The Liturgical Calendar: A Year of Colour

Perhaps I should back up even further and explain why we observe Advent at all. Spiritual teachers of many traditions have long taught that time is cyclical, rather than linear, and the Christian year is the way we observe the passage of time. The book of Ecclesiastes, one of the older books in the Hebrew Bible, says that “nothing is new under the sun,” and our Jewish ancestors teach that there is a sense in which we experience the same things again and again in life, coming full circle as we experience events and lessons in a different way each time we encounter them.

There is a rich tradition of story-telling in Judaism, where the story of the people- particularly their bondage and exodus from Egypt, their pilgrimage in the wilderness and entry into the Promised Land- are told again and again. This sets them apart as a people, reminding them of who they are and where they’ve come from. When the story is told again, they are proclaiming, in essence, “We are the ones who came up out of Egypt; this story is an inseparable part of us,” and there is a sense in which the whole drama happens again as the story is told.

The Christian year, beginning in Advent, serves more or less the same purpose. It reminds us of who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going. It enables us to enter into the great story of our faith and become actors in the unfolding drama of God’s work in the world. We begin in Advent because the world was longing to be made new before the birth of Christ and we are reminded that we are still waiting for that newness. It forces us out of our regular routines which act like everything’s okay in the world and reminds us that our attempts to be self-made are continually falling flat on their face, just as they were last year and the year before, and the year before that.

 

My colleague and mentor Tim O’Connor explains that as we near the festival of Christmas, we “turn around and look back” to that time long ago when God came among us as a tiny baby; but as the festival comes to an end and we near Epiphany, (January 6^th), we “turn right back around” and look toward the future, when God will at last make the world whole. We carry the spirit of Christmas with us into the rest of the liturgical year, remembering that God continues to walk along with us.

The lessons that we learn in Advent- that the world is broken, that we encounter a kind of hope (week one), peace (week two), joy (week three), and love (week four) in the Christ child that changes lives and makes the broken whole- we carry into the rest of the year. Just as Passover reminds our Jewish brothers and sisters who they are and where they’ve come from, so Advent and then Christmas remind us that things are not always as they seem. In a world of Christmas shopping, we remember our need for a Saviour. In a world where despair and greed seem to run rampant, we declare that a baby who joined us some 2000 years ago changes everything.

It is fitting that Advent is the way we begin the year anew because for all the declarations that things are not okay and we need someone to come intervene, it is ultimately a declaration of hope: outrageous, unreasonable, radical, hope. In our culture in particular, I have found that hope is in desperately short supply. We may sing jingles that “wish every day could be like Christmas,” but this is among the most common times of year for suicide attempts. Ours is a season which does not deny the pain of the world but which simultaneously declares that things are not as they seem. Hope- whole, deep, abiding hope- is on the way.

Things are Not Okay: Advent 1

I fear that in my excitement to begin waiting and watching, I have forgotten what this first bit of Advent is really about. Beginning on Sunday we have been lighting the “hope” candle, which tends to be associated for me with happy ideas like joy, love, and peace. We cannot really have hope, however, until we first acknowledge that things are not okay. Think about it: “hope” is not necessary for people when things are going well. Hope is the treasure of the broken, the hurting, and the lonely.

In our readings for Morning Prayer from the lectionary this week, we have been hearing, not a story of excitement over the coming Christ, but a story of brokenness and failure. In the readings from the prophets (Isaiah 1-2 and Amos 3-4), Israel is condemned for oppression and hypocrisy and the poor cry out for justice. In the Psalms, the people are surrounded by enemies and injustice on all sides, crying out to God for mercy. In the Gospels, we find John the Baptist crying out against the hypocrisy of religion many hundreds of years later, because things have not changed.

Part of why the oppression found in Israel is such a travesty is that these are the people whom God called apart to be a safe place for the hurting of the world: the strangers, the orphans, the widows, and the outcasts. Yet our readings for this first week of Advent cry out, “Things are not okay in the world!” It is a cry, not only of the Christian Church, but of the whole world. We long for something new, for justice and mercy and hope that things will not always be this way.

