ALL SAINTS CHURCH

Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?  In most cases, if the answer is yes, it is still better than one alternative, i.e. not waking up.  You came through another night, another encounter with the strange mechanisms of the underworld of sleeping and dreaming.  One might imagine an entire nightshift crew coming on duty after hours cleaning and sweeping, painting and restoring, sorting and filing, so that upon awakening you are ready for business again.  One is reminded of troubled nights, waking at strange hours, peering in on half-finished products of unrefined, unfiltered consciousness.  Sometimes all the work doesn’t get finished before opening time the next morning.  Sometimes things get put in strange places and it seems as if you are dealing with a significantly different reality than the one you went to bed with the night before.   

When we were kids we used to have sleep-overs.  I can well remember spending the evenings watching Alfred Hitchcock presents and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone.  For several hours after everyone else in the house was pleasantly wrapped in the arms of Morpheus, I would lie awake and contemplate the mysteries of the universe and my chances for survival and sanity.  Is that what drove me into the ministry?  Certainly it was not the happy world of the daytime playground.

The Patriarch Joseph had a couple of interesting nights recorded in Genesis.  One night in the middle of nowhere, (somewhere between Beer-sheba and Haran) he used a stone for his pillow and in the middle of the night dreamed he saw a ladder stretching to heaven and that angels were ascending and descending on it. He also heard the voice of the Lord reiterating ancient promises.  Upon awakening he proclaimed, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I didn’t know it!”  From actually being in the middle of nowhere to being in the center of the universe, alive and full of awe and wonder is what his dream-sleep accomplished.  Another night he wrestled all night with this “presence” who had all the trappings of divinity.  The two of them wrestled all night, but at sun-up the “man” wanted to be let go.  Jacob wouldn’t let him go until he exacted a blessing from him. From this blessing he received a new name, a new identity which was Israel, “For you have striven with God and men and have prevailed.”  Interesting how the heavens communicate when our guard is down.

Each night of sleep we go down into the depths.  We have the chance to dream the same dreams and wrestle the same Presences that Jacob encountered.  We have the chance to experience a change of perspective and even a change of identity.  Our struggles and fears can be transformed by encountering the God at the depths of our being, who is able to rearrange our awareness.  Perhaps Joseph was special, but I think we all have the opportunity to encounter the numinous.  In a sense, each night is a dying and each morning a rising.  As St. Paul said, I have died with Christ and I have been raised with Christ.   

Each night we replicate the death and rebirth cycle.  For those who have eyes to see, ears to hear and journals to record these experiences in, life can become an amazing journey of transforming death into life, and raw data into meaning. There is no reason to consider sleep as wasted time, it not only refreshes and renews, given spiritual attention it can also inform, bless and transform.

As always, I invite your comments!

 

Remember, tomorrow is our Church Clean Up Day 11:00 a.m. Then 5:00 p.m.  Soup Kitchen and On Sunday we are having one Palm Sunday service is at 10:00 am.! 

I think three things go into every communication. There is a basic trinitarian paradigm, the sender, the information and the receiver. The sender creates, composes or relays a particular packet of meaning. When the sender sends this “composition” or message and the receiver receives it, there is a new reality for both people. The sender feels understood. That is, there is somebody else standing-under and together in relationship and sharing meaning. The person who receives it has this new information form and inform his or her world. They may choose to dismiss it as irrelevant, they may categorize it so they can find it later, or they may apply the new information to the very core of their beings. When Mary received the Holy Spirit and became pregnant with Jesus, she received something that merged with her humanity and changed the shape of her internally and externally. According to the story, angels came and interpreted these events to her and Mary kept all these things in her mind (a mental gestation that corresponded to the physical). Mary was changed forever, God had delivered God’s message and heaven and earth were joined in a new way. The Church has been given this message, God has composed it, and delivered it and we, in our own way, are somewhere in the process of receiving it. We call the message the Gospel, i.e. good news or good message. It is a message that originates in response to the difficulties of our historical situation. In giving it, God is understood by us and we stand-under God’s reality. In standing-under and together we are transformed, if we choose the difficult work of appropriating it in our depths. The content of the message is Unconditional Love. As believers, we are not called to create a Gospel ex nihilo, but to accept the eternal communication and to experience Divine Love. Once we accept the communication that we are God’s beloveds, we enter the ongoing process of communicating that message with others.

