Better times

It amazes me when I read the psalms to find that issues on the psalmist’s mind, expressed several thousand years ago, are issues we face these days. Who among us has not said: Oh, that we might see better times? How do we navigate that sense that things are going off the rails? People have posed these kinds of questions for centuries. Does this psalm, read yesterday in church and included above, have anything to say today, offering ways to navigate the times in which we live?

My wife and I went to hear Anne Lamott speak last week. It was great. She has a new book (her 20^th) and her presentation was given on her 70^th birthday. (Happy birthday, Anne! You are yourself a gift.) She is a deeply faithful person, even if in her theological reflections she throws in a few expletives. I especially love her take on prayer, by which she says that we only need three words to pray: thanks, help and wow.

That part about asking help is reflected in Psalm 4, and provides a way to approach those times when we wish for better times. The psalm begins by asking God to answer when we call. The psalm asks for help, for mercy.

The psalm carries this warning. Don’t run after false gods or dumb idols. Don’t give your heart to that which will not satisfy your heart. Doing so may feel like a quick fix, but it won’t get you where you want to go. I don’t know what the psalmist had in mind when mentioning dumb idols. What do you think they might be in our context?

The psalm also calls for a good look in the spiritual rear-view mirror, to see how God has acted in the past. The Hebrew Scriptures do that again and again, reminding the people of Israel to remember the ways that God has acted in salvific, healing, miraculous ways. We do that again and again in our prayers at eucharist, when we include a portion technically called anamnesis. That Greek word literally means not amnesia. Not forgetting. When we find ourselves in times of trouble, a dose of faithful retrospection can help us move forward.

The psalm also speaks of the power of silence, with a call to contemplative attentiveness, putting aside our own thoughts. Nicolas Malebranche, an 18^th century priest and philosopher, said it this way: Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul. (again, indicating wisdom from another era can help us in our own. There is actually nothing new under the sun.) That kind of attentiveness can be blocked by our hankering for better times. In silence, we can attend to what God has to teach us right now, even as that moment may be filled with challenge. It’s a way of saying “here we are.”

And in the end, it’s about where we put our trust. An old hymn has this refrain: We may not know what the future holds, but we know the one who holds the future. For centuries, trust has been a key issue for people of faith, the confidence that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, even if we don’t experience that reality right this second. That kind of trust is a spiritual practice, something we get stronger in when we exercise it. Based on that trust, we can lie down and fall asleep. We can be at peace.

We may long for better times. But we are where we are. The good news this Monday morning is that God is with us.

-Jay Sidebotham

Remember me?

How often do you think about how you will be remembered?

A friend tells me about a fellow who leads his bible study. He begins with this prayer: “Good morning, God. This is Bob. Remember me?” It’s a far cry from Cranmer, and not the way I choose to approach the throne of the almighty creator of the universe. But Bob is on to something, the same thing that the author of the psalm read in church yesterday explores (see above).

The psalmist asks about what God will remember. When I run across this psalm, I’m struck by that concept that God in divine freedom has options about how we are remembered.

If, as we affirm in our tradition, God knows the secrets of our hearts, maybe knows us better than we know ourselves, it matters a great deal what God remembers about us. It’s unnerving for me to think that God has that kind of window into my soul with all its dark and unattractive corners.

We also affirm in our tradition that God regards us, warts and all, with grace and mercy, one of the great themes of the Lenten season. The psalmist appeals to that tradition, asking God to continue to regard us with compassion and love. The psalmist asks God not to focus on the goofy (or worse) things we did in our youth (or in our advanced age), but rather to regard us through the lens of unconditional love.

What difference does that make in our life?

It means we begin with belovedness. Our foundation is God’s mercy, a gift not to be taken for granted. For that, we offer thanks, with an attitude of gratitude that animates our worship. On the basis of that grace, our lives are meant to unfold in keeping with God’s covenant (Psalm 25:9).

