Monthly Archives: March 2020

Monday Matters (March 30, 2020)

March 30, 2020

The wound is the place where the Light enters in.

-Rumi

There is a crack in everything God has made.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

-Leonard Cohen

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.

-Matthew 10:1

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

-Revelation 22

Healing Prayer

I don’t know if you have this experience, but as someone who has been hanging around the church for a while, I’m continually surprised with the ways that words I’ve said over and over, hymn texts I’ve sung a million times, familiar passages of scripture come to life, striking me as if I’ve never heard them before. I confess (spiritual shallowness alert) that it can become routine. I can get bored or distracted. My mind can wander in worship. And then a phrase will come to life and grab my attention. I take that to be the enlivening work of the Holy Spirit, breathing new insight into old forms, maybe even resurrecting them.

Some of you know that in response to the current health crisis, and my own self-quarantining, I’m leading online Morning Prayer on weekday mornings (You’re welcome to join us weekdays on St. James’ Parish, Wilmington Facebook page.) It’s been a hugely helpful spiritual exercise for me this Lent. Though I can’t see or hear those on the call, I sense their prayers and presence, as we spend time each morning praying for healing in this unprecedented season.

I’ve said Morning Prayer maybe six bazillion times…not a boast, just an observation…but what has struck me anew since we started this discipline is the couplet from the suffrages (where officiant and people pray responsively). It’s taken from Psalm 67: Let your ways be known on earth, your saving health among all nations. As the global maps on TV show us contending with this crisis in almost every region, we are praying each morning for God’s saving health among all nations.

Reflect with me on those words. What do we mean by God’s saving health? The phrase is redundant. Salvation is about healing. It is about being made whole. It is the work God does. It is the work Jesus came to do. It is the work passed on to the church.

And maybe that healing work is a way to describe everything the church is called to do, healing of body, mind, spirit, memory, relationship. Healing as peacemaking. Healing as the work of social justice. Healing as priorities set forth by our Presiding Bishop, himself a healer, calling us to racial reconciliation, creation care and proclamation of good news.

It’s mysterious work for sure, for all kinds of reasons. For starters, healing is not the same as cure. Why are some fervent prayers apparently answered and others are not? That goes on my list of questions for the pearly gates. Then there’s the mystery of why this kind of suffering is allowed at all. And all of it is made more complicated by bad theology, those crazy, craven corners of Christendom which regard this crisis as God’s judgment, or seeks to blame this crisis on others, foreigners or people with different political or social points of view or whatever serves their purposes.

We live with the questions, seeing through a glass darkly as St. Paul noted. In the meanwhile, we’re asked to think about how we might be healers this week, in these unusual days in which we live. It’s a ministry accessible to everyone, because everyone can pray, even if it’s the eloquent one-word prayer: help! We pray for God’s saving health to be known among all nations. And we allow our prayer to turn into action. Support for hospital workers. Donations to fund meals for school kids. Phone calls to those who are anxious or alone. Agitating advocacy to make sure our leaders are on their game as healers.

Carry with you today these questions posed by wounded healer, Henri Nouwen: “Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone’s face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love?These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.”

-Jay Sidebotham

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

RenewalWorks For Me is a personal guide for the spiritual journey, providing coaching to help individuals grow. It begins with a brief online survey which assesses where you are in your spiritual life. We call it the Spiritual Life Inventory.

Once your responses have been processed, we’ll email a helpful explanation of our findings, along with some tips for improving your spiritual journey. You’ll also be given a chance to sign up for an eight-week series of emails that will offer some suggestions, coaching for how you can grow spiritually, and ways you can go deeper in love of God and neighbor. Learn more at renewalworks.org

Monday Matters (March 23, 2020)

March 23, 2020

Dear People of God:

The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

-From the liturgy for Ash Wednesday page 264 in the Book of Common Prayer

Invitation to Lent

My wife sometimes tells me I would have made a good monk. I don’t know if that’s compliment or complaint. I am finding that social distancing is not as challenging for me as it might be for some of my more extroverted colleagues. It does strike me as strangely appropriate that we contend with all of this in the season of Lent. So here we are. Here’s what we’ve been given. So the persistent faith question: What will we do with what we’ve been given?

