Friday Five: Priesthood

Posted on May 30, 2014 by marybethbutler

I’ve just finished a great little book by L. William Countryman called Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All.
Countryman suggests that not only do all Christians have a ministry, but all of us have a priesthood. The “priesthood of all believers” comes to mind, and he takes that farther to suggest that humanity shares a ‘universal human priesthood’.  Every human has the capacity to encounter and then pass on something of transcendent significance.
For today, think back over your life, and share about five (or more) who have been priests in your life (or ministers, pastors, whatever language is comfortable for you). In sharing, know that names are not necessary.
Do share a link in the comments here if you play along today on your blog. We’d love to read about your richness of experience.

Mary Beth is a friend of mine and I appreciate so much her willingness to post this FF today.  In our diocese the priesthood of our denomination often times is over fixated on how different the vocation of 'priest' is from the 'lay person'.  The ordained priesthood, in my mind, is not any higher or more important than any lay person who is living his/her Baptismal vows.  It is just a bit different.  

I haven't read Bill Countryman's new tome.  He was one of my profs when I was working on my doctorate, so I know the person and can guess what he might have said.  Bill is a biblical scholar whom I respect and know that he has based what he has said deeply in Scripture.  He is also an ordained gay man who has had to struggle with the Church and all the vagaries of what that has meant both professionally and personally over the past 30 years.  

I understand the role of priest as one who points to the Holy One and I have many 'priests' in my life, lay and ordained, two legged and four, because I get it that the whole Creation shouts out the presence of God. With that in mind...

1.  The first priest in my life was a Sister.  A Roman Catholic nun who pointed me to prayer that allowed God to enter my life in a conscious way.  Lorene helped me to see where God was and gave me a vocabulary to describe that experience. 

2.  Back in my adolescence, there was the mother of one of my schoolmates who taught me about love.  Along with my

grandmother, they are the people who introduced me to people who allowed me to touch the love of God.  As I grew up, Charlotte was always there, not in an obtrusive way.  But we were able to pick up where we had left off no matter how many years there were in between.  I would visit when I visited my hometown.  And then, when it was time, her husband and children gave me the singular honor of performing her  funeral.  

3.  I have had cats since I was a child.  But one, Gizmo, a little grey rescue taught me about fidelity.  She didn't start our as 'my' cat, but over the years

she became that.  She was with me 18 years.  I have one now that is beginning to worm her way into my heart the same way.  But Gizmo was a witness to me of how creaturehood signs who God is.

4.  Those who know me know that I live with one of the first women priests in the Episcopal Church.  And while J has been Priest for me at times, she is also what NOT PRIEST means in my life.  She is that friend who has just been there for me for almost 40 years.  I met her at a gathering of women in ministry back in 1975 that was organized by Mary Bruggemann (yes, Walter's 1st wife).  She did not intrigue me so much as a sacramental sign, but as a woman who had been called.  We have seldom had to be priest for each other.  We are not wife for each other either.  We are simply sisters who have journeyed together, more like Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus and our hearts have been warmed on the way.  

5. In 1988 I was called as only the 3rd or 4th woman rector in the Diocese of Washington, DC.  It was a lonely business.  My parish was wonderful but J. was 5 hrs. away and long-distance calls were expensive.  I had one colleague who was also a woman rector in my deanery.  We  would meet for lunch once a month and would laugh ourselves silly about having to dodge the problems in our parishes, the aggravation of unenlightened men both lay and ordained, sharing what it meant to be the visible.  +Jane Dixon went on to be the 2nd woman bishop in our denomination.  And she became MY bishop.  Both of us were able to live into the sacramentality of  that relationship.   She always said, “I am a symbol of the inclusiveness of God" and she was the sign of Christ present both in her friendship and in her episcopacy.  

Bonus:  I have a rector  who is my pastor and boss who is truly a priest for me.  After 30 years of being a priest, it is really nice to have one of my own.  Melanie is the age of a daughter if I had one.  Yet she has a vision of what it means to be Christ's own in the Church that has expanded mine.  She is a colleague, but she signs for me so many times the best in myself and highlights it for me.  And more and more both J and I are in need of a pastor, a sacrament of God's love.

