Send Her Your Prayers

I'm on my way with Hurricane Peg to Anniston, Alabama, to celebrate the new ministry of my mentor at Grace Episcopal Church. That means for the next 36 hours, I will not be posting anything new here, but I invite you to check out the sidebar with "Brilliance in the Blogosphere" to sample some other thinking that is witty, thoughtful, and newsworthy. I'll be back to my own online "processing" by Saturday.

And please take a moment to send out a prayer to God for the ministry of Mtr. Lee F. Shafer as she is officially instituted as the rector of Grace Episcopal Church. Or, is it institutionalized? Only parish priests know the real answer to that one! :)

On Our Level

The other night, I attended an interfaith service as part of World AIDS Day. Such occasions give rise to feelings of sadness in remembering lost friends, and anger at the bigotry that allowed so many to die. But what stood out for me was the moment when we heard a reading from the Gospel of Luke, in which the evangelist recounts the Sermon on the Mount as the Sermon on the Plain:

He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. --Luke 6: 17

I'm going to stop there to note that, in Luke's telling of this event, Jesus came DOWN to the people. He wasn't sitting above in judgement; he was right there, on the ground, amidst everyone. And now, back to Scripture:

They had come to hear him and be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them.--Luke 6: 18-19

The people were seeking, they were longing, they were desperate for something GOOD. And here's this amazing man who's presence was such that they could feel the power coming from him. By listening to what he was teaching, their loads were lightened and the darkness enveloping their souls and making them a despairing people was giving way to a healing of their brokenness. Jesus then launches into the Beatitudes and several parables, including seeing the speck in the neighbor's eye while not noticing the log in your own. Towards the end of the chapter he reminds us:

No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.--Luke 6: 43-45

The abundance of the heart, what is inside you, is what will come out of you. If what is inside you is "good fruit", then it will be an abundance of this goodness that people will hear in what you say. Likewise with evil. I think this is true. It is certainly what one can see in the political arena. Again, another state legislative body, this time the New York Senate, voted overwhelmingly to defeat a marriage equality bill. Opponents said nothing during the two hour debate; supporters, many of them black or Jewish Democrats, said a lot. They drew the parallels between the struggles of their own minority groups and mine. One Senator told the story of her gay brother, estranged from the family, who she searched to find... and when she found him, his partner had died... and he didn't have the benefit of survivorship afforded straight spouses. Abundance of the heart. And while the good people lost, they at least spoke out from their hearts. The ones who perpetuate the evil of inequality couldn't even open their mouths.

We all know Jesus opened his mouth in goodness, and his mouth and his actions got him nailed to a cross by evil authorities as a "let this be an example to any of you who would speak out!" But this man, who willing met the people at their level, defeated death through the resurrection. And his example is the hope for those of us big mouths speaking out of goodness that we will eventually overcome the evils of inequality. Again, this is Advent. The theme is patience and waiting for the Lord. And trusting that there is a growing sense of fairness that is rippling below the surface. Be awake. Be alert. And get ready to ride that wave of freedom when it comes.

And the Heat Goes On....

I have been hosting the famous Hurricane Peg; hence blogging about news items has been a little bit more sporadic as of late. But I think it is worth noting that in advance of the Executive Council's teleconference call about the situation in Uganda, the President of the House of Deputies, Bonnie Anderson, has condemned the Anti-Homosexuality legislation. You can read the story from the Episcopal News Service HERE.

The Executive Council will be discussing Uganda next Monday, but it would seem that HoD President Bonnie Anderson's statement may be a forerunner to what the Episcopal Church will say through the Council next week.

So, as with all things in Advent, it seems that if one waits patiently, one will get to see the Spirit move in its mysterious ways. Glad to know that someone in the Episcopal Church is standing up for the dignity of ALL people!

Thank you, President Anderson!

World AIDS Day

In rememberance of all those who have died, all those who have cared for the dying, and all those who live with HIV, let us pray:

O merciful Father, who hast taught us in thy holy Word that thou dost not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men: Look with pity upon the sorrows of this world and those living with the realities of HIV/AIDS for whom our prayers are offered. Remember them, O Lord, in mercy, nourish their souls with patience, comfort them with a sense of thy goodnes, lift up thy countenance upon them, and give them peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
--Collect for A Person in Trouble or Bereavement, BCP, pg. 831

Hatred Knows No Boundaries

As the U.S. was building up a head of steam to go "kick a little Iraqi ass", I remember how many leaders on the European continent were cautioning then President Dum-dum NOT to do it. The French were particularly concerned with the ill-thought plan, and became the target for much scorn among the crowd that now is waving their tea bags and screaming that they don't want health insurance reform. We actually had members of Congress pressuring the folks in the Congressional cafeteria to rename French Fries to "Freedom" Fries (because that would hurt the French??)

The concerns of our European friends made sense for a lot of reasons... as we are now learning. But chiefly, these countries are ones that had been seeing an influx of immigrants, many of whom were Muslim, and it was putting their own social, economic, and humanity to the test. These folks don't look like us; they don't speak like us; and they don't pray like us. And in countries, such as France which used to be a colonial power in places such as Algeria, there have been very tense relations with the Islamic immigrant community. So any kicking of that ant hill was bound to have ripple effects felt much more closely in Europe than the United States.

Now, in a rare instance of "Well, at least this isn't us bull-headed Americans being the idiots", the Swiss have voted to ban minarets, the towers that arise from the domes on mosques in that country. They did not take a similar vote to remove all crosses from their churches. If you read about the campaign that was waged to pass this ugly legislation, you'll see the roots of racism and fear of "the other": ads showing a set of brown hands grabbing for a Swiss passport and minarets arising like missiles from the Swiss flag.

Many of the 6-percent of the Swiss Muslims are people who escaped to this supposedly-neutral country during the upheaval in Eastern Europe, particularly Yugoslavia, in the 1990s. According to the Associated Press, only one in ten of those Muslims practices their religion in this country of 7.5 million people. So clearly, we are talking about a minority within a minority. All the more reason to pass a constitutional ban on this iconic feature of their mosques, right?

Gay people, especially in Florida, can understand the feelings of Swiss muslims this morning. Nothing like being a minority group who must endure the tyranny of the majority voting on your personhood!

The Swiss have not only kicked an ant hill, they've done so with a bucket of honey poured on their shoe. And I imagine the rest of Europe is a little nervous about the fall-out from this prejudicial vote.

O God: Help! Help! Help!

Hallelujah! A Marriage Milestone in Massachusetts

Great news arriving just in time for the start of the new Church year! The Bishop of Massachusetts is directing clergy in his diocese, who so desire to marry same-sex couples, that they may go forth and do so using resources developed by the leaders in Province I of the Episcopal Church. Read about it HERE on the Integrity blog.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Year C

Happy New Year! OK, that's happy Church New Year. We are entering into Year C in our Church calendar, and with this comes more readings from the Gospel of Luke. Attend church on Sundays for the next year, and you will likely be hearing a reading from the gospel according to the "other", the non-Jew among the evangelists, the one who tells the story of a Jesus whose wide embrace reached beyond the chosen ones of Israel to often incorporate women, Samaritans, and prodigal sons.

In some ways, Luke's gospel might well be the one written for those who often felt excluded or unheard. He was writing for a Gentile audience; thus there are often times longer explanations of "things" that the other gospel writers didn't need to explain because they presumed those hearing their words were already in the know. Luke is the one who tells of Jesus' birth from the perspective of his mother, Mary. Luke is the only one who gives us a glimpse of a teen-aged Jesus in the Temple asking questions and giving answers that astound his audience. In Luke, we have the teaching about what it means to love your neighbor and the explaination that the "neighbor" is anyone, including a Good Samaritan... a character many Christians are familiar with from Sunday School teachings. But how many Christians would cringe if we were to update the story and instead of a "Good" Samaritan, Jesus would have said that a transgendered person or a lesbian stopped and helped the beaten and bloodied man who was left to die on the road? See, Jesus' point was to tell the self-righteous of Israel that "the one who showed mercy" may be one of "those people" that they so despised who, nonetheless, did the right thing. And it is also in Luke's gospel where we see Jesus, hanging on the cross and in excruciating pain, absolving the thief dying along side him when the man asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. That story has always made an impression on me and has made me see Jesus as one who will listen for the earnest cry of repentance from even the lowest of the low, and will not turn them away.

So, I am happy to be entering into Year C which might well be seen as "The Year of the Lukian Calendar". It will be an opportunity for all of us "others" to hear the call to come home, and to recognize and give thanks for the "otherness" of everyone who surrounds us.