MONDAY MATTERS
Reflections to start the week
Monday, January 26, 2015

Waste

We went to see the movie “Wild”, a story about ways to navigate wilderness, a persistent biblical theme for sure, a theme of powerful pertinence because every one of us, even the most entrenched urbanite, knows about wilderness. Our most crowded cities can feel like the most isolated places. The movie tells the story of two women, a mother and daughter. Each find that the circumstances of life lead them into wilderness, literal, figurative. And while there are tragic challenges faced throughout the narrative, while brokenness abounds, I was struck with the ways that each of the two women discover a pathway marked by gratitude. The mother speaks of gratitude for the difficulties she experienced because she ended up with two children who she loved more than life. The daughter reflects on the painful and destructive ways she screwed things up and hurt people she loved. The journey of her life, with all its wounds, some self-inflicted, led to a new place, a new future. She was able to forgive others and forgive herself. She expresses gratitude for that journey.

I gather the movie is up for Oscars, but the takeaway prize for me? A call to gratitude in the attitude, giving thanks in the wilderness. I thought about that perspective last Friday when our church observed the feast of Phillips Brooks, a great Episcopal preacher (note: not an oxymoron) who served at Trinity Copley Square in Boston and who said the following:

You must learn, you must let God teach you, that the only way to get rid of your past is to make a future out of it. God will waste nothing. 

This Monday morning, perhaps you find yourself in the wilderness. We’ve all been there. I’m wondering how you will regard that experience, how you will think about the circumstances that brought you to this place. I’m wondering if there is a way to regard those experiences, and your life in this moment, with gratitude. To put it mildly, that’s not always easy to do.

But if our faith really is about the promise of transformation, of renewal. It calls us to that leap whereby we claim that God will waste nothing. Sometimes we see that most clearly when we’re in the wild.

– 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, January 19, 2015

In one of his several amazing books about the Civil Rights movement, Taylor Branch describes a pivotal moment in the ministry of Martin Luther King. The phone at Dr. King’s home had been ringing with messages of threat and terror, implying peril not only for him but his family. King sat alone after his family had gone to bed. Taylor Branch writes: “

King buried his face in his hands at the kitchen table. He admitted to himself that he was afraid, that he had nothing left, that the people would falter if they looked to him for strength. Then he said as much out loud. He spoke the name of no deity, but his doubts spilled out as a prayer, ending, “I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.” As he spoke these words, the fears suddenly began to melt away. He became intensely aware of what he called an “inner voice” telling him to do what he thought was right. Such simplicity worked miracles, bringing a shudder of relief and the courage to face anything. It was for King the first transcendent religious experience of his life. . . . For King, the moment awakened and confirmed his belief that the essence of religion was not a grand metaphysical idea but something personal, grounded in experience — something that opened up mysteriously beyond the predicaments of human beings in their frailest and noblest moments.” (from Parting the Waters, by Taylor Branch, Simon & Schuster, 1988)

This Monday matters because as a nation we honor this prophet, a prophet in the sense of a seer who has a dream about the future, but also a prophet in the sense of one who has courage to speak truth to power.

This Monday matters because as a church we celebrate this saint as one of the great cloud of witnesses who models what discipleship means, what it means to put faith to work in the world. For the feast day of Martin Luther King, we read about the call of Moses, noting comparisons between the prince of Egypt and Dr. King. We read from Exodus 3 (below), the story of the call of Moses to take on the enslaving, oppressive Pharaoh, to be God’s instrument in the world because God had heard the suffering of God’s people. Moses turns aside to see the burning bush and says the three most dangerous words in the Bible: “Here am I.’ In response, God describes the task ahead. “Tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.” In response, Moses moves from “Here am I!” to “Who am I?” Specifically, he asks, “Who am I to do this job, to change what can’t be changed, to face a problem that cannot be overcome, to counter evil that is too strong?” And what is the divine answer to Moses’ question: “Who am I?”

God says to Moses: “I will be with you.”

The Monday matters because we face problems that defy our cleverness and reveal the limits of our competence. There is still too much work of justice and peace to be done. Perhaps we’ve come some distance since Dr. King’s day but today’s news reveals that it is not enough. Injustices and inequity, violence and treachery persist. They can overwhelm. Our tradition tells us that God not only hears the suffering of God’s people, but also calls us to address that suffering. Who me? Who am I? How will we do that when the problems seem so big?

Once when I was whining with doubts about my effectiveness, a mentor asked me to name the one thing (or more) that I knew I simply could not do without God’s help. She said to pray about that particular thing. She predicted that would be the place where God would work, echoing that translation of the beatitudes: Blessed are those who know their need of God. This Monday morning, the news of the day from around the globe, the challenges of our lives as we face another week, may overwhelm. Who are we to tackle them? If that question is bothering you, I wonder if you can hear God’s response: “I will be with 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, January 12, 2015

I raked in at Christmas. Now that we’ve moved from the season of Christmas to the season of Epiphany, I’m mindful of many wonderful gifts I received, some of them found under the tree, some of them bits of good new. (Not to be mysterious: my wonderful son announced his engagement to a wonderful young woman, all of which is wonderful.)

It’s probably dangerous, perhaps unseemly and possibly ungrateful to highlight gifts which are among my favorites, but I’ll go out on a limb here. As I write, I’m looking across the top of my laptop at a small necklace, one of four that my daughter purchased for each member of our family, a small gold chain with a simple medallion. On each of the medallions is engraved the same citation: Joshua 1:9. If your trip down Sunday School memory lane doesn’t bring the text of that verse to mind (below). Our family has encouraged each other over the years, in times of adventure and adversity, with this call to courage. We are bound to each other by that call, which is why we each got that same necklace.

