Tag: Sermon

Stories Beget Stories

~ Christine Havens ~ Leave a comment

Audio from 9:00 am sermon

In the introduction to his new collection of assorted writings, A View from the Cheap Seats, one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, who’s written theologically-charged fantasy novels such as American Gods and Good Omens (with the late Terry Pratchett), names all the writers he’s read evangelists. Evangelists because reading one author, such as Tolkien, led Gaiman to yet another storyteller and from thence to yet another writer—a journey for him of good news through words and imagination. Stories beget stories, and the stories we tell bring tangibility to ideas and concepts that we can’t otherwise touch.

For example: How many of you watch 30 Rock? It’s one of my comfort shows; one of my favorite episodes is called “Leap Day”—it aired February 28, 2012. In it, Leap Day is a major holiday where people dress in yellow and blue (heaven forbid if you’re not wearing it), nothing that happens that day counts, and an old man named Leap Day William, who lives in the Mariana Trench, emerges every four years to exchange children’s (and adults’) tears for candy.

One of the storylines in the episode revolves around CEO Jack Donaghy—the stereotype of an ultra-Republican, ultra-conservative businessman, played by Alec Baldwin. Jack sees Leap Day as an opportunity for making extra profit for the company and even has a bet with his business school friends as to who will make the most money on Leap Day—the goal causes him to neglect his year-old daughter. During a rhubarb-induced slumber, he is visited by the Spirit of Leap Day Past, Present, and Future, and after seeing his grown daughter “experimenting with liberalism” (she’s participating in a Habitat for Humanity build) in the future, has a change of heart and goes home to spend time with her, after giving Kenneth the page money enough to buy the biggest rhubarb (the holiday food) in the shop down the street. “The one as big as me, sir?” Kenneth asks as all ends happily.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that the storyline was begotten from Charles Dickens’ well-known tale, A Christmas Carol. I know I’m getting to Christmas early, but then again, so are the stores. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his change of heart is a familiar story to most; if not the print version, then through movie or TV versions. Does the mention of the story conjure up certain images for you? Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s poor yet cheerful clerk. Or his son, Tiny Tim, who wears iron braces on his legs and uses a crutch, and whose words, “God bless us every one,” still moves me when I reach the end of the story.

And Scrooge. A name that’s even made it into our vernacular: “Don’t be a scrooge!” we say to those who seem in danger of being curmudgeonly and ungenerous. In the story, Dickens describes Scrooge as cold. He’s well-to-do and callous—he won’t keep Christmas, saying “humbug!” to all. He grudgingly gives Bob Cratchit a day off for the holiday; won’t accept an invitation to dinner from his laughing nephew, Fred; and when gentlemen knock on his door to ask for a donation for the poor, Scrooge asks “are there no prisons?” “are the workhouses no longer in operation?” Of course, he gives no money. He won’t keep Christmas at all. All who know him feel there is no hope for reversal. Scrooge rejects kindness and caring and turns his back on those in need. He may not feast every day—he generally dines on porridge at a tavern but neither will he share his wealth.

And yet, someone comes back from the dead to warn him that his dealings in life will affect him in the hereafter. While Scrooge dines on his soup in his cold rooms, he is visited by the ghost of his business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley—I’m sure you can envision it–weighted down by the chains he forged in life through his actions: a long, heavy chain with which he must spend eternity. He must wander the earth as well, no chance of happiness or peace. Yet Marley is given the chance to warn his friend Scrooge, to give him a chance to escape the same end.

And so probably the most familiar part of the tale—Scrooge is then visited by three Spirits; those of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Scrooge sees what he was in his youth—a boy at school with a lively imagination, an apprentice clerk who enjoyed making merry with his boss and friends; he comes from a not very wealthy family. When he’s a young man, his fiancé breaks their engagement—Scrooge is becoming enamored with wealth, becoming hard-hearted and ambitious. It wouldn’t be right for him to marry a woman with no dowry, so she generously leaves. In all the scenes he’s shown, Scrooge easily reconnects with his old self, reliving eagerly the joyous ones, and feeling sorrow for how he’s behaved recently, wishing he’d acted differently.

In the end, we see a total reversal, repentance in Ebenezer. After the last visit, it’s Christmas morning; it’s not too late. Ebenezer opens his curtains, opens his window and shouts to a boy outside, asking if the big prize turkey is still in the window at the butcher’s. “The one that’s bigger than me?” the boy asks. “Yes!” Scrooge tosses an excess of coins to the boy. The turkey is to be a surprise for the Cratchit family, they’re going to feast; though earlier in the book, we see that they easily make a feast of what they have—that the feast is in being together, is in the love they have for each other.