It means that we are called to regard our neighbors and ourselves in a new, graceful light. Let’s start with ourselves. If God practices holy amnesia (a.k.a., mercy and forgiveness) towards things we’ve done wrong in the past, we can let those things go as well, hopefully learning from them, hopefully steering away from them in the future. It’s a matter for forgiving ourselves, sometimes hard to do. In fact, we sometimes shape our identity around the recollection of things we’ve done wrong.

Then as part of our expression of gratitude to God, we are called to holy remembering and holy forgetting towards those around us. We have the choice to spend our lives remembering bad things others have done to us, polishing resentments like trophies kept in a place of prominence and high visibility. Or we can regard each other with compassion and kindness, forgiving as we have been forgiven.

This week in Lent, enjoy your forgiveness (a tagline created for a local church, written by a friend who was a successful ad guy). As a Lenten discipline, think about how you might regard others with kindness, compassion, mercy, love and forgiveness. Consider what holy remembering means for you, as you look in the spiritual rear-view mirror to see how God has acted in your life.

But also consider holy forgetting, letting go of resentment, forgiving yourself and others, knowing that, as the psalmist says, God is full of compassion and mercy. As far as the east is from the west, so has God removed our sins from us (Psalm 103:8,12).

-Jay Sidebotham

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Trust

My parents divorced when I was a teenager. My mother then took on a role she neither wanted nor expected. She became a single parent of four siblings, which required some courage. Each member of our family navigated the changes as best we knew how. In retrospect, there are probably lots of things each one of us would have done differently, done better. But we were a bit at sea. Ground had definitely shifted.

Perhaps looking for resources to move forward herself, my mother expanded her role as spiritual leader in the family. She looked for ways to guide us faithfully through uncharted waters. One of the things she did was invite us (no, that’s not a strong enough word), she caused us to memorize the hymn text which begins:

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word.

She understood that each member of our family had experienced some shaking of the foundations. I thought of that hymn when I reflected on the psalm chosen for yesterday’s liturgies (see above). It suggests imagery that appears throughout the psalms, referring to God as rock, refuge, stronghold, firm foundation. I suspect each reader of this column has had some experience in which foundations were shaken, when sure footing seemed elusive. What was that experience for you? How did you find footing? Perhaps you’re in such a quicksandic moment this morning.

We don’t know the circumstances faced by the psalmist(s) who repeatedly refer to God as this solid footing, a shelter. But in each of these psalms, we hear a call to have trust. That need for trust has been part of the human experience ever since those psalms were written. In my moments of evening reflection, guided by meditations written by Howard Thurman, I recently came across this bit of wisdom about trust, about finding that holy support. Thurman wrote:

Teach me, O God, the simple lesson of trust. Bring into my sorely pressed spirit the sure confidence of birds floating in the sky with nothing to support them but the automatic trust of wings, or the sure confidence of fish that keeps them from drowning with nothing to save but the automatic use of their gills.

What can we learn from the birds of the air, or the fish of the sea? For that matter, what can we learn from the psalmist who claims that God is refuge and strength, that God is rock and salvation?

There are all kinds of reasons to think that such trust makes no sense, no more sense than the ability of a bird to soar. But that is the adventure of our faith. This week, carry with you the words of that familiar hymn. Here are a few more stanzas to take with you. Reflect on them. See if they apply to your life. (You’d make my mother happy, may she rest in peace.)

Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed!
For I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
the rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
for I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
my grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
the flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.
The soul that to Jesus hath fled for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
that soul, though all hell shall endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no, never, no, never forsake.

-Jay Sidebotham

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RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

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Speaking of the Devil

Margaret Mead was an active Episcopalian. She walked around New York City, short of stature but clearly in charge, wearing a long cloak (not unlike a cope) and brandishing a long walking stick (not unlike a crozier). One might have even mistaken her for a bishop.

