Public discussion

The public discussion about end of life issues is very prominent this week. The conversation started by Brittany Maynard as she chose to end her life before terminal brain cancer completely claimed her body is unfolding in our workplaces, homes, and among friends. The communication rich world in which we live carries all ages into some dimension of this conversation. Yet, this is a very personal conversation to have - one's wishes and thoughts about death and the time of death. And, it is a conversation that deeply touches our spirituality, our beliefs, and our life in Christ. As a pastor, priest, and as an Episcopalian, I am not taking a stand or teaching an issue. I am opening a door to conversation and prayer. As a pastor, I encourage questions, wonderings, and exploration of our life with God in each day as the way we live faithfully. I asked each member of the clergy team of St. John's to contact members of the ministries in which they are most closely involved. We want the church to be the church among our members. We seek as pastes to be spiritual guides as well as scriptural interpreters when the questions of our life in the world presents itself in important ways. We pray that no member of our parish will need to make the decisions the unfolded in Brittany's life over the last several months. However, we are also aware that we all contemplate the final chapter of life as well as that of our loved ones. "Will you undertake to be a faithful pastor to all whom you are called to serve, laboring together with them and with your fellow ministers to build up the family of God? I will." (from the Ordination of a Priest, Book of Common Prayer Page 532)

Worth writing on our hearts, why church?

Two days ago I reflected on the "We" in the following quote from Stephanie Paulsell, "We need places to pray as if someone were listening, to study as if we might learn something worth writing on our hearts, to join with others in service as if the world might be transformed. Churches are places to learn to practice, with others, a continual conversion of life, a permanent openness to change." Today, my mind - well actually my heart - is dwelling on "...to study as if we might learn something worth writing on your hearts..." Study often narrows our focus to right information, right ideas, correct side of the ideology spectrum. Study too often is narrowly defined by correcting a deficiency, filling a void, learning to catch up. Study in the church and in community is not to catch up but rather to catch on. Study is to connect information in our minds with our hearts to form us in Christ's life. Study is not a text but a testing of where the goodness of God makes a home in us. As those in church we can and should hold different and diverse ideas in our heads even as we appreciate that those written on our hearts determine who we are.

Why Church?

The following quote answers for me "Why do you go to church?" "We need places to pray as if someone were listening, to study as if we might learn something worth writing on our hearts, to join with others in service as if the world might be transformed. Churches are places to learn to practice, with other, a continual conversion of life, a permanent openness to change." Stephanie Paulsell, from "Soul experiments," Faith Matters in the Christian Century. The message begins with a "We." Why church for me is always about a We - there is just not enough of my own spirituality that can fill all the world with God. I need the We to embrace all of God. And the "We" is gathered in shared prayer that has movement, structure, music, silence, emotion and thought. I need the dynamics of worship to open for me the tiny facets of God. And the the "We" is about listening. If God is listening to all of us, then what "We" share with God is a mere speck of sand in the vast beauty of God's restful short. I need the "We" to feel part of the ecology of God's creation. Tomorrow...something worth writing on our hearts.

Easter Wednesday

The journey through the Psalms is complete. It ended on the plane ride on the return flight from Oklahoma City and the "Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace" Conference. After two whirlwind days of speaking with the church's emerging voice about gun violence, I read/walked through the last 25 psalms to soak in all my recent experiences. I read the Ascent Psalms that the pilgrims sang as they climbed the final hill to the gates of Jerusalem. I stood at my own gates of the City of God when Holy Week began. Martin Smith when he was a brother at the Society of St. John the Evangelist wrote that Lent was trying to drink from a waterfall with a tiny cup. My Lent Journey of the Psalms was my waterfall but God filled the tiny cup I had by guiding me each day to stand on a ledge by a different place of the thundering water. When the torrent of the rushing baptismal river began in Holy Week, at least my feet and clothes were already wet with the spray of God and I was ready. Now it is Easter Wednesday. Time is lay in warmth of the light God created, to feel the freshness of my skin that mirrors the freshness of my soul, to touch the cold rocks of my hardened places of my heart warming to the heat surge of new life around me, and, to listen to the rush of the water knowing that is there to carry me to a new life with God.

In the Fourth Week of Lent, Psalms 99 through 102

Probably because I memorized Psalm 100 in Sunday School, I thought all psalms should be like this one. Reading through the psalms, they certainly are not tilted towards the exuberance found in Psalm 100. Reading to this point in the psalter lead me to wonder, how can so many psalms be devoted to the fear and struggle of life? In Sunday School it is appropriate to learn that all the earth worships that Lord and that 'his steadfast love endures forever.' Most likely it is not until later in life that we learn that all the earth struggles. That lesson may not come to us until it is our own struggle that grabs hold of our feet and we feel we cannot break free no matter how hard we try to run. Reading through the psalms I experienced in a comforting way that wrestling with life and wrestling with God is sanctified in our prayers, our pleas, and our worship.

