MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, December 30, 2013

You say you want a resolution…

A long, boring stretch of the interstate, family and dogs asleep in the car during Christmas season travel provided time for reflection on impending New Year’s resolutions. As a way of postponing any resolution I might actually decide to make, I got to thinking about the word itself, realizing its varied meanings. When I arrived home, I looked up the definition in the dictionary. In the column to left, you’ll find just a few of the entries. The word is rich indeed, loaded with implications for the spiritual journey.

Resolution: a matter of intention or firm determination.

I’m wondering what you hope for in the coming year in terms of your own spiritual growth. Take this day, the 30th of December, to set some spiritual intention for the coming year. Perhaps even make a firm determination for the spiritual journey. Many people at this time of year decide on a program of physical exercise. Run 3 miles a day. No more french fries. What would a program of spiritual exercise look like? Maybe it’s as simple as deciding to start each day by naming five things for which you are grateful. Maybe it’s establishing a daily rhythm of reflection, quiet time or solitude. Maybe it’s remembering that each day is a gift, that once that day has passed, we’ll never receive that particular gift again, and that we should live each day of 2014 to the fullest.

Resolution: a matter of clarity or fineness of detail

I’m wondering where you wish for greater clarity, greater vision in your spiritual life. What is the spiritual counterpart of higher resolution, as in a television or photograph or scan. Take some time before 2014 begins to think about where the path forward seems foggy or dark or out of focus. What in the past have been the resources that brought clarity when you had a hard time seeing what lies ahead? Were there people in your life who have been your guides? Make it a point to thank them, and call on them again if needed. Perhaps God has sent writers, current or from another era, whose insights helped you navigate? Maybe the prayerful reflection on scripture has brought that kind of clarity, as in the psalmist’s comparison of God’s word to a lantern upon the path. If you’re facing the fog, offer a prayer that clarity will come in the coming year.

Resolution: a matter of movement towards healing and harmony 

I’m wondering where in your life you seek this kind of resolution, which is comparable to a move in music from dissonance to harmony. Where is there brokenness of body, mind, spirit, relationship, memory? Where can spiritual and/or relational discord be resolved? How in the coming year can you practice more forgiveness? Where do you need to ask for it? Can you move from resentment to resolution? It is indeed a practice, i.e., we get better at it the more we do it. It calls for daily, maybe hourly practice. Resolve to let go and let God provide the strength to resolve differences and injuries that have you in their grip. Like most holy work, it can only happen through a power greater than ourselves. Pray each day for more love in your heart, as one of my spiritual advisors describes it.

If you’re looking for some help in the resolution department, reflect on the reading from St. Paul that is given below. It’s been chosen for the Feast of the Holy Name, January 1. It challenges the reader to have the mind of Christ. Not a bad resolution, if you ask me. How would all of our lives be different if we each resolved in the coming year to have the mind of Christ?

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, December 23, 2013

The opposite of faith

Two days ago, our church observed the Feast of St. Thomas, of doubting fame. In the thick of jingling bells and decking halls (fa la la la la), the liturgical calendar takes us to the days after Holy Week, to a locked room with disciples gathered in fear they’d be executed, perplexed by the rumor of resurrection. There we meet Thomas, who refuses to believe what other disciples have reported. “Unless I see it for myself, I will not believe.” says Thomas, earning him the title of doubting Thomas, a bit of a scriptural smackdown. Some scholars suggest that the writer of this gospel wanted to put Thomas in his place, and denigrate a gospel attributed to him. (Imagine. Rivalry and petty spirit in the church. I’m shocked.)

Maybe it’s just wishful reading on my part, but I see the story another way. Thomas’ doubt led him to one of the greatest affirmations in the gospels. The doubt, the questions, his rigorous desire for truth, the open wound of losing his purpose led him to faith by which he saw Jesus resurrected (which really means “standing again”) and exclaims: My Lord and my God.