The Church too has been called to be a people set apart, a blessing to the strangers and outcasts in our lands; but we, like Israel, have become unjust and hypocritical instead. So in the first week of Advent, we are called to repent- to acknowledge that something is deeply wrong with the world and, not only can we not fix it, but we are a big part of it.

Yet the prophets do not leave their people in condemnation and the rhythm of Advent doesn’t leave us there either, as we come to the end of this first week. Even as we are reminded of the ways in which we’ve failed the world, failed God, and failed ourselves, we are given a promise: God is going to do something new among you. God has seen that you cannot be the blessing to the world on your own, so God will break into our time and space to dwell among us and be the justice we long for. The bad news is we can’t do it. The good news is that God can: and soon will.

Now, as I sit with my first Advent candle at the end of a long day, I think about the brokenness of the world and repent of my role in it, both personally any communally. Then I beg God to come and transform the mess we’ve made. I sit in stillness for a moment, and I blow out the candle with a sense of hope, knowing that by acknowledging my own inadequacy I have made space for God to come and dwell among us. Because God never barges in unwanted and uninvited. That, my friends, is the hope we profess this season: not a greeting card sentiment, but a deep, almost painful assurance that God has not forgotten us.

An Advent Devotional Practice

As promised! The Lutherans Connect Advent Devotional, one practice that helps me watch and wait during this season. Hope you enjoy it.

http://lcadvent2013.blogspot.ca/

 

Hurry Up and Wait

Tis the season of hurry up and wait. If there is any time in the Christian year when it is appropriate to learn the discipline of sitting with ourselves in the stillness, Advent is it. Yet every year, Advent springs upon us just as we’re gearing up for finals- and patient waiting couldn’t be further from our minds.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve seen a steady but predictable decrease in students attending midday prayer in the chapel and an equal increase in people coming on their own to de-stress through meditation or jamming on the piano. Students studying English as an Additional Language are learning the word “stress” for the first time and even the cafeteria is unusually empty over lunch.

It is strangely counter-intuitive, then, to begin December with a practice of quietness which helps us step back from the rush of exams and holiday preparations to simply wait. This doesn’t have to take a great deal of time, but I encourage you to set the coming season apart as different, as new, the hope-filled waiting that our ancestors declared it to be.

When I was a student, I found my Advent practice to be particularly refreshing amidst the busyness because it reminded me that there was more to life than my impending exams; that this too would pass and the world we long for will one day be a reality. Each night before going to sleep I would light the appropriate candles in my Advent wreath and say a simple prayer before sitting in silence before God, watching and waiting for something much more than the end of term.

My second practice during school was a wonderful little Advent meditation put out by my Lutheran chaplain friend, Sherry Coman, and her colleagues. Last year it included a short reflection, some kind of service response to the reflection happening in the world, a musical meditation, and a prayer. What it’s going to look like this year is still a surprise! I’ll post the URL here when it becomes available on December 1^st, but in the meantime check out their facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/574263379294230/.

What about you? What kinds of contemplative practices are you going to engage this Advent as you practice waiting and watching?

Calm in the Storm: Contemplative Life

     As I wandered through the streets of New York City for the first time this week, I found myself swept up into the great rituals of consumerism, mesmerized by the flashing lights, the soaring buildings, and the windows filled with beautiful things I suddenly wished to own. A rural Canadian in NYC for the first time is a bit like a child in Disney World, amazed by the sights and sounds and smells which heretofore did not exist.

     Wandering the streets through Time Square, I imagined myself in a magnificent temple, the worshippers carefully attending to every detail of décor, ritual, and celebration. Of course, there was sacrifice too, but no one was thinking about that at this moment. Everyone was rushing about in preparation for some magnificent feast day. It occurred to me that I could be walking through both a movie set and some celebration from long ago.

     My thoughts shifted as I came across something rather unexpected in the midst of the festivities. There, between high rises and neon lights, stood a magnificent old church. But while it’s style and décor was a bit out of sync with its surroundings, I wasn’t too surprised because it was just as magnificent and beautiful as the theatres on Broadway.

