ben | 
06 27th, 2008| 
The Friday Letters
27 June 2008
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Just a short, friendly note this week. It’s been quiet around the office for me, which in combination with the sunny weather makes it feel like summer has actually arrived. Here are a couple things upcoming which I’d like to remind you of:
For those of you who enjoyed our Fourth of July Eucharist last year, I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping it this year. I have both a negative and a positive reason for this. First, because the 4th falls on a Friday this year, and thus makes for a three day weekend, I expect lots of people to be away, or at least to have things other than church on their minds. On the plus side however, having the 4th fall close to Sunday makes it seem like a good idea to celebrate in church on our usual morning. We’ll try to throw a little extra flair into that Sunday’s (July 6th) worship; feel free to come dressed to show your spirit.
Also, don’t forget the parish picnic on July 13th. The 8am Eucharist will be as normal, with the service in the park at 10am. Please plan to come! There are plans being made to make this year’s picnic a great event for people of all ages. The Eucharist will be short and sweet with music that will have you recalling summer camp. The food afterwards is shaping up to be quite the grill out, so look for further instruction on how to participate in the feast. Finally, organized (but not too organized) games for everyone will round out the picnic experience. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope you are too.
Lastly, our group of Saturday morning bicyclists is still going strong. Usually we’ll have eight to a dozen folks and we ride out to Orting where we stop for coffee and snacks. If you’ve thought about joining us but haven’t yet done so, this might be the week!
That’s it for this Friday. No deep spiritual musings for this week, it’s too sunny out! Enjoy your weekend; I hope to see you Sunday,
Peace,
Ben.
A sermon by Benjamin J. Newland
[The 6th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 7, Year A]
Genesis 21:8-21
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1b-11
Matthew 10:24-39
There are two images in our readings for today that leap out at me. This first is the baby Ishmael, lying under a bush in the desert, apparently abandoned. The second is that of the sparrows, sold two for a penny, yet not forgotten by God. What do these images have in common? And more importantly, what do they have to teach us?
I’ll start with the story in Genesis. Unlike the Gospel passage, which is made up of things Jesus is saying to his disciples, the Genesis lesson is a story of events and people. This is the third week in a row we’ve heard about Abram: first we heard of God’s call and Abram’s simple act of faith in following. Then we heard of God’s promise to Abram, and incidentally to Sarah, that he would father a son and begin a nation of people set aside for God. In both of these tales Abram acts faithfully and true. This week his actions are less clearly good.
Again we’ve come forward in the overall story by a leap. Sarah has given birth to Isaac, and she looks upon her son playing with the Son of Abram and Hagar. We missed this little detail in all the jumping about, so let me fill in a bit of backstory. In their desperation to have children, Abram and Sarah had earlier resorted to a kind of ancient surrogacy: Abram had taken Hagar his servant as his consort and made a child with her. That child was then Abram’s heir. His name, not mentioned in our story today, is Ishmael.
The plan that resulted in Ishmael was one Sarah had approved of, and one that made sense by the morals of the time, though it seems wrong to us no doubt. Yet now that God has begun to deliver on God’s promise, Sarah has her own son in Isaac. So as she looks upon Hagar’s son Ishmael playing with her son, she becomes worried about the nature of the covenant God is bestowing upon her and Abram. Whether it is jealously or spiritual insight that drives her I cannot say, but she asks Abram to cast out this former son and his mother.
It is reported that that having to do this causes Abram no little discomfort, for Ishmael is his son as well. God speaks in the story at that point in a most curious way: the Lord says unto Abram that he should not worry about casting out this helpless first son and his mother. Instead of acting to protect this helpless soon-to-be widow and orphan, God merely reassures Abram that it’s OK, and that Ishmael too will be made a nation of people in accordance with God’s promise. Surely there is something to be learned from the fact that God’s covenant is wide enough to encompass more than just the promised heir Isaac; but apparently that learning does not include how to live together in one big happy family.
And then the rest of the story unfolds: Hagar takes Ishmael and leaves, they wander the desert until they inevitably run out of water, and Hagar places Ishmael under a bush to die and walks away that she might not have to listen. Yet God intervenes as God promised Abram (no word on whether Hagar was forewarned) and saves mother and child.
The whole scene is a near parallel of the one where Abraham is commanded to sacrifice Isaac—a story well known and not well liked—which we shall have to deal with next week. Tradition has it that from Ishmael come all the Arab peoples just as from Isaac come all the Jewish ones. That they begin in this awkward way certain resonates with both ancient and modern experience. Yet while awkward, the separation of Isaac and Ishmael at their births does not make them enemies, and they come together in peace at the death of their father Abraham in a story yet to come.
For now we are left with the remarkable expansiveness of God’s promise: having made the incredible assertion that Abram and Sarah’s unlikely child will be the beginning of an entire people special to God, it seems but a whim that God assures Abram that Ishmael too will father such a people. Is it so easy for God to include entire peoples in God’s history of salvation? Perhaps it is, and perhaps that is our lesson: however apparently worthless someone may seem, God is perfectly capable of making that person into a people of faith.