While the story can be read to frame doubt and faith as opposites, it seems to me that Thomas’ dubious questions brought him to faith. Sure, he gets roughed up in the process, but with the help of his questions, he moves and grows and changes. He comes to see something he didn’t see before. Faith emerged from doubt, illustrating what Frederick Buechner said: Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.

If Thomas were around today, church-shopping, I bet he’d end up in an Episcopal pew. Many, including me, have been drawn to this denomination because of its hospitality to questions, seeing that welcome sign not as a precursor to some litmus test but as invitation to inquiry and exploration. So think with me about faith and wonder with me about its opposite. Annie Lamott asked her pastor about just that, about what is the opposite of faith. “I remembered something Father Tom told me–that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”

Last July, Pope Francis (I have to quote him again this week. He is, after all, man of the year.) wrote about faith and its opposite. He said that what really opposes faith is in the end idolatry. “We either seek God or we seek, knowingly or unknowingly to replace God with false gods.” Idolatry, the pope explains, “is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another.” But faith “consists in the willingness to let ourselves be constantly transformed and renewed by God’s call.” He said that faith is born of an encounter with God’s primordial love, wherein the meaning and goodness of our life become evident.

Which may well be the link between the Feast of St. Thomas and the Feast of the Nativity. Because as we wonder as we wander through this season, face it. It takes faith. I don’t just mean faith to believe in angels in the sky or virgin birth or stars that serve as GPS. I mean faith that the God of all creation would become a human being. I mean faith that we are loved as we are. I mean faith that the central fact about our lives is that we are on the receiving end of grace. Unconditional acceptance. If I really believed it, how different would my life be? So I come to Christmas like Annie Lamott. (No dreadlocks, though.) I come with a faith that notices the mess, the emptiness, the discomfort and letting it be there until some light returns, the light which our church sees in that candle at the center of the Advent wreath.

Bring your doubts with you to Christmas this year. You won’t be alone. Let them open the door to a deeper faith, faith by which the holy child of Bethlehem may in some miraculous way be born in you and me this day.

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, December 16, 2013

Joy to the World

A Christmas carol when it’s still Advent? Not to worry. Liturgical know-it-alls and Advent police have informed me that “Joy To The World” is not really a Christmas hymn. In the 1940 hymnal, it was not even listed in the Christmas section. It’s less about Bethlehem and more about the future coming of Christ. Some churches sing the hymn in the dog days of August. It’s been requested at funerals, liturgies which according to our Prayer Book, have to do with joy. So with that in mind, a Monday reflection on joy to the world, well before the Christmas season begins.

The theme is prompted, in part, by the exhortation recently offered by the new pope. Confession: Over the years, due to my sloth or indifference or Protestant ancestry, I’ve never gone out of my way to read Vatican documents. But this one, entitled Evangelii Gaudium, has triggered exceptional commentary. After I saw the politicians and pundits who criticized it, I thought to myself: “If these folks are upset by this, I’m gonna like it.” So I downloaded it and read away. It focuses on the challenges in our world prompted by income inequality, and the fact that money has grown as an idol, that money is meant to be servant, not ruler. The pontiff’s critique of unfettered capitalism drew the critical attention that drew my attention.

But passages that dealt with the call to social justice were only part of what the Pope had to say. The title of the document (which means “The Joy of the Gospel”) framed the discussion in terms of the call for Christians to experience and share joy. The Pope said this: “The life of the Church should always reveal clearly that God takes the initiative, that “he has loved us first” (1 Jn 4:19) and that he alone “gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7). This conviction enables us to maintain a spirit of joy in the midst of a task so demanding and challenging that it engages our entire life. God asks everything of us, yet at the same time he offers everything to us.”

In another section, the Pope said that “the gospel joy which enlivens the community of disciples is a missionary joy. The seventy-two disciples felt it as they returned from their mission (cf. Lk 10:17). Jesus felt it when he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and praised the Father for revealing himself to the poor and the little ones (cf. Lk 10:21). It was felt by the first converts who marveled to hear the apostles preaching “in the native language of each” (Acts 2:6) on the day of Pentecost. This joy is a sign that the Gospel has been proclaimed and is bearing fruit.