The power of wrong, Psalms 91-94 today

How many wild-eyed characters have we seen or read spurting forth, "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord." The crazed character has been pushed to the edge of her or his tolerance for what is wrong with the world. The Power of Wrong is about to overwhelm. So, justice is taken into the hand of a man or woman. And, mostly the actions taken are themselves wrong. Psalm 94 speaks of God of vengeance but not a God who picks off the wrong doers to defend the right doer. Vengeance as James L May comments is "a plea for the Lord to vindicate his reign by intervening in the human situation in a time when wrong is rampant. Vengeance is not from the anger of the Lord but from the One who is the ruler of all creation to bring about the balance of justice. It does not mean the wrong does are wiped out, that is the human solution. Vengeance is God reasserting what is right. How do we rather than destroy what is wrong bring out that which is the love of God for all?

Catching UP, Psalms 76 to 80 today

Its inevitable that disciplines clash. At least its inevitable for me. Each day is a set of competing priorities around which I allocate my time and my heart. Lately the allocation has been in time for others. Today, my heart and my mind need that time. So I am catching up. Its similar to catching up with a trusted friend. Its time to reconnect, recenter, have coffee with someone who really understands you and will ask the discerning questions. So today after five days of putting off my psalm journey, time is set aside to center in again. As long as we know we are on a journey, even when we wander from the path, we can always rejoin the purposeful movement toward the destination we have set.

Two in One.

Today is two in one. Two sets of psalm readings in one day. Thursday's four psalms were 52 through 55. Today, Friday, the psalms are 56 through 59. As I read all eight psalms this morning, I was sitting the the waiting room of my mechanics shop. As the oil in my car was being changed, I read psalms with the background music of a rock radio station. Plaintive words are plaintive words regardless if the beat is a deep bass or the chant of the congregation. I wondered, did those worshiping with a new psalm text experience the song in the same way we experience a new rock tune. Was a new psalm of 2000 BC as edgy and enticing as a rising rock hit today? Was a new psalm as suspect as a new hymn today? Did the congregation of the Jerusalem temple cry out, "What happened to our favorite psalms?" just as congregations cry out today, "What happened to our favorite hymns?" That which we venerate through the ties to our ancestors of faith was new at some point. That which is new today will be venerated in the future. Can we find ways to live faith as both old and new? Two in One.

Journey through Lent with the Psalms, 48 through 51

Today's map of psalm readings offers many dimensions for reflection. Reading could focus on Psalm 51 alone, the classic psalm of confession which is said, chanted, or sung in Ash Wednesday worship. Or, Psalm 50 that clearly places God as the eternal judge of heaven and earth and the people of God as defendants in God's court. Within these psalms are varied places for reflection that God is God and we are not. However, Psalm 48 offers an image perhaps less familiar, that as the city as the dwelling place of God. The city of Jerusalem experienced by the pilgrim as a metaphor for the coming reign of God. As James L. Mays comments, "The way in which the psalm speaks of Jerusalem as Zion, the city of David as the city of God, is a way of envisioning the earthily terms of the heavenly, the temporal in terms of the everlasting…The psalm uncovers what modern Christians can easily lose, the discernment of the church as a society created in the finite and temporal by the infinite and everlasting." How would it change the ways you participated and cared for your church community if you recognized its very existence as a community created by the 'infinite and everlasting' God?

A Mighty Fortress, Psalms for today 44 through 48

Today we begin reading in the second book of Psalms. The individual focus of the first book concluded and now the poet's voice is the community of the congregation and the nations. Read all four psalms and listen for a sweeping references of the nations of the dart, the foundations of the earth, the glorious reign of the king. Psalm 46 is the biblical text for Martin Luther's hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God." Read the Psalm aloud and then read the hymn text aloud. The confidence sounding from the voices of the people singing together arises from the choice of God to be with us. God dwelling in Christ is with us beyond the foundations of the world and the depths of our sin. For Christians, God dwelling in Christ is the source of our trust. And our trust transcends anything we might do to fall away from God.

Psalms 40 through 43 for today's journey

Since Lent is a season of confession and renewal, these psalms capture of Lenten journey. They are prayers for deliverance and prayers of longing for God. Psalm 41 concludes the Book I of the psalms. Psalms 42 and 43 have been read and offered in worship as one song. Reflect on times when you desire for God, God's healing help, God's reassuring presence, have been as life giving to you as the air you breath and the water you drink. Recall a desperate time of thirst. Have you ever felt desperate for God?