The season of Lent has specific intentions, articulated in the liturgy for Ash Wednesday. The officiant invites people to the observance of a holy Lent (included above). I’ve been thinking about those intentions, reflecting on how we respond to them in this particular, peculiar, perilous season:

Self-examination: Unsettling global events have a way of driving self-examination. Add to that isolation and we have time and space to reflect on our own lives. What do we value? What is important? Where are we giving our hearts? We see too many examples of the unexamined life. Case in point, from the shores of Florida as hordes of revelers flocked to the beach. One told a journalist: “If I get Corona, I get Corona. At the end of the day, I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying.” I don’t mean to pick on the kid. I just wonder if he holds up any kind of mirror for me.

Repentance: One of the challenges of school closings is that we have millions of kids who won’t have meals otherwise. How did that happen in a country of such prosperity? This is just one example of the need for a collective change of direction, which is what repentance is all about. Where else do we hear the call to repentance, as a community and as individuals? How can we turn from a life focused on self and move in the direction of a life focused on others?

Prayer: As I said last week, in times like this, prayer should be first response, not last resort. A friend told me that her pastor once said from the pulpit that he had gone through a personal crisis and had tried everything. Nothing worked. So he decided to pray about it. A last resort, perhaps a rare moment of candor from clergy, the admission that in many ways, for much of the time, we are functional atheists. What would it mean to recognize God’s presence in the thick of this current mess? What would it mean to talk with God about that, a lot? To draw on strength beyond ourselves, the kind of help we now need? To pray without ceasing, as St. Paul advises.

Fasting: In Lent, that can mean going without food, booze, sweets. Maybe some fasts will be presented to us without our choosing. We may find that some things we considered to be necessities of life suddenly aren’t so important. The New Yorker cartoon shows the guy forced to work at home. Caption: It’s true. All those meetings could have just been emails!

Self-denial: Self-quarantine is just one example. It’s no fun, especially for those non-monks among us. But if ever there was a time to get ourselves out of the way and focus on others, focus on the greater good, this might be it. What might we give up for the sake of others? How might we orient our energies towards workers who lost their jobs? What creative, compassionate responses can we offer for people who work in hospitality industries? What can we do for folks under the radar: elderly living alone, homeless under the bridge, parents losing sleep in the middle of the night over unpaid bills, health workers lacking equipment they need? The list goes on.

Reading and meditating on God’s holy Word: You don’t have to dig deep to find biblical stories that parallel our current crisis. I don’t simply mean the various plagues visited on biblical peoples. I think of the oppression of the Pharaohs, the exodus through the wilderness, exile from homeland, the way of the cross, the persecution of the early church. The psalms are filled with stories of folks who feel like God has abandoned them. In other words, what we experience has been experienced before, in varied form. And God was present in it all.

Can you see how the intentions of the Lenten season correspond to this moment? As grim as it may seem, as cloudy the future, as people of faith, we can withstand when we can’t understand. We can proclaim when we can’t explain. And here’s what we proclaim this Monday morning: People of faith have made the journey through this kind of thing before. They came to realize, as we will, that they were not left alone in that journey. They discovered that dead ends can indeed become thresholds. And as Julian of Norwich said, as her ministry unfolded in the midst of plague, they knew that in the end, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

-Jay Sidebotham

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

Monday Matters (March 16, 2020)

March 16, 2020

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God

Here we receive an invaluable practical lesson in the art of prayer, and prayer, be it remembered, is our only means of returning to our communion with God.

The great essential for success in prayer…is that we first attain some degree of peace of mind. This true, interior soul-peace was known to the mystics as serenity, and they are never tired of telling us that serenity is the grand passport to the Presence of God.

It is serenity, that fundamental tranquility of the soul, that Jesus refers to by the word “peace”, the peace that passes all human understanding. The peacemakers spoken of in this Beatitude are those who make or bring about this true peace or serenity in their own souls, for it is they who surmount limitation and become actually and not merely potentially the children of god.

As long as there is fear, or resentment, or any trouble in your heart, that is to say, as long as you lack serenity, or peace, it is not possible for you to attain very much.

Excerpts from Emmet Fox’ book THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

Blessed are the peacemakers

Jesus said: Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled. And do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

In 1993, Yasir Arafat, Palestinian leader and Yitzhak Rabin, leader of Israel, met on the White House lawn to announce a peace agreement. Here’s what I remember: Mr. Rabin looked pained in the process. He noted that you don’t make peace with friends. You make peace with your enemies, with those who oppose you, maybe those who hate you. Peacemaking is work. Hard work. It ultimately cost Mr. Rabin his life.

There are lots of ways to think about peacemaking. It’s something to consider in this extraordinary season, with our focus on health issues. How will do the hard work of peacemaking? What will it take to manage the understandable anxiety that has a grip on us? How do we move to peace of mind? Will that be hard to do? Does our faith have anything to say in this moment?