And speaking of things apparently worthless, we come to the Gospel and what Jesus has to say about sparrows. We tend to imbue anything Jesus says in the Gospels with an air of religious dignity and gravitas, but let us remember that he’s talking about sparrows, which are hardly the world’s most noble bird. After all of his grim warnings about what the disciples were up against, I imagine Jesus offering some light-hearted consolation:
“What about the sparrows?” he asks. “You can buy two of these annoying little birds for a penny, though I don’t know why you’d want them anyways. Yet even these loud-mouthed, greedy little things are precious in the sight of God. God knows when even one of these little winged abominations falls from its perch. How much more must God value you, when you are known so well that the hairs of your head are counted?”
The Son of God informs his disciples, and by proxy those of us hearing his words today, that whatever hardships we have to face in going about his business, God holds us dearly. People who can kill your body are scary. But a major theme of religion is transcending the scary. So, while people may kill your body, they cannot kill your soul. While the world may mock your efforts to create the Kingdom of God on Earth, they cannot take from you the peace that comes from doing God’s work. If you have nothing to die for, you have nothing to live for. Somewhat morbid, perhaps, but true nonetheless.
And some kind of death may be required, in one way or another. Notice how Jesus said that God would know when a sparrow fell, but he never said God would do anything to stop it? And that God promised to keep Ishmael, but did not act to prevent his being cast out? It may be that not one sparrow will fall without God, but the sparrow will still fall. May God give us the courage to fly and to fall, and the comfort of being known by grace. AMEN.
The Friday Letters
20 June 2008
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Without a doubt, the highlight of my week was the Celebration of New Ministry on Wednesday evening. Many of you were there and so know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that it was an evening to remember both for its liturgical ceremony as well as for its exceptional eating. Several who could not be there have sent their thoughts to me before and since, which I very much appreciate. It was an event I won’t soon forget and an occasion that I will cherish.
I owe some heavy-duty thanks to many people for making the evening happen. As so often happens around here, there are a very large number of folks who participated. First, thanks to Mac Owen who, while filling in for Elsa over the past couple weeks made a whole bunch of phone calls to fill the various rolls and kept pestering me for details. I know Bruce Blocher helped her with some of that phone recruiting, and I imagine there were others. Second, Pat Loffer did an amazing job heading up the decoration of the Parish Hall for dinner. Our building is always lovely, but I am nevertheless amazed at what the proper finishing touches can do to transform the place. Pat was assisted by her partner in crime décor, Diana Mears. Finally, thanks to Rob Nathe for once again playing professional chef in our somewhat less-than-professional kitchen. Rob’s assistants were many, in traditional pot-luck style. The meal was, as I am coming to expect around here, a cut above.
In addition to these, thanks are owed to the altar guild for their extra work in setting up and cleaning up; it was great to see all the candles out in force as if it were Christmas or something. Thanks also to the choir for breaking their summer sabbatical to lead the singing and perform that wonderful offertory. Thanks to Leslie for sharing the organ with Jieun, and to Elana and Ashley for adding to the musical texture of my favorite hymn. Thanks to Vickey and Charlie Clayton for the champagne reception following the service. I know I’m missing people; it simply isn’t possible to thank everyone for everything around here because so many of you participate in so many ways. This is truly a participatory community and I am thankful that it is so.
One of the highlights for me was having Bishop Rickel with us. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and talk with him before, and I was looking forward to sharing him with you even before we’d had this occasion planned. One evening and a single service is perhaps not enough to get to know someone, but I hope you feel introduced and share with me in feeling like we have a Bishop with a very real call to his ministry.
I also appreciated what he had to say during his sermon. He called the Celebration of New Ministry the worst liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, and I think I’d have to agree. Perhaps that thought was lurking in the back of my head and helped me keep putting off this service until it wasn’t so much a celebration of new ministry as it was an anniversary of new ministry. The trouble is not really with the words or actions of the liturgy itself (in fact, Bishop Rickel complimented me on the way we prepared and carried out the liturgy) but rather the orientation of it. This service used to be called a service of Installation and it was exactly what most people still think of it as: a service designed to put a new Rector into his new Parish as the head thereof. Since then we have decided (rightly I think) that ministry is not something any clergy person can do alone, and we’d be much better advised to celebrate the new ministry that we hope will spring from the collaboration of a parish full of people and the clergy person called to facilitate their baptismal ministry.
The trouble with that is that the liturgy still feels a lot more like the former idea than the new one, as the Bishop pointed out. That’s not entirely a bad thing; we still install our Bishops after all and don’t think that’s so terrible. We are human-social creatures-and we do like to know who’s who. Pomp and Circumstance has a real social function beyond entertainment.
We are called to walk this line between leader and people; between functioning social hierarchies and Gospel oriented communities. Yes, I am the priest, the leader of this place. And yet, while this is a particular and special role, it is not the only-nor even the most-important role. We said in Wednesday evening’s liturgy that I am called and accepted as priest of this parish. What we also said, though perhaps less explicitly, is the reciprocal of that: that you are the people of this community, and as such you are very bit as called as I am, and every bit as accepted in this place as ministers of the Gospel.
Peace,
Ben.
