Hi, Anxiety.

The anxiety with which we all contend is nothing new. Epictetus, first century Stoic philosopher said: Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems. Around the same time, Jesus spoke about anxiety in the Sermon on the Mount:

Therefore I tell you, 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?  

It sounds like Jesus was referring to the earthly things in the collect we heard yesterday in church (see above). To address anxiety, he tells disciples to change their perspective, to look up:

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

He continues with another example of anxiety-free living:

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 

Jesus invites disciples to a heavenward perspective. He says:

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.

How have you handled anxiety, in yourself or others? I have found that the least effective way for me to address someone else’s anxiety is to tell them not to be anxious. I have found that the least effective way for me to address my own anxiety (along with my own resentment and envy) is to try to power through it, to will it away. In my experience, the only way that anxiety has been lifted is by grace, a gift from a power greater than myself, by divine intervention. It’s led me to pray the prayer from Psalm 51, offered on Ash Wednesday among other times. The prayer? Create in me a clean heart.

No doubt about it. There’s plenty about which we might reasonably be anxious, on a global scale and in our own lives, as we look at the church, as we pray for friends and family members, as we project our own future, as we raise kids. We certainly can focus on those things. Wherever anxiety comes from, whether real or imagined concerns, our faith tells us that its relief comes by looking beyond the anxiety, or maybe more to the point, looking above the anxiety. That can involve trust. That can involve gratitude. That can happen in worship.

C. S. Lewis, who wrote a good deal about a heavenly perspective, put it this way: If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next…Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

Add to that a word from preacher C. H. Spurgeon: Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths. And a final invitation to do our best to take ourselves lightly, offered by Rabbi Ed Friedman: A major criterion for judging the anxiety level of any society is the loss of its capacity to be playful.

How will you respond to anxiety this week?

-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.

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Synergy

In our exploration of the spiritual life, we can come up with all kinds of ideas about who God is and what God expects of us. It’s easy to fall into images of God as a person or presence requiring us to prove ourselves, maybe like a college admissions committee or a prospective employer or the policeman who pulls you over for speeding or rolling through a stop sign (not that that’s ever happened to me). It’s easy to imagine that we have to show ourselves to be worthy of God’s attention and affection.

The collect we read in church yesterday (above) suggests another way of looking at things. It says that in the spiritual journey, God is working with us. We can see that kind of holy synergy in a passage from the letter to the Philippians, a letter which we’ve been reading in the Daily Lectionary. In that letter, written by Paul from a first century prison cell (Imagine what that was like!), Paul describes a holy synergy. In chapter 2, vv. 12, 13. He writes: Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do you see what I mean about synergy? We are to work out our salvation. We are not potted plants. We have a role. We have responsibility, ownership, stewardship. But it is indeed God who is at work in us to make it happen. That sounds like yesterday’s collect, which addresses God, saying that without God’s help we are not able to please God. In that collaborative process, where God’s powerful grace encounters our active gratitude, we pray to be led by the Holy Spirit, asking that the Spirit direct and rule our (unruly) hearts.

There is freedom here, the recognition that we are not alone, that it’s not all up to us. God is not sitting at the monitor getting ready to press the “smite” button when we mess up. We can believe that is true because of the incarnation, because Jesus came to live among us, to share our experience.

Along side the freedom, there is responsibility. Grace is not cheap. As saints through the ages have shown us, grace can be costly. For reasons that sometimes mystify me, God calls on us and maybe even counts on us to be part of furthering the Jesus movement, and building his kingdom. When that call feels daunting, as it did to so many biblical characters, we are not alone. When that call invites us to do things we’re not sure we can do, to do things we’re not worthy to do, a prayer like yesterday’s collect can reassure us that we’ve not been left hanging. We can give thanks that we have not been left alone:

Our hearts need to be directed, indeed they need to be ruled by the loving power of the Holy Spirit. How might we open our hearts to be so ruled, so guided this week? How about this synergistic idea: We will with God’s help.

-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

Something to boast about

One day in Lent, a bishop kneels at the altar rail, and pounding his chest, says: I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing. A priest comes and kneels next to him and says the same: I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing. A seminarian walks in, kneels and repeats: I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing. Priest leans over to the bishop and whispers: Look who thinks he’s nothing.

The point? We can brag about just about anything. Yesterday’s collect (above) brought to mind one of the greatest hymns in our tradition, Hymn 474: When I survey the wondrous cross. In particular, I remembered this stanza: Forbid it Lord that I should boast, save in the cross of Christ my God.