She played a key role in the shaping of the service of Holy Baptism in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer book. She was initially invited to offer a guest consultation with the committee working on the liturgy. She ended up in charge of the committee and brought her own wit and wisdom to the proceedings.

I’m told that when they came to the part in the service when the renunciation of evil was framed in a series of questions, she argued for preservation of language about Satan. Some in her group said that modern people didn’t believe in Satan any more. Dr. Mead disagreed, informed not by her theological training as much as by her work as anthropologist. She insisted on the inclusion of this question: Do you renounce Satan and the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Granted popular culture has made discussion of the devil into something slightly comical, large red elf with barbed tail, pointy ears, pitchfork in hand, perhaps marketing hot sauce. Easy to dismiss. New Yorker cartoons which depict businessmen checking in at the front desk of Hades don’t help. But our Prayer Book, in the baptismal liturgy and in the collect we heard yesterday in church (see above), as well as our scripture, call us to take seriously the works of the devil, to recognize that we live in a world with devils filled that threaten to undo us, to borrow language from Martin Luther.

Dismissing cinematic or cartoonish renderings of the devil, we might want to note that the scripture sometimes refers to this destructive presence as an angel of light. The gospels tell us that Jesus came into the world to meet and beat that destructive presence. Jesus’ ministry couldn’t get off the ground until he had encountered this presence himself. In the wilderness, when Jesus was hungry and tired, the devil came offering food and power and worship, all good things. Jesus resisted, and began a ministry that sought to overcome the forces that would do us in, forces he met with arms stretched out on the cross, forces vanquished on Easter morning.

Our collect tells us that such a victory means the world to us. It means we can be children of God, heirs of eternal life, that we may be made like him. We need to hang on to that promise in our world with devils filled. The daily news shows how around the world forces of death and destruction fueled by greed and fear are breaking hearts, are breaking lives. We can see those forces at work not only far away, but also close to home and in our hearts. When G.K.Chesterton was asked in an interview what he thought was the problem with the world, he said: I am.

The victory we claim in Jesus is clearly not yet fully realized, which is why we are a people of hope. There’s a lot we have to hope for. A lot we have to wait for. But in our own encounter with forces that would threaten to undo us, we can claim the power of Jesus that can transform our hearts, that can heal our relationships, that can move us toward being a reconciling presence in our world. As the collect says, we can indeed become more like Christ. What might that look like for you this week?

-Jay Sidebotham

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RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule.  Sign up now!!

Learn more in our digital brochure.

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Getting religion right

Press pause this morning and ask yourself: What is religion all about? Is it about rules? Ritual? Being right in word and action? I almost have the alliteration out of my system. But let me suggest that it’s about relationship, an insight prompted by the collect we heard yesterday in church (see above).

For starters, let’s unpack what we think it means to be righteous, which folks often equate with being religious. Warning: the idea of being righteous easily slides over to being self-righteous, a downfall to which clergy are particularly susceptible. For some, being righteous means being right in one’s thinking, which in the world of religious thought often means somebody else must be wrong. For others, it means doing the right thing, because God is just waiting for us to veer offtrack, lightning bolt in hand.

St. Paul uses the term righteousness a lot, especially in his amazing letter to the Romans. I’ve been told that for him it suggested relationship. It was about being rightly related to God and to each other. It involved God’s gracious work in setting us in those right relationships, noting that, left to our own devices, we probably won’t get there.

Jesus apparently agreed with St. Paul (Isn’t that convenient?). When Jesus was put to the test, asked about how to inherit eternal life, he said that it’s simple, if not easy. It’s one thing, but really two. It’s about love of God and love of neighbor. In other words, it’s about relationship.

That is an echo of the central prayer of the Hebrew Scripture, the shema, which was to be repeated twice daily, affirming the worship of the one God by answering the call to love God and neighbor as described in the book of Deuteronomy.