Friday Five: Trash, Treasure or Tea?

 The Friday Five is up again.  This one I couldn't pass by.  It is far to close to home. Muthah+

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Deb

This is a corner of my garage:

This weekend, our church is have a “Rummage Sale and Tea” event. The “rummage” part of course is of donated furniture, clothing, books and toys, or as some call it “Trash or Treasure.” (I think some of you call it “a jumble sale.”) The “tea” is an opportunity for those who don’t want (or shouldn’t) buy anything to still drop in and visit. It’s going to be a fun community event.
To get ready for this, I’ve been doing some sorting of things I don’t/won’t/can’t use to pass along to someone else. I also made a batch of Tea Tassies as part of the tea refreshments. All of this preparation birthed this week’s Friday Five!
Pictures are optional but make this more fun. Play along and don’t forget to post your link in the comments so that we can come and visit!
1. TREASURE: What is the best thing you’ve ever found at a rummage sale? Was it a bargain or just something you’ve longed for but couldn’t afford?

When I was just about to start my first parish, my home parish had a rummage sale that really helped.  I had to set up house keeping in a 4 bedroom rectory that was one of the oldest homes in the village.  It had been built in 1864 and I didn't have much to go into it.  I got a couch, a chair and a few other things but the thing I remember most fondly was an upright GE mixer that was older than I was.  It reminded me of the one my mother had.  I kept that thing until it began to smell like it was burning oil 3 years ago when J bought me a Kitchen Maid for Christmas.  I gave it away so I am guessing that it is still being used.

2. TRASH: What is an item you couldn’t WAIT to donate to a sale like this, and then were surprised that someone not only bought it, they were so excited to have?

A bread machine that I had also gotten at a rummage sale.
 
3. BUDGET: How disciplined are you at these kinds of events? Can you stick to a budget, or do you empty your wallet?

I generally avoid rummage sales because my wallet is too thin and my garage needs a rummage sale.
 
4. TAKE IT AWAY: What’s something you’d gladly donate right this minute if I would just come pick it up?

About 1/2 my garage.
 
5. TEA: Do you have a favorite tea? Or a special teapot? Tell us more!

After years of being a coffee maven, I have turned to tea more often.  I live with a Starbucks addict so stops there are common.  But I love a good English Breakfast with milk.  I DO NOT like Earl Grey.  I am sure that there is something seriously wrong with my British roots.  My grandfather was English and loved his tea.  When he and my grandmother were young marrieds, Grandpa would go into the Chinese Tea merchants in Chicago and have a special blend of tea mixed.  It was light in color and a very delicate blend.  My Grandmother was a Scotswoman and one day invited her aunt to  tea.   Now the Scots (at least in my family) are famous for tea that will grow hair on your chest.  When Grandfather served his very finely wrought tea, Great Aunt said: "Hoot, mon!  T'is na tea a'tall!"  And that phrase has been used in our family ever since as a comment on when something is not up to snuff.
 
BONUS: Share a recipe that you think would be divine for a tea. Or, if you aren’t a baker, tell about something scrumptious that you have had recently in the baked good category. For those of you who are now gluten-free, we want your favorite GF recipe!

I am not a baker.  I keep thinking I am going to try.  I do upon occasion do muffins but that is about it.

But I love a good really  grainy bread toasted with lemon curd and butter.  I don't need much more to make my breakfast complete.

We had hoped...

Alleluia, Christ is Risen….

After preaching regularly for 30 years, I am pretty familiar with the lessons for Easter tide.  And today’s lesson (Luke 24:13-35) is one of my favorites.  And because it is so familiar it is easy to just say what I have always said about this passage.  But as I read this passage this week, some phrases jumped out at me.  And I tend to pay attention to such experiences when I am reading Scripture because it is the way that the Spirit often speaks to me.  

