| "Always We Begin Again" |
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“Always We Begin Again” The Rev. Carole Wageman Trinity Episcopal Church/Shelburne, VT November 13, 2011 Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18; Psalm 90:1-8 (9-11), 12; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30
Good morning. I’m so glad God has brought us together. I thought I would begin this morning’s homily with naming the elephant in the room: I will be leaving Trinity at the end of this December due to the parish’s financial constraints. There it is. There is the truth. Now we can own it together and figure out how to move forward. Over the past few weeks, the vestry has given great care in writing the letter you received last week and part of that process was to give careful thought to the time table of when the final decision would be made by the vestry – when the letter should go out – how to make time available for the congregation to gather to discuss this staffing change if they wished and to make time for people to ask their questions or make their comments. In developing that time frame, I realized I would be preaching today – which would the week after the letter went out. It would also be one of the Sundays set aside for congregational conversation and comment. So, as part of our planning, I mentioned to the vestry that I was preaching and that I thought it might be a good time to preach about my own sense of call and ministry. We all agreed that was a pretty good idea. So this week, while I have started shifting gears and beginning to develop the transition plans for my responsibilities, I spent some time thinking about how to approach this theme I had wisely suggested. I meditated and I prayed about it and struggled with it. Finally came this heartfelt and honest prayer: “Oh God......THAT was a really stupid idea!” I mean, really --- what do I say? How do I explain a lifetime of journeying with God from a vision I had when I was five or six and didn’t even realize what that was, through making a commitment to God as a teenager, through my personal wilderness in leaving the church and God after graduating from seminary due to clergy “mis-conduct”, to my unexpected return to a new church tradition – the Episcopal Church -- nearly 25 years later where I once again felt God’s loving and clear call and followed that trail to pursue ordination yet again ...that eventually brought me to your doors here where I have served God by serving you for eight and a half terrific years. All of that is a pretty big blessing and it is hard to articulate my personal sense of ministry because it is so integrated into who I am as a person and I’m not usually comfortable drawing that kind of attention to myself. A few years ago, I preached about the experience that comes to some when they lose their jobs or have some other major life change like the death of a loved one. Anyone who has gone through that experience usually runs into the question: “Who am I now?” It is not an unusual question to wonder about when something disrupts life the way we have known it and the way we have known ourselves in it. We don’t even realize until that anchor is gone how much of ourselves becomes defined by those attachments. That was certainly my own experience when my job at the Youth Service Bureau went away in 2002 – again due to finances. I was surprised at how much of what I did professionally defined who I was personally. When the job was gone, a significant part of me seemed to be gone as well. I grew spiritually when I realized that perhaps my sense of self needed to be rooted in something else other than my job. So, it has been interesting as I prepare to leave Trinity and I wonder about what January will be like because I am not going to another parish right now. While there certainly is some sadness, I do not have the “Who am I now?” question this time. Somehow, this life journey that led me back to God has also been a return to some mysterious awareness that who I am and what I do have become the same thing. So whether I volunteer in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter for veteran’s or return to secular work or become a greeter at Walmart or am called to serve another parish somewhere, I will still be serving God’s people no matter where I go...and that confidence in God’s Call is something for which I say “Alleluia” and is a significant part of my sense of ministry. But I want to turn our attention to the recent past months – this summer and fall when we have had lots of Old Testament readings about the story of the Exodus – the freeing of the Hebrew slaves from captivity in Egypt by Moses and their journey in the wilderness along the way. During the times I have preached since I returned from sabbatical in mid-August, those stories have served as an important personal touchstone of hope and confidence in God’s promise as Trinity’s discernment for next year’s staffing began to unfold. Three stories in particular gave me pause to think about how God works in the lives of individuals and even entire groups of people who are called by God to follow Him in whatever work he calls them to do wherever he calls them to do it. 1. The Baby Moses in the Basket Boat Story is the first where five seemingly unrelated women follow what feels right in their hearts when they have to make a decision that is out in front of them: The two mid-wives who lie to the Pharaoh about killing the boy children they help birth; Moses’ Mother who entrusts her child to an unknown future by setting him adrift in a basket boat on the Nile River; the Pharaoh’s daughter who finds the basket boat and decides to keep this child and raise him as her own son; and finally, the Sister of Moses who becomes the link between Moses’ past and his future. This story of the Baby Moses tells the tale of God’s mysterious way of weaving together the threads of potential disaster into a powerful story of God’s mission. God prevailed and created something new even in the midst of what seemed to be a disaster.