I’m mindful of all the places in scripture where we’re told to live free of anxiety and worry. Is that naïve? Pie in the sky? Bobby McFerrin singing “Don’t worry. Be happy”? Again and again, the biblical record points to peace of mind in the most anxiety producing situations. In the book of Isaiah (26:3) we read: You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. In the book of Lamentations (3:22-24), the prophet Jeremiah makes this claim: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,”therefore I will hope in him.” These prophets do the hard work of peacemaking, issuing a call to faith when exile loomed large, and anxiety was a most reasonable response.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” He cites the birds of the air and lilies of the field as models of life free of anxiety. This preached by a man who knew his journey headed for the cross, in a gospel written at the end of the first century after Jerusalem had been destroyed and the church experienced persecution.

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul writes: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This was not written from the splendor of fancy rectory or academic ivory tower but from a prison cell. Imagine what such a place was like in the first century? What would it take to be a peacemaker in those circumstances, to speak of rejoicing and gratitude and not worrying?

This week, how can we be peacemakers, specifically making peace in the face of our own anxiety and the anxiety surrounding us? Is such a thing even possible? Like peacemaking between Rabin and Arafat, it will take work. It’s counter-intuitive, to put it mildly. It doesn’t mean we ignore or minimize the health crisis. It’s real. It’s big. Perhaps unprecedented. It doesn’t mean it will be easy or free of pain.

It does mean that the witness of scripture is that people discover the peace of God in the middle of the storm (and we’re in one now). That takes faith, trust, confidence that while we may not know what the future holds, we know the one who holds the future.

I’ve been thinking of the line of the hymn: “O what peace we often forfeit, o what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” For people of faith, this is time to claim the power of prayer, not as last resort, but as first response. We are called to engage in healing prayer, to pray for our leaders, to pray for those who care for those who are sick. Our prayers are not withdrawal from the problem. They are not denial. They indicate the intention, the hard work of trust.

Then we allow our prayers to guide our action in the world: reaching out to the most vulnerable and fearful, helping those facing hardship because of changes in their work situation. Maybe in your social distancing you can send a note each day to someone who is alone, or reach out by phone or Facetime or email or text. Maybe you can support (directly or through your representatives in government) those in need, for instance, students who depend on schools for meals, workers who scramble for child-care.

It may be hard to be a peacemaker in this moment, to overcome anxiety with trust in God. In many ways, it’s a leap of faith. And that’s the work before us this week. Thank God we’re not alone in this.

-Jay Sidebotham

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

Monday Matters (March 9, 2020)

March 9, 2020

And as John the Baptist watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.

-John 1:36-39

For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Jesus Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change. When Jesus said, “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened,” he assumed we would grow weary, discouraged, and disheartened along the way. These words are a touching testimony to the genuine humanness of Jesus. He had no romantic notion of the cost of discipleship. He knew that following him was as unsentimental as duty, as demanding as love.

-Brennan Manning

To be a disciple

Scott Gunn, fearless and creative leader of Forward Movement, speaks often about the mission of the organization he leads. He knows that many people think of it as a publishing business. Others think of it as a pamphlet business. Others think of it as that marvelous exercise known as Lent Madness, a particular, perhaps peculiar (dare I say screwball) invention of Scott and his buddy, Tim Schenck, to teach us more about saints. I suspect all of the above are true.

But at heart, Scott says that Forward Movement is a discipleship business. As we make our way through the season of Lent, I’m mindful that perhaps that is the business not only of Forward Movement but of the whole church in its varied expressions, always and everywhere addressing these questions: What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? How do we become such? Are we actually interested in having that happen, or is at all just a little too religious?

As I say, this Lenten season has given me ample opportunity to think about all this. Our church in small group is reading a beautiful (and succinct) book by former Archbishop Rowan Williams. I commend it to you. He’s a disciple of significant brain power. This simple book opens with the following description of disciples. Being a disciple means two things:

That what we do, how we think, speak and act is open to Christ
As church, that we continue to be a learning community, growing in depth of love of God and neighbor

An interesting summation. I wonder how it strikes you. It means, first of all, in all of life, being open to Christ. I see that openness in the ways Jesus called his disciples. This past weekend, our youth met in retreat around the theme of the three words Jesus said to would-be disciples when they expressed curiosity. He said: “Come and see.” This old ad guy can only think of the ancient commercial with this punch line: “Try it. You’ll like it.”