The collect speaks of those who make their boast of God’s mercy. Consider the things we boast about, or are at least tempted to boast about. We boast about education, zip code, income, about where our kids were accepted for college. We boast about tennis serve or golf score or how fast we can run a mile. We boast about being woke or being anti-woke. We boast about being orthodox or progressive. We boast about how religious we are, how well we know the liturgy or scripture or music. We can even boast about how humble we are.

The collect also speaks of God’s resistance to confidence in our own strength. So a related reflection: think about where we place our confidence. Both how we make our boast and where we place our confidence speak volumes about what we think is worthwhile, what we value. They say a lot about our identity.

St. Paul spent a lot of time thinking about boasting, probably because in his life long struggle to be more Christ-like, he contended with his own ego. In several places he describes his upbringing that made him think he was really swell, that God should be really pleased to have him on the team. His family roots, his education, his moral uprightness, his commitment to tradition were all things he could boast about.

In his letter to the Romans, he talks about the ways in which boasting runs at cross-purposes to God’s saving intention. Perhaps looking in the mirror, he comes down particularly hard on religious people (translate: good church goers) who imagine themselves to be better than those profligate people out there, whoever they may be. Read Romans 2:17-22 to see how he speaks about people who boast about their relationship to God because they are so well instructed in religious stuff, so sure that they are guides to others based on their superior religious credentials. It’s not the most attractive quality of religious people.

The letter to the Ephesians, attributed to Paul, says in chapter 2, verses 8-10 that we are saved by grace, a gift from God. We are not saved by works (our accomplishments, religious insight, basic delightfulness) lest any person should boast.

So what does it mean to boast, to brag on God’s mercy? It means among other things that we don’t have to brag on ourselves. That can actually be quite freeing. It means as well that our confidence rests not in our own strength, great one day and fleeting the next. Our confidence rests in the fact that we are loved (and accepted) by a grace from which we can never be separated. Never.

So it becomes a boast that doesn’t divide us from other people, does not force us to compare ourselves with others, but invites us to see ourselves as “woven into an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny,”, to quote Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yesterday’s prayer invites us to boast in God’s mercy. So here are a few questions you might want to consider this week: Where have I experienced God’s mercy? How can I remember on a daily basis that I have received that gift? Can I see that mercy as the defining principle of my life, the thing that assures my value, my worth?

It doesn’t mean that others things we value, and are even proud of, don’t matter. It does mean that those things are set in the right place in our lives, giving us freedom to live into the way of love. To borrow a neighboring church’s tagline, in light of God’s mercy, we can celebrate our forgiveness.

-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

True Religion

I suspect we have all heard people say that they are spiritual but not religious. The way I hear that comment is that being spiritual is a good thing. Being religious, not so much. There are all kinds of reasons why a negative view of religion might take hold.

On August 23, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about the precipitous decline in religious observance in our country. He attributes that in part to the ways religious leaders have embraced a particular political agenda. I can think of other reasons, including the ways religious leaders have abused power for sake of sex or money. In parish ministry, I’ve met too many people who’ve been wounded in encounters with church life. I often wonder why any of them come back. There are people who sense that religion is not relevant, indeed that it is terminally boring. One person said they prefer Rotary Club to the church, as the people at Rotary were kinder. Another person said they preferred attending a Durham Bulls game, a more successfully integrated gathering than any church he’d ever attended. You may think of other reasons to explain the decline.

Reflection on being religious is prompted by the collect we heard yesterday in church, above. It asks that God might increase in us true religion. So what is that true religion? How can we distinguish it from false religion?

The word “religion” is rarely used in the Bible. In the few times when it’s used, it’s not necessarily a positive thing. Jesus spent a lot of time and energy in opposition to religious leaders (the clergy) of his day.

But there is one passage in the New Testament letter of James which casts religion in a more positive light: Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. Maybe that gives us a hint about what true religion looks like.

In a new book on the teaching of Jesus, specifically on the Sermon on the Mount, Richard Rohr compares religion and the gospel. He says that religion is all the things you normally go through to meet God. The Gospel is the way you will see and think after you have met God. The Gospel is the effect of the God-encounter. He says that religion is the invitation. The gospel is the banquet, and by the gospel I take Richard Rohr to mean the good news of God’s grace, God’s unconditional love.