Dickens and the Victorians loved the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus—it certainly helped to beget A Christmas Carol. Dickens does some reversals of his own—the biggest one is that the rich man does have someone to come back and “bear witness” to him. But I’m not here to read an English paper comparing the two stories. It’s enough for now to know that one is born from the other.

Which brings us to our gospel reading for today—the Rich Man and Lazarus.
Jesus tells this parable on the way to Jerusalem, on the way to his own crucifixion (part of me now pictures Jesus and the disciples sitting around a campfire). This is a story of rejection and reversals. The Pharisees, who have taken Jesus to task because of who he associates with—the tax collector and others—have rejected those same outcasts and rejected Jesus as well. We have a classic story of the reversal of fates of the rich man and Lazarus. Can you picture Lazarus? He’s a beggar, covered in sores, in pain and hungry. We could get graphic here imagining the pus and the blood running. And I’ll leave it to you to imagine whether the dogs who lick his sores are being compassionate in their doggy way or have a different end in mind.

Can you picture the rich man? He’s wearing purple robes—very exclusive ones as purple is meant only for members of the Roman royal family. And he feasts every day, disregarding the beggar at his gate. Imagine that—feasting everyday in the same way that the feast was given for the return of the prodigal son; Luke uses the same word in each story. And after he dies that he is in Hades, a dry, dusty, hot place, being tormented while Lazarus, who’s also died, is in the bosom of Abraham, at peace. The rich man calls, callously, for Lazarus to be sent to him to put a cooling drop of water on his tongue. We heard Abraham’s refusal as well as the refusal to send Lazarus to the five brothers. There is no hope for the rich man, it seems.

This parable is the only one in which a person is given a name—Lazarus. I find it interesting that medieval folks tried to give the rich man a name—mostly commonly Dives, which is a misreading of the Latin word for “rich man.” So basically, they were still calling him “rich man.”

And the chasm. Do you see a wide gulf, say, like the Grand Canyon—so wide that you can’t reach across it? Or do you see the gate that separated the two men?
So what stories does Rich Man and Lazarus beget for you? Did Jesus hope that his audience would go forward and retell this story to others? What resonates in this gospel for you?

What comes to mind for me is a quote from Scrooge’s nephew as he describes Christmas: “The only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on another journey.”

These words remind of an experience I had a couple of weeks ago. I went to Goodwill; I was buying something for a costume. Outside the store, sat a young man, a teenager really, homeless. He had a variant of the usual cardboard sign: “Anything helps. God Bless.” A couple of people passed him by as they entered the store. I looked at him, and said, “I’m sorry; I don’t have any cash on me.” He answered, “That’s ok; just thank you for saying something. That’s enough. God bless you.” I went into the store, and didn’t think until later that I could have offered to buy him a Coke and chips.

So I wonder: do we share things in common with the rich man in the story? I don’t mean that we feast every day, callously disregarding the beggars at our gate, or that we are are destined for the heat of Hades, like the rich man. But we live in a culture that tries to teach us to love material possessions, that tells us stories about them—that the newest iPhone, the newest Tesla, the latest iteration of Pepsi or Coke, will help fulfill us, these stories are all we need in life; these things will keep us safe, and safely, behind our gates.

Like Scrooge, though, we have someone who came back from the dead, someone who loves us immeasurably, someone who through stories and example, reminds us to not only see the outcasts, but to share what we have now with them—even if it’s a kind word, an acknowledgement, a hug. We do have the resurrected Christ who wove stories throughout his journey to the crucifix to teach us, to help all try to make reversals, as needed, in our own journeys when we find ourselves reveling solely in our material things and forgetting those who might be outcasts, or are simply in need of our help. We have the feast that we share together at least every Sunday.

I wonder what stories will you beget with your life. Where will this gospel lead you?

God bless us, every one. Amen

“Not All Who Wander are Lost,” or Apotossomai to All That

~ Christine Havens ~ 2 Comments

http://tinyurl.com/ChristinePentecost6A

By way of a prologue—

When does a journey begin? In stories, in poems, in epics, we, as the audience, know because the poet or the writer tells us. We have Chaucer’s “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,”we have the Beowulf poet’s “Listen!” But the characters don’t necessarily know the nature of the journey to which they’ve been called—no chance or thought to make preparations. Characters such as Perceval, the paramount knight of King Arthur’s court and the Grail quest, and Tolkien’s hobbit of Lord of the Rings fame, Bilbo Baggins, come to my mind.