I would like you to take your bulletin home with you, or look up this passage in your Bibles during this week and re-read this resurrection narrative.  It is long, but it is so full of meaning.  There are layers of meaning here, and after a Holy Week full of the Gospel of John; we should be able to find in our readings much to stimulate our understanding of how God interacts with us.

 The two phrases that jumped out at me were “But we had hoped…” and ^"Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight."

 

“But we had hoped…” is what the two walking along the road to Emmaus say to this mysterious companion on their journey.  They are obviously disciples of Jesus who

have experienced his death on the cross and feel deeply the dashing of their hopes for the future of Israel. It is easy to feel their confusion and grief.

 In my own experience it may have been similar to what I felt when John, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated in a matter of a few years during my 20’s.  “We had hoped…”  The dashing of hope is very difficult to support without becoming cynical or becoming dis-empowered to follow through with the goodness one is called to in life. 

We have had a bit of this here at St. Albans. Five years ago, we saw this legal battle as being one that would be over because we have a system of “swift justice” in our nation.  But with each step forward in the courts, it feels as we have gone two steps back.  “We had hoped…”.  (On this I would like to say one thing:  Please don’t bother to read the press from the other side.  The former regime has its own particular spin on things that does not necessarily resonate with reality.)

Hope is the stuff of faith.  It is rooted in our relationship with God.  It is rooted in the journey we make with the Holy One.  Just like Cleopas and his friend, it is important to

get the real story.  Jesus, in mufti, fills them in about what has happened to the Son of the Living God.  He showed them in Scripture that what has happened was to fulfill what the Prophets had proclaimed for centuries.

 Jesus was not there to start a new religion but to show them that faith in God had always given hope even in the midst of their darkest hours.  For anyone who was devoted to the Holy One of Israel, hope came from trusting implicitly in the goodness of God, that God’s goodness would prevail.  

  

When we allow ourselves to succumb to hopelessness, and it is common to do so, it is incumbent on us to look to Scripture to repair the lines of relationship with the Holy One.  Hopelessness is not a mere feeling.  It is also is often choosing to not search one’s life for holiness, or the Scripture for mighty acts that God has done in the past, or availing ourselves of the grace in worship, or finding God’s love in the hearts of those who love God.  Most of all, when we are faced with hopelessness, we are being called to wait and remember.  We are being called to embrace the emptiness of our souls so that God can fill the void.

Last year while I was working at St. Martin’s, one of the high school kids who was very active in youth activities and Happening, asked me a question.  ‘Lauren, do you ever feel that Jesus is far away?”  “Yes,” I said.  “And to be frank, it is a place where I

have lived most of my life.”  She looked at me shocked and crestfallen.  She said:  “I don’t like it.  I want him to be close.  How can I get him back?”  I said, “YOU can’t”. God comes close when we are in need.  To have a mature faith, we must be willing to live in the hope that that closeness will return. And at the same time REMEMBER.

We can’t live on the warmth of Divine intimacy all of the time.   It is far too rich to have that familiarity on a regular basis. That would tempt us turn inward and not outward toward others, which I believe, is why Jesus came. 

The second passage that came to my attention was ^“Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”

It is important that Jesus was recognized in the breaking of the bread.  By the time Luke wrote his Gospel about 70CE, evidently the Christian community was already celebrating a type of Eucharist, the feast of thanksgiving, as a ritual in their

gatherings.  The people who heard Luke’s Gospel understood that Jesus could be seen in the breaking of the bread.  It is in this communion of God with humanity that Christ is to be experienced.  It usually takes a long while to develop ritual.  But in less than a generation, breaking bread together was a sign of God presence among those who followed Christ. 

But this passage does something more:  it tells us that Christians cannot expect that

Jesus is always going to be close.  Jesus vanished from their sight once they recognized him.  Why?  Because we are not called to just sit around and discuss theology with the Holy One of God.  We are called by all of the resurrection stories to tell the message that God love is forever.  We are to share our hope in a God who presents to us the goodness of life and allows us proclaim that there is an alternative to the cynicism that life often leaves us with.  The experience of the Holy One of Israel propels us to live our lives in hope.  Walking with the Godhead offers us a chance to choose for goodness rather than wandering aimlessly and without companionship. 