In this vision of religion, religion is not an end in itself. We may need to be reminded that it is a means, an instrument, an introduction to an encounter with the living God. In the 1930’s, Evelyn Underhill wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, with critique of the state of the church, and especially the clergy who had lost focus. She sent this reminder to the Archbishop: God is the interesting thing about religion and people are hungry for God.

Andrew Root, a Lutheran theologian, has written lately about how the church is in decline because the church has lost a sense of a transcendent God. We have domesticated the deity to the point where God is manageable, containable, limited, and not particularly relevant. His point is that the church is not the star of the story. God is the star of the story. For our purposes this morning, we might say that religion is not the star of the story. The liturgy, the music, the buildings, the brilliant sermons may all be wonderful, but they only represent true religion when they lead to encounter with the living God.

Our Christian faith finds that encounter in the person of Jesus, present now to us in all kinds of ways, in the preaching of his word, in the bread blessed and broken and given, in ministry to people in need as we seek and serve Christ in all persons. If religion does not assist us in these kinds of encounters, it may have lost its way.

Reflect on the meaning of true religion for you. How are you experiencing true religion? Are there ways in which you are engaging in religion that is not true? Can you see your religious practice as invitation to an encounter with God? Think about where you’ve had that kind of encounter. And carry this prayer with you this week, as you ask God to increase in us true religion.

-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

Power

What do Jimi Hendrix, Mahatma Gandhi and Michael Curry have in common? Apparently, each have said something along these lines: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” I thought of their common ground as I reflected on the collect heard in church yesterday (above). That prayer speaks about power and the church.

When we talk about power and the church, the mind can easily go to ways the church over centuries has identified with those with power in this world. These have not been the church’s best moments. Go all the way back to Constantine, who found it useful to identify the Christian faith as the faith of the Roman empire. Consider the ways that church leaders have linked up with political or military enterprises like the crusades or colonial enterprises. In the category of nothing new under the sun, we currently find church leaders cozying up to political and economic powers of the day. I’ve succumbed to that as a parish priest, when I paid a bit more attention to parishioners who made big pledges or who had influence that might help me to be a successful rector (whatever that means).

Let’s take a closer look at the collect. It says that it is God’s power, not our own, that makes the difference. It is the Holy Spirit that gathers people in community. Not us.

I’ve been reading books by Andrew Root, a Lutheran theologian, who has a lot to say about the church these days, and especially its decline. My best reading of his message is that the contemporary church needs to increase focus on the transcendence of God. He says we live too much in the immanent frame, acting as if God is spectator, maybe a sleepy one at that. Here’s a way to understand what he means. He says: The church is not the star of the story. God is the star of the story.

It is God’s power that, through the Holy Spirit, will allow the church to gather in unity. When I think about the kind of wacky characters that populate our pews (and our pulpits), I can embrace the notion that it is only by a power beyond ourselves that a powerful community can be brought together.

It is God’s power that shines through the church, as if the church is a stained glass window, radiant with beauty only when light (God’s light) shines through it. That can actually be delightfully good news for the church. We don’t need to rely on our own ingenuity or innovation, our crafty, creative cleverness to bring the impact God intends for the church to have in the world. We simply are called to rely on the power of love (not the love of power). We are called to trust in it.

Last Saturday was the 60^th anniversary of the March on Washington, when the dream of Martin Luther King was proclaimed in one of the most powerful speeches of the 20^th century. The speech, in keeping with Dr. King’s ministry, relied on the power of God, the power of love, the conviction (which Dr. King learned from Gandhiji) that non-violence bore its own transcendent and transforming power.

The vision of Dr. King’s dream may seem now to be clouded or fading in some places (e.g., tragic events on that same Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida, an explicit hate crime fueled in part by public divisive discourse), I remain hopeful that the power Dr. King invoked, the power of love, is what our broken world needs now. The church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can shine with that power.

Let me add one more voice to Jimi Hendrix, Mahatma Gandhi and Michael Curry. It’s St. Paul, who in the beginning of his letter to the Romans spoke of power. He said, in the theme verses of that letter (Romans 1:16, 17) that he was not ashamed of the gospel because it was the power of God, the power of love. The Greek word for power which he uses in that letter is dunamis, which shows up in our lingo as dynamic or even dynamite.

The church has been given access to that transforming, indeed explosive power. Too often, we stand in the way of its activity, or act like it’s something we have to conjure up, or simply ignore it. But it is there for us. Pray with me for that power to be unleashed.