     What I did not expect, however, was the serene sense of stillness I would find as I entered the building, leaving the clamour of the street outside. I wandered into the nave, the cavernous room filled with pews, and was surprised at the number of people gathered there to pray. As I moved closer, however, I saw that these were not people gathered to pray but homeless men and women finding sanctuary in the worship space. They were sleeping, their tattered bags and grocery carts scattered around them in the pews and on the floor.

     In the stillness, I knelt to pray in the chancel (at the front near the altar) and suddenly suspected that the earth was standing still. The entire world was whizzing by outside, but inside I was experiencing a deep sense of peace like the calm after a storm. This is the beauty of the contemplative life: that even amidst the busyness of our 21^st-century lives we can learn to anchor our internal selves in a stillness quite apart from the rush of the world.

     Over the coming months, I propose that we have a conversation about the contemplative life and what it looks like to find that place of internal stillness. I work at fostering such a life in many ways, but the most transformative have been ancient prayer rituals passed down by my ancestors in the faith. Sometimes I run into the holy like I did in the church of St. Mary the Virgin, while other times I fail miserably, but the contemplative life is never about “arriving.” It is about opening the door to the church again and again, hopeful about what we will find there.

     If you would like to join me in this conversation about the contemplative life and finding places of stillness, I would be honoured to hear about the ways in which you’ve encountered the holy, the sacred, and the presence of life in the daily and mundane. Similarly, I hope that my own encounters will challenge you to reach deeper into the recesses of the soul to meet the one who waits there.

When I was Special

     Most of my life, I've thought of myself as being pretty special. Like many of my peers, I was one of only two children; I took self-esteem lessons in my grade one classroom; I watched TV shows that encouraged me to dream big and was taught by teachers who said I could be anything in the world. In short, I belong to generation Y. We are special.

Yet, in recent days I have become tired of being special because it requires that I be smarter, stronger, and faster than most other people. Since we can’t all be the best, specialness is an attitude which drives us to continual competition and busyness. If we slow down, we might fail. We might not change the world. We might not be “the best we can be.”

My puppy- who has never minded just being normal!

I have often compared my specialness with something else I learned at a young age: God loves each and every one of us. The same. Now this is something I’ve always found hard to believe. If God loves the stranger as much as God loves me, then I am not special. I am just normal. And that has generally been more than my special-gifted-world-changing self could handle. Until now.

Not only am I finally old enough to realize that I’m no more awesome and world-changing than anyone else, but I’ve become tired of always trying to be one step ahead of myself, always trying to prove to a non-existent audience that I’m really making the most of my life and being the best I could possibly be. As it turns out, I would prefer to be normal, to work and play and love as any other person would. Perhaps what is special is simply life itself; not trying harder or doing better, but simply doing life.

And another thing. I’ve noticed that God chooses to use people who are not special at all with remarkable frequency. Was Moses changing the world when God called him from his sheep? Was Jeremiah being the best he could be when God told him to become a great prophet? Was Mother Teresa particularly special when God sent her to Calcutta to care for his children there? No. God does not ask us to be special, or to change the world, or even to be our very best.

Then what does God ask us for? Our faithfulness. It sounds like such a little thing! Yet it is because they were faithful to what God called them to that the people we call heroes did the things they did. In essence, they said “yes” to God, not in grand things but in little things. Saying yes to God- faithfulness- happens every day. It happens at work, on the street, with our families, and (especially for those who are always busy) in rest. Because God asks for our very normal human lives, not our awesomeness :)

Flying in Uniform: God does not forget us

     I’m on a plane, sitting beside a soldier from Portage La Prairie, both of us in uniform. It occurs to me that, while neither of us is “on duty” at the moment, we each wear our uniforms today for similar reasons. He wants to be a visible sign and symbol of the military for the public, a way for them to remember who the military is and what it does. By his very presence he portrays his message: Young men like me still do this. We still think it’s important enough to dedicate our lives to. We’re here to protect you. And while I don’t really enjoy flying in clericals, I wear my collar today for the same reason. Seeing a young priest in the airport forces people to wonder if, perhaps, God is not dead after all.