This Saturday at 11:00 a.m. we are all invited to a parish work day. It seems like the inside of the church is very much like each one of us. Without attention we find wear and tear, tarnish and mildew. So in anticipation of the return of the Holy One of God during Holy Week and Easter, we are gathering together this Lent to clean up our act. Please wear your work clothes and bring gloves and rags and a desire to prepare the Church for Royalty. We will provide the coffee and bagels (after all Jesus was Jewish you know). If yo ulike you can make a day of it and stay for the community meal later in the afternoon. It’s always fun serving the Lord in so many guises. Stay tuned for more thoughts and reflections tomorrow. Remember Palm Sunday service is at 10:00 a.m. this Sunday.

Our Jewish friends ritually ask at their Passover Seders, “Why is this night different from every other night?” They ask because by their preparations the evening is obviously different. One of the meanings of holy is that it is something set apart for a special use or veneration; it could be a time, a space, an object or a person. There are holy spaces, holy times, holy men, holy women, holy vessels, holy vestments, a Holy Spirit and so it goes. We set these special “things” apart from the ordinary or mundane to help focus our attention on the different dimension or realm that calls us into relationship with the divine. Without the Holy, our lives become a barely endurable gray expanse of repetition and decline. So beginning on Sunday, April 1st, we set an entire week apart from others to remind us of how holy our world and our lives really are. At the church we work hard to create and enact a liturgical drama that helps us to step out of ordinary time into redemption history and remind ourselves of how the sacred works in our lives. Some might argue everyday is holy and every place is holy, but we all know that very few of us can maintain that kind of focus without soon falling into a monotonous, self-absorbed rut. So whether you’re an old regular parishioner, a former parishioner or in the “still thinking about it” phase, I invite you to come do something that will make a difference in your lives by making this week different. Remember, we are in relationship! We ask you to realize both what your church can do for you, and at the same time ask yourselves what you can do for the church. When you fall away from the church, you fall away from that which God gives us to best approximate and represent God’s presence. God is here and we are here so that we might all be reconciled and come to know life and love in new and healing ways. Come join us in making this week holy and different and thereby do so for you and your world.

They don’t make meaning. And they don’t worry about dying or suffer anxiety, at least not to the best of our knowledge. We on the other hand, created in God’s image are creative meaning makers. On the outside we do so many things the animals do, except we think about it, a lot! We interpret and anticipate. We hope and dream, we guide and direct our lives. In this world of meaning we are subject to the powers of fear and destruction as we see the world around us suffer the effects of entropy and decay. We know that this flesh is a time-limited opportunity. But by faith, hope and love, we are also able to live and move and have our being on a different playing field. We are able, as the great sages and prophets have always taught, to access the same spirit that brought all things into existence. Though this body may be decaying, we might, with the Apostle Paul, find our inner life expanding exponentially. Yes we are caught up in a drama, much of it of our own composition. In large part we are able to choose the characters and the plot. And with the right spirit, we can choose the outcome. Do we choose to interpret this experience as a tragedy or a heroic odyssey? Will our hero suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and then rise from the ashes, or will he or she suffer and ignominious demise in abject obscurity? As a community of faith we have chosen to elevate a story that turns death into life, as the centerpiece of meaning. If this is the ideal paradigm can we do anything but structure our own existence accordingly? Now we see through a mirror dimly but then we shall see face to face, now we know in part, then our knowledge will be full. Three things remain, faith hope and love but the greatest of these is love. And what I mean to say is, I think I know what he meant.