-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

WWJD

My preparation for yesterday’s sermon got me thinking about those WWJD bracelets. What would Jesus do? Excellent question. Perhaps it comes with being an Anglican, but I regard the question with ambivalence. That ambivalence was captured by Nadia Bolz Weber in a recent sermon. She said: “When I’m struggling in life, I don’t know if ‘What would Jesus do?” is the most helpful question. What would Jesus do? I don’t know. Something super cool like raise the dead or cast out demons or turn water into wine…none of which feel like a fair test of faith for someone who can’t even remember to send thank you notes.”

The collect heard yesterday in church (see above) offers insight into what Jesus would do. The collect talks about the ministry of Jesus in this twofold way. He came as sacrifice. He came as example. As sacrifice, what he did was something we could not do for ourselves. As example, what he did is apparently something we might also be able to do. Which gives us a fair amount to think about this Monday morning as we pose the question: WWJD?

First, Jesus comes to be for us a sacrifice. Over the centuries, the notion of sacrifice and atonement has been variously interpreted by people a lot smarter than I am. What I know is that it matters a great deal how we think about ourselves and our God as we reflect on the meaning of sacrifice. I like how Marcus Borg stated it: Sacrifice for sin means that God has already taken care of whatever it is that we think separates us from God.

It’s a reminder that we need help from beyond our own selves. In whatever way sacrifice is understood, the point of the collect is that what God did in Christ is something which we are to receive thankfully. We are beneficiaries, enjoying the fruits of his redeeming work. It’s a reminder that all is grace. We need not, in fact we cannot earn those fruits. That attitude of gratitude is the foundation of our spiritual life, which is why Meister Eckhart said that the only word we need to say in prayer is thanks. What would Jesus do? He would do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, which should keep us humble, hopeful and grateful.

Second, Jesus provides for us an example. There are ways that we can imitate Christ, ways we can follow in his footsteps, ways we can be more like him. When Jesus washed disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, he told them to do the same thing to each other, to take on the role of a servant. Repeatedly, Jesus invited his disciples to take up the cross and follow him. He told his followers to love one another as he has loved them. Those are our marching orders.

And that is where those little bracelets might come in handy, as they invite us to be like Christ. St. Paul told the Christians gathered in the church in Philippi to have the mind of Christ. He told the Christians in Rome to welcome one another as Christ had welcomed them.

So with the help of yesterday’s collect, we gratefully commit to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life. What does it look like for you to follow Jesus’ example this week?

-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

Ask for it

What does yesterday’s collect (see above) say about what we believe? It asserts that we need the spirit to think and do those things that are right. We need God’s help to live according to God’s will. It’s the counter-punch to the adage: God helps those who help themselves. Many people think that adage comes from scripture. It may convey the spirit of our age, a commitment to rugged individualism. But it’s not in the Bible. So where does that leave us?

Yesterday’s collect reminded me of the seventh chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Roman church. In that chapter, in a most personal way, St. Paul describes his own spiritual crisis, maybe even a breakdown.

The first chapters of this important letter have been focused on the human condition, how all of us are caught up in powers beyond our control, powers greater than ourselves. Paul speaks of the power of Christ to bring new life. Deep theological stuff. A broad vision covering all of history. Then in the seventh chapter, he gets personal, speaking about challenges he has faced in his own spiritual journey.

He writes: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that, when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand… Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

I know not everyone likes St. Paul. Some regard him as cranky and legalistic. But for me, St. Paul is a spiritual hero. He recognizes and wrestles with his urges to be a control freak. I get that. (Maybe it’s an occupational hazard for clergy.) He was willing to share his struggles. One of the marks of great spiritual leaders is transparency, a revelatory dimension that shows the ways they work on their own spiritual lives, the ways they work on their own discipleship. St. Paul shares that in this and other letters.

We don’t know the particulars of St. Paul’s struggles, but it is clear he feels ill equipped to meet them. He believes he lacks resources in himself to overcome them. I am grateful that his struggle is included in scripture. It offers freedom to move forward. It offers permission to recognize our own imperfections. It offers companionship and comfort: “I’m not the only one who struggles.” And it points to a place to find help.

A wise friend and mentor, the Rev. Carol Anderson, told me a story about leading a church when she had no money, and no music. She knew she needed music. So she prayed for a musician who could help. Shortly thereafter, a Juilliard PhD student in piano called to ask if the church needed help. The student arrived with about eight musicians. As an additional gift, Carol was offering an evening service, again, in dire need of musical leadership. In short order, a very accomplished jazz bass player, who had a gig in the Village, and who had Sunday nights off, arrived with a few pals to “help”. The lesson that my friend and mentor took from this? She said: What is the thing, now, you cannot do without God’s help? Ask for it. This was her experience: To say that God will give us more than we can desire or pray is an understatement.