Throughout the plane, both the soldier and I have our public supporters. Behind him sits a man with a “support our troops” t-shirt. Behind me sits a woman wearing a cross. Yet people do not come up and congratulate me in public the way they do my travelling companion. While they see him as a symbol for all Canadians, I tend to be seen as representing a select few. A fellow passenger might say to me, “Oh, I’m not religious,” but it isn’t often that my neighbour is told, “The military isn’t really my thing.”


Outside a Yorkshire convent at sunset

There was a time, however, when the clergy were also seen as a symbol for all Canadians- both those who identified as “religious” and those who did not. Our ancestors, I think, understood that we are inherently spiritual beings whether we like it or not. No matter how self-made and independent we may become, there will always be a part of us that we cannot take apart and quantify: that which communes with our Creator, the spiritual life.

The public legislation against wearing religious symbols in Quebec is further evidence of our amnesia: to be a spiritual being, it is presumed, is a personal choice that’s best kept private.

As Christians, however, we must disagree. Whether a person shares our faith or not, he or she was made to reflect the Creator. It is not possible to be a human and not be a spiritual creature. When we wear the symbols of our faith, then, we are not projecting our particular religious values onto an unsuspecting public. We are, instead, carrying bits of collective memory which remind us that we rely on one beyond ourselves for our life and daily bread. At the end of the day, we are not self-made and we can never outgrow our DNA as spiritual creatures. In a time when religion lags in Canada, we can be encouraged to remember that even when God’s people forget God, God will never forget God’s people.