A bit more from the Pope: “I can say that the most beautiful and natural expressions of joy which I have seen in my life were in poor people who had little to hold on to, the real joy shown by others who, even amid pressing professional obligations, were able to preserve, in detachment and simplicity, a heart full of faith. In their own way, all these instances of joy flow from the infinite love of God, who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.

Going back to my Protestant roots, I’m reminded of the definition of a Puritan: Someone who is unhappy because somebody somewhere is having a good time. The Pope seemed to know about this dynamic in the church, as he wrote: “A tomb psychology develops and slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum. Disillusioned with reality, with the Church and with themselves, they experience a constant temptation to cling to a faint melancholy, lacking in hope, which seizes the heart like “the most precious of the devil’s potions”. Called to radiate light and communicate life, in the end they are caught up in things that generate only darkness and inner weariness, and slowly consume all zeal for the apostolate. For all this, I repeat: Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the joy of evangelization!”

Reading these last comments, I’m challenged to consider the extent to which the Pope has me in mind. It makes me wonder where we find joy, even in adversity. Where does it come from? How I can know more of it? How can I pass it on? I’m thankful that the Pope has reflected on the challenge, and indeed, that he shows us the way. I saw joy last week, in evidence at the memorial for Mandela, a celebration of music and dancing in the pouring rain, an extension of Mandela’s life which even in adversity exuded joy. It’s evident in the ministry of Desmond Tutu who navigates life’s most challenging passages with a contagious exuberance. Yesterday, the Third Sunday of Advent (a.k.a., Gaudete Sunday), takes its cue from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, in which he calls on readers to rejoice in the Lord always (The word gaudete means rejoice). That’s striking because Paul’s letter was written from a prison cell. As he writes from that dank, dark place, every other word in the letter seems to be about joy. C. S. Lewis, whose spiritual autobiography was called Surprised by Joy, said that joy is the serious business of heaven. But it is business we undertake here and now.

As we move from the season of Advent to the season of Christmas, make room for joy in your life. When have you experienced it? What caused it? Give thanks for that. And then ask yourself: How can you share joy with others?

-Jay Sidebotham

Note: I’ve you managed to read this far, you may note that this week’s entry is a bit longer than most. I try to be more succinct than this. I guess I could blame the Pope. He just wrote a lot of good stuff, and I had a hard time selecting what to share. Believe me. There’s more where this came from. Take some time before Christmas and read Evangelii Gaudium in its entirety.

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, December 9, 2013

Let it go.

My own spiritual journey has shown me that I have a remarkable skill for remembering slights and injuries from years, even decades, past. I am really good at it. These memories are commonly known as resentments, which literally means “feeling again” or “feeling backward.” It is a grasping, clinging, retrospective frame of mind. It’s opposite, I imagine, is forgiveness, which literally means “giving forward”. As such, forgiveness is oriented toward the future, and the opposite of holding on. This spirit of generosity, of letting go, is in my own life a growth opportunity. Disclaimer: I can’t claim to know much about it, or to practice it well.

But I’m thinking about it a lot this week, because of one of the stories I’ve heard about Nelson Mandela, in accounts that have aired as our global community honors his life and ministry and witness. An interviewer asked him how he felt upon leaving Robben Island (Capetown’s version of Alcatraz) where he had been held for 27 years. The interviewer asked him about whether he harbored anger towards his captors.

My wife, Frances and I, were privileged to visit that island a few years ago. We saw the small cell which was Mandela’s home for those years. We saw the quarry where he and others labored, breaking rocks in the hot sun. Our tour guide had been a prisoner under apartheid. He showed us how the prison was designed to preclude any view of Capetown, just a few miles away. Prisoners might well have been on the other side of the globe. Our visit to that prison helped me understand the significance of the question asked of Mandela. If ever there was a case for justified anger and resentment, this would be it.