Use Only as Directed, Psalms 36 to 39

Use only as directed is a warning posted on strong chemicals and medicines. The same might be said of some psalms. The intensity of a psalm can lead us to a theology that does more harm than good. Psalm 38 is a good example. The poet is already weighed down by the recognition of sin. However, if an individual read this psalm as a description of the whole of human life, then one could be lead to an understanding of humanity as deserving of God's anger and a God who gleefully doles out punishment. Instead, Psalm 38 is a plea for healing, the wholeness intended by God for all of us. Psalm 38 is also very intimate. The words painfully arise from the sinner aimed directly at God. On first reading I wondered if verse 2, "For your arrows have sunk into me,…" could be like the pangs one feels searching the face of our beloved for a sign of affection only to find indifference. What it is like to long for God like a lost lover? Mine is not the biblical interpretation but a way in which the text might move in our imaginations. Use only as directed...

Confession, Psalm 32

Although we read Psalms 32 to 35 today on our Lent Journey through the Psalms, contempt especially Psalm 32. It is one of the classic penitential psalms. The words of confession reach beyond a cry to God for help. The words of confession are prayer, a prayer that offers in raw raggedness of our hearts to God trusting that God forgives. As our human spirit confesses we are drawn into God's forgiveness. As our hearts are opened to where we fall away, God enters with the soothing love of forgiving presence. There is a danger to our spirits when we do not confess. James W. Mays writes about Psalm 32 in his commentary, "When one has wronged a wife, a parent, a friend, a neighbor-someone with whom there is a conscious relationship-and refuses to acknowledge it, to put the wrong into words so that it is there in speech available to be dealt with, then the wrong retained and sheltered begins to become part of one's identity. It harms and hardens and diminishes." I imagine hard, black, crude oil blobs sticking to my sprit and weighing me down. Lent is about giving words to these places we have created wrong in order to offer them to God. Every Lent I use the offertory phrase, "If you are brining your gift to the altar and there remember that a brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift before the altar and go…" It is a plea that we enter into the prayer of confession with ourselves, in our relationships, and with God. And, every year those who hear these words in worship tell me how these words helped them or how they can't reconcile but they can confess. There are situations of abuse where reconciliation with the abuser is neither safe nor the desired outcome. Confession however opens every space in our spirit to God.

"…but joy comes with the morning."

Our journey with the Psalm through Lent takes us to Psalms 29 to 32 today. As I read this Psalms I discover within the context of the entire song familiar phrases that I know from quotes, worship, and other places in scripture. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning; In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; Into you hand I commit my spirit; Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven. These are only a few. What familiar verses did you find this morning/ Can you recall or research Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Compline and other other offices in the Book of Common Prayer that use these phrases?

Search for Innocence, Journey through the Psalms in Lent

God as judge come forth in many psalms. By reading Psalms 25 to 28 today we hear God as judge. However its not judge as we understand the process of hearing all the evidence and making a decision. God as judge is the one who bestows forgiveness on the worshipper. From Psalm 26 verse 6 today: "I wash my hands in innocence, and go around your altar." The worshipper seeks complete and full forgiveness and trusts God to bestow that gift. As we journey through Lent, is our process of confession a way to trust God's gift of forgiveness? Are we seeking justification, in other words, that it is OK that we have fallen away from God? Or, are we searching for innocence, a confidence that we have a complete and new start?

Psalms in miniature? Journey with the Psalms in Lent

Our reading today covers Psalms 21 through 24. Within that reading is Psalm 22 and 23 perhaps the most familiar psalms to all of us. Psalm 22 we hear in worship during Holy Week and especially from Jesus on the cross, "My God, My God why have you forsaken me?" As you read the psalm today hear those familiar words of Passion and hear also this song from the voices of a congregation. It moves an individual plea to the voice of the congregation to the voices of the generations of Israel to all humanity and final to the whole earth singing to God. Psalm 23 we hear during almost every resurrection worship- funerals. We hear also the sounds of our childhoods. How many of us heard or memorized this psalm in Sunday School? How many of us heard this psalm as the first voice of scripture that we understood. If John 3:16 is considered the Gospel in miniature, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…" might Psalms 22 and 23 together be considered The Book of Psalms in miniature?

"…the meditations of my heart."