Jesus Meets the Stranger- a sermon on Luke 16 for All Saints Church

   Imagine yourself sitting in church on a Sunday evening at 5:00. Beside you sits an aging drag queen; on the other side is a woman who appears to be a prostitute. You discreetly cover your nose a little to block the smell of the man sitting in the pew in front of you, a man who appears to be homeless and not taken a bath in years. You’re visiting the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado, a quirky Lutheran church plant that’s only five years old. You look up and notice that the pastor is a tough looking woman covered in tattoos. Her language is remarkably crude and a little blunt for a pastor and you remember hearing that she’s a woman with a past: a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. To the side are several small children playing by themselves and making rather a lot of noise; their parents are nowhere in sight. You shift a little in your seat, trying not to appear too uncomfortable.
     You stand to chant a cappella with the rest of the congregation and then sit down as pastor Nadia moves to the front to preach. She turns to Luke 16 and tells you a parable about a manager who’s accused of wasting his master’s resources. You’re pretty sure you’ve heard this one before; the parable is about a wicked and dishonest manager who is fired for being irresponsible or stealing, you’re not sure which. Oh, but hold on a second: Nadia’s telling the story a bit differently. The manager, she tells the congregation, is getting himself in trouble because he’s being too kind and generous with the debtors. He doesn’t really care how much they owe the master because he knows they can never repay it.
     The master in the story ends up firing the manager because rumours are going around that the manager isn’t very reliable. The manager loses everything. But on his way out the door, he ends up reconciling the master and the debtors by reducing the debts. The manager knew that the debtors could never pay all that they owed on their own; they needed him to reduce it even though it ended up getting him fired. Perhaps the manager was just dishonest enough, just enough like the common people who owed his master money, that he could actually understand them.
     As you sit listening to the story, it occurs to you that the manager she’s describing is an awful lot like Nadia herself. People say she’s too much like the people she serves; too many tattoos, too much compromise, too much time spent singing with her parishioners in the local bar. They say that Nadia condones sin by welcoming people like addicts, con artists, and transgender people into her worship service. The manager suffered for being unjust, and Nadia has also suffered from people in the church that think she should clean up her act a bit and run a cleaner, purer kind of church.
     And then it occurs to you: this is exactly what Jesus was like. Jesus hung around with homeless deserve to be welcomed at all. He drove the religious leaders were going crazy because he hung out in bars and was a bit too vulgar and got tattoos. Well, ok, he didn’t have tattoos. But he hung around with people on the edges of society and he did break a lot of rules. Without sinning, of course, he became like the people he wanted to welcome, making a lot of sacrifices in the process. I imagine that some days it was a lot of fun; but other days it was downright exhausting. Sometimes he probably just wanted to go hang out in the temple with the other rabbis and talk theology. But that’s not what he came for. He came to welcome those who the rest of the church didn’t have time or space for: the foster kids, the transgender teenagers, and the refugees. He wasn’t fired for it, the way the shrewd manager was, though; he was killed instead. It was a pretty hefty price he paid to reconcile the debtors with the master.
guys and prostitutes and drag queens. He welcomed people that didn’t
     Nadia looks out at the congregation and for a second she catches your eye. The parable of the shrewd manager, she tells you, is ultimately one of radical, undeserved grace. It is about learning to speak the people’s language so that you can make space for them. After the parable finishes in Luke 16, Jesus points out that “the children of this age are more wise in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” If we want to welcome the stranger into this place, she tells the congregation, we need to learn to speak their language. Sure, they might not be clean, respectable people deserving of this time and space; but then again, neither are we!
     I’ve been reading the story of House for All Sinners and Saints this week in Pastrix, Nadia’s new book. And as I read the parable of the shrewd manager at the same time, I thought about the ways in which we, here on the corner of Osborne and Broadway, have learned to speak the language of the people Christ welcomes: inviting a Sudanese congregation and mission church to share this space; opening our doors to Agape Table, hosting events that bring together people of different backgrounds to share their gifts and learn from one another, like the Feel the Heat concert coming up next month. And then I also wondered how we might find new ways to speak their language of our neighbours. How can we make space for them? Who are the poor debtors in our neighbourhood who don’t deserve to be welcomed by Jesus but who are welcomed anyway, just for being God’s precious creation?
     And I realized that you’ve already begun exploring that question by beginning conversations about reaching out to new Canadians, to youth, and to children in West Broadway. Dietrich is excited to talk about starting a children’s music camp. Yanna is interested in how we can develop a children’s liturgy. Cynthia is committed to caring for students. Edmund is talking about having dialogues with other faith groups in the neighbourhood. What I’ve been doing over the last few weeks is getting to know this neighbourhood as well as I can in order to discern what God is calling us to in this time and place. What’s already here? What’s missing? What would a Saturday children’s church look like for the people of West Broadway?
     In two weeks, I’m planning to give you a report about what I’ve been discovering and I’ll invite you into a conversation about how God might be calling us to speak the language of our neighbourhood and offer welcome to whoever the “debtors” might be that God brings to our doorstep. How can we facilitate hospitality and reconciliation to them as Jesus does?
     In our reading from Timothy today we were reminded that no matter what our particular gifts and callings might be, we are all called to the ministry of prayer. So I invite you to join me in prayer over the next couple weeks as we discern how God is calling us to create new space for people in our neighbourhood. It might be a difficult journey and it will always involve sacrifice, but Jesus welcomes everyone to come in, cancel their debts, and join him at his table. It’s a pretty preposterous idea that makes a lot of people unhappy, but it’s also the most beautiful, the joyful, and the most life-giving thing in the world.

Creating Sacred Space

The term, “sacred space” gets thrown around a fair bit these days- but what does it really mean? People talk about the chapel at St. John’s as a place of peace, somewhere they can go to get away from the chaos of classes and assignments to rest, reconnecting with God and themselves. Though God is everywhere, this particular space is sacred because it has been set apart since its inception to be place for people to meet the Holy One, bringing before God all their fears, anxieties, joys, and hopes.

Space, I believe, carries a story in the same way that a person does. Our chapel carries the story of connecting students with the Holy One, becoming a home for the wanderer, the doubter, and the lonely. In this space, people have celebrated their greatest joys and mourned their greatest losses. They have confessed their fears and expressed their hopes.

A sacred space also has a special gift for ushering us toward the holy, often by focusing us on our senses rather than our clambering thoughts. A labyrinth, for example, stimulates the right brain to give our logic-driven, overworked left brain a rest. It is the creative centre that enables us to enter into mystery. Candles, incense, icons and art can play similar roles.