I’m wondering what is the thing you face this week that you just know you cannot do without God’s help. A relationship? A predicament? An inner struggle? Ask God to work precisely in that place. See what happens. Pray the collect which asks that we, who cannot exist without God, may by God be enabled to live according to God’s will.

-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

Disquietude

Yesterday in church we observed the Feast of the Transfiguration. Many, if not most, of the feast days in the church calendar recognize a person. From time to time, we remember an event in Jesus’ life or in the lives of one of his followers. This year, August 6 fell on a Sunday, so in church we focused on this mysterious story of Jesus taking his best buddies up a mountain. (Read about it here: Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9:2-13, and/or Luke 9:28-36.) There they experience this remarkable event, with special effects that would make Steven Spielberg jealous. We know it’s an important event because we not only celebrate it in August. It also shows up each year at the end of the season of Epiphany, right before we transition into the season of Lent.

Have a look at the collect for this feast day, included above. The word that caught my attention was disquietude, a word I don’t think I’ve ever used in a sentence. I looked it up to find that the word suggests anxiety or agitation. I thought: Well, that’s a word that might prove useful in all that we face in our world these days. Whatever anxiety or agitation you feel, prompted by what you see on the news, or what you experience at work or at home, what do you think is the key to deliverance from disquietude, which is the focus of this prayer?

A scan of biblical stories indicates that mountaintop experiences are places where that kind of deliverance can come. Has that ever been your experience? Religious leaders from all kinds of traditions head for the hills to figure things out, to find wisdom. Moses climbed a mountain to have his encounter with the Holy One. When he was beset with disquietude, Elijah went to Mt. Horeb where the divine presence was revealed in a still small voice. Matthew tells us that Jesus gave his seminal teaching in a sermon on the mount. And for Peter, James and John, the mountaintop experience provided a chance to “behold the King in all his beauty.”

The revelation that came to those disciples on top of that mountain was indeed a gift, prompted by God’s gracious revelation. At the same time, they had a part to play. They had to climb the mountain. Whether or not they knew something would happen, they intentionally pulled away from routine making room for this encounter.

So here we are at the outset of August. For some, the summer months provide an interlude before all kinds of activities crank up in the fall. It can be a useful time for retreat, opening the way for deliverance from disquietude. Maybe you can find some kind of mountaintop experience this week or this month, a way to take the long view and gain some perspective.

That may take intentionality on your part. We can practice that kind of intentionality on small scale, a few minutes of quiet each morning. A walk in the park. A break from screen time. A stop by a local church for some kneeling prayer. Shavasana.

My guess is that we each know something about disquietude. Whatever your version of that state of mind, pray for deliverance. Pray for the vision to take the longer view, to see something of Jesus in his beauty. Pray for the help of Jesus who spoke to the storm and said, “Peace be still.” And know that your prayer can be offered not only with your lips but with your life. What might that look like as we move through this week?

-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

Life is Short

Life is short and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love. Make haste to be kind. And the blessing of God be with you.

I had the privilege of introducing this blessing to a congregation where I was serving. They thought I was brilliant. It became Jay’s blessing, despite how many times I told them that it had been used in many churches, and that the prayer apparently was originally crafted in the 19^th century by a Swiss philosopher, poet and critic named Henri Frederic Amiel. None of that seemed convincing, and I’ve had worse things happen in church than getting credit for something I didn’t do. Regardless of source, I have been struck with how this prayer resonates with people. I have wondered why it is so engaging.

It may be the directness of its start. The older we get, the more we recognize the fleeting aspect of life. That’s hardly news, as the psalmist notes that even those who stand erect are but a puff of wind (39:5), or that our days are like a passing shadow (144:4). Accordingly, we recognize the wisdom of the collect heard yesterday in church (see above) which offers prayer that we may pass through things temporal without losing sight of things that are eternal.

Think with me about the things that are temporal. They are fleeting. Early in my ministry, in the cocky snarkiness that can mark those who have been recently ordained, I made a slightly derisive comment about someone who was only serving in an interim capacity in a church, bless their heart. The wise person who heard the comment responded: “Jay, we’re all interim.” I’ve not forgotten that. It’s useful to keep that temporal aspect in mind. It can help us through rough passages. “This too shall pass.” It can also help with some immunity to hubris. It can prevent us from giving our hearts to that which will not ultimately satisfy our hearts.