 

What do the disciples do when they recognize Jesus at the supper table?  They don’t sleep on it.  They RUN BACK to Jerusalem to tell the others that they have seen the

Christ.  Eucharist, sharing in the body and blood of our Lord, compels us to share the hope that God’s love engenders in us.  We cannot contain that love.  We have to tell others in some way.  Whether we do it with words or actions doesn’t matter, but we are all called to share with others the greatness and the hopefulness living a life within the promise of resurrection.  

My young friend is now in college far away from home.  She has had to step into a

mature faith which can claim a faith that is supported by her own experience of Jesus, by the Scriptures that remind her of the promises of God, by the worship that allows her to ‘see Jesus’ in the breaking of the bread, and supported by other Christians who can retell the hope that God holds for her.

Hope is the work of all of us no matter what happens.  It is rooted in Jesus’ love, the love he poured out on Good Friday and the love he proclaimed in his resurrection.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen... The Lord is Risen, Indeed!  Alleluia.

Lent, Holy Week, Easter Week and Resurrection in Fort Worth

This year I was drafted along with J. to fill in for our pastor who needed some sabbatical time.  This has been both the hardest and the most beautiful Lent, Holy Week and Easter that I can remember.  I was also moving into new ministries in this parish.  I have picked up the college ministry at the University of Texas at Arlington and positions on the Executive Council and the Constitution and Canons Committee of the diocese.  And I thought I had retired!

Just before our priest-in-charge went on sabbatical she signed our parish up to participate in a 3 congregation sharing of Holy Week services.  Because of the schism we are a parish that meets in a theater, another congregation meets in a wedding chapel.  We do not have access to our meeting places on weekdays.  Another 'stone church', a parish that stayed with the Episcopal Church and consequently still has its own building, is going through the calling of a new rector.  They invited our congregations to celebrate together. We had the clergy but no building. It was a wonderful invitation but the logistics were complicated, to say the least.  However, everyone pitched in. 

Here in the Fort Worth we have deacons who take a significant part in the liturgical celebrations.  We also have a custom of vergers who are lay folk who 'direct liturgical traffic'.  That means that we have a lot more people trained and interested in the worship of the Church than I have experienced before.  And this means that there was a wealth of trained people who had a stake in how Holy Week was to be celebrated.  We also had 3 different sets of customary to attend to and 2 priests who have never  served Anglo-Catholic parishes in their careers. 

There were 3 very different musical traditions.  St. Alban's has a distinctly folk or even country and western style.  St. Stephens has often employed acapella singing and Taize chant.  St. Luke's has an organ and a more traditionally Episcopal musical tradition.  All three musical directors had envisioned these services differently.  But they worked together and compromised to produce lovely music for the Holy Triduum. Elements of all of the styles were present in the services although, I think some of the St. Alban's folks may have missed the tambourines.

An organist friend of mine once said:  "Do you know the difference between an organist and a terrorist?  You can negotiate with a terrorist!"  And I have certainly had some music directors like that

in my career.  And if truth be told, I have been that way myself, when I was directing choirs.  But I must admit, there was such a good spirit among the music directors that I felt privileged to work with them.  We 'caught' what each of us wanted to do and made it work as best we could.  I really felt that Holy Week liturgies were truly 'the work of the people.'

We had the regular amount of illness and death during Lent.  J., the

deacon and a seminarian  took on those duties.  I did the administrative stuff and somehow we made it through Easter.  When we took our usual Sunday afternoon nap neither of us woke until 9pm.  We did not know if it was night or morning of the next day.  I think that clergy tend to hold it together until the last Alleluia of the last service and then turn into peanut butter. I certainly did.  My body felt that I had fought Mayweather and my mind felt that the gray matter had turned into stone.  