Creating sacred space, however, is not just about setting apart a physical location and designing it for entry into prayer. The creation of space also means silence and stillness, room to hear the story of the other, to ask questions, to listen. It means having the freedom to doubt, to be afraid and be honest about wherever we find ourselves on our pilgrimage toward God.

In Christian community, making space means having room to wrestle with the grey areas of faith and being okay to show up with more questions than answers. It means welcoming the gay student who is struggling with his identity, being ok with noisy children during the service, and making room for people to move in and out of the community as they need to, both supporting them and letting them go. As we attempt to create sacred space in the St. John’s chapel for both our Christian brothers and sisters and others, it is my prayer that the physical space would merely be a sign of the many ways in which space is created and welcomed in our community.

Social Media, Friend or Foe: Could the Holy Spirit Really be on Twitter??

I have heard it said that social networking is a symptom of our consumerist, individualistic culture which should be prophetically resisted. Yet after several years of prayer, research, and experimentation, I’ve become convinced of quite the opposite: the Holy Spirit is, in fact, on twitter. As a postmodern in her late twenties who can remember life without the internet, I have watched my peers and my students change the ways they interact with one another. And while opinions on what this means abound, changing methods of communication is quite a normal thing.

While some Christians are afraid that communication changes mean a growing irrelevance for the Church and a narcissism which prevents young adults from seeking community, I would argue that God is up to something here, perhaps calling us to a new way of doing life together. After all, the Holy Spirit has never been one to sit idly by as humanity changes beyond recognition. We worship the God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, One who is the master creator of culture and at work in all times and places.

On November 2^nd at the Faith and the City conference hosted by St. Augustine’s United Church, I will argue that social media is not only a valuable tool for the Church, but it is a place where God is already at work, drawing people into community and into God’s self. The ecumenical conference will focus on faith and political engagement, so I will look at how Christians might use social networking as a way to live into God’s call to pursue justice and mercy in the city. Other panelists include Jane Barter-Moulaison, Tim Sale, Aiden Enns, Lynda Trono, Bill Blaikie, and others. For more information about the event check out the blog: http://faithinthecityaugustine.blogspot.ca. To
register, please contact Augustine United Church at augustine.uc@mymts.net or (204) 284-2250.

When We're Faced with Suicide

World Suicide Prevention Day

Tomorrow is World Suicide Prevention Day and I find myself thinking of all the theological misconceptions around suicide. The questions people have when a loved one takes his or her own life are particularly difficult, in part because suicide is such a bizarre event that it makes us question much of what we thought to be true. I say it’s bizarre because creation is made to live and to desire life; the very fact that a person no longer desires what he or she has been created for is an unusual twist in the created order.

Nonetheless, I think it’s fair to say that virtually all of us has been affected by suicide in some way; I can’t even count the number of people I know of who have suicided, known either to me or to people I love. I use the verb “suicided” rather than “committed suicide” because it’s time we stopped putting suicide in the same category as a crime (such as, “he committed a felony”). Usually when someone “commits” something it is utterly shameful, a taboo subject in the community.

In years past, the Church has made the grave mistake of treating suicide as one such taboo subject. These deaths were explained away and condemned, the families of the deceased shamed and outcast. A person who died this was buried outside the churchyard as a symbol that he or she would not rise with the Christians on the day of resurrection and would be condemned to eternal punishment.

Fortunately, the Church now has the opportunity to acknowledge our error and take an active role in suicide prevention and care, as we have with other ancestral baggage. A suicidal person is in utterly unbearable pain, such as most of us could never imagine. Jesus calls such hurting people, saying “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:18). As the Creator-God, it is always God’s desire that God’s children choose life, promising to carry us through the darkest and most painful moments of our lives. Yet when a child dies, God is also there to catch him, to gather him into God’s arms and keep him safe there forever.

As those who are left behind to wonder and to grieve, I believe the most important thing we can do is to talk openly about suicide, as scary and painful as it can be. When a friend or family member is struggling, don’t be afraid to ask about it. Encourage her to seek help in whatever way you can, reminding her that she will come out the other side of the darkness she’s experiencing. Tell her she never needs to walk alone- and then tell her again.

