My Stole

What a Year it's Been

It's the end of another semester.  The end of another year.  Though I'm not in the habit of making December a time of reflection, this year it just seems natural.  So much has happened, it surely warrants at least a blog post.

Over the last year, I have tried to sort through what believe about the church.  I have tried to find my own heart in all of the hurt.  At this time last year, the shit was hitting the fan with the church at which I was a member.  Just a few weeks from now, I would leave the church.  I used to say I was "kicked out" or "asked to leave," but that is not entirely accurate.  You see, I was not the one on the payroll.  Though I was teaching, though I was writing curriculum, though I was singing in the praise band, I was invisible.  So when my friend was forced to resign, it fell on me to remove myself.  The church couldn't even see me well enough to kick me out.  So I kicked myself out.

At this time last year, I was preparing for the the National Academy of Young Preachers conference in Atlanta, GA.  I had just finished a semester of preaching class, one of the most terrifying, crisis-inducing tasks that had ever been put before me.  As a young woman (the only one in the class) who had never preached before (the only one in the class), I struggled.  How do I preach the Gospel?  What does that mean?  What does it mean for me to do it?  Where does my authority come from to preach?  I preached my first sermon in class.  I preached my second sermon in chapel.  I preached my first public sermon at the Academy of Young Preachers.

Over the summer, I did my hospital chaplaincy.  Alongside preaching, it was the element of the M. Div program that had caused me to change my major at one point.  What could I say to someone who was dying?  How could I comfort a family who had just experienced a loss?  I learned a lot about silence last summer. I learned a lot about presence.  I was asked to continue my ministry there after the end of the course.

Just before school started, a bump in a dear relationship forced me to take my questions to a new level.  Who am I?  Where am I? What do I want?  What do I need?  What do I think? The painful experience of seemingly losing myself when a relationship changed has been pushing me to locate myself.

And a few months ago, my childhood best friend asked me to officiate her wedding.  A question that caught me off guard and threw all sorts of new possibilities into view.  I was being asked to serve in a pastoral role.  Despite 5 years of seminary, the shock of this proposal is almost indescribable.  Who am I that I could do this?

And really, hasn't that been the question in every challenge this year?  Who am I that I could do these things I'm being asked to do?  And that's just it.  While I don't have a congregation that I call home at this point in my life, I do have a community.  And my community, scattered though they are, is helping me to answer that question.  They hold up a mirror for me.  They show me what they see.  They ask me to preach.  They encourage me to be present with the sick.  They come to me for counsel and to confess.  And now, I've been asked to perform a public, pastoral role.

Ordained.  Set apart for ministry.  Ordination.  Ordo.  Marching orders.  My community has been showing me what they see, holding up a mirror for me, even as I've struggled, diverting my gaze and covering my eyes.  But they have been gentle.  They have been persistent.  And they have shown me what they see.

Who do I choose to be?  How do I respond?  I choose to receive the vision of me that my community brings.  I choose to take on the responsibilities that come with it.  I choose to stop fighting that I have been gifted by God for ministry.  So I'm choosing to respond.  I'm choosing to embrace my ordo, my set-apartness, my marching orders, that have already been perceived by my community. 

I am choosing, at the urging of my community, to respond by accepting ordination.

What are your Standards?

I have been thoughtful the past few weeks about the standards that I set for myself.  Not just in schoolwork, but “across the board.”  I set impossibly high standards in my schoolwork, my relationships, my marriage, my housekeeping, my work, and even in the things that I do to try to relax.  I simply can’t seem to cut myself a break.  I lie in bed, wondering if I’ve been a good enough friend, knowing I could have done something more, spent more time, offered better insight.  I scold myself over even successful papers and projects, positive I could have used just one more source, conveyed my idea a bit more clearly.  I fret over the state of my house, the dishes left in the sink that I could have washed or the groceries I could have picked up for my empty refrigerator.  And the better work I do, the higher my standard becomes.  I simply move the bar continually higher so that it is always just out of reach.

In Matthew 11:28-29, Jesus says ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

This verse is one that is often tossed around in the midst of stress and busyness.  But how is it exactly that Jesus offers us rest?  How is it that Jesus’s yoke is easy and his burden light?  When I look at the life of Jesus, “easy” is not the first word that comes to mind.  I don’t find Jesus lying getting a suntan on the beach of the sea of Galilee, so clearly this is not a call to “make more time for yourself” or even necessarily a call to a “balanced lifestyle.”  What Jesus is calling us to here is revolutionary.

Jesus refers to a yoke, a piece of farm equipment used to harness draft animals so that they could pull a cart.  But the term was also understood by Jesus’s audience to refer to an empire, a rule under which people lived.  So Jesus is not just calling people to relax more, but is calling them to live under a different empire, a different rule altogether.

We may be ruled by the masters of homework, relationships, perfectionism, or work.  These rulers certainly fight for our time, our attention, and our loyalty.  It seems I can scarcely wake up in the morning before being reminded of all that I must do, all that I must attend to.  But Jesus is calling us to change our allegiances.  He is calling us to come under his yoke, his reign, where it is easy, where the burden is light.

