MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, April 28, 2014

A nimble faith

On this Monday in the Easter season, I find myself mindful of the different ways the gospels tell the story of the first Easter, and especially how the gospels describe the men and women who saw an empty tomb and met the resurrected Christ. Each gospel offers its own spin, but all four have this in common. The disciples have, how shall we say, mixed reactions to the news that Jesus is alive. Most famously, as we always hear on the Second Sunday of Easter (i.e., yesterday), Thomas gets stuck with the adjective “doubting”, forever fixed to his name. He refuses to believe unless he gets physical evidence. That doubt, that skepticism makes him a hero to some. I sometimes think he is the patron saint of Episcopalians who are pretty good at celebrating the questions. But as I read the Gospel of John, it sounds like Thomas is getting called on the carpet, or in biblical parlance, he is upbraided for his doubt.

Lest we are too hard on Thomas, all four gospels indicate that he was not the only one with questions. The gospels describe disciples who doubted (Matthew), who fled the tomb in terror, amazement and fear (Mark), who were perplexed, terrified and startled, who thought they saw a ghost, who were comically clueless about Jesus’ presence until he broke the bread (Luke). Let’s just say that the first disciples did not immediately break into singing “Jesus Christ is risen today.” Before they got to “alleluia”, there were a lot of “I don’t know about this.” And along the way, I’m guessing there were a few ancient near eastern expletives uttered.

For the first disciples, those eleven guys and the several women on whom dawned news of resurrection, it took a while for the news to sink in. Doubt was part of the story. Which is good news for each one of us, because they are us. The news of Easter is amazing. But if it doesn’t prompt questions and wonder and doubts, we may not be paying attention to its claims. The ways the gospels describe the event gives permission for us to embrace the news at our own pace. It gives us the opportunity to believe and disbelieve (a la Emily Dickinson) and thereby to develop a nimble faith.

That nimble faith is the goal, because doubt is not the destination. It is meant to lead to a deeper, more authentic relationship with God, and especially to an embrace of the hope of new life. It is meant to lead to mission, a call to service in a world that needs to hear good news. I don’t know about you, but in a world where religious certainty often breeds intolerance, exclusion and division, I can easily linger, even loiter, maybe lurk in the place of doubt. I can easily take up residence there, gravitating to the religious sidelines, in a slightly defensive posture that says: “At least I’m not like those folks.”

The doubts, the questions, the skepticism that Thomas courageously expressed led him ultimately to worship. We’re called to the same journey. Celebrate the questions. God made us in such a way that we can’t help but ask them. They are a gift. But as you ask them, also ask God to lead you through the questions to a place of deeper commitment, deeper insight into the mystery that surrounds us, into service as a response to the love that comes to us as gift.

– 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, April 21, 2014

Yes

One of the great privileges in my life: to administer communion, giving out bread or wine as the people of God receive the gifts of God. Whether I’m standing at the rail in a grand worship space, or moving from wheelchair to wheelchair in a nursing home activity room, or bending over to give communion to a toddler, or serving bedside in a hospital room, whether I know the people well or not at all, I find it an honor to connect with people in this sacramental moment.

When I was considering ordination, a wise counselor advised me to read the ordination service in the Prayer Book and see if anything grabbed me in the way that liturgy was shaped. I remember being moved by a question which was asked of the candidate for ordination: Will you nourish God’s people from the riches of God’s grace? It seemed to me that is what we do when we come to communion: We are nourished by God’s grace. The priest or whoever is giving the bread and wine is simply an instrument. That’s probably true of all ministry in the world, all the good we do, but to me it seems clearest as the bread is placed in open hands, as the wine is received.

Many if not most of the people who receive communion respond to the bread placed in palms by saying: Amen. But I remember one parishioner, a wonderful older woman who grew up in the mountains of Virginia and brought the softest, most beautiful accent with her from that region. Her voice was deep and each word was extenuated. On Sundays, as I moved down the altar rail handing out bread she would not say “Amen”. Instead, she would say yes, which in her rendering of that word ending up with about four syllables. Her one word response to the bread placed in palm was one of the most elegant and eloquent (not to mention succinct) sermons I’ve ever heard. It spoke volumes to me about how we are to respond to God’s grace in our lives. We are called to say yes, in word and action, with our lips and with our lives.

Easter is God’s yes to us. As we move into the second day of the Easter season, we are called to give thanks and praise, we are called to alleluias, which have been on mute since Ash Wednesday. But I believe we are also called to say yes in return, yes to the new life, the resurrected life that God holds for us. That life comes as gift. But a gift, a grace only has meaning if we accept it and apply it. Abraham could have turned down the call to take his leap of faith. Moses could have taken a look at the burning bush and kept on going. Mary could have responded to the annunciation by saying “no thanks”. Peter could have kept fishing. Paul could have imagined that the Damascus road experience was a hallucination or projection. Each of them said “yes”, and that response not only changed their lives. That response changed the world. That can still happen.

What is God calling you to do and to be on this first Monday in the season of Easter? Can you experience this season as God’s emphatic “yes”?  Can you pass on the grace of God, be an instrument of that grace in someone’s life? How will you say yes to the new thing, the new life God holds out for you?