Mandela said that, of course, he felt anger towards his captors, for all kinds of reasons. But he indicated that he had chosen not to live in that place. If he lived in resentment (again, literally, feeling backward), then his captors would still hold him captive. He chose another path. He simply said to his questioner: I let it go.

I was embarrassed comparing the monumental injuries experienced by Nelson Mandela with the resentments I savor. How could he “let it go”, let go of those years filled with injury and insult, while I harbored relatively silly slights? Mandela showed us all what it means to move forward.  Working with Desmond Tutu, who wrote about this period of transition in a book called “No Future Without Forgiveness“, Mandela charted a course for his country marked by reconciliation. It was not cheap grace. It involved truthful accounting for the injuries over the years. But he demonstrated that what matters is figuring out a way to move forward. Nelson Mandela chose a path of reconciliation when he could have chosen retribution. If he could do that, given what he experienced, I’m guessing I could give it a shot. Not a bad project for the remaining days of this season of Advent.

A great theme in this season of Advent, the beginning of the church year, is the theme of a future, the call to hope. Forgiveness, it has been said, is giving up the hope of a better past. It’s future oriented. I suspect each of us harbor resentments. I’m betting that each of us has caused resentments. One way to honor Mandela is to figure out how to practice forgiveness (and I’m here to tell you it takes practice), to ask it of those we’ve injured, to extend it to those who’ve triggered resentments, to take those resentments to the water’s edge and watch them float down the river, to let them go.

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, December 2, 2013

What do you expect?

Advent has arrived. Since Advent means arrival, editors might accuse me of redundancy, which wouldn’t be the first time that has happened to a preacher. But it’s here, a season of expectation, posing this question: How do our expectations of the future affect the way we live in the present? As we make our way, day by day, through this season, we’re invited to slow down, to be quiet, to savor holy anticipation, to live life expecting God to do something. And to do so patiently, a growth opportunity for many of us who want patience and want it now.

Whether we join Mary and Joseph in expectation of the arrival of the Christ child or whether we join the great communion of saints across the ages who say that Christ will come again, we live our faith based on promise. We live in hope. As C.S.Lewis said: “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”

The work with which I’m involved these days focuses on expectation, the expectation of spiritual growth in each of our lives, which leads to spiritual growth in our faith communities. It has brought a number of provocative exchanges. In one church, the conversation centered on how we move from here to there in the spiritual journey, how the church helps us do that, in fact, how that is part of what it means to be church, to grow and change and be transformed. One Episcopalian, in the spirit of full disclosure in the course of this work, said to her rector: “I don’t really expect anything to happen to me when I come to church.” I was grateful for the candor. She gave voice to what I often feel. I’m not always interested in change or growth or transformation. I’m not always prepared for it. I’m not always expecting it.

Advent tells us to live expectantly, to navigate the present moment guided by a sense of promise and hope in what God will do in days ahead. One of my favorite Advent hymns (and that’s a tough call because Advent hymns are simply the best) is printed below. It calls us to be on the lookout for the long-expected Jesus. Here’s what we might expect from that arrival. We can expect to be set free. To be released from fear and sins. To be consoled. To know hope. To experience deliverance. Ultimately, to be raised. Not a bad set of expectations.

Carry this hymn with you for the season of Advent. If you want an Advent discipline, memorize the text. If the spirit moves and the opportunity arises, gather around a piano and sing it with those in your household. Expect God to act in your life in this holy season. Watch for ways that will happen. Take a moment and jot notes about what you might expect God to do in your life, in our world. Or at least note what you would like God to do in your life, in our world. Make those notes a prayer.

And know that as we live in expectation of what God will do, there’s also an expectation that we will live into the new life God has for us. Said another way, there’s certainly an expectation about what God will do. But maybe this is also a season to think about what is expected of us, as well, part of the call to be disciples of the long-expected Jesus.

What do you expect this Advent? What might be expected of you, and me?

-Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

Rev. Jay Sidebotham
jsidebotham@renewalworks.org
RenewalWorks is a ministry of Forward Movement.
www.renewalworks.org
www.forwardmovement.org