Tomorrow I will wear a yellow ribbon to honour the too-short lives of those I have known and those I have not. But I also wear the ribbon as a symbol of light in dark places, a reminder that it’s ok to talk about suicide and to ask for help. Finally, I wear the ribbon as a reminder to myself that sometimes the people around me are walking in dark and lonely places. Perhaps if we can walk together, the road will be a little smoother and the burden a little lighter. Perhaps together we can come out the other side of that darkness.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, click here to contact the Manitoba Suicide Hotline

Welcoming All as Christ

It’s orientation week at the university, when new students are pouring over the sidewalks and across the quad, wearing their favourite outfits and looking either ecstatic or terrified. I imagine that we are a large monastery like the ones in the European Middle Ages, and the professed monks and nuns are all wearing yellow shirts, pointing the eager new novices in the direction of their profession classes. Some are completely sure of their vocation, having mapped out a solid eight year plan, while others are only here as postulants, not sure if university life is really for them.

As I point a young man in the direction of the engineering building, I think about my own vocation in this place. Tonight I’m getting a new tattoo which reads, “Welcome All as Christ,” a line from the Rule of St. Benedict. Although Benedict’s monastic rule seems harsh to modern readers, during the seventh century he was considered unusually kind and sensitive, teaching that every person should be welcomed into the community in the same way that Jesus would be. A striking feature of the Benedictine way of life was the insistence that all members of the community, including the very young, the lower class, and the uneducated, were to be included in group discussion and treated with respect.

When someone asks about my new tattoo, I explain that it means that we should look for God in everyone. That’s something almost anyone can understand. The implications of such an idea are much more difficult to wrap our minds around, however. University life, very often, does not teach us to look for God in everyone. We are taught to compete for grades, for fashion, for friends, and for jobs. This week already I have seen too many young women flaunting their bodies and young men being bullied because someone in their life has been unable to see Jesus in him or her.

Receiving a person as Christ is not simply a matter of “tolerance” or “human rights”; it goes far beyond such legal claims. When I see Jesus in the eyes of another, I welcome him warmly into my home; I sit with her when she’s crying; I go out of my way to treat her like she matters. Because if she matters to God, she matters to me. In St. Benedict's day, the people who were hardest to welcome were obvious: beggars, lepers, foreigners. I see many of these people on campus today too. What does it mean to look for the face of Jesus in them?

The problem, of course, is that despite my best intentions I am particularly bad at keeping Benedict’s rule of welcome. I am liable to see only a broken, sinful person sitting in front of me and not the face of Jesus. So as you and I launch into our respective vocations at the university this year, we do well to remember that it is only Jesus that is really able to see the image of God in everyone. Yet as we apprentice with Jesus this year, we will slowly learn to welcome the way he does. J

 

How to Treat the Freshmen, 1495

 

They get smaller every year.
Codex Manesse (c. 1304)

A little advice for the new school year, reposted from http://askthepast.blogspot.com/2013/08/how-to-treat-freshmen-1495.html

"Statute Forbidding Any One to Annoy or Unduly Injure the Freshmen. Each and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with insult, torment, harass, drench with water or urine, throw on or defile with dust or any filth, mock by whistling, cry at them with a terrifying voice, or dare to molest in any way whatsoever physically or severely, any, who are called freshmen, in the market, streets, courts, colleges and living houses, or any place whatsoever, and particularly in the present college, when they have entered in order to matriculate or are leaving after matriculation."

Leipzig University Statute (1495)

A friendly reminder for the new academic year: please resist the temptation to terrify the freshmen with spooky voices, at least for the first few weeks.

Questions and Answers

     This evening I had a conversation I will never forget. I was sitting beside a dear friend, ripe in years and equally ripe in wisdom, who asked about the funeral I officiated three days ago. “I don’t know” I responded quietly, “I just feel like the bible leaves me with more questions than answers.” As I sat there frustrated by the things I don’t understand, I waited quietly for his disappointment. I waited for him to tell me I’d make a terrible priest. Instead, his answer surprised me. “Maybe that’s why I like you” he said, more to himself than to me. “I have a lot of questions about the bible myself. When something terrible happens, there are no easy answers.”