I also think of my own journeys, and especially this week (the Tour de France is only a week away!) of one for which I was totally unprepared. When my priest, my mentor, at Trinity Episcopal in Waterloo, IA, asked if I was interested in being a support driver for a charity bike ride around Missouri, I didn’t think, I just said, “yeah, that sounds like fun!” Packed my bag and off I went! No inkling of what was to come—shepherding cyclists and yelling at motorists, writing about the Tour de France, going to seminary, learning about mission and community and connections. Helping to lift others up.

Today, Luke starts us on a journey; we take the first steps with Jesus and the disciples at the beginning of the road to Jerusalem, the road that will bring them to the cross. We have would-be disciples, including one who asks if he might say good bye to his mother and father, echoing Elisha’s question, asked of Elijah, his mentor. The Greek word apotossomai in Luke that means “say goodbye” is the verb form of the word “apostasy” that we use today as turning away from, a turning one’s back on, a withdrawing from, one’s principles, one’s religion, one’s cause.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with our (All Saints’ Episcopal, ATX) lectionary group, which meets between the services as an alternative to the Adult Christian Education forums; I invite you to join us sometime. Part of our discussion involves thinking of creative responses we might have to the Gospel. And so, that’s what I have for you today. The journey’s about to begin; I invite you to close your eyes and listen:

Do we set our faces toward Jerusalem?
Apostasy means never having to say goodbye again.

Perceval, the ultimate knight, the straight, the true, who
hopes to hold the Grail, doesn’t look back
following the angels in shining armor
he wants
to follow without question
the men who must serve God in their perfection

Never saying goodbye to the mother who
hid him, bore and raised him,
in the security and surety of the forest.
But he sets his face toward . . . what?
Glory, fame, to be the best, among the best,
To quest.

Apostate to his mother
she lies dead in the clearing
A hand outstretched, a heart broken
“Let the dead bury the dead”
though she taught him communion and to say Our Father
he never looked back, his hand on the plow
turned into a sword.

Perceval should have asked
“who does the Grail serve?”
but hand to the plow, eyes
and the body’s grace do not allow
him to look behind; mazed at the samite-clad
silent procession,
the single wafer
upon the platter.

What is the cost? “I’ll follow, I’ll follow. . .”
Fools rushing in where only an angel offered a place for his head
“where ever you go”
Even the cross? Can you let go?
Where is your face set?

A young Bilbo runs down the road
without a handkerchief to hold
Dwarves and dragon await.
Much, much later, apostate, withdrawn,
Bilbo, older now, slips on the Ring,
the one to Rule them all,
though it should go into an envelope.

The hand falters on the plow
but finally “the Road goes ever on and on”
face set toward Rivendell and elves.
The Precious left with his nephew,
precious, too, to follow the precarious Road,
to set his face,
to lose a finger,
hand on the plow,
but heart in the Shire.

The prophet cries out against Israel
His face set toward Jerusalem
but Elisha’s set his eyes on him.
He slaughtered the oxen with the very
yoke under which they served
straight and true (all twelve)
fed the people in farewell, his father
and mother and uncles and cousins
a feast of apostasy. “Turn in the rags
and giving the commodities a rain check.”

And Paul, free and Spirited slave, apostate to himself,
to Saul, on the road to Damascus, turns his face from Jerusalem
turns toward Christ. The writer writes, urging others to journey, to apostasy—say goodbye to the Law; lift up each other in love.

Where does your journey begin? Where do you set your face? Amen

Holy Monday Sermon, Post-Brainstorm and Given

~ Christine Havens ~ Leave a comment

Holy Monday Sermon, Post-Brainstorm and Given audio

For some reason, the image from today’s Gospel reading—Mary wiping Jesus’ feet with the nard using her abundant hair—kept evoking the memory of a night when I was on duty as a volunteer night chaplain at a hospital in Waterloo, Iowa, about a year or so before I started seminary. Latent anger and helplessness still lingers whenever I recall that night, and I know it colors how I feel about my gay friends and it colors how I feel about violence. That particular night I’d done my usual rounds and returned to the chaplains’ room. At some point, my pager went off—a call to the ED for a trauma patient. Arriving in the suite reserved for trauma victims (this was my second time there, but my baptism by fire is a story for another time), I discovered that the victim was a young black man, nineteen years old, comatose, his head bloody because he’d been beaten with a baseball bat. This young man was beaten by members of his own community because he was gay.