I must admit resurrection has been long in coming.  I do not have the ability to return to normal (for whatever that is) as quickly as I once did.  So I am still dragging now in the 2nd week of Easter.  But now I am enjoying my garden, pruning tomato plants, picking out lettuce leaves for salads and enjoying spring weather before it gets too hot to sit on the patio.  I think that this is what I am supposed to do in retirement, and yet... and yet.... I am still on Executive Council and helping with the redraft of our Constitution.  Life is beginning to come back to center and I can truly sing: 

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

 

 

Friday Five: Spring Fling Edition

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Deb

 

Woohoooo! I wore sandals this week and my toes didn’t go numb!! That’s how I know winter is really over. For this week’s Friday Five, tell us 5 things that let you know “Spring is here!!” In your part of the world.

Spring has been here for several weeks.  I put my garden in around mid-March but we had a very cool few weeks.  I have shorts on today and have been wearing sandals like a Texan --most of the winter.

1.  Bluebonnets--  Any Texan's heart goes all aflutter when the bluebonnets (State flower) drift over long expanses of the roadsides.  They are often accompanied by Indian paintbrush and a little pink, buttercup like flower of which I do not know its name.  I love to do  long-distance driving at this time of the year just because the blue waves of flowers give my soul such a charge. 



2.  Gardening:  As I said I already have picked lettuce and the patio tomatoes are as big tennis balls.  It won't be long before they are ready to pick.  I have to pick them while they are still greenish yellow

or the birds will get them.  But they ripen very nicely on the counter of the sink.  This year I have 6 tomato plants all in pots. (we rent).  Also I have a 6ft long planter a friend helped me make this winter.  It is on a 4ft high bench so that I don't have to bend over to weed and water.  The herb garden wintered over quite well.  I have chives and oregano that wintered over and have planted dill, tarragon, thyme and cilantro.  I did get some catnip for the beasts, but it never made it to the garden.  The cats got to it before I could even get it into the ground. We now have stoned cats.

3.  Sun tea:  I love it when I can put a glass pitcher on the patio table with a big, fat, honkin' decaf tea bag in it and make tea.  No sweet tea for me.  It doesn't quench the summer thirst like unsweet tea does.  Much of the time I make iced green tea this way too.  Right now I can enjoy the patio.  When it gets hotter, I can't stay outside for very long, but J. sits there for hours on end reading, drinking coffee, indulging her vice and playing with the kitties.





4.  Cargo Shorts:  Spring and summer cannot be complete in the summer without cargo shorts.  They

are perfect for everything I want to do.  They have enough pockets so I don't need a briefcase or a bag.  They are long enough that I don't feel that I am giving scandal to anyone.  They do not expose too much skin that would be prone to burn.  I can get to my cell phone and keys with ease. They do look pretty sloppy but, hey, any shorts on my butt would look pretty sloppy.





5.  Post-Easter Just Sittin':  'Nuff said!  

Dem Bones: a work of the meantime.

It is hard to hear the story of the Dry Bones and not think of the spiritual, Dem Bones.  It is almost as hard to hear this story without cartoon images coming up of skeletons dancing.  And after going to Mexico this past fall for the Day of the Dead, these Halloween images were conjured up in my head as I tried to prepare these lessons for today.   

But that is not the point of this very powerful oracle in the book of Ezekiel.  In this story which is paired today with the Raising of Lazarus in the Gospel of John we are supposed to acknowledge the subject of Resurrection in these readings.  But the kind

of Resurrection that we find in both of these readings is not the Glorious Resurrection that we identify with Easter.  In both of these stories we find that Resurrection is hard work.  It happens with the greatness of God, but it demands the work not only of the individual, but the work of the community to help God present that new life is the work of us all.

In the story of the Dry Bones, Ezekiel is taken to a valley—it was THE valley where the armies of Judah had been defeated some 50 years before and God asks if the bones lying in the field could be reconstituted.  It is such an impossibility that Ezekiel can only mutter:  “O Lord

God, only you can know.”  In human experience, dry bones cannot be raised from the dead.  But a vision plays out for Ezekiel in which the bones do come together, sinew by sinew, but they have no signs of real life. 

