The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

For our Dirty Sexy Ministry family, we thought you'd like to read the sermon preached by one-half (Mary) at the other half's (Laurie) installation as rector and the Celebration of the Ministry of St. Michael's.  We hope you can feel the love, because it was a joyful, amazing night.  And yes, we had cupcakes.  And champagne.  

“The hopes and fears of all these years are met in thee tonight...” Indeed.  This evening St. Michael’s installs her new rector.  The journey has been long: you have examined your parish, looking at your strengths and weaknesses.  You have worked toward developing a profile and putting out what you wanted in a rector.  You did your search.  You consulted with your bishop and canon to the ordinary.  At last, the rector arrived.  Now the journey begins again...  The relationship begins for real.

With hopes and fears:  What is Laurie like?  Does she get us?  Will she love us?  Will she hate us?  Do we get her?  Will we love Laurie?  Will we hate Laurie?  How is this all going to turn out?

Aaah the fears of all the years...

You are just beginning your ministry together.  But what is ministry?  What is it that Laurie is supposed to do?  What is expected of you, St. Michael’s Church?  The answer is so simple: love one another.  A simple command, so obvious, and yet...

You are to love one another.  You are no longer servant and master.  You are friends.  Or at least you are to treat each other as friends.  Can you do it?

How do you love someone you just met?  How do you keep loving someone year after year?  Will love mean that somehow St. Michael’s will never encounter another problem, issue, disaster?

Logically we answer no.  Love does not mean never having to say you are sorry.  Love means always having to say you are sorry.  Love means deciding day in and day out that you will treat the other with respect and care whether or not you feel it.  Like I said, love is simple but...

Love is simple but not easy.  Loving can be simple but never easy, fraught with good intentions and lousy follow through.  Life is a complicated and difficult thing.  Helping St. Michael’s Church grow and express its ministry to the world will be complicated and difficult.  

There are vestry meetings and shortfalls in budgets.  There are arguments about liturgical styles and customs.  There are classes to teach, people to visit, and gospels to preach.  There will be arguments.

Lord have mercy, there will be arguments.  If only church membership and budgets would grow on arguments, but alas...  The church does not grow on arguments.  The church grows despite arguments and disagreements.  The church grows because no matter what we love.

No matter what, we love.  No matter what, God loves us.  God loved us first, giving us that first taste.  That first taste of love that will not be recreated in gimmicks or programs or meetings or good intentions but only when we love.

The church grows in our ministry, a ministry centered on the very foundation of the world, expressed one night on the night before he died for us, when he took bread, blessed it and brake it and gave it to his brothers and sisters and said: “Take and eat this, this is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me.”

“Do this in remembrance of me...”  God says: Love in remembrance of me because that is how I live in you.  Come together and share your bread, your heart, and I am in the very midst of you, transforming your hopes and fears into a glorious banquet of love.

St. Michael’s, Laurie, this is your night to begin.  This is your night to begin that ministry started at the foundation of the world when our God first loved, loving us into life.  The ministry of St. Michael’s, the ministry of Laurie Brock are wrapped together in the simple package of love, remember that in remembrance of him.

Outgrowing Closure

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insolvable. . . . They can never be solved, but only outgrown.

-Carl Jung

We like resolution, or at least I do, and I'm learning in each moment in this life that I'm not as terminally unique as I like to believe I am.  So, we humans yearn for resolution, for a tidy ending, for closure, for no threads left hanging.  All our questions about a situation are answered, with no moments where we simply have to understand that we will never know what the heck happened.

Oh yes, we like closure, that imaginary event that gives us a feeling of control, that there is no more left to say or do, and the production has come to a glorious and suitable end.  Oh, and did I mention that we feel as if we are in control?

I wonder how much of our desire for resolution is really a desire for control, a desire to fly in the face of that whole, "I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other gods before me," commandment that we violate regularly with the gods of our own egos.  I pull out the altar to the Ego God when I start crawling around in someone else's head to find resolution - assigning psychological issues and insane behaviour to the person whose actions I find distasteful.  In short, when I blame the other as I polish my halo.  

S/He treated me this way because s/he has (and fill in the blank with whatever is issue du jour keeps you in the best light - come on, you all know how to do this.)

But like Jung says, the most important problems in our lives are fundamentally unsolvable.  The most important problems.  The big ones.  The situations we find ourselves in with others that keep repeating themselves.  Systems experts and non-experts alike call these patterns.  We all have them, these patterns, these important problems in our lives, that recur and recur and recur.  

The Ego God whispers seductively to us, "It's that person's problem, not yours.  YOU are just perfect."  And we can believe and go forward.  Until we meet another person with the exact same "problem" and we find ourselves in the exact same situation, just with a brand new cast of characters.  We as individuals, as families, and as groups all experience this. And we can begin the exercise of data-collecting, assigning blame, and solving the unsolvable issues.

Or we can grow.

Sounds easy, right?  

But growth is never easy or particularly fun.  To grow, we must be willing to shed the skin of blame, to have that level of ego ripped from us by the Holy One, and to step into a new place.  Our egos, or personas, are these protective layers to our souls that we develop quite well over years.  They are often very helpful, allowing us to step into roles as needed or handle painful situations of our past with a minimal amount of danger.  They also have a darker side, when we become so invested in our personas that we lose who we truly are, both out good and our bad.  We are buried under so much ego that the core of our Child of God can't move or grow.  The holy child of our souls is bound and tied, and any growth is stifled or malformed while we work very diligently toward closure for all our problems and toward keeping our ego personas in place at the cost of our core selves.

We keep running into the same problems and patterns because, maybe, God keeps offering us a chance to grow.  God keeps hoping maybe, this time, the blame won't work anymore or we'll just finally clue into the pattern and decide the illusions are working anymore and enough is enough.

We might pray, "God's will be done," and mostly mean it, until God says, "Yes!" and gets to work and we realize we forgot to read the fine print.  Now that we have stopped looking outside for blame, stopped forcing the illusion of resolution, and given God a minuscule space in which to work, God starts flaying.  I understand why all of us avoid growth.  We do, initially, because our deep souls know the pain of ego being ripped away so growth can begin.  I saw an image of St. Bartholomew, who was flayed alive before being crucified, his skin sawed away from his body.  Trust me, it's worse in the picture.

That's what holy growth, the deep kind, feels like.  If we can easily release our ego persona to growth, it's not really our ego.  It's the shirt from the 80's that we never wore, anyway, so we'll give that away painlessly.  The Ego God (and we all have more than one, unfortunately) does not release so easily.  She will cling to the soul, and he will wrap around bones and muscles while God is flaying.  There will be tears and pain, and we might not think we will live.  And, oh, others will mock us and tell us we are wrong for enduring this and we should just cheer up or engage in whatever quick fix would make them feel better, like those who watched Bartholomew be flayed.  

But, miraculously, we live and grow.  We look at the new skin that appears and see ourselves and the world in a new way.  The Child of God within us stretches and takes up more space within us than we have previously allowed.  We probably even feel out of control and recognize its holy freedom.

In this new place, we celebrate rebirth, recreation, and renewal.

And eat cupcakes.

  

  

To Bertha

The day before Christmas Eve the adoption worker came to the house for a visit with my soon to be daughter.  She brought with her papers for me to sign.  She explained that by signing these papers I was saying that I wanted to adopt my little girl.  She continued to explain what else had to be done as part of the adoption process. 

Before the adoption worker left she presented me with a beautifully wrapped gift.  She told me that the gift was from a woman at her church.  At her church, parishioners bought presents for all the children in foster care.  This gift was for my daughter.

I thanked her.  She left.  I looked more carefully at the present.  There was a card that read: “To my angel (my daughter’s name), from Bertha.”  Now, I know the present was for my daughter, but it is really hard for a baby to unwrap presents, so I ripped the package open.  Inside the package was expensive baby clothing.

It was the kind of baby clothing that you give to someone at a baby shower- extravagant and adorable.  It was the kind of baby clothing that you give your good friend or your sister for a child that you will know and love.  Bertha took time, and went to great expense to buy and wrap these outfits for my daughter.  I filled with wonder.

I wondered: who is this woman buying expensive gifts for a child she may never meet and does not know?  I felt strange receiving such a wonderful and expensive gift from someone I did not know.  I felt strange receiving such a wonderful and expensive gift when I certainly could well afford to purchase these items for my child.  I wondered: how do I receive this gift?  I also wondered: am I this generous?

In the past, I have gotten presents for children from an angel tree, but were the gifts as lavish?  Sheepishly, I must answer no.  Certainly, I gave nice things, but frankly, I did not put as much thought nor expense in the items I bought.  It brings to mind the question: do I give thoughtfully and lavishly? 

Sometimes I do give thoughtfully and lavishly when I buy a present for a friend.  I also try to give generously to charities and the church.  I try to give, but I sometimes find myself wanting to know who is getting this and what are they using it for.  Does that person, charity, church deserve my gift?  Will my gift be used wisely?  I want to control the receiving of the gift, so I guess that is not really a gift anymore.

I think about Bertha, whoever she is.  She has given lavishly and thoughtfully with no expectation of return.  Can I be generous?  Can I give lavishly and thoughtfully with no expectation of return?  Will I be willing to give my very best even to a stranger?  I certainly hope so.

So Bertha, whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you!  Thank you for the beautiful baby clothing.  My daughter is all ready wearing them.  She looks adorable in them because of you.  Thank you.

Thank you, Bertha, for reminding me to give generously, thoughtfully, and lavishly.  Thank you for reminding me that what you give to the least of these, you give to Jesus.  Thank you for reminding me that what you give to the stranger, you give to Jesus.  Thank you, Bertha, whoever you are, wherever you are.

Sincerely,

Mary Koppel