His brain was swollen and pressure had built up (I forget the exact medical terminology, but that’s the gist of it); his mother and siblings were in the suite, awaiting the medical transport helicopter that would take him to Iowa City. The university hospital was much better suited to perform the pressure-relieving surgery; the doctors told us that they were confident the surgery would be successful. The helicopter arrived, and as we stood around the young man on the gurney before the medics came in to get him, his mother asked me to pray. She was trying to be strong and looked for hope, for assurance. What could I pray when I felt a very strong sense—I knew, don’t ask me how, but I knew—that the young man would not survive the violence done to him? How to pray out of an angry place—because besides the reality of this young man and his family, the what-ifs of my son, just a few years older, came into being; the what-ifs of my gay friends came into being; the realities of those who suffered violence because of who they were and who they loved angered and frightened me.

Was Mary at all angry as Jesus spoke to his disciples of what must befall him? John doesn’t say that she was weeping (I tend to cry when mad) while she anoints Jesus’ feet with the nard. Did she carry some residual grief because of Lazarus? He was alive again, but certainly not out of danger.

I know my experience in the ED is being brought forward by the questions I’m asking of the text; surely, if I’m angry about the beating of this young man, who until that moment was unknown to me, how can Mary not be at least a little so on behalf of her beloved “Rabbouni?” Perhaps anointing his feet with fragrant oil, using her hair, is Mary’s spontaneous prayer for a man she knew was going to suffer violence at the hands of others, even though it was of his own volition. Maybe Jesus needed hope; hope given profusely in Mary’s actions as she was present in those moments of care.

In the everlasting seconds that quickly passed as I stood there, the question I asked of God—how to pray out of a place of anger—was answered by the grace of the Holy Spirit, grace that transformed my abundance of anger into an abundance of love, enabling me to be a calm presence for the young man’s family as we prayed for his safe arrival to the hospital, we prayed for the doctors and nurses who would care for him, and we prayed for God to give strength and solace to his family at that time.

At his funeral a little over a week later, his mother and I embraced and a sense of understanding and love passed between us, as we both shed tears, an anointment of sorts.

If this were the fifth Sunday in Lent, I might have ended my sermon there, at the anointing. However, we are given more verses of John’s Gospel on this Monday in Holy Week, on every Monday in Holy Week, than we hear at the end of Lent. These ominous verses about the Pharisees’ intentions for Lazarus give us an intimation that we must endure more, with Mary, with Judas even, and of course with Jesus, as we are drawn forward to Maundy Thursday’s bittersweet agape meal and to the heart-wrenching betrayals and violence of Good Friday.
As we enter into the aletheia—the not-forgetting, the remembering—of Holy Week, are you frightened? Are you angry? Do you feel helpless as these events unroll, immediate and real? Do what-ifs spring to mind? What if Judas had waited three more days? What if it were my child on the cross? What if? We can’t change the events of Holy Week, though, no matter how many what-ifs.

So, then, how do you pray for and with Jesus, with Christ, in his suffering and death this week? How do you pray this week, and every week, for a world full of turmoil—terrorism unfolding around us, politicians you may not agree with; how do you pray for those in prison; for those in the injustice system, for those who are homeless,
for . . .? If we feel sad, helpless, or angry over what befalls Jesus—someone we love—this week, surely we feel the same about what’s happening in the world? How do we pray, as a church, and as individuals?

The good news is that while we know that Jesus dies on the cross, we also know that the tomb is empty on Easter morning. Perhaps we can pray from that place of hope, assurance, and love. Amen.

Brainstorming a Sermon

~ Christine Havens ~ Leave a comment

I’m working on a sermon for Holy Monday, my first sermon (as opposed to a few short meditations given during Evensong or Evening Prayer) at All Saints’ Episcopal. I’ve been re-reading all of the Gospel of John; I finished reading Christopher Moore’s excellent novel, Lamb, a story of Jesus’ life prior to, yet including, the Gospels; and I’ve listened to BBC 4 Radio’s show In Our Time, the recent episode on Mary Magdalene–I highly recommend it. All this time, I’m trying to intuit where the Spirit is talking to me, to where the energy is, as I wonder about the scripture readings for the day–the Gospel reading is John 12: 1-11. Many springs bubble up in my heart and my mind, feelings try to creep in, too.