In our liturgy, we note the centrality of relationship in the course of the Confession, when we admit we have not loved God with whole heart, body, mind. We have not loved neighbor as self. Those kinds of admissions are true every day of my life. We fall short. The vision of whole and holy relationship is a life goal. Maybe heaven is that place where we will actually, finally love in that kind of way.

I’m off today at a conference convened by the Presiding Bishop. You know, the guy who says that if it’s not about love, it’s not about God. The conference is entitled “It’s All About Love.” It will provide an exploration of the three key goals of Michael Curry’s tenure. We will reflect on racial reconciliation, creation care and evangelism, each of which has to do with relationships.

Michael Curry has helped us all recognize the inherent joy in a religion that seeks to build loving relationships. Clearly in our broken world, we have work to do in building those kind of relationships. Which is why we offer a prayer like we did yesterday in church. We ask for grace to love God more fully. We ask for grace to be united to one another in pure affection.

As you ask for that grace this week, how can you grow in seeing your life of faith as about relationship? What steps can you take, by God’s grace, to live more fully into those healed and holy relationships?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule.  Sign up now!!

Learn more in our digital brochure.

RenewalWorks – Digital Catalog

Never alone

Her extended battle with cancer, lasting over a couple years, did not diminish her poise or grace or strength. A bit of a steel magnolia, she navigated the illness and treatments with calm equanimity. On one of my visits as her rector, I mustered the courage to ask her how she did it. She smiled and looked at me as if to say: “O you poor clueless clergyman.” She was too kind to say that, but here’s what she did say: “You know, God never promised me wealth or health or even that I would be happy. But God did promise that I’d never be left alone.”

We talked about how she was experiencing God’s presence. Some of it had to do with the ways her faith community attended to her. She spoke of the support of spouse and other family members. And she spoke of her faith. She did not explicitly name the Holy Spirit. She didn’t need to.

The collect we heard in church yesterday (see above) is read on the Sunday after the Ascension Day. It references that mysterious moment when the risen Christ is taken up to heaven. My mind is too small to figure out the physics, logistics, or optics, but the upshot is that the disciples could have felt like they had been left alone, abandoned, that they were on their own. I feel like these are questions that would have been on the minds of the disciples, posed by Jesus’ ascension: What happens now? What’s next? Where do we go from here? Who will go with us? These are questions disciples still ask. I ask them a lot.

Jesus’ final words to his disciples, as told in the Gospel of Matthew, include the promise that he will be with them to the end of the ages. That promise is made to us as well. If someone asked you to describe the way that you sense that presence, what would you say? Do you have a sense of that presence?

These days, I can forget what I did or said yesterday, but I remember a series of talks given by Dr. James Kay, of Princeton Theological Seminary more than 30 years ago. He explored the variety of ways that people experience Christ’s presence, an interesting take on the various branches of the Jesus movement.

For some, perhaps in the Protestant tradition, Christ is present in the scripture, the word preached and heard. For others, Christ is present in the sacrament of bread and wine. And so we sing: “Come risen Lord and deign to be our guest. Nay, let us be thy guest. The feast is thine.” (Hymn 306) For some in Eastern traditions, Christ’s presence is experienced in iconography, just one of the ways that beauty mediates Christ’s presence in all of the arts, and especially in the beauty of creation, which we’re told is Christ’s artwork. For others, Christ’s presence is felt in the striving for justice and peace, in the work of liberation, as we hear Jesus’ words from the Gospel of Matthew: “As you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.” Mystics may experience Christ’s presence in times of prayerful silence.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does indicate the richness of the experience of Christ’s risen presence, as one we love but see no longer.

So folks, we’ve still got a few more days in the Easter season, given to remind us that our lives unfold in the presence of a risen savior who is still active in our lives, and who promised to never leave us alone. There are many ways to experience that liveliness. How are you experiencing it these days? In what ways might you wish to experience it more deeply? Pray towards that end this week.

-Jay Sidebotham

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RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth