Tapping the phone lines of faith

        I was excited when I learned that the people inside almost every car that stopped at the red light in front of our church during Jazz Mass in the Grass rolled down their window to check out what was happening on our lawn. For a few minutes, they heard a bunch of Christians happily singing along to some snappy jazz; they heard snippets of God’s Word; they saw Christians of all ages feasting together on the grass. By worshiping God outside among the noise and bustle of Westport Road, we engaged in the easiest kind of Christian testimony. We let strangers eavesdrop on our relationship with God.

          Given the present scandal about the NSA collecting data on our phone and email conversations, I’ve heard several people make jokes like, “Well, they can go ahead and tap my phones. I’m not a terrorist! They are welcome to listen in on my boring life!” Those comments made me wonder: If a bunch of spies were tapping my phone and computer to find out what I was up to, how much of my conversations would be a testimony to my faith? How much of my daily conversations would be about God, about Jesus Christ, about God’s presence in my life? Would the spies listening to my life get an earful of the Good News? Would my words invite a sleepy government bureaucrat to want to know more about the love of God?

Since I’m a priest and earn my living talking about God, the spies might get a fairly high “God talk” reading on me, especially during working hours. One of my favorite things about starting the ordination process was that people all of a sudden started talking to me about God. My siblings, my fellow teachers, my students’ parents at school, strangers at cocktail parties …. As soon as they heard that I wanted to be a priest, the floodgates opened like magic, and boring superficial chatter was engulfed by waves of interesting conversations about faith, questions, and doubts. That is one of the best and most precious gifts that comes from wearing a collar, as far as I’m concerned. But I know that it is harder for the rest of us to open up; in our secular world, it is challenging for those of us without a socially-accepted excuse to talk about God.

For our Baptist brothers and sisters, testimony seems to come easily. From childhood on, lay people learn how to get up and talk about what Jesus is doing in their lives. For us reticent Episcopalians, however, such language is almost foreign, and somehow, just plain distressing. And of course, giving testimony can be problematic. We can accost others in such a way that makes them feel threatened. We can come across as intolerant, shutting down relationships rather than building bridges. I read a recent blog post about prayer at a public school graduation that made an interesting point: Jesus did indeed warn us to beware before practicing one’s piety on street corners. Remember, he says that we’re supposed to pray in private, and not like the hypocrites. Don’t Jesus’ remarks on prayer excuse me from testifying, as well? Shouldn’t we keep our religion private? My mother always taught me that you don’t talk about religion, sex, or money in polite company. But as the author of this blog wrote, what if a valedictorian not of the majority religion at a high school graduation dared to speak up about how his religion “had motivated him and mattered to him, about how it had been part of his family and part of his upbringing, about how it mattered within his life.”[1] He wouldn’t be forcing others to pray a prayer that wasn’t their own. He wouldn’t be using his power as a member of the majority to threaten or belittle. He would be telling his little-known story, daring to witness to what he knows. That, the author pointed out, would be an act of courageous faith, rather than an act of intolerant bravado.

We Christians these days are often in the minority, once we leave the safety of our church walls. Like members of the early church, we live in a culture that is less and less predominantly Christian. I think that the skill of talking about why our faith motivates us and matters to us, about how it matters within our lives, is a skill that even we Episcopalians need to learn. I am veering away from a sermon on our readings today because I have asked Fred White to start us off with some testimony at today’s 10 a.m. service. This is something that I think we can do more of at St. Thomas, at all of our services. I am going to be asking you to think about how you have seen God, seen Jesus, in your lives and in our parish. Four times a year, we are going to share these words of testimony with one another, in this safe and loving community, hoping that the practice will encourage you to share them in other places, too. Now, I know that not everyone likes to get up and talk in the pulpit. I am so afraid of speaking off the cuff, that I myself have to write down even what I am going to say at announcement time, so I understand that fear. So if you would rather write your testimony and have someone else read it, then that is an option, as well. Not everyone has to do this, but I would like everyone to think and pray about what you might say. What would you say if someone asked you where you experienced Jesus this past week or this past month? If someone asked you why your faith mattered?

Yes, I know that words can manipulate. Just look at Jezebel using the royal power behind her words to spread lies. I know that words can be judgmental. I cringe, as you do, at the harsh condemnation that the prophet Elijah offers on God’s behalf in our reading from 1 Kings. I also know that actions often speak louder than words, that testimony of deeds can be richer than testimony of words. I know St. Francis’ famous line that goes “preach the Gospel always; if necessary use words.” I see the woman in our Gospel lesson pouring out the jar of precious oil on Jesus’ feet, showing her love without uttering a word. Words are far from the only way to testify.

But I also know that we don’t talk about “God’s Word” for nothing. We are a people of the Book, a people of story and of words. Our scriptures testify with many voices, and it is the whole of these many voices that is God’s Word. We too testify with many voices to what we read in scripture and to what we experience in our lives. God needs all of our voices, all of our stories, to give witness to God’s Good News. Your life with God is Good News to the world, and it is too important to keep hidden. So bring on the eavesdroppers at St. Thomas: we have a secret that is begging to be leaked!

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[1] http://www.stateofformation.org/2013/06/public-piety-authentic-courage-and-christian-witness/

Speaking to Despair

         Referencing the decline in religious affiliation these days, poet Christian Wiman commented, “In my experience every church nods to doubt but has little to say to despair.”[1] Perhaps he has a point. We’re proud to be open to all kinds and shapes of “beliefs” in the Episcopal Church; we reassure you—I hope—that questions and doubts are a normal part of the life of faith. But do our tidy services, our coffee hours, our guarded smiles, our carefully reasoned sermons … Do they speak to the waves of despair that can wash over human beings in this world? Do they reach down into our private pits of meaninglessness? Do they reach out to those desolate places, far from our doors, in which despair dwells and even thrives?

          I’m not so sure that they do. In contrast, though, today’s lessons from Scripture show us a God who deals directly with despair. No one in the ancient world knew more about despair than the widow did. It’s not just that she grieved for her husband. It’s not even that she faced poverty. A woman in the ancient Near East depended upon a man for her very survival, for her personhood. If her husband died, and he had no brothers to marry her and keep her a place in his family, then she and her children were thrust out on the margins of society, without status, without income, without hope that things would ever change. Thanks to God’s law, a widow in Israel could glean leftover crops in the fields to scrape together some sustenance for herself and her children. But she was powerless and invisible in her plight. Her only hope was that a son might grow to adulthood and give her food, shelter, and an identity in her old age.

The two widows that we meet in today’s readings have lost even that hope. The widow from Zarephath, to whom the prophet Elijah is sent, is literally starving during a time of famine in the land; yet she has a son. When her son dies, she cries out to God in total despair, convinced that her own sin has brought such doom upon her. The widow in Nain, whom Jesus meets on the road, has also just lost her son, her only son and her only hope for survival. No wonder Jesus’ heart goes out to her. In bringing these two sons back to life, God is doing more than alleviating grief and putting on miracle shows: God is reaching down into total despair and turning it into joy. In both stories, it is the healing of the despair of the mothers that is emphasized, rather than the healing of the sickness of the sons. In both stories, we see God’s compassion—and more importantly, God’s action—in the face of the greatest human desolation imaginable. We see Elijah do more than heave a sigh of grief. We see him throw himself down on the dead son’s body and angrily challenge the Lord God, until God changes his mind. We see Jesus do more than console the grieving mother; we see him charge into the midst of the funeral procession and touch the unclean bier, daring to make himself ritually unclean.

Recently in Louisville, there has been a great deal of talk about compassion. Our city is the largest city in the country to have signed a “Charter of Compassion, and Louisville has embarked on a 10-year campaign for compassion which will be implemented by a new local group, the Partnership for a Compassionate Louisville. We mainline Christians are comfortable talking about compassion. The recent visit by the Dalai Lama and the recent Festival of Faiths centered on an interfaith discussion of what it means to be compassionate, to “suffer with” the suffering, to lift up the marginalized. I was proud of myself for attending a few lectures in this festival, and for advertising it in our bulletin. However, I must say that I do a lot more listening to talk about compassion than I do actively engaging in it. I do a lot more opening my heart to sad stories than I do risking my own neck by reaching out to heal what is broken.

I read a story in the paper on Tuesday that has haunted me all week. Perhaps you saw it, too. It is the story of a local family, members of Northeast Christian Church, who have just adopted a toddler from China with stage 4 cancer.[2] This family already has four children and is going through financial hard times. Before adopting the little girl, they even had to sell their nice, upper-middle-class home to move into a smaller rental home. Yet their eldest child, when she was only six years old, heard about all of the Haitian children who were orphaned in the earth quake there. She wanted to adopt an orphan, to share her family’s blessings with a less fortunate child. Her parents did what we all probably would have done under such circumstances: they tried gently to dissuade her, to distract her, to satisfy her with doing less momentous acts of Christian kindness. Children, after all, don’t understand the practical, real-life difficulties that follow generous impulses. When their daughter kept begging and praying, year after year, for an adopted brother or sister, the parents even found an international Christian organization that offered the opportunity to pray and to send money to unfortunate children overseas without going through the huge step of adopting them. But that is when the family met Mya, the little girl all the way over in China, who was dying of a rare cancer of the pelvic bone. The Chinese doctors had already done everything that they could for her. The Louisville family heard a call from God to take care of this little girl; they tried to ignore that call, to rationalize that call away, but they couldn’t do it. And this family did what I wouldn’t have done: they reached out in spite of the risk of financial ruin, in spite of the risk of heartbreak, in spite of the risk of traumatizing their own four children, and they adopted the sick child. They acted with God’s compassion, the kind of compassion that suffers with the suffering, the kind of compassion that not only bows the head before despair but that actively addresses despair—the worst kind of despair that we know—the despair of a dying, abandoned child. Mya now lives with them in Louisville, where she receives free top-notch medical treatment from doctors at Kosair hospital. She smiles and plays and holds tight to her new mom’s fingers, and she might even see the miracle of a cure or remission of her cancer. For all accounts and purposes, Mya, like the despairing widows and their sons, has been, at least for now, raised from the dead.

It all made me wonder: what made Mya’s new family do more than shake their heads over the shadow of a little girl in despair, half a world away? What made them do more than pray for her, more than send a few left-over dollars her way? What made them overcome their fear to reach out and take action?

A friend of mine pointed to an answer. In the newspaper interview, this family emphasized the support of their church. This family knew that, whatever misfortune they might incur in helping Mya, their church would be right there with them, lending them whatever aid they might need. Indeed, in order to pay for the adoption, Northeast Christian collected some $15,000. This family’s call became the whole community’s call. They felt the backing—the spiritual and emotional and practical backing—of an entire community. This family was not acting alone. They were not making the decision alone. They had the support of a Christian community.

We saw something similar here at St. Thomas, too. When I found out about the needs of a single-parent family from the Congo and shared them with you, we were able to take a step together that I doubt any of us would have taken on our own. We did have one family step up courageously to take the lead, but the financial and emotional and spiritual support that we have been able to give to Ortance and her family have been the result of a whole community coming together, and it has exceeded my wildest expectations.

In our scripture lessons, there is another interesting common thread in the two miracles. In both stories, the faithful are experiencing a spiritual high at the moment that they are confronted by despair. Elijah has just seen God feed him and the widow and her son for days with one small jug of oil and a handful of meal in a jar. It is after this miraculous sustaining act that the widow’s son suddenly falls ill and dies. In Luke’s story, Jesus’ disciples have just seen him cure the centurion’s slave, and they are entering the town of Nain in triumph, with a whole enthusiastic crowd of believers at their side. It is then that the parade of happy disciples meets the funeral cortege, and joyful life comes face to face with tragic despair.

We in the Church today, as we rejoice in Jesus’ deeds or reap the fruits of God’s sustaining blessings, we too run smack into despair. Sometimes it is in our midst and sometimes we only get wispy traces of it, floating to us from dark places far away. As followers of a compassionate God, we are called to take compassionate action. We are called to adopt that dying baby. We are called to give away money that we think we might need. We are called to take risky action. But if the Church is doing its job, we know that we have a community to support us. We know that we don’t go out on a limb alone. It is my prayer that we at St. Thomas can grow to be that kind of real, authentic, and priceless community for one another—a community that dares, in the name of the compassionate Christ, to speak life, in word and in deed, to despair.

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[1] “A pastor and poet talk about God: Embrace and Abandonment,” The Christian Century, June 12, 2013, 26.

[2] http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130604/NEWS01/306040052/Louisville-family-takes-leap-faith-adopts-Chinese-orphan-cancer