the lives of others. We, who are afraid to tell others of our deepest needs and hurts, for fear of their rejection, live a kind of self-imposed exile in which we are far more competent in judging the faults of others than being accountable for our own self.

It is also far easier in the community we call the “church” to find fault with others than to accept the brokenness of our own lives and the lives of others. Jesus observes that human persons often see the “splinter” in the eye of other persons more clearly than the “log” in our own eye. There’s quite a difference in size between a splinter and a log!

The life of ordained ministers in the church often comes under greater scrutiny than the life of others in the Christian community. After all, so many reckon, they are to live out the “moral life” for their congregation. The priest, in that case, however, becomes a professional Christian attempting under difficult odds to embody the Christian life before those who have often given up trying to live that life themselves. It is difficult today for all of us living in the kind of society we have made to find persons with whom we can share our deepest hopes, joys, fears, and disappointments. It is even hard to find Christian communities in which this honest sharing goes on. But if we cannot find it in the church, where will we find it?

We in the church are often more ready to judge than to love, more ready to criticize than to listen. When we judge, we stand apart from other persons; when we love, however, we stand beside them waiting to share in their hopes and dreams. Jesus calls us who seek to follow him to give an honest account of our own life before we examine the lives of others. We are called first to love others, and not judge them. To do this we have to become a people more willing to trust than to fear.

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WRITTEN ON OUR HEARTS

Photo by Jose Llamas on Unsplash

 

This meditation is taken in part from the sermon I preached at the Ordination of Daniel Paul Spors to the Priesthood on January 18, 2017 

The hymn, “Come labor on” (The Hymnal 1982, #541) begins with a call to action: 

“Come labor on. Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain, while all around us waves the golden grain? And to each servant does the Master say, ‘Go work today.’”  

It is a call to action—a call to follow Jesus—to attend to the harvest to which Jesus, the Son of Man calls each and every person who desires to follow him. My favorite verse, however, is the third:

“Come labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear! No arm so weak but may do service here: by feeblest agents may our God fulfill his righteous will”.  

The verse tells of how God takes our feeble efforts and uses them for God’s glory and God’s purposes.  How does God do that? We will never know, but thanks be to God, God does it.  

Working as a priest in parish ministry has many challenges. One thing is eminently true. You will never be able to please all the people all the time. You can try to “be all things to all people” as St. Paul once wrote, but you will never please everyone.  All you can do is to strive to be faithful to God. 

And the most wonderful thing about our respective ministries— and you have one whether you are ordained or a layperson —is that God will work in and through you even when you are sure that you have failed—that no one has heard you—that you have not said enough—or done enough.  God, mysteriously, will have a way of creating something good out of even the smallest and imperfect fragments of your work. It is a mystery—a wonderful mystery—how God speaks, works, and acts through us, despite ourselves.  That is the wondrous work of the Holy Spirit!   

It’s true with most jobs that people will rarely tell you that you are doing a good job, but quick to tell you when you are doing something wrong.  As a priest, it is no different. We are rarely told that what we have done, or said, or not said made any difference in the lives of those to whom we minister. That is in part because we human beings—all of us— rarely recognize it at the time we are being helped. That recognition only comes later.  For that reason, we clergy often do and do, never knowing if what we do makes any difference at all in the lives of those to whom we minister.  In ministry, there are times when we will not know if we are doing a good enough job or not.  We can only trust that if we are doing all in your power to be faithful to God, that God will use us, even if, despite our very best efforts, we feel that we have failed.  All we can do is to be faithful to our call to the priesthood because God will always be faithful to us. 

The Welsh poet R. S. Thomas, ordained to the priesthood in the church of Wales in 1936, wrote a poem entitled “The Country Clergy” that speaks to the situation I have described in words that transcend my meager words on this topic. 

I see them working in old rectories
By the sun’s light, by candlelight,
Venerable men, their black cloth
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes; rather they wrote
On men’s hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.[1]

In the second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul says that he does not need a written letter of recommendation to attest to the work of his ministry, because the people to whom he ministered in Corinth, imperfect as they are, in fact, serve as his letter of recommendation. “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts (2 Cor. 3:2-3).

Other people may not appreciate what you are doing when you do it, or even remember what you have done, but if you put your trust in God, and not in what people think of you, God in God’s time works all things for good.  You will “write” on the hearts and minds of men and women, and young children. God takes whatever we have to give and makes the most of it. God is always faithful.

[1] “The Country Clergy” in R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems: 1945-1990. (London: Orion Books, 1993), 82.

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LENT: A SEASON OF GROWTH

Photo by Miranda Jane Pace on Unsplash

I long have been deeply moved by the wisdom of the desert fathers and mothers who began living in the deserts of Egypt in the third and fourth centuries of the church. The most famous of them was St. Anthony of Egypt (251?-356 AD). His biography, written by St. Athanasius, inspired thousands of young men and women to flee the cities of the Byzantine world for the solitude of the desert. These spiritual warriors, as they saw themselves, had left everything for the sake of Jesus Christ. Now they had arrived in the desert to resist the world, the flesh, and the devil. Many were unprepared for this task and as a result sought out the advice of spiritual elders. This advice was soon collected and widely distributed in the ancient Christian world.