That verse from the book of Joshua was given to the children of Israel as they were facing new challenges, forging a new community, ready for the new thing God had for them to do. That call bound them together.

A variation of the verse occurs in several places in the psalms, that book which is really a guide to liturgy. Episcopalians may note that the call to courage surfaces in our own liturgy. The prayer we say after communion, as we are sent into the world, asks that we will have “strength and courage to love and serve with gladness and singleness of heart”. The call to courage has for centuries found its way into worship. Who knew that worship was meant to give us courage? It binds us together to face the world.

Think with me this Monday morning about the word courage. It connotes bravery, the willingness to face fears and failure. Brene Brown writes powerfully about the call to be courageous, noting how responding to the call with vulnerability can bind communities together. Her book Daring Greatly was prompted by a speech given by Teddy Roosevelt, especially this excerpt: “It is not the critic who counts…the credit belongs to the [man] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming…at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.” A call to courage.

But perhaps more than bravery, the power of the word comes from its link to the French word for heart (coeur), which is to say that on some level, the courage to which are called, the courage binding us together and provides a way to move forward, is a matter of heart. As we note in the work we do focused on spiritual growth, that movement is really about the deepening of love of God and neighbor. So if we are called to be of good courage, we are called to deeper love. As Brene Brown says: “Our communities need love and a sense of belonging. In their absence, there is always suffering. We all need to be seen and loved. We all need to belong. We all need to be brave.”

As a hack, amateur cartoonist, I’ve been so saddened by what unfolded in Paris last week. The events have caused me to think about who “je suis”. My thoughts have been led to the ministry of Karen Armstrong, former nun, now prominent religious scholar with a vocation to think about how the world’s religions can possibly get along, how we can have courage for the facing of this hour. We need her now more than ever. She has devoted time, talent and treasure to presenting compassion as the highest common value among the great faith traditions. Consider her insight: “Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don’t want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.”

Her call to compassion seems to me to be a lot like the call to courage. That call to be compassionate (literally, compassion means suffering with) seems currently compelling. Will you join me with strength and courage to consider what a more compassionate world might look like, daring to shift the focus from self to the other, praying for those like the people of Paris now called to courage? Will you join in the challenge of considering courageous ways to be more compassionate this Monday, January 12, with the people you’ll see in the next moments: family, friends, co-workers. This is hard work. Jesus knew how to do it. He teaches how to do it. I wonder if we will learn.

– 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, January 5, 2015

It’s become a habit, maybe on a good day a spiritual discipline, always a gift. I hop in the car, dogs in tow, and drive a few miles down to the beach to watch the sun break the horizon. It means a lot to me. It’s quiet. It’s stunningly beautiful. It’s awesome, in the true sense of the word. It puts me in my place. It offers perspective. It’s different every morning. It’s a place to focus on the things for which I’m grateful, to offer the intercessions on my heart, to focus on how I may be of service in the next 24 hours. As a discipline, it’s given me time to be mindful that each day is a gift and to challenge myself to use the days wisely. On most days, I’m pretty much alone, perhaps one or two folks in sight as I look up and down miles of beach.

The spirit led me in this ritual last Thursday, a.k.a., New Year’s Day. I had gone to bed pretty early the night before (a huge surprise to those who know me) so it was not a big deal to get up early. I expected to be alone, revelers still recovering. But as I drove down towards the beach in the moments before sunrise, cars sped by me. When I got to “my” parking lot, there were no spaces left. I had to find a new place to park That was annoying. I’m an Episcopalian, and we don’t like liturgy interrupted.

As I walked on to the beach, I realized I was not the only one on this first day of 2015 to think about starting it by watching the sun come up. The place was crowded. There were groups of young folks who had clearly not gone to bed yet, or sobered up yet, still very much in a party mood. There were couples who sat looking over the expanse of water, blankets wrapping them in a huddle. Individuals stood or sat, some with cameras, waiting and watching until the blaze broke the surface of the sea and another day began. With that new light, 2014 was behind us, not an altogether bad thing, since it’s been a rough year for many. We were all there together, a congregation celebrating the gift of a new day, a new year, with new challenge, new opportunity.

That this one sunrise marks a new year is arbitrary, I suppose. The sun is just doing what the sun has been doing for a while. The earth is spinning just like it always does. Thosee waves roll in, indifferent to whether I was watching or not. But that community of strangers on that beach on that morning at 7:12am EST was expecting something new.

On New Year’s Eve, one of the readings for the day, assigned by the lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer came from the Second Letter to the Corinthian church. It’s a reading (below) that also surfaces on Ash Wednesday, another season that has renewal as its intention. It’s a reading about God’s habit, God’s spiritual discipline, God’s ritual of making things new. St. Paul speaks of God’s ministry of reconciliation. He invites his readers (including you and me this Monday morning) to be ministers of that reconciliation. He calls us ambassadors of that work. Ambassadors for Christ. Who knew?

So as the sun rises on your new year, how will you carry out that ministry? How will you represent God’s new work in the world? How will you participate in it? How will you open yourself so that it can happen in your life, in your heart, in this day which the Lord has made, in the coming year which will be filled with challenge, opportunity and surprises.

– Jay Sidebotham

Contact:

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