It does not mean we focus only on pie in the sky and forget about the ministry we’re given to do right now. C.S.Lewis put it this way: “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.” He said: “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”

Think with me about the things that are eternal. In St. Paul’s famous hymn in I Corinthians 13, he concludes by saying that in the end, faith, hope and love will abide but the greatest of these is love. In some respects, faith and hope are by definition temporal. There will come a time when we no longer walk by faith, but by sight. Hope anticipates something that will come, with the implication that there will be a time when hope will not be necessary. But love does not end. Someone once posed this question about heaven: “Will everyone I love be there?” A wise person responded: “Even better. You will love everyone who is there.”

Think this week about how you might focus on the eternal. It matters. More from C.S.Lewis: “It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.” Maybe that kind of eternal focus will come with a prayer for vision, maybe a repetition of this week’s collect. Maybe it will come with a prayerful act of love, unconditionally offered, expecting nothing in return. Life is indeed short, but whatever time we have is filled with opportunity to be swift to love, and to make haste to be kind. Those opportunities when met have lasting value.

-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

It’s okay

He came pretty regularly to church, at the outset mostly for the sake of wife and kids. We had any number of conversations about why faith didn’t make sense to him. It might have been generous to call him an agnostic. He was one of the smartest people I’d met in church, a well-read philosophy major. I was no match for the intellectual sparring, but he kept coming to church.

After a while, he made an appointment to tell me that he had come to a place where faith actually did make sense. He seemed to affirm the adage that faith is more often caught than taught. Slowly, over time, after hanging around the community, he was becoming a believer, in his own way. He offered his synopsis of the gospel. He said that the gospel sounded to him like this: I’m not okay. You’re not okay. And that’s okay.

I wanted to fine-tune that. But I believed he had grasped a basic truth. Maybe without knowing it, he was underscoring the message of the collect we read in church yesterday (above).

In a nutshell, the collect says we need help. The collect says that God knows our necessities, our ignorance, our weakness, our unworthiness, our blindness. An interesting if not entirely chipper assessment of the human condition. The collect also suggests that God, the fountain of all wisdom, is not surprised by any of this. God knows all this about us. And God hangs in there with us anyway.

We’ve been reading Paul’s letter to the Romans on Sundays. One of the key points the apostle makes in that letter is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No exceptions. But that’s not the whole story, because Paul describes in soaring language the marvel and mystery that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing, not even our deficits. We call that grace. It’s amazing.

Here’s one way to know what love is. It’s when someone in your life knows the bad or dumb things you’ve done, knows your quirks and deficits, and loves you still. Parents on a good day show that kind of love. Spouses can do that. It doesn’t happen enough in church, where contrary to the gospel, we often act like we expect people to have it all together. We are often less than gentle with other people’s failings, even if we coddle our own.

Our faith tells us about the wideness of God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea. To the extent that we’re able to grasp that, to believe that, to trust that, we have heard the gospel. We are saved from the ways in which our world makes everything conditional, the persistent ways that our world tells us we don’t measure up, tells us we’re just not good enough.

When I began my course of study at Union Seminary, we had a week of orientation. I’d been out of school for a while and I was excited about a return to serious academic work. Heady stuff. One of the speakers at orientation was James Forbes, seminary professor who went on to be Senior Pastor at Riverside Church. He said he had just one bit of advice for us students. Memorize Psalm 139. He said it would change our lives. I thought: I didn’t come to this high-falutin’place to memorize bible verses. I did that in Sunday School.

But I took him up on it. Years later, I can still recite a good amount of the chapter. Have a look at that psalm this week and think about why he recommended it. Think about how it might be transformative. The premise of the psalm, thousands of years old, says that God knows us better than ourselves. (Just a few of the verses are printed above) God knows all the ways we fall short. With all that knowledge, God still is with us and for us. On some holy level, in some divine economy, it’s all okay.

I believe that good news a fair amount of the time. Sometimes I find it hard to believe and I don’t act as if it is true. But to the extent I can embrace that good news, it provides a way to live in the world, a break from all the ways that I regard love as conditional. It means that my necessities, my weakness, ignorance, unworthiness do not define or limit me. I hope I can receive the grace to live into that truth, and to regard others with a bit of the grace that God extends to me.

-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