Feelings–I pick apart all the little nuggets of information I’ve gleaned (yes, I’m mixing images–one gleans ears of wheat rather than stones) and that helps keep the feelings tamped down. Excited and nervous, of course, only natural. But last year’s Holy Monday sermon given at All Saints’ is still in my heart; it’s one of my favorites and I can still feel the Spirit in it, trying to call me out of myself. And I confess, I have to remind myself about non-competitive transcendence. I don’t want a better sermon, I just want to write my sermon. A thoughtful, feeling sermon. A sermon that calls  to others.

And what I’m feeling is a memory of a night when I was on duty as a volunteer night chaplain at a hospital in Waterloo, Iowa, that surfaced today while I was picturing Mary wiping Jesus’ feet with her long hair and the nard. Latent anger still lingers whenever I recall that night and I know it colors how I feel about my gay friends and it colors how I feel about violence. That particular night I’d done my rounds and returned to the chaplains’ room. At some point, my pager went off—a call to the ED for a trauma patient. Arriving in the suite reserved for trauma victims (this was my second time there, but my baptism by fire is a story for another time), I discovered that the victim was a young black man, nineteen years old, comatose, his fucking head bloody because he’d been beaten with a fucking baseball bat. This young man was beaten by members of his own community because he was gay.

His brain was swollen and pressure had built up (I forget the exact medical terminology, but that’s the gist of it); his mother and siblings were in the suite, awaiting the medical transport helicopter that would take him to Iowa City. The university hospital was much better suited to perform the pressure-relieving surgery; the doctors told us that they were confident the surgery would be successful. The helicopter arrived, and as we stood around the young man on the gurney before the medics came in to get him, his mother asked me to pray. She was trying to be strong and looked for hope, for assurance. What could I pray when I felt a very strong sense that the young man would not survive the violence done to him? How to pray out of an angry place—because besides the reality of this young man and his family, what-ifs of my son, just a few years older, came into being; what-ifs of my gay friends came into being; the realities of those who suffered violence because of who they were angered and frightened me.

Was Mary at all angry as Jesus spoke to his disciples of what must befall him? John doesn’t say that she was weeping (though I tend to cry when mad) while she anoints Jesus’ feet with the nard. I know my experience in the ED is being brought forward by the questions I’m asking of the text; surely, if I’m angry about the beating of this young man, who until that moment was unknown to me, how can Mary not be at least a little so on behalf of her beloved “Rabbouni?” Or perhaps this is the way she prayed for a man she knew was going to suffer violence at the hands of others, even though it was 0f his own volition. Maybe Jesus needed hope; hope given in abundance in Mary’s actions as she was present in those moments of care.

In the everlasting seconds that quickly passed as I stood there, those questions I asked of God were answered by the Holy Spirit’s presence, which transformed my abundance of anger into an abundance of love, enabling me to be a safe presence for the young man’s family as we prayed for his safe arrival to the hospital, for the doctors and nurses who would care for him, and for God to give strength and solace to his family at that time.

At his funeral, his mother and I embraced and a sense of understanding and love passed between us, as we both shed tears, an anointment of sorts.

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday–November 20, 2011

~ Christine Havens ~ Leave a comment

I gave this sermon at St. James Episcopal Church in Independence, Iowa. I feel very blessed that Rev. Sue Ann Raymond and Fr. Sean Burke are willing to let me preach there so that I can practice and gain experience.