That is the kind of openness we read about yesterday at church when Nicodemus comes to Jesus (John 3) with his own questions about the spiritual life. Nicodemus wonders how someone like him, who has been around the block a few times, can possibly be born again. He begins a journey that ultimately led him to one of the most precious and holy acts of devotion in the Bible (John 20). He and Joseph of Arimathea take the broken body of Jesus off the cross and place it in the tomb (ready for resurrection), a courageous act of worship, marked by bravery and love, which after all is what courage is all about.

In Mark’s gospel in the daily lectionary, we’ve been reading about the call of Jesus to his disciples. It’s even more succinct than “Come and see.” He simply says “Follow me.” Quite remarkably, fishermen and tax collectors do it, instantly changing course, launching a journey marked by openness in everything they did to Christ. So this Monday morning in Lent, take a spiritual selfie and note the degree to which you are open to Christ in your life. What are the obstacles to that happening?

And then think about that second dimension of discipleship, being part of a learning community, knowing that the word disciple relates to being a student or a learner. Wherever we are in the journey, there is always more for us to come to understand. The mysteries of God’s ways in the world know no limits in depth or breadth. God’s love extends beyond our understanding or imagination, for sure. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn more about it. Use this season, use your church as a place to take the next steps of discovery as you hear Jesus say to you this morning: “Come and see,” as he gets right in your face and lovingly says: “Follow me.”

-Jay Sidebotham

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

Monday Matters (March 2, 2020)

March 2, 2020

He divided the sea and let them pass through it, and made the waters stand like a heap.

In the daytime he led them with a cloud and all night long with a fiery light.
He split rocks open in the wilderness, and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.

He made streams come out of the rock, and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God, saying, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”

-Psalm 78:13-19

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness

-John Muir

To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken.

But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness – you shall love him.

-Frederick Buechner

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

-Thomas Merton

Can God set a table in the wilderness?

It’s one of the persistent images in scripture. Moses spends 40 years in the wilderness before he is called to liberate the children of Israel from Pharaoh’s oppression. Once delivered, after marching through the Red Sea, the children of Israel wander for 40 years in the wilderness, tracing a rather circuitous route. Israel in exile sought a path home through the wilderness, a trackless waste with no cell phone or GPS.

Episcopal Church Memes
(Cartoon by Dan Reynolds)

The voice of John the Baptist was heard crying in the wilderness. And immediately after his dramatic baptism replete with heavens opening, doves descending and divine voices booming, Jesus is driven in the wilderness by the Spirit where he is tested by the devil, as we read yesterday in church. The season of Lent, now underway, is compared to several of these stories, a time spent in the wilderness, wandering and all the while wondering in the language of Psalm 78: Can God set a table in the wilderness? Good question.

The fact is, we don’t need the Bible to tell us about wilderness experience. I suspect we all know something about it, even those who are not exactly outdoorsy types. Some of my wilderness moments came in densely populated urban settings, lots of people around but no one around.

Wilderness can come when we enter uncharted territory. Wilderness can come when we contend with isolation. Wilderness can come with all kinds of experience of deprivation. Wilderness can come in response to a crisis of health or finances or employment or relationships or meaning. Wilderness can come with the sense of abandonment that accompanies grief. Just a few examples, illustrating wisdom I’ve shared before from one of my mentors who told his congregation: Suffering is the promise life always keeps. We’re all way too familiar with wilderness.

The church, again, presents Lent as a journey through the wilderness, a time marked by challenge. At the same time, for Moses it was the place where he received his call via a conversation with a burning bush. It was the place where the children of Israel were painstakingly formed as a nation. It provided a pathway home for a people in exile. It was the venue for John the Baptist to prepare the way of the Messiah. And it launched Jesus in his public ministry. So the answer, sometimes hard to believe, is that God can indeed set a table in the wilderness. In other words, it is a place from which something new can emerge.

Think of a time when you have felt like you were in the wilderness. What was that like? What brought you through? What did you learn?

The fact that we make our way through this season of Lent together means that on some level, we are all experiencing wilderness. As you navigate this journey, make it more than a season to just feel deprived, to feel more miserable-than-thou. See what God might have to teach you in this time. Ask for that kind of teaching. Put yourself in a place to hear that teaching. Maybe some quiet time each day. Maybe some reflection from people you think have wisdom. Maybe some act of kindness, accompanying someone else on their wilderness journey.

The children of Israel discovered that God could indeed set a table in the wilderness. Perhaps we can discover that too this week.

-Jay Sidebotham

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