     I couldn’t believe it. This man has been a devoted Christian all his life and holds the respect of many in his community. How could he have questions or, dare I say it, doubt? The answer, I realize, is that my friend has suffered a great deal on this earth. Christian or not, he isn’t naïve enough to pretend to have all the answers. Perhaps learning to follow Christ is more about learning to ask good questions than finding all the answers.

     Preaching at the funeral this week, I felt a little stupid, as if people were looking to me to give completed answers I couldn’t possibly provide. And I wasn’t about to pretend I could; I hate hypocrisy. Instead, I pointed them toward a mystery, something I knew was there though I didn’t understand it. I believe in things like the goodness of God, the coming kingdom, and the resurrection of the dead because I can feel them happening, not because I can explain what’s going on. Sometimes I don’t have a blessed clue.

     Watching for the signs of God’s kingdom is a bit like learning to sense the coming of a storm. When I was a kid growing up on the farm, I learned to sense the change in wind that signaled the need to close the barn right away.  I knew that when the animals began to act a little differently or the sky began to change, it was time to put away my toys and head inside. But to this day, I couldn’t tell you a thing about how the storm works. Or why we shut up the barn some days only the have the storm pass in another direction.

     Life in God is a similar mystery which can only be known by being experienced. Just as I can’t explain what it’s like to be playing in the field and suddenly sense that a storm is on the way, so it is very difficult to explain the mysteries of life and death in words. While I stood over the deceased this week with more questions than answers, however, God showed up. Later I was commended for a well-orchestrated funeral, but all I did was ask questions. I think that’s what they call faith- because faith only dies when we no longer wonder at the mystery, when we stop showing up, and when we stop asking questions.

On Tattoos and Vocation

          I had just turned 20 and I’d been debating between two tattoos for months. Should my first tattoo be the word “justice,” my greatest goal and passion, or should it be God’s sacred Hebrew name? Quite unexpectedly, my tattoo conundrum was forcing me to do some serious thinking about what was most important to me and why. One night as I sat praying in my dorm room I reminded God that the only reason justice was so important to me was that I served a God of justice who called me to reflect that image. My God was the God of the oppressed, a God of action, not of passive religious reflection. “In fact,” I remember thinking to myself, “you really kind of need me. Your pursuit of justice in the world isn’t going very well at the moment.”

What happened next is a moment I will never forget. God did not seem angry or annoyed with me over my youthful arrogance, but just as a mentor might gently answer an over-confident teenager, God asked, “Is it your justice that you’ve committed yourself to, or is it mine?” I was taken aback by the question. Such a possibility had never occurred to me before. Could it be that God’s plan for the world was different from mine? Was my elaborate plan for eradicating poverty in my lifetime not only statistically impossible but also a symptom of prideful distrust in what God was up to? Did I really believe God was enough for the world?

As I continued to ponder these questions, I decided to get both tattoos and experiment with the idea that God might actually be enough. Enough for me, enough for the poor, enough for the world. I asked questions about the implications of the crucifixion for community development and what the resurrection meant for my country’s exorbitant wealth. I started taking seminary classes and debated over what it meant to give God all of my life, including my desire to serve.

The journey that ensued took me to a mission, a slum, a convent, a community house, and finally- to a bishop’s office. From there I learned about “the ordination of baptism,” the idea that in our baptisms we are recruited into God’s service to represent and honour God in a particular way, depending on our gifts and abilities. This is what we call “vocation,” said the bishop, and my particular vocation would combine both my tattoos perfectly: I would finish seminary and become a priest.

The next part of this journey has begun with the deaconate, a kind of service which grounds all others because it includes a solemn vow to “be Jesus” to the least of these: the poor, the sick, the elderly, and the young. A deacon is supposed to portray for others, priests, laity, and even bishops, what being Jesus to the world looks like. As you might guess, I am in no way equipped to take on such a role. Yet I feel greater confidence to jump into this now than I did seven years ago, because I have no incredible plan for changing the world now; I only have Jesus. And that, my friends, is enough.