Today is Christ the King Sunday, and in the four years that I’ve been attending Trinity in Waterloo, this is the first time I’d thought to ask why. Prior to writing this sermon, I just accepted that this was an important feast day in the Church and I knew that Christ IS King, according to scripture, so what else did I need to know? However, as I pondered the meaning of today’s readings, I knew I needed to be a good scholar, a good (hopefully) preacher, a good girl, and find out what lies behind this tradition.
And so I went online and looked at the Wikipedia articles (feeling a little bad that I was doing so—as an English Comp. teacher, I’m always saying that good students don’t rely on that website too much), where I learned—and perhaps you all know this already—that Pope Pius XI added the feast to the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar in 1925 as a reaction not only to Mussolini’s co-opting of secular authority in Italy, but also what he saw as the entire Western world’s rejection of Christ’s teachings.
Now, I could stop the theological history lesson right here because that information alone provides a wealth of links to today’s readings, as well as links to Matthew 22:15-22 that we read last month, in which Jesus gives answer to the Pharisees when they try to entrap him with the question about paying taxes to the emperor. I could easily make the comparison between Caesar Augustus and Mussolini, who did desire to be a dictator in the manner of Augustus’ father, Julius.
However, I hope to take us further in our thoughts for today. Pius originally set this day on the last Sunday in October, right before All Saints’ Day, and it wasn’t until the calendar reforms of 1969 that the last Sunday before Advent became Christ the King Sunday. The major Protestant denominations, and more importantly for us, the Anglican Communion, all added this feast to their own calendars since we all share in the Revised Common Lectionary.
So why this shift, and what meaning does it have for us? Well, take a moment to think about what today IS: the end of the liturgical year. The pope wanted to emphasize the eschatological significance of this moment. When we consider the coming Advent season, we think in terms of waiting; waiting for  our Savior and KING, Jesus Christ, who will come again to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end, to remind of the words we say in one form or another as part of our liturgy. We wait for the end times. It’s interesting to note that in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden that this occasion used to be called “the Sunday of Doom” and talk centered around the final judgment.
Judgment—that is one of the themes apparent in the readings today. The lesson from Ezekiel deals with the Lord’s judgment of those—namely the kings and leaders of Israel—who have not cared for those of their own people who are weak and lost. The selection from Matthew is really a continuation of the parable of the master who gives his servants the talents to invest, which itself is a continuation of the long answer Jesus gives his disciples in reply to their question about the signs of the “end of the age” and what his second coming will look like. After giving many examples of what the Kingdom of God will look like, Jesus ends by telling his disciples of the judgment that will occur when “the Son of Man comes in all his glory.” He will bless those who have fed the hungry, given the thirsty a drink, clothed the naked, and welcomed the stranger, since by doing so, they did the same to Jesus. However, those who did not do those things will face eternal punishment. We should also remember that in the next lines of Matthew, Jesus reminds the disciples that in two days time, he will be handed over for crucifixion. End time, indeed.
I want to digress a moment—I hope you’ll bear with me. I am in Year One of EfM, Education for Ministry, and the lessons from the last two, really, three weeks,  have given me much to think about. Lesson Ten, from this past week, is about Jacob’s story, and one of the preparatory questions is this: Would you rather be good/right or would you rather be faithful? I’m not sure I like that this was posed as an either/or choice, but I am giving much thought to this. I had to admit that prior to this, I’ve been largely concerned with being good—I’m a good girl. I always try to do what’s right, what’s expected of me, obey the laws, and listen to authority. I think that’s not always the same as being faithful. In my life, I know that once, at least, I’ve missed an opportunity to follow God’s call to me by being focused on being good and doing what I was told to do, or rather not doing what I was told not to do.
And so, let’s consider today’s Gospel in terms of that question. When we think of those who asked Jesus about the rightness of paying taxes to Caesar or the rightness of working on the Sabbath, we can see that maybe they were only focusing on being “good” or “right.” Maybe they were giving power to the wrong authority. They were looking for control and for neatness in their good works. Helping someone on the Sabbath is work, and that’s against the Law, so we can’t help you. A missed opportunity to follow God’s call through Christ to care for those who are weak and lost.
When we consider the missions and ministries we do as a Church, I wonder—and I know I can’t speak for St. James because I haven’t known you all very long—if we worry too much about being good and neat. Sometimes I think that churches compartmentalize their missions, individuals, too. We want that neatness—writing a check rather than going out to work in a soup kitchen. We want that feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the naked, the welcoming of the stranger to be on our terms; if not, we might not do it at all. I think of missed opportunities in welcoming; such as a church who offers a free clothing closet and locks the doors to all the other rooms in the building and hides food normally stored out in the open. If you think about today’s readings in terms of hospitality—something else that I learned in the EfM lessons mentioned above—it was vitally important in nomadic and Jewish culture—what do those actions say? Are you truly clothing the naked? Maybe we need to think of today’s readings not only in terms of physical needs, but also think about being hungry, naked, and thirsty spiritually. What are our responsibilities then? I would argue that Christ came to us as a king in humility and love, wanting us all to take part in the responsibilities of his kingdom. I think he was saying that the Law is nothing without love. We need to be faithful to that call, and we may have to redefine for ourselves, and the Church, what it means to be good or right and faithful.
I’d like to leave you with one last thought about Christ the King Sunday. In England, in the Anglican churches, today is traditionally known as “Stir-Up” Sunday, because it was, pre-20th century, the day to “stir-up” your Christmas pudding, as the mixture needed to sit for several weeks. Churchgoers were reminded of this from the collect said that day: “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” I know that we traditionally think of Advent as a time of stillness and waiting. Maybe it’s time for us to redefine that as well in preparation for the return of Christ. After all, love is messy, life is messy, as my spiritual director so often reminds me. Let’s stir it up and see what happens.