Ponder: "the revolution of tenderness"

"For just as some people want a purely spiritual Christ, without flesh and without the cross, they also want their interpersonal relationships provided by sophisticated equipment, by screens and systems which can be turned on and off on command.  Meanwhile, the Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence that challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction.  True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from reconciliation with others.  The Son of God, becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness."

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 88.

Victory is Ours: A Sermon for Holy Cross Day

"The LORD has made known his victory; * his righteousness has he openly shown in the sight of the nations."  Psalm 98:3

As you might have noticed, just now I made the sign of the Cross over myself.  I do it quite often.  I sat down and counted this week, and discovered that in the usual course of celebrating the Eucharist on Sunday, I make the sign of the Cross not once or five or ten times, but 27 times, as well as making it over each of you individually with the wafer when you come forward to receive Holy Communion.  Making the sign of the Cross is a ritual that accompanies many different words and movements in the course of the liturgy, including nearly all the most important ones.  I use the Cross when I ask God to be with me in reading and hearing the Gospel, when I speak His word absolving your sins, when I bless the bread and wine, when I speak His blessing over all of you at the end of the service, and at quite a few other times besides these. 

And of course, the Cross isn’t just here among us in the ritual action, we also worship facing a Cross.  The service begins when the choir and the sacred ministers come in, proceeded by a Cross—and we brought the beautiful jeweled one out of the vault to mark this special day.   There are crosses on the windows and the paintings, the arches and the plates.  The silver cruets we use at the Altar have crosses on their tops.  My vestments today are adorned with a half-dozen of them.  There’s one on the steeple, and the whole building, for that matter, is shaped like a Cross. 

Now, if you’re new here, all these crosses are likely to strike you as rather odd, maybe as a kind of symbolic overkill.  Surely, we could mix it up a bit, couldn’t we?  What is it about the Cross that urges us Christians to plant it everywhere, to mark everything with it? What does it mean for us?

Ponder: unselfishness, the sign of God's kingdom

"Dorothy Day wrote, 'Patience, patience--which means suffering.' Her life of sacrificial service to the poor was one of great power that places her in the first rank of Christians who will be remembered...Dorothy Day's commitment to a sacrificial life arose from a place of strength, not a place of weakness.  Such a life, rightly understood, is uniquely empowering because it is aligned with the self-giving of God in Christ.  Wherever there are gracious acts of unselfishness, there are the signs of God's kingdom of remade relationships based on mutual self-offering.

Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion (2014), 275.

Ponder: "the evil spirit of defeatism"

"While painfully aware of our own frailties, we have to march on without giving in, keeping in mind what the Lord said to Saint Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor. 12:9).  Christian triumph is always a cross, yet a cross which is at the same time a victorious banner borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults of evil.  The evil spirit of defeatism is brother to the temptation to separate, before its time, the wheat from the weeds; it is the fruit of an anxious and self-centred lack of trust."

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 85.

Ponder: "sympathy that fails to recognize culpability also fails to recognize potentiality"

Vance conceded that Obama’s comments had been “well-intentioned” and that he had named “legitimate” problems. Nonetheless, he said, Obama’s comments had lacked “sympathy.” Reading “Hillbilly Elegy,” you see what Vance means. Vance is after a certain kind of sympathy: sympathy among equals that doesn’t demean or condescend. Such sympathy can’t be deterministic and categorical. In fact, it must be a little judgmental; it must see the people to whom it’s extended as dignified individuals who retain their moral obligations. For Vance, it’s “anger at Mom for the life she chooses”—recognition of her present-day freedom—that makes “sympathy for the childhood she didn’t” meaningful and humane. That’s because sympathy that fails to recognize culpability also fails to recognize potentiality. It becomes a form of giving up. If you’re a politician representing a troubled community from afar, as many élite politicians must be, then it’s easy to fall into this sympathy trap. At best, you can be a well-intentioned but nonjudgmental—and, therefore, condescending—outsider. Only an insider can speak about his community with honest anguish. “Hillbilly Elegy” is especially compelling because Vance writes with the sorrowful judgment of a betrayed yet loyal son.

Joshua Rothman, "The Lives of Poor White People" The New Yorker 12 Sep. 2016

Comfort and the Cross

“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”  St. Luke 14:27

Last Sunday after the 8:00 service, Ralph Tildon came up to me and told me that my sermon had reminded him of a movie.  “We’re No Angels,” was based on the passage about welcoming the stranger that I had taken as my text.  I don’t expect you’ve ever heard of the movie either, as it never broke number 8 in the box office listing when it came out in 1989.  But it was a slow Sunday evening, so Allison and I watched it together. 

The movie tells the story of two bumbling convicts who escaped from a prison and were taken into a monastery, after being mistaken for famous Biblical scholars.  The convicts are played by Sean Penn and Robert DeNiro, and for me it was worth the cost of the rental to see Robert DeNiro trotting around in an old fashioned priest’s cassock and biretta.  The plot plays out as you would expect when two semi-illiterate, chain-smoking cons try to pose as holy men in the midst of a massive manhunt. 

The climax of the film comes when Father Brown, aka Jim the convict, is spontaneously invited to give the sermon at the monastery’s annual festival.  Jim is Sean Penn’s character, a relatively kind hearted fellow who looks about fourteen.  By this point in the movie, you know to wince when he opens his mouth, but you’re also on his side. 

The Spirituality of Financial Management

From the September 2016 issue of The WORD of Saint Timothy's, Herndon.

“Pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, that we may appoint to this duty.”  Acts 6:3

This summer, Rick Wilson resigned after twelve years as the treasurer of Saint Timothy’ Church.  We all owe him a great deal of thanks for the way in which he has discharged his responsibilities with steadfast patience, integrity and care.  For twelve years Rick has been a careful and diligent steward of the resources entrusted to us to God’s work. 

One almost never hears of someone committing to such a demanding (and often thankless) role in these days when so many responsibilities and social activities fill people’s calendars.  Maybe he didn’t think he would be at the task for so long when he first took it up.  But Rick has been faithful, pressing on to complete tasks week by week, and carefully training those people (two of them) who will continue in his stead.

Rick has been the classic “behind the scenes” worker, coming in on weekends and burning the midnight oil to keep up with the demands of our large and complicated organization.  A highly skilled professional, his generous donation of time and talent has saved our congregation tens of thousands of dollars in accountants’ fees.  Most importantly, Rick has maintained the trust that is absolutely essential for the management of church finances.

It’s interesting that the early church’s first major conflict centered around financial management.