The teachings of the elders were not systematic but rather were a collection of answers to questions from those who came to them for spiritual advice and counsel. A good many of the requests directed to the elders began with these simple words, “Speak to me a word that I may live.” The answers the seekers received most often were not what they expected. Often, they sent the seeker away to re-engage with the very question he or she had hoped the elder would solve. 

One elder apparently was asked why it was so difficult to grow in the life of service and prayer to God. He answered: “The reason we do not get anywhere is that we do not know our limits, and we are not patient carrying on the work we have begun. But without any labor at all we want to gain possession of virtue.” The last sentence is telling. The young seeker thought that his radical renunciation of the world should be enough to catapult him to virtue. The only way, however, that we gain virtue is by repeated effort.  

Virtue in the ancient world was understood to be something gained by practice. We learn to love as we love, to be a giving person as we give, to be forgiving as we forgive and so forth. None of these virtues can be purchased off the shelf or given to us by God or anyone else. To learn to do these things we have to do them. And we most likely will not learn how to do them unless we fail over and over again. “The reason we do not get anywhere is that we do not know our limits, and we are not patient carrying on the work we have begun. But without any labor at all we want to gain possession of virtue.”  

It takes discipline and effort to grow and mature. Lent is the season the church sets aside for particular devotion and dedication, not to burden us with one more thing to do, but as a time in which we can learn more about ourselves and our limits.  May you have a blessed and holy Lent.  

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This Lenten booklet (link below) provides resources to assist you in your daily Lenten devotions and readings. May you be drawn closer to our Savior Jesus Christ in this Lenten season.

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WE ARE EUCHARISTIC BEINGS— THE IMPORTANCE OF GIVING THANKS

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4: 6-7

A few years I was talking to a stewardship consultant about churches and people we had met in our separate work and travels around the country. He asked me if I knew a certain priest from the Diocese of Oklahoma, the diocese in which I was ordained almost forty years ago. It happened that I did. Once, when newly ordained, I was having some difficulty in the mission congregations I served. This priest went out of his way to help me and I had not forgotten it. Even though I had not seen him since I moved away from Oklahoma in 1984, I knew that I needed to thank him once again. I certainly had thanked him at the time but I wanted to thank him once again to let him know that I had never forgotten what he had done for me. And so I called him up at the church he was now serving and expressed my thanks to him once more. We had a wonderful conversation. We caught up on what had happened to us and our families over the intervening years and we remembered what it was like for us to be young priests together in the Diocese of Oklahoma. I do not know how he felt after my phone call, but I know that for me I had completed something. I had given thanks and that, for me,  had made all the difference.

One of the things I have learned over the years of my life is that human beings are the happiest when they are thankful. Expressing our thanks to God and to one another is essential to our well-being.

Most Episcopalians know that the word eucharist is a Greek word meaning “thanksgiving.” When Episcopalians gather for worship they celebrate and offer to God a “Holy Thanksgiving,” a “Holy Eucharist.” This form of the Holy Eucharist is shaped by four actions. Jesus took bread, gave thanks to God, broke the bread, and distributed the bread to his followers. On the night before he was betrayed Jesus took bread in his hands, lifted it towards the heavens, with the usual ritual glance upwards towards the heavens, gave blessing and thanks to God. As he broke it he told his followers “this bread is my body” broken and given for you. He did the same with the cup of wine. As he offered the bread and the wine he added these words: “Do this in remembrance of me.”

When we relive this story together we often focus our attention on the suffering of Jesus. That is, of course, central to this event. At the same time, however, we often forget the central role of thanksgiving in this event. What if we were to tell the story this way: Jesus himself is a Eucharistic Being who, in thanksgiving to God, gave his own self for us and for our salvation? When we make Eucharist together we do so to give thanks to God in Christ and through the Holy Spirit for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus who gave himself for us in thanksgiving to God. When we look at the Eucharistic event through the lens of thanksgiving it becomes evident that our participation in the eucharistic rite is an expression of thanksgiving to God.

Every time we make Eucharist together, we give thanks to the God who so wonderfully created us and to the God who so wonderfully redeems us.

When we make Eucharist together we give thanks to God for all that we are and all that we have. When we do so we are reminded that we like Jesus are also eucharistic beings, that is, we are people who are created by God to give thanks.

We Christians worship a God who is revealed in stories in which God showers blessings on the people of ancient Israel and on us in the person of Jesus Christ. God is not an abstract idea for us, but rather a God revealed in stories of love and concern for God’s people. When you look through the stories of the Scriptures you will see that God primarily is a giver. God always wants to give to God’s people. God showers blessings on God’s people because that is the nature of God.

From the earliest stories in the scriptures, God’s people have responded to the gifts God has given them by giving thanks in return. We are created by God and given life so that we might give thanks. The human being, in other words, is a eucharistic being. We are beings created to give thanks. If that is the case, then to be fully human, we have to learn how to give thanks to God and to do so in all circumstances.

St. Paul understood how important thanksgiving is to our lives. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 he writes, “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In Philippians 4:6 he writes, “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” In Colossians 3:17 Paul writes, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” In all of these examples — and there are many more like it in the New Testament— the word “eucharist” is central. We are who we are because we give thanks, because we are eucharistic beings.

When you begin to realize how central giving thanks to God is to your very being, to being the full person that God has called you to be, you will find that it will change the way you live.

Remember that you were made to give thanks and then offer to God the giver heartfelt thanks for all the gifts you have been given—food, family, shelter, friends, and so much more.