2. The story of the Burning Bush is the second story. This was God’s call to Moses to “function up” and trust that God knows what He is doing in sending Moses back to Egypt where he is a fugitive in order that he might rescue an entire population of people. Moses’ reluctance is what I call “Moses Moments” – and we all have them. Times when something God-like beckons and we are not really sure that it is God or we are not really sure we want to disrupt our lives to make room to listen; or we are not confident that God really knows what God is doing because we don’t feel confident in ourselves. But God sees the bigger picture and searches out the gifts in us that we don’t always see for ourselves. Moses didn’t know how his story would turn out. We don’t know how our story will turn out either. God’s light in the burning bush would have remained on that mountain unless Moses chose to let it shine through him, as incompetent as he felt at the time. Moses – reluctantly --- became the window through which God’s light poured. The People of God are the windows through which God’s light pours. We are made to be used by the Light --- much the way our beloved Tiffany windows were made to be vehicles of beauty, but only if the light shines through them.
3. The third story is that of the Golden Calf where the people get a little nervous that their leader, Moses, does not seem to be coming back. He’s gone a bit too long and they are left on their own. So, in order to make themselves feel better, they revert to their old, familiar, comfortable ways and create a golden idol around which they could dance and worship. This is a great story because we all have “golden calves” that get in our way of stepping out into a future where God lives on the cutting edge of discovery and ministry. What if they had trusted in this God who continually showed them that he heard their prayers? What if they had turned to God rather than to the idol they created? What if they had poured all that energy, artistic talent, creativity, personal resources and drive into figuring out God’s work in their midst instead of into a golden calf that was a total distraction? What would have changed in their story and in their history? These stories outlining the history of the Hebrew people were written hundreds of years after the Exodus actually happened. They were written for the Jewish people who were in Exile in Babylon so they would not forget who they were and who they belonged to. It was genius on the part of the writers who put these stories together, so while in the midst of the dark days of exile and an unknown future, the people could recall the great story of a God who would never forget them and remember the epic history of which they were a part. I know these were not the readings for today, but as I thought about how to make a statement about my understanding of ministry, I recognized the important lessons I have absorbed from these stories over these past few months:
How we bring God’s Stories in Scripture into our own Stories with God is where we find life in the desert, light in the darkness and open doors in the unknown future. God always shows up – just not always in the way we expect. The book Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia For All That Is by Joan Chittister and Rowan Williams has been particularly helpful to me these past few months and has given me much to think about in my own discernment in facing the challenges of this staffing change. Each little chapter takes some kind of difficult subject and explores ways to say “Alleluia” for those things that are defining moments in our lives. In the chapter about “Darkness”, Joan Chittister says: “To succumb to darkness, to fail to trust the light that is coming...is therefore to fail to trust the continuing new dawns of life. But if we can possibly learn to trust darkness, to understand that life is a pattern of starts and stops, of celebrating the past, of coming to terms with the present, of believing the future to be kind, then we can come to understand that the dark parts are only those closing-down moments, like flowers at night, till the sun shines once more...Darkness signals a change point in life...Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight. Then we come to understand that God is at work in our lives even when we believe that nothing whatsoever is going on.”[1] This [bulb in water vase] is a personal prayer exercise I set up a few weeks ago and I watch it change every day. I got this idea a few years ago, when Maxie Ewins gave me a leftover bulb that didn’t get planted in the gardens outside my office window. It sat on my table for a long time until I finally put it in some water and watched what happened. It wasn’t but a day before that bulb set out its roots. It was just waiting to grow and all it needed was a place to do that and some water to nourish it. I watched the roots grow longer and longer each day. It was working very hard yet nothing was happening “above ground”, so to speak. Finally came the day when its DNA gave the signal that it was time to move into its next phase of life. And slowly the first leaf appeared on the top of the bulb followed by others and eventually the stem arrived followed by a bud that blossomed into a flower. I watch this one every day and it reminds me that “Not all growth takes place in the sunlight.” Sometimes what seems to be the darkest moments might really be the start of something very new. So, back to the original question about my own sense of call and ministry. My ministry – my Call from God – this strange and difficult and wonderful vocation --- has always been to support you in discovering your ministry --- your Call from God. It has always been about that. I might not have always done it well and there are times I wished I had done some things differently, but I’ve always tried to be faithful, not perfect. Henri Nouwen, a 20th century theologian and writer once wrote: “The mystery of ministry is that we have been chosen to make our own limited and very conditional love the gateway for the unlimited and unconditional love of God.” Ministry is a partnership between you and God and – should you choose to accept it --- is one that will never disappoint. [1] Chittister, Joan and Williams, Rowan Uncommon Gratitude: Alleluia For All That Is (Liturgical Press, Minnesota 2010) pg 187 |