On our Journey through Lent with the Psalms, today read Psalms 17 through 20. The conclusion of Psalm 19 is the prayer I use before preaching a sermon. For me it is both the words of my study and reason and my listening to the movement of the Spirit within me that shapes the message I am about to share with the congregation. This concluding verse of the psalm that I have adopted as a prayer culminates three parts of Psalm 19. The first part is about all of creation praising the creator God. The second is about the gift of guidance found in the words of the Law. The third is about our need, my need, for forgiveness. God gives both creation and the law, and, I will still wander away. Yet the meditations of my heart will lead me back. My Bible notes that mediations can also be translated whisperings or murmuring. What is your heart whispering to you today on this Lenten journey?

Real Life Sets In, Journey through Lent with the Psalms

Yesterday, did you read Psalms 9 through 12? I did on the 7 am flight to Boston. Instead of my print Bible I had my NRSV on my Kindle. The two commentaries I have chosen, one by CS Lewis and one a commentary for preaching and teaching by John Mays are also on my Kindle. What I didn't have during the day was time to stop and connect to the internet to post to this blog. I struggled with yesterday's psalms. Reading through the words seemed in a voice of someone else. The writer(s) did intend to place the voice of the individual's struggle into the voice of the congregation. Yesterday these texts did not resonate with me. And that too is real life with biblical texts. Today, read Psalms 13-16.

My King and My God, Journey through Lent with the Psalms

Today read Psalms 5 through 8. While the language of sovereign and king evokes for us opulence and power, in Psalm 5 the King is a protector and a shield against danger. Trust is an essential element in the relationship. Which is why the Psalm speaks of lying and deceit as the evil that destroys relationships. Scholar James L. May in Psalms: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching comments, "Speech is the distinctively human capacity, the interpreter of others and of all around us. It is also the cheapest, most common and inhuman means of causing trouble and anguish for others. There is a profound and essential relation between truth telling and God." What words will you use today? Another reader of this blog found a map to read the psalms at: examen.me.

Ash Wednesday, Beginning our Journey with the Psalms

As an introduction to the Psalms, my Bible states, "Psalms is a book of praise and prayer." The psalms are songs, poetry, that capture every human emotion. The psalms sets our lives, our humanity, into the world of God's being as God's Life shines into every crevice and onto every mountain. The psalms connect our lives with God through the generations of faith where we find we are all bound into the love of God. Inspired by a lay leader at St. John's who is reading the Psalms through Lent, I am joining her. I invite you to join us. For myself, I plotted a map of four psalms a day. Use this map as your guide or develop your own map. The Psalms can be found in many forms and translations. My friend Beth is reading them online from the St. Alban's Psalter with commentary and calligraphy. I am reading them from my print Bible, The Life with God Bible, with textual comments and spiritual guidance. If you choose a Bible, then choose an Revised Standard Version (RSV) or a New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). A classic and beautiful translation of the Psalms is found in the Book of Common Prayer. Also available in many forms, including electronically, are The Book of Psalms commentaries from the latest scholarly works to one from probably the most popular Christian writer, C. S. Lewis. Go deeper by reading the psalms and then reading about them from others who reflect and study them. Comment on this blog your insights, thoughts, questions. The Psalms will swirl deep into your spirit and bring forth God's Spirit in you. Join me. Join this community of praise and prayer for Lent. Read today Psalms 1 through 4.

Globalization

Globalization visits St John's everyday. One medical engineer in the congregation is employed by a Norwegian firm and most of their prospective clients are from China. A biotech executive's boss is located in Amsterdam. College students view traveling and working abroad like traveling from Maryland to Delaware only it takes longer. A mission trip to Kenya is the center piece of our school's outreach. Differences in language and culture are expected and navigated. The Holy Eucharist is celebrated each Sunday in Korean for those whose first language is Korean but who are now living in our community. Likely St. John's reflects other congregations. Christian disciples are reaching across differences everyday. We have a global reach when we are home and when we travel. As Christian disciples we don't leave our faith behind but how can we live it among people whose languages and beliefs are different from our own? The first part of the answer is the faith nurtured in your heart will be with you wherever you go. Practices of prayer and reflection are holy habits that stay with us. Build upon those practices with digital resources for reading devotionals and scripture. And another layer comes to us directing from the Baptismal Covenant, 'respect the dignity of every human being." The second part of the answer is more complex. We cannot take with us what we have not already nurtured. We cannot create on the spot a well of treasured scriptural passages, psalms, and centering phrases to meet challenges. Living with globalization begins in the daily life of each disciple and in the connection with a practicing community. Living with globalization is more of consistent exercise of building the resources rather than a skill to be taught and mastered. Bringing Christ's reconciling love to the world truly does begin in our faith community as we live our faith together.