Jesus beckons us to  ‘seek first the Reign of God and all of this will be added to you as well.’  (Matt 6:33)  This new empire encompasses all that we are and all that we do.  We seek the Reign of God in our relationships, job, schoolwork, and leisure.  And this is the standard.  Seek first the Reign of God.  Seek to bring more of God’s good order to the world around you.  That’s it.  Perhaps today, the Reign of God looks like me spending extra time with a friend.  Perhaps it looks like studying hard for a test.  Perhaps it looks like taking a nap or having a cup of hot tea.   Life under Jesus’s yoke, within the Reign of God means freedom from the masters of the world.

There is freedom and rest in serving just one master, Jesus Christ.

At the end of the day, when I lay down to sleep, I ought not ask myself “Did I study hard enough?  Did I do well enough?  Could I have done more?” but rather “Did I seek the Reign of God first today?” This is God’s standard.  And who am I to impose a different one?

My First Sermon Ever

We all like equality, right?  That’s one of those values that seems so obvious.  Everyone should be equal.  Yet, if we think about it long enough, we know that the method of carrying out equality matters. In Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, Harrison Bergeron, legislation has been passed to ensure complete equality of all people.  Those who are beautiful must wear ugly masks in proportion to their beauty.  The more intelligent a person, the more distractions they are subjected to via a government-controlled headset.  The strongest people wear heavy weights on their bodies; those with the best eyesight are subjected to distorted glasses.  And everyone is equal.  Everyone, that is, except for Harrison Bergeron.  A strong, intelligent, and handsome young man, the government is unable to sufficiently handicap him.  When he tries to liberate people from their “equalizers,” he is killed by government agents and quickly forgotten, thanks to the new (and significantly lower) “average” intelligence of the nation.  And although we may sometimes wish for similar equalizers when walking in to the Hebrew final or standing up to preach, for instance, we recognize that not all equality is, well, equal.

Matthew 20: 1-16: “For the reign of God is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

And so, let us as brothers and sisters think together. Does this parable sit well with you?  Does it encourage you?  Bring you comfort?  Or do you, like me, find yourself unsettled by it?  It seems more than a little unfair.  It pushes on my sense of justice.  It makes me uncomfortable.  Why should others, people who have not worked as hard as me, receive the same wage as me?  How on earth is this Good News?

And why is the injustice of it such a problem?  Similarly to the landowner’s retort, can God not do whatever God wishes?  And yet, I cannot let God “off the hook” so easily.  In the interpretation of a text…any text!, everything hangs in the balance.  There was a time in my life when I believed that God was rash and arbitrary, and I struggled to reconcile this arbitrary nature with God’s supposed goodness.  And I was unable to do it.  So long as I understood God’s actions that way, I could not call God good.  Until I first made a commitment to an intentional God, texts like this one were lined up as ammo, evidence against a God who cares.  Every passage must be accounted for. Every passage must be considered, allowed to “poke at” and “tweak” my way of understanding.  If, at the end of the day, it still does not fit, then I must change.  And so, as it does for every passage, everything hangs in the balance here.  Does this passage present an arbitrary God who will bless some and cheat others, as it seems the parable’s land owner does?  Or does it present a God who is good and intentional?

This message would certainly have been unsettling to Jesus’s original audience, though it is unlikely that they heard it in quite the same way that we do.  Traveling from Galilee to Jerusalem, Jesus focuses on painting a picture for the disciples of what Matthew terms “The Kingdom of Heaven,” in other Gospels called “The Kingdom of God” or the “Reign of God,” a radical way of doing and being in the world which is in direct conflict with the ways we typically understand the world to work.  In the preceding chapter, Jesus handled a challenge concerning divorce by redirecting his audience to God’s intention for a marriage relationship: a “one-flesh” relationship, radical to the ears of his hearers.  He welcomes children, needful people who are unable to contribute to society and considered to be of little worth, explaining that the Reign of God belongs to people like these.  He explains to a rich young ruler that the Reign of God looks like selling all that he has, giving to the poor, renouncing his status to follow Jesus.  He elaborates that those who give up their homes, their status and follow will be receive one hundredfold.  The first shall be last and the last shall be first.[1]

And this is where we pick up our parable.  We receive it as a further illustration of the idea he has been trying to help the disciples understand the entire journey.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last. Yet, still, how is this good news? I find myself unable to be excited over being slighted.  It seems that God has simply chosen a single group to bless, and another to treat with a sort of bare minimum of respect or kindness.  I find it difficult to find the goodness, the intentionality here.

Who are the first?  Who are the last?  I do not want to identify with the last, with the valueless, with the powerless.  I want to be seen as having something to offer, as capable, valuable, even indispensable!  And in many areas of life, I am.   I am valued as a wife, respected by my peers and professors (at least it seems!) and am given voice by a wonderful and supportive group of friends.  However, when I am courageous enough to face the whