Dean Spangler's Retirement Party, 2014

These were the remarks I gave at the retirement party for Dean Spangler, commenting on her time as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo.

The bishop has mentioned before that the relationships between bishops and deans have been notoriously rocky, and that he’s glad that it’s not been the case between him and Mother Liza.  Unlike the relationships between bishops and deans, I don’t think there are any Victorian novels or modern accounts that include the relationship between a Cathedral Dean and a Cathedral deacon, so Mthr Liza and I made it up as we went!

And it turned out to be really, really successful!  At least I think so, she might disagree…

And that’s no easy feat!  Tonight, I’ll share an episode of clergy confidential, a hidden look into the lives of clergy.  Tonight, we’ll feature Mother Liza, and reveal some of the secrets of what goes on in the sacristy, the unknown dealings between the clergy cathedral.

Let’s start with the first fact: Mthr Liza and I disagree about theology.  We disagree about quite a bit of it, actually!  We have had some fireworks-level discussions about things great and small, in the sacristy, over text and email, and, after knowing Mother Liza for all these years, I’ve come to a simple conclusion about our theological discussions: she may be a heretic.  Now, I’m pretty sure that she thinks my theology sometimes belongs in a medieval monastery.  So, she’s the modernist and I’m the throwback when it usually comes to our theological starting points.  I have recommended to the bishop that a stake be prepared in Cathedral Square for Mother Liza, just to scare her enough, not too much, but just enough so that she’ll return to orthodoxy.  The bishop has yet to comply.

Second fact in clergy confidential: what a dean really does.  I’m sure you’ve all seen that meme on Facebook or emailed around the office: six squares, with six different pictures, and under each picture, the phrases: What the world thinks I do, what my friends think I do, what my mom thinks I do, what my boss thinks I do, what I think I do, what I really do.  So, here’s the secret about what Mother Liza really does: everything.  And I mean everything!  On a typical Sunday, I see dozens of people (usually I’m one of them), come to Mthr Liza and ask for things, tell her things, ask for prayers, for healing, for advice, for money (that’s usually me), for direction, for help dressing up like St Nicholas, etc etc.  Mthr Liza has to have plans A-Q in her head for each liturgy each week, in case one of the multiple variables goes awry, and a change needs to be made.  And she has done it all without bleeding from her eyes!

My favorite example of this was during the process of the bishop’s transition.  For those of you who remember, there are two committees: the first one selects the candidates, then is done.  After that, the transition team takes over, and has to: bring the candidates and their families here, parade them around the diocese, hold an election, plan a consecration, plan a going away party for the Garrisons, install the new bishop.  Mother Liza is the one who headed the process.  In seminary, they do not spend a ton of time teaching skills related to: party planning, cross-continental travel, public relations and press releases, dog and pony shows, holding a modern, electronic democratic election in a Gothic Cathedral with technology challenges, clergy rustling, organizing choirs from 61 different parishes into one huge choir.  They didn’t teach any of that in seminary…they were probably teaching that questionable theology I mentioned earlier.  And since the bishop taught at that same seminary, maybe his reluctance to prepare the heretic stake for Mother Liza is because we’d uncover his own dark theological roots…interesting…

Third fact in clergy confidential:  the art of making it all go smoothly.  I bet that you think that Sunday mornings all fall into place, that a mystical fog settles over all of the participants, and we just know when to begin processing, that we know which piece of hardware needs to be carried, set on fire, thrown, turned on, turned off, lifted up, put away, and that we all know where to sit.  Not so. 

Part of the secret is that Mthr Liza thinks through all of these details and gives instructions for anything out of the ordinary.  The worst thing that can happen is for me to wander around looking confused.  And, because my stall is in front of hers, and sometimes I can’t tell when she’s standing or sitting or kneeling, I’ll hear her helpfully hiss: STAND!!!!  I get back at her, however, when I get to turn around and tell her that she has forgotten to cense the altar during the Gloria, and that I’ve waited to tell her that she has only 15 seconds left, so she had better get moving. 