– 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, April 14, 2014

Praying shapes believing

That’s one of the things we say about our tradition. The ways we pray, our requests and thanksgivings, our praise and confession, they shape our convictions and commitments, our beliefs and practices. We become what we desire. Or as Jesus said (always good to quote Jesus): Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So what do we pray this Holy Week? Take a minute of silence (if need be, set the timer on your phone) and read the collect for the Monday in Holy Week at the bottom.

Then note what we affirm in this prayer, that God’s son suffered pain before joy. The mystery of suffering has been on my mind in preparation for Holy Week. It surfaces in great variety in the passion narrative: betrayal, isolation, indifference, expediency, questioning, violence prompted by religion and politics. Nothing new under the sun.

I’ve also been thinking about the subject of suffering since I read a N.Y. Times column last Monday. David Brooks contrasts the experience of suffering with our culture’s focus on happiness. (He wrote that in one three month period last year, more than 1000 books on the subject of happiness were released on Amazon.) Brooks notes that while happiness is a good thing (Just watch the Youtbue of Pharrel Williams’ Happy ), people feel formed through suffering. While he sees nothing intrinsically ennobling about suffering (i.e., we don’t need to go looking for it), people can be ennobled by it. Suffering, he says, sets people on a distinct course, “dragging them deeper into themselves, finding new resources, discovering they are not who they believed themselves to be.” As suffering gives a sense of our limits, insight into what we can control and what we can’t control, Brooks believes that such insight can lead to a sense of call, “a sense that people are at a deeper level than the level of happiness and individual utility. They don’t say, “Well, I’m feeling a lot of pain over the loss of my child. I should try to balance my hedonic account by going to a lot of parties and whooping it up.” The right response to this sort of pain is not pleasure. It’s holiness.”

How many times have you heard the word holiness raised in a major newspaper, of anywhere in the media, or anywhere besides church? And it come just in time for Holy Week, a week set apart to explore the mystery of God’s suffering.

We all know suffering. None of us go looking for it. All of us occasionally cause it in the lives of others. Each of us have to navigate our way through it. We worship a God who came among us to show us the way. That way has to do with love and grace. Pray your way through Holy Week, as we look suffering straight on, affirming the mystery that God’s son himself suffered. God is well acquainted with the topic, and in some way, in the economy of faith, that mystery leads to a miracle, a way of life and peace. Let your prayer shape your believing this Holy Week, bringing confidence in the hope that will arise next Sunday.

– 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, April 7, 2014

It’s a joy to travel to meet interesting people in interesting places in this new work I’m doing. It’s also a joy to come home, the experience enriched by the unfettered, exuberant greeting which I get from our dogs when I walk in the door. Their excitement makes me feel swell. (Truth be told, I get just about the same reaction whether I’m gone for a week or if I just run out to the grocery store for a quart of milk. Dogs may be high on the ladder of spiritual evolution, but they lack a sense of time, which in this case, works to my favor.) On occasions when I’ve been asked to cite examples of unconditional love, I have noted the reaction of my dogs. I may have to rethink that.

Last week, I attended a conference with a variety of interesting speakers who spoke on the theme of our identity, specifically our identity as Christians. Woven throughout these conversations, a mosaic of perspectives, atheists and believers exploring the challenge of being a person of faith these days, was the persistent call to discover our identity in the unconditional love of God. In other words, it was a conference about the meaning of grace. As one speaker stated, that grace is the solid rock on which we stand and all other ground is sinking sand.

One of the speakers was church historian, Dr. Ashley Null. He said something which made me perk up my ears (not unlike my dogs) and perhaps unleashed a new way of thinking about grace. He said that there is a difference between unconditional love and unconditional affirmation. He said we get unconditional affirmation from dogs. In my case, they extend that affirmation without the slightest knowledge of the inner workings of my heart, soul and mind, the good thoughts and the petty ones and the ones that are even more unseemly. That affirmation feels good, for sure. In that respect, it’s a good thing. But it is not the same as unconditional love. And it may not be enough.

More from this speaker, who said: unconditional affirmation never challenges your right to see yourself as the center of the universe. Unconditional love is different. It calls us into relationship, calls us to surrender at least some of our illusory autonomy for the sake of knowing and being known by God, by neighbor. It accepts us where we are, but invites us to a new place. As Dr. Null said, grace is the power of God’s Spirit wooing us homeward. It is an alluring not a compelling force, triggering a synergy by which the divine graceful love inspires gracious human love. It causes us to change. It causes us to grow.

I believe that for the healing and wholeness of our souls (another way of describing salvation), for the healing and wholeness of our world, we need unconditional love, not just unconditional affirmation. (Sorry, pups.) The upcoming week which we call “holy” celebrates the urgency of that deep human need. Its narrative, sorrow and love mingled, is offered as annual reminder that we are on the receiving end of unconditional love. The week describes God’s persistent, alluring outreach to us, stretching out arms of love on the hard wood of the cross to draw us into saving embrace. Unconditional affirmation may come our way. But unconditional love provides the foundation for our identity.

As you prepare for Holy Week, give thanks for the love that surrounds us, depicted in the hymn text in the column on the left. That love meets us where we are, without condition, and calls us to a new place. Let that love be the strong foundation on which you walk this week. And see how you can share it.

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

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