This is a brief and incomplete synopsis of what I see going on in our broader church. As most of you know, the Anglican Communion is in turmoil. Sides are being chosen, both within the Episcopal Church in the United States and the worldwide Anglican communion. For decades we have managed to avoid serious schism because we have always been able to say we are still studying the subject of human sexuality. Of course while various committees study science and theology, people go about living their lives. Most of us realize that we have not waited for a a council or committee to tell us who we should sleep with. Eventually what happens in our culture happens in our churches, with or without studies. In 2003, the Diocese of New Hampshire elected and consecrated an openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson. We all know he was not the first gay clergy or priest, but he was the first openly gay Bishop elected and approved. Because the rest of the Episcopal Dioceses had to approve this election, the entire Episcopal church was seen to give its endorsement. Those people and churches who feel or think that homosexuality is a sin, feel that the Episcopal Church is out of step or sending the wrong message to its people and to the world. Some churches have sought to pull out of the Episcopal Church while others have sought Episcopal oversite from conservative Bishops, frequently from from Africa (a very undermining action). Moreover, the international Anglican Communion has sought specific actions from the American Church asking that we would not elect any more openly gay Bishops and that we would refrain from endorsing blessings of same sex unions. Some in the church who are gay friendly see this as an acceptable interim step in order to gain more time to make our arguement and save the unity of the Anglican communion (of which the Episcopal Church makes up 2.2 million of the 77 or so million Anglicans worldwide). Others see this compromise as being a betrayal of our gay and lesbian colleagues and a capitulation to prejudice and injustice. Our own Bishops are in a very delicate place and are trying to hold something together (the Anglican Communion) while not giving up their support for the basic human and Christian rights of so many of our people. In the past we have taken controversial stands, e.g. the ordination of women, that have cost of us the support and sympathy of our more conservative brethren. I would like to think to myself the very conservative question, “What would Jesus do?” It seems to me that he was always more concerned that everyone knew they were invited to the table than in preserving human structures, religious or otherwise. While this may be a delicate time necessitating prayer and patience, I hope that we will take the couragous stand and support those that God has given us to love. To be a witness to the truth was never meant to be popular. Jesus says, “Blessed are you when people revile and persecute you for my name’s sake, for this is what they did to the prophets before you.” Remember, tt is easier for us to take this stand in New York City than elsewhere. Let us pray for those who are having a harder time in other parts of our communion. I invite your thoughts and questions on this forum.

People are surprised when I tell them I don’t tell jokes during my sermons. I learned a long time ago that when people are not expecting to hear something funny, they won’t hear something that’s funny, even if it’s funny. But yesterday, while speaking about the prodigal son, I mentioned an incident from my time in seminary when I greeted a priest at the back door of the church after Sunday services. I told him I enjoyed the service and felt like the prodigal son. To which he replied, “Coming or going?” I could see this vignette was a hit in the pews. But behind the bemused smiles, I think a lot of us wonder if we are on our way to or from God. Are we getting closer or moving further away? How can we know? The one route is filled with confidence and anticipation; the other is filled with shame and remorse. The leaving can have such a sense of energy and enthusiasm, while the return can be marked by sadness and humiliation. Only the reconciliation is truly festive. Now, I am not usually Hegelian in these matters (pardon the name dropping). I mean this in the sense where everything works together as opposites pull and push each other into new territory (synthesis), but here I think I am “a la mode.” The son who leaves, never would have come to know the unconditional love and forgiveness of the father had he not separated and exercised his freedom. The older brother stays at home, never differentiates himself and never risks losing anything. He turns out to be bitter, contemptuous, self righteous and jealous. Worst of all, he never understands who he is, a beloved son, rather than a glorified slave. Martin Luther said, “Sin boldly, but have faith more boldly.” Could he have been thinking about the message of the prodigal son? In the act of living boldly, we re-experience the fall of Adam and Eve. But perhaps this fall is a fall up into history and into consciousness. This fall is what is necessary for us to learn about life and its cruel and wonderful twists. Perhaps happiness is the ability to will only one thing. Perhaps we need to choose God and stay with it. But our Gospel talks about the necessity to choose life and its risks and then realize whether you are coming or going, you are on the same road. Attendance seemed to marked by a number of prodigals going about other business. Until, about halfway through the service a bus load of people from Jackson, Tennesee came into our service as Robin was getting to say the prayers of the people. Streaming in, I was reminded of the possibility of answered prayer such as when Jesus fed the 5000 from almost nothing. Inside I felt like Jimmy Stewart in, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And in fact, it is! Tomorrow we will send out our Holy Week schedule. Stay tuned

