MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, November 24, 2014

Grace and gratitude

The theologian Karl Barth apparently never had an unexpressed thought, as attested by extensive volumes of theological reflection. Who knows? Perhaps he got paid by the word. He was also wonderfully able to cut to the chase, as attested by an encounter in the early 60’s with a group of Chicago seminarians. Mindful of his propensity for writing at length on almost any subject (I wish he was around now to reflect on contemporary issues), these students basically taunted him to sum up his theology in a sentence. Perhaps if they were asking today, the request would be to sum up his theology in a tweet. Could he do it? Dr. Barth indicated he could provide such a summation. It went like this: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

In his Dogmatics, he offered a similar simple insight into the faith, a description of our life with God which seems fitting for this week which includes a national holiday promoting gratitude in the attitude. Please note: I love this holiday for many reasons, and I’m so excited to be with our children in a new home. I’m deeply grateful on so many levels. But face it. We observe this holiday in strange ways. We prepare then consume foods we love until we about near explode, thereby inducing a big old nap. We spend a chunk of time enthralled with the most popular liturgy of our culture: football. Many do battle with other consumers in anticipation of Christmas, vigorous competition such that each year the news will report fistfights (and worse) over sales items, all ostensibly in observance of the birth of our Lord, the prince of peace, born in a manger. Go figure.

Given those observances, perhaps we can pause on this Monday, perhaps each day this week, perhaps each day for the rest of our lives, to focus on gratitude, and to use Dr. Barth’s simple vision of the spiritual life. Here it is:

Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth.  Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo.  Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning. 

This week, carry this passage with you. Begin by reflecting on a time (or two) in your life when you have experienced grace. Did it come from God? Did it come from someone close to you, God’s instrument of grace? Did you see it in the beauty of creation? If you’re having Thanksgiving Dinner with folks, and looking for a way to avoid arguing about politics (Fox news vs. MSNBC: watch out for flying mashed potatoes), maybe you can start your meal by going around the table, telling about a time when the voice of grace stirred an echo, when lightning flashed. Our youth calls those moments God-sightings. Sharing them can be downright transformative.

And then let gratitude flow from that vision of grace, gratitude that infuses your heart and shapes your behavior. Heaven and earth meeting. Echoes of grace expressed in gratitude, as sure as thunder follows lightning. This past week, I had the privilege of leading a conversation about spiritual growth at the 199th Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina. In that conversation, I asked people to identify things that helped them move forward in their spiritual journeys, and things that got in the way. On that second question, one answer struck me in particular. A woman indicated that her journey was stalled when she forgot to be grateful.

That’s what we aim to avoid this coming Thursday. We take a day off to express our gratitude (even if we do so in idiosyncratic ways). That’s what we aim to do each Sunday when we gather for eucharist, a Greek word for thanksgiving. That liturgy includes in the prayer over the bread and wine a portion that describes the things God has done for us, things for which we are thankful. Liturgists call that section anamnesis, which means literally, not amnesia. Not forgetting. Our expression of gratitude need not wait for a national holiday. It doesn’t need to wait for Sunday. It’s why God made Monday. As William Arthur Ward said: “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say thank you?”

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

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

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, November 17, 2014


Spiritual nationality

The pope is at it again. Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. I pray for this guy because he’s shaking things up, and that’s risky business. In a homily delivered on November 7, he described what he called “pagan Christians.” Offering his spin on the New Testament letter to the Philippians, he reflected on Paul’s challenge to those early Christians. Paul asked: Was their citizenship in heaven or on earth? The new pontiff spoke about religious observance in our own time, those who may attend mass on Sundays but forget about a commitment to the way of Jesus the rest of the week (those for whom Monday may not have mattered in terms of discipleship). He said they were Christians in name only. Pagan Christians. He challenged hearers to think about where they gave their hearts, their allegiance, their loyalty. Asked another way: Where was their citizenship?

The way for someone to check their spiritual nationality, he said, is to ask some questions: “Do I like to brag? Do I like money? Do I like pride?” Alternatively, he said, “Do you try to love God and serve others? If you are meek, if you are humble, if you are a servant of others, then you are on the right path. Your citizenship papers are in order and they are from heaven!”

Here’s my experience, based on what the pope said. I have dual citizenship. I’m sometimes a pagan. A pagan Christian but pagan nonetheless. On occasion, on a good day, by God’s grace, I locate my citizenship in heaven. I sometimes trust. I often don’t. Emily Dickinson put it this way: We believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour. She said that it makes the faith nimble. (Nice turn of phrase, Emily.) But as one preacher put it, I’m often a functional atheist, my attitudes and behavior demonstrating that I don’t really believe God is around or involved or active or relevant. I’m not proud of that. I’m not unaware of it either. Saint and sinner at once, to channel Martin Luther. That’s why grace is such a good thing.

So how would you describe your spiritual nationality? Where are you giving your heart this Monday morning? Where is your citizenship? May God grant us the grace to find our home in heaven, starting this Monday morning with a little heaven on earth. By holy coincidence, last week I came across a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (below), shared with me by one of my spiritual guides. Reflect on this poem as it reminds that we are all in this together, all on the receiving end of God’s mercy.

– Jay Sidebotham 

Contact:

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

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, November 10, 2014

Of soldiers and saints.

Tomorrow we observe the feast of St. Martin, coincident with national observance of Veterans’ Day. Chalk it up to holy coincidence, since St. Martin was, among other things, a soldier. In his honor, and in honor of all veterans, begin this morning by joining in a prayer of honor and thanksgiving for Veterans (below).

St. Martin’s Church in Providence, Rhode Island was the place I served right after seminary, under the leadership of the Rev. Dan Burke, one of the kindest and wisest priests I have known. Dan was gentle with me when gaps in my preparation for ministry were on display, which was more often than I care to admit. During my time at St. Martin’s, I came to know a fair amount about this saint from the 4th century. Martin of Tours was a soldier who was traveling one day in a snowstorm, on the highway, when he came upon a beggar. Martin raised his sword and cut his own cape in two and gave half of his cloak to the shivering beggar. Martin apparently did not ask if the beggar was worthy. Martin did not worry that he was enabling the beggar. He did not fret that the beggar was scamming him. He just gave him a coat. I don’t know if I could do that (even though I realize in our recent move that I have enough coats to equip a marching band!) but maybe that’s why Martin gets a feast day. The story continues. That night, Christ appeared to Martin in a dream, commending him for his offering. Legend has it that Martin heard Jesus say to the angels: “Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptized; he has clothed me.”

The gospel for the Feast of St. Martin is the parable of judgment in Matthew 25 (We’ll read it in church on November 26) which declares that we meet Christ in the poor, the hungry, the prisoner. When we minister to them, we minister to Christ. When we ignore them, we ignore Christ. A parable to keep us on our ethical toes. From this passage, we get the baptismal injunction to meet Christ in all persons, even if occasionally Christ comes very well disguised. In honor of Martin today, when you’re out on the highway, out in the world, in whatever turbulence (meteorological or otherwise) be ready to meet Christ in those whose lives are marked by need. They surround us.

One more thing about Martin. His symbol is the goose. Why the goose, you ask. Well after the soldier/beggar encounter, Martin became a monk, such a fine one in fact that he was elected bishop. Like many folks who hear God’s call to the episcopacy, Martin ran in the opposite direction, not wanting the job. He hid in a barn. The honking of the geese gave him away. He went on to have a powerful ministry, so effective that we honor it more than 16 centuries later.

Honor his day in reflection on what God is calling you to do, and especially how God might be calling you to address the needs of a broken world. Who knows, you might meet Jesus in some new way when you do. Wouldn’t that be something? 

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

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

MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, November 3, 2014

For a few years, I served at a church in midtown Manhattan. It probably had as much pedestrian traffic as any church on the globe. Only a tiny percentage of the people who passed by the church ever came through our doors, let alone became part of the worshipping community. I’d occasionally meet people who said they walked by the church daily for decades and never ventured in. I often stood at the top of the steps and watch New York go by, people in a grand hurry to wherever. Purposeful New Yorkers, never making eye contact. We wondered how to break through.

One especially warm summer, my colleagues and I decided to hand out glasses of lemonade on the sidewalk, wearing our clerical collars. Many people walked right by. Some were certain there was a catch. Nothing was free. If they took the lemonade, they’d have to give us money, or worse, attend a service. But occasionally, we would engage in conversation. One young woman appreciated the cool drink. She stopped to talk, asking what we were doing, and told me a bit of her story. As she was winding up the conversation, she looked up the steps at the imposing portal and asked: Am I allowed to go in there? I asked what she meant, because I sensed she was not asking if the doors were locked, or what the hours were. She shared that she had not led a particularly puritanical life, that she had not been in a church for a long time, and that the church in her past had not welcomed her. She expected more judgment than mercy. I felt a deep sadness when I really heard her question, a bit of shame as a church professional as I wondered how many other folks were asking the same thing.

Last Monday, I asked people to tell me what in their experience had gotten in the way of spiritual growth. I am grateful for the responses I received (and it’s not too late to offer your own.) Folks talked about the distractions of day-to-day living, the trivia of life that crowds out things of significance. Many looked in the mirror and saw the obstacle, described repeatedly in triune form: Me, myself, and I. The ancient truth of scripture that we try to put ourselves in the place of God emerged once again as a barrier, that old ego, which some tell me is an acronym: Edging God Out.

Too many folks mentioned the church as a barrier. People wrote about the messiness of organized religion, the hypocrisy which caused one person to leave the church for decades, admittedly “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” People described petty competitiveness, jealousies, hierarchical hoops, theological meanderings in the church. Another person noted the church as an institution driven by human nature with its resistance to change: “I struggle to get past the church as the end, to arrive at the church as a means.”

When people tell me that they have bailed on the church because it’s full of hypocrites, I can only say “guilty as charged”. And as a church professional, I often pray this haunting verse from the Psalms: “Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me.” I have experienced woundedness and disappointment from the church. I’ve also caused injury and disillusionment, and for that I ask forgiveness (with fear and trembling).

But in it all, I remain convinced that God wishes to work through the church, that it is indeed a means for God’s presence to be experienced in the world, and in fact that God will do a new thing in the church in days ahead. Later this week, we will observe the Feast of William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II. (Talk about a tough assignment!) He is famously noted for describing the church as the only organization on earth that exists for the sake of those who are not its members. In other words, the church is meant for service to the world. We can all identify ways that it fails to do that, ways in which the church insists rather on being served, a collective expression of ego. The church with its failings is an easy mark.

The more difficult pathway is to be in it and help it to live into its divine intention: to be the body of Christ, or more specifically, to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. How will you live into that vision this week? How will you grow as part of the body of Christ? Pray for the church, in word and action. Ask God to show you how you can be part of the healing of the church, so that the church can be part of the healing of the world.

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

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