We also have secret hand movements, and can communicate with our eyes. This (gesture to suspenders) means: take off your cope and put on your chasuble, but wait until the choir starts, so the ripping Velcro noise won’t be too loud.  Or this with the eyes: TOUCH THAT AND MOVE IT, not to be confused with DO NOT TOUCH IT OR MOVE IT.  We never really got that distinction down.

Also, you have one more chance to see another piece that makes it all go smoothly.  If you have never seen them before, this Sunday, kindly ask Mother Liza to see her sermon.  I can assure you, it looks nothing like what you think it will.  It has always been my goal to preach half as well as Mthr Liza, who sets the bar so incredibly high.  I have learned that one of the greatest fears is the terror that settles into your stomach when you contemplate going up to the pulpit to preach, and finding that your sermon isn’t there, or the fear that Mother Liza will feel ill late on a Saturday night, and I’ll need to preach her sermon without having prepared.  So, one Sunday, I thought: just in case, I’ll look over her sermon, and see how she lays it out, so that, if she suddenly swoons, or develops croup or scrofula or something, I’ll be ready to preach in her stead.  What I saw when I looked at her sermon text is the sort of thing you can never unsee.  It looks like plans for a nuclear assault against Canada.  It is color-coded, has cryptic symbols all over it, has arrows with text in both pencil and ink above and below the lines, is pointed like music, and generally, both terrified and fascinated me.  I have decided that if Mthr Liza were ever overtaken by some dread illness, then I’d ask Abbie to play some interlude music during the sermon, and we’ll all meditate instead.

Fourth part of clergy confidential: the secret weapon.  We all have those things that keep us going, that make the rough spots of our days a little smoother.  For me, it’s coffee and gin, though never together.  Different flavor profiles.  Mother Liza’s secret weapon, is much smoother than coffee, much more powerful than gin, and gives great hugs: Dr Luann Bauer.  Luann is Liza’s sounding board for sermons, the powerhouse who keeps life running amidst the chaos of church life.  The parties that go off without a hitch: Luann.  The evenings of roasted walnuts and port by the fire when I have a bad day: Luann.  There are times when I go to Luann for guidance instead of Mthr Liza, usually when I know Mthr Liza would give me advice I don’t want!  And, even last week, amidst their move, Luann drove a moving truck to Cape Cod during Holy Week so that Mthr Liza could focus on the liturgies!  What a woman!  However, I am also suspicious about whether Luann might need to be burned at the stake, as well.  However, not for heresy, but for witchcraft.  I find it impossible that a vegetarian can cook pork like Luann can, and believe that she must employ the dark arts to accomplish it.

Now, a final part of clergy confidential; one of the most important parts in the life of any person called to ordained ministry is the day of ordination.  And a personally convicting part is at the end of the sermon, when the preacher gives the charge to the person to be ordained by the bishop.  At my ordination, Mthr Liza was the preacher, and gave me my charge.  So, I’d like to return the favor.  Liza Spangler, please stand.

Through your decades of service to God’s people, you have touched the lives of thousands.  You have welcomed into the Church through baptism, you have prepared Christians for confirmation, you have married couples, you have helped form and educate those preparing for Holy Orders, you have anointed the ill and prepared the dying as they journey toward the promise made to them by our Lord, you have heard the confessed sins of your people and absolved them in Christ’s name, you have joined with countless saints and angels in the consecration of the Eucharist.  And, personally, you have helped me through my struggles and joys, and I am honored to call you both my mentor and friend.  You now enter a new phase in your ministry, that same ministry that tickled the back of your tomboy brain in Missouri in the 1960s, that led you to General Seminary in the 1970s, to Alaska in the 80s, to Michigan in the 90s, to Buffalo these last 8 years: Christ’s call in your life has been a seamless garment, woven from top to bottom, and Cape Cod is now the next place you are being sent in order to ensure that the Gospel is proclaimed and that Christ is made present among his people through the sacraments.  The large window in the Richmond chapel depicts St Paul leaving the elders of the church as he journeyed on to his next destination.  Though we will miss you and will feel a gap as you and Luann depart, we know that the Lord Christ sends you on to do more of the work he has given you to do, the work of an apostle, the work of a priest.

Remember, Liza Spangler, the words in Latin from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer that surround the chancel at General Seminary.  Remember those words you read on the walls as you sat in the choir stalls with men who did not want a woman amongst them, remember those words as you now journey to Cape Cod, remember the words that hundreds of thousands of priests have heard as the bishop laid hands on them:

Be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments

Remember, Liza: Thou art a priest forever.  So, with our love and profound thanks, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Holy Saturday, 2014

Holy Saturday morning, 2014
Preached at St Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo

In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit.  Amen.

Before a complete understanding of astronomy, the ability to predict and understand solar eclipses was scant.  Since they were unpredictable, the frightening prospect that the sun would darken then be completely overshadowed, throwing the earth into darkness for 15 minutes was terrifying.  It may be hard for us, with our modern understanding, to fully grasp the horror that our ancestors felt when the sun was entirely blotted out.  That horror likely centered on what would happen if the sun did not return.  The first glimpse of light peeking out from the edge must have led to a huge sigh of collective relief as the eclipse began to end.

So, too, we can be accustomed to knowing that Easter follows Good Friday.  It is still uncomfortable and unnerving to be in the darkness between, but we feel fairly sure that the Church will proclaim the Easter message and continue its sacramental life.

But today, we are in the middle of the eclipse.  Today, there is no sacramental life.  What would it feel like if that became our future?  Not just for today, but for the rest of the Church’s life?  What if the eclipse were not to end?

No more funerals, no baptisms and confirmations, no more anointing of the sick, no weddings, no ordinations, no consecration of bishops, no blessing of animals.  If we stayed amidst the eclipse, never again would we meet Our Lord in the Eucharist.

That’s what the world faced on Holy Saturday: its Messiah had come to inaugurate the kingdom of God and to begin a new chapter of grace being extended to all by God living and coming among them.  But Good Friday was our response to that invitation.

On Holy Saturday, Peter continued to weep bitter tears, not just because of his part in the betrayal, but because of the darkness that enshrouded the world.

But there were others, others who lived in that darkness, but hoped that the light would break through again, others whose faith strengthened them and reminded them that Our Lord had talked of his body as a temple, and promised that he would rebuild that temple in three days.  Some of those in the darkness remembered and hoped.

First among those who hoped was the Blessed Virgin; she was the first to have received the grace of Christ in her life when she accepted the invitation of the archangel to become the Savior’s mother, and Scripture repeatedly reminds us that she pondered in her heart the mysteries of her son’s life.  ON Saturday, Mary hoped.

It is a medieval tradition that Saturdays are a day in which the Church remembers Mary in a special way, specifically because of her faith in God’s promises even in the midst of doubt: first at the Annunciation and today, on Holy Saturday, as she pondered in her heart her son’s words that he would rise again.  She stood, faithful at the cross, as her son was taken from her, and today, though morning, she set her face to Sunday.  She knew that today was the Sabbath, the day on which the Lord rested in Genesis.  She remembered and pondered the promises God had made to her and to the world, and knew that after the Sabbath rest, on the first day of the week, her Son would begin again the work of creation in the world.  With Mary, we wait with hope, with eyes and hearts set for the eclipse to fade.

Maundy, 2014

Maundy Thursday

Preached at St Paul's Cathedral, 2014

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Holy Week 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama was unlike any that it had experienced before or after.  That year, the city was rocked by peaceful protests for racial equality that led to the arrest and harsh imprisonment of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.  During that Holy Week, eight religious leaders of the city wrote an open letter, entitled A Call for Unity, in which they condemned the peaceful protests, and urged the black population of the city to use the courts and other legal means, rather than protest their condition and unfair treatment; that letter contained a veiled reference to King when it condemned outsiders who were in their city to direct and lead the events they criticized.  Of the eight white religious leaders who signed that letter, two were Episcopal bishops.

The letter was smuggled into the jail where King was being cruelly kept, and he wrote a response to those eight men, his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  Surely, with both the events in Birmingham, and the events in Jerusalem during Holy Week on his mind, King wrote to those men who called him an outsider: 

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

During the liturgies that mark the great events in Jerusalem that led to the arrest, trial, and death of Christ, the words, and actions, and melodies are powerful enough without need to embellish with a rousing sermon.  The liturgy itself is the sermon.  I’ll use my opportunity tonight merely to point you to the liturgy, to help you focus your thoughts on the events unfolding.

We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  It was true in the South in 1963 AD, true in Jerusalem in 33 AD, and true here, in our lives in Buffalo and Western New York.  That single garment of destiny is a place of thinness, where the common and the divine are interlinked, where the differences between privilege and want disappear, where the possibility of life bursting from death trails our every action.

Once again, beginning tonight with the Maundy, and continuing through tomorrow’s tolling bells, Saturday’s shocked silence, and the light on Sunday, our God wraps around us that single garment of destiny.  On this night, Christ takes the apostles with Him, and institutes the sacrament of Holy Orders: He makes them deacons by ordering them to serve in washing the feet of others, makes them priests by commanding them to offer sacrifice in his name, consecrates them bishops by forming them into a community of teachers, witnesses, and leaders.  Through the apostles and through his own commandment, Christ makes love and service the great act of the Church, Christ makes love and service to neighbor and stranger the liturgy that the Church enacts in the world.  We heard in the Gospel, Christ tells His apostles:  I give you a new commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.  The word for commandment, Mandatum, lends itself to the name we give this day, Maundy Thursday.  The words of the Maundy remind us that we are a people consecrated for service and love to others.

On this night, the barriers between heaven and earth are revealed to be paper thin.  St Thomas Aquinas wrote a hymn to be used in this evening’s liturgy, written about the events of this night in Jerusalem.  He penned the words: cibum turbae duodenae se dat suis manibus. We’ll sing the English translation tonight: then, more precious food supplying, He gives himself with his own hand.  He gives Himself with His own hands. 

When Christ transformed bread and wine into His very Body and Blood, when He gave Himself with His own hand, He did not merely give Himself and stop there.  He shared Himself with those gathered, He shared Himself with those with Him, with the people whom He had just commanded to serve others.  As soon as He gave His commandment to serve others, Christ then gave Himself to us in the Eucharist.  Again, let the liturgy be our guide and teacher tonight: we will carry Christ, truly present in the Eucharist as our Lord and Savior, we’ll carry Christ to the altar of repose, and adore His presence among us in the Eucharist, adore the thinness by which He still comes among us in the Sacrament. 

As Christ ties the Eucharist into service, let the liturgy lead you to think how, with love,  we are to reverence and adore those we are called to serve: those in the pews next to us, those huddled in the cold outside our doors, those who struggle to find meaning in their lives.  Our Lord will be given over to betrayal, to imprisonment, and to trial.  How do we honor and reverence those in our communities who are not treated fairly, those who are imprisoned unjustly or held captive by addiction, those who face conflict and pain?

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, is quoted as saying: The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.  That’s another way of stating that the Church is part of an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. That’s another way of saying that we are to Love one another as I have loved you.  We don’t preach mission and outreach to those most in need because it’s only our personal belief.  We preach it because the liturgy compels and drives and shoves us to. 

We, as a Church, confess that Christ comes among us fully under the guise of Bread and Wine, that Christ, in the Eucharist is as fully and truly present as He was when He first broke bread with the Twelve.  We adore Him tonight, staying with Him as the disciples were unable to; as they fell asleep in the Garden, we strive to stay awake, to remain with our Lord for some time before His death tomorrow.  The thinness in that garment of destiny allows us to be as truly present in the garden as Christ is truly present in the Eucharist.  Tonight, the walls of Jerusalem are interposed on the streets of Buffalo, and the Lord who gives Himself with His own hand bids us to love others as He has loved us, to pray with Him, to watch, and to remain at His side.  Amen.

Sermon, Lent 2: Kierkegaard, Nicodemus, and messiness

Preached at St Paul's Cathedral
Lent 2
March 16, 2014

Lessons
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=25

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

In the north of Denmark is the medieval city of Aalborg, famous in past times for its thriving trade in salted herring.  And in this small, quiet Danish city in the 19^th century, the Bishop of Aalborg had a problem.  Actually, it was a problem that involved the whole of the Lutheran Church of Denmark, but it was a unique problem in Aalborg.  At that time, the bishop of Aalborg, Peter Kierkegaard, found himself often needing to speak out against the secular and anti-Christian writings of a difficult and prolific writer.  This was a messy thing for the bishop of Aalborg because that writer happened to be his younger brother, Soren Kierkegaard.  Peter frequently had to choose between relationship and faith.

The Danish bishops claimed that Soren called into question the tenets and traditions of the Church, and high on the bishops’ list of criticisms was Soren’s short work entitled Fear and Trembling.  That book is an exploration of Abraham, and a review of faith: the virtue for which Abraham is so well known.  And it is Abraham who in ancient times, in 19^th century Denmark, and even today the Church still lifts up as a model of faith.  There is no one else in the Church’s history who is so esteemed as a perfect example of faith.  Soren Kierkegaard thought, however, that faith might be more complicated than Abraham’s example of unquestioned obedience.

In the first lesson from Genesis, the epistle reading from the Letter to the Romans, and in the Gospel this morning, we hear Sacred Scripture mention faith.  The readings remember Abraham for his faith for a number of reasons, but in particular for a story that unfolds on the slopes of Mt Moriah, when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac; Abraham readies a knife meant for his son, but is stopped at the last moment and given a ram to sacrifice in Isaac’s stead.  Kierkegaard criticizes the Church for holding up Abraham and his faith based on this act.

Even though the Church has used that passage from Genesis to instruct about the virtue of faith, it’s actually a brief story, and includes few details.  So, in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard paints in a hypothetical background for us.  In one passage about what may have unfolded, Kierkegaard writes that Abraham’s faith in God is so absolute that requires that he follow God’s command to sacrifice Isaac.  But, Kierkegaard wonders if Abraham worries that, as Isaac is laid out for sacrifice he will kick and scream and curse their God who asked for the sacrifice, that Isaac will lose his faith even as he is given up according to his God’s desire.

And so, Kierkegaard wonders if Abraham so valued his faith in God and so valued Isaac’s faith in God, that Abraham would do anything to preserve both.  Kierkegaard writes:

The two of them climbed Mt Moriah, but Isaac did not understand Abraham’s words about sacrifice.  Then for an instant, Abraham turned away from Isaac, and when Isaac again saw Abraham’s face it was changed, his glance was wild, his form was horror.  He seized Isaac by the throat, threw him to the ground, and said, “Stupid boy, do you then suppose that I am your protector? Do you suppose that this is God’s bidding?  NO!  It is my desire.” Then Isaac trembled and cried out in his terror “O God in heaven, have compassion on me! If I have no father on earth, then you are my father in heaven!”  And Abraham in a low voice whispered to himself  “O lord in heaven, I thank you. After all, it is better for him to believe I am a monster, rather than that he should lose faith in you”.

Faith, Kierkegaard thought, was not something to be valued above all other things; faith, Kierkegaard thought, was not a simple thing.

In today’s Gospel, Christ told Nicodemus that faith was not a simple thing.  Nicodemus came at night, secretly, asking about how the works that Christ was doing, how those works were part of God’s plan.  Christ immediately avoids the issue and changes the topic to what is truly at the heart of the discussion: faith.  Christ responds to Nicodemus that seeing the kingdom of God, that having faith, is only possible if you are born again, if you’re born from above.  Faith, Christ tells Nicodemus, is taking on the mind of God, and seeing in a new way how God is working in the world and in our lives.

We can often think of faith in God like Kierkegaard wondered if Abraham may have thought of it: as something so precious that it must be protected at all costs, as something that must never be defiled, that it might be better to destroy a relationship but keep our faith intact, better to maintain utmost fidelity than to fall, better to obey than to love.

But hear again how Christ describes faith, not as a litmus test, not as a standard to be obeyed: Christ, in a dark garden, whispered to Nicodemus that faith was being born from above. 

In Scripture, we are often given images and recollections of God that seem entirely contradictory.  In Genesis, God demanded Abraham kill and burn his son Isaac to show that he was truly devoted to God.  We hear of God bringing death and destruction, vengeful armies, pestilence, disease.  We hear of God sending angels to bear us up lest we dash our foot against a stone, of our God who loves us like a mother, of our God who so loved the world that he sent his only Son.  How can all of these stories, all of these images be of the same God?  Of the same God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?  Of the same God of Nicodemus?  Of the same God of Jesus?

 

If we accept that faith is only as deep as the last command we received, as a list of instructions, then these different stories of God stand as a testimony that our faith is hollow, nothing but the dust from which we are made and to which we will return.  But, if we are born from above, if we begin to see ourselves and our lives as God sees us then it becomes so much clearer.  The stories of an angry God, of a compassionate God, of a jealous God, of a self-sacrificing God are stories given to us, true stories written by those who lived these experiences of God.  They are given to us because we can be angry, we can be compassionate, we are jealous, we are self-sacrificing.  God, in his perfection, reveals himself to us, by being more than only one thing, just as we are more than only one thing.  God is perfect, and holy, and the source of all goodness, but that doesn’t mean that he is not complex, that he’s not messy.

We are messy, too.

This is our second Sunday in Lent, and we do well to recall that the season of Lent follows immediately after the season of Epiphany.  In Epiphany, the lessons focus on the divine and miraculous nature of God’s work in the world, especially in his work in Christ: water is changed into wine, Christ converses with Moses and Elijah in dazzling light, wise men follow a supernatural sign to the east.  And then Lent opens with this perfect and dazzling Christ doing what?  Being tempted…being pulled toward denying God and accepting power from the Devil.  Our God is not just one thing: he is both dazzling and able to be tempted, just as we can be both dazzling and also be tempted.

Abandoning faith as a list of commands that must be always believed and blindly obeyed, abandoning that and replacing it with a birth from above means that we accept that we are both dazzling and tempted.  When we are in the midst of our achievements and highest points, we must also remember our sins, remember the sufferings of our neighbors.  And when we’ve hit rock bottom, when all seems lost, we remember that we are loved, that a ram was given in place of our sacrifice.

Epiphany is about God’s glory and about majesty shining forth in the world.  Lent is about God’s temptation, his suffering, and his loss.  And Lent is about our temptation, our suffering, our loss.  It’s about all of that, coupled with our love, with our glory.  Lent is about the very reality that our lives, our God are messy.

We may think about Lent as a time of penitence: breast-beating, crawling, weeping penitence and self-denial for our manifold sins and wickedness.  However, it is impossible to be penitent unless the first step we take is to be honest.  Honesty requires us to admit and cherish that we are beloved children of God, that we are given life as a free and beautiful gift, and that we have often betrayed that gift through negligence and selfishness.  Being honest means that we accept our lives as being messy, accept that no list of rules can make us holy, no list can be copyrighted as faith. 

Honesty also should lead us to find faith, not only in obedience as Abraham found it, but also finding faith by being born from above, by taking on the mind of God in Christ, and seeing as God sees.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have everlasting life.