No, TGIF is not a sign on a pair of slippers designating, T-oes G-o I-n F-irst. Nor is it anything from the Bible, the lips of Jesus or any minister or priest I have ever met. For us the weekend is the beginning of a divine drama. But for most, it does refer to the end of ordinary work time and the beginning of “my time” a time of pleasure and renewal. Even God rested on the seventh day. If there had been a pre-creation union, maybe there would have been two days of rest and humankind would have had to have waited for the next Divine Sneeze, Big Bang or Universe to come along. Nevertheless, here we are in our imperfect fashion, once again trying to pattern ourselves after our God. Yet on this Friday, we remember another Friday, a time when justice was miscarried and the Innocent One was scapegoated and crucified. Traditionally this has been interpreted as God’s venting his Holy Anger on the representative man so that others could avoid the same condemning judgment. Yet could it not more easily be understood that in Jesus the whole sacrificial system of our species was laid bare for the horror it is. Might it not be true that in the Crucifixion of the Christ the end of the sacrificial system is signaled and a new reality based on mutuality and compassion is established as a witness against “politics as usual?” In this time of war and fear of war, we are in a constant cycle of demonizing the other. If they were not so greedy, so evil so inhuman all would be well. All war, from personal to global, begins with human tension and pain being poured onto the other and then finding ways of consigning the other to oblivion. After our ritual or actual murder, everyone feels better for a while, until our system of competition and violence forces us to find another victim. The Christ came to teach another way and he did so in his life and in his death. This Friday as we end our week, some of us are gathering to pray for peace. We pray that we will all come to see our own participation in the meta-structures and processes that cause violence. We will pray that those in authority might come to a new realization that the way things are, are not the way things need to be. We pray that we might come to use our own authority to find ways of creating peace as we remember the one whose life was sacrificed in a system that is exactly like the world in which we live. We pray that before we wash our hands of our complicity we will become aware of our own need for forgiveness and transformation. It’s Friday, the whole creation is moaning in travail for deliverance. Our prayer is that we are all delivered into that realm where pain and suffering are no more and that finally, all of us gather at the great banquet table to share a common feast prepared from before the creation of the world for all of us.

It is always hard to know what to be afraid of (pardon the ending preposition). In our time we have been warned about so many things, from coffee to Russians, from ozone depletion to Taliban. Yes we live in a dangerous world and it is easy to live lives based on fear. It is even easier to speak bromides like Bobby McFerrin’s, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Is there a middle ground (the Anglican way)? Or better yet is there an appropriate way to live in the world cognizant of threats yet not bullied by them? In Matthew, Jesus counsels, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ” There seems to be a subtle, but all important shift in emphasis. Our attention and fear is all to often based upon holding onto things that we ultimately can’t take with us. Our treasures and even life itself, both Jesus and the Buddha tell us are transitory. Instead, our attention is directed to concern for our eternal nature, our souls. Our souls so easily lost, so easily corrupted, forgotten and sold for a pittance, like exchanging the Hope Diamond for cubic zirconia. When we find our souls, we know how to live in this world as agents of change, rather than victims of fear. Jesus also says be innocent as doves but as wise as serpents. We are not called to be stupid or unaware, but we are called to learn how to prioritize our energies. When we learn to seek the Kingdom first we learn that other things have a way of falling into place. We become comfortable even with our own mortality and learn to live lives based on faith not fear. These are easy words to say and write, it is significantly harder to make them real. As the Poet Mary Oliver wrote, remember, the one life you are called to save is your own. Once that is discovered one is ready to minister to others. Remember the peace vigil Friday Night at 7 p.m. Bring a friend or for that matter, an enemy. After all….. Your comments, thoughts, announcements and questions are all invited here.

OK, so nobody wrote a response to my opening Blog. I am undeterred. But I wonder, could it be that no one knew that this blog-site existed? If a Blog falls in the ether and nobody sees it, did it really fall? Today is Wednesday and that means tonight we meet at the altar in the chapel to celebrate again the great mystery of salvation and consider the possibility that the big story serves as a paradigm for our, somewhat less well known, story. Then we come next door and discuss the work and experience of the Holy Spirit as found in the book of Acts. But I can’t think of all that now, because I need to finish preparing the liturgy for Friday night’s Peace Vigil that we are doing with a Christian group called the Sojourners. Can you believe it has been four years since we went in to save the world from weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist? I pray daily for the troops and for the shattered lives of those people, Iraqi’s and Americans, who will never know life the same way. I think worshipping and praying in our small corner of NYC is the least we can do as a response to this great sadness our world is suffering through. Besides that, Samantha (aka Office Baby) is particularly vocal this morning. All the time taxes need to be filed, sermons written, phone calls returned and and and and……Not much different than other days or other people’s lives. Except when we gather together and find ourselves caught up in the sacred mysteries that make the mundane sacred and the ordinary sing. If you get this today or in the days ahead, I hope you will take a few minutes and write your thoughts, questions, responses and ideas. LATE BREAKING NEWS: Marian H is calling for a day of cleansing the temple, i.e. a Parish work Day on Saturday March 31st (the day before Palm Sunday) at 11:00 a.m. p.s. If anyone is Blog friendly, could you let me know what Tags and Stickys are? Thanks