This story is not about raising the dead.  This is a story about reviving the spirit when it has gone out of a community of faith.  Ezekiel is not prophesying to the dead.  He is preaching to a people who have lost their confidence in God to become a unified people again.  The Hebrew word ruach is used nine times in these few verses.  That is the word for breath.  It is also the term for wind and Spirit.  This story is about the renewal of a people—the story of the Spirit of God being rebreathed into a community.  It isn’t resurrection, where the body comes from the tomb.  It is image of people with the gift

of the spirit given a sense of newness by working together, by becoming whole, by being revived by the loving center in God.

This story should be quite familiar to us in this diocese.  When Judy and I came here in 2010, we saw a people who had been liberated from a type of bondage, from their own Babylon.  I remember coming here then and listening to you sharing your faith, excited about learning what the Episcopal Church had been doing for the past 30 years.   The Spirit had caught you up and breathed new life into you. 

But once Ezekiel saw the dried bones formed again, he knew his work was still not done.  As the returnees from Babylon came back to Jerusalem, they wanted to return to the old faith. But that faith had changed.  It had embraced new people.  It had opened its doors to those who had not had the experience of exile.  The reason that we have the book of Ezekiel was because the oracles that Ezekiel had was not just for the specific people who had returned from Persia; they were oracles that were to be heard by the people for all time.  The bones needed to be continually renewed.  The faith needed to be constantly vigilant to be open to the Spirit moving within it.

Stagnation is always a problem with communities of faith. It doesn’t matter what religion or what denomination. All of us come to faith and then we want to stay the

same.  But the Spirit doesn’t work like that.  The spirit stirs us up.  Those of us here in Texas know what the wind does:  it is constantly changing the landscape, even if it is only the landscape of our sinuses.  The Wind of faith, the Holy Spirit, changes the landscape of the Church too. 

We cannot go back 30 years to catch up with the Episcopal Church that has changed around us.  We can’t just remake the church on the principles of even 5 years ago.  We must be willing to breathe into the life of what the

Church is and is becoming.  Now I know I am preaching to the choir here.  You have taken the ball and run with it here at St. Alban’s.  But there are still those who long for a time when it will ‘calm down’---when things will get back to ‘normal’—when we get our parish buildings back. But I would like to suggest to you that that time will never come.  (That doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the property that belongs to TEC.)

I know.  I would like that Church back too.  It is familiar, warm and comforting to me.  But that Church no longer exists.  That Church has moved on.  We are a Church now that is trying to put past conservative/liberal fights aside.  We are a Church that is saying that it is more that an ideology.  We are a church that has taken some important stands, such as being a church where people CAN have differing opinions about theology and politics and still come to the same altar.  We are a church where we can support people who are

different from us.  We have said to those who have come to us that you are welcome, not because our old, dried bones have been given life, but because we have breathed the Spirit of freedom, have known the touch of the Divine and found in the community of united hearts that God does meet us in this place despite our scenery, our ‘unchurchy’ music, our wanderings in the desert.  God has breathed life into us even when we would rather have kneelers and solemn liturgies.  That is what the story of the Dried Bones tells us today.

And the story of Lazarus is the same.  Resurrection is not for sissies!  So be prepared for Easter!  Resurrection is not for the faint of heart.  Resurrection takes not only faith but it takes a community for it to happen in.  Lazarus can’t get out of his funereal bindings without help.  It takes the whole community to free him from his tomb-wear.  It takes a community which is willing to remove the stone, to be willing to put up with the smell so that Lazarus can come forth.  Newness isn’t magic.  It is hard work and it requires a willingness to find life where it is.  New life is not always visible at first.  Anybody here have perennials in your yard?  You aren’t always sure they are going to come back each year.  You have to go looking for the new life, under a leaf, or in the corner of the garden. 

We already are that resurrected church.  We already are living into what it means to be Spirit filled.  But there is a temptation to say—this is just the meantime. 

All of life is the Meantime.  We all live in the meantime as Christians.  We are always being breathed into new life—the new life of faith, the new life of a changing world and God gives us the breath to carry on loving, supporting, changing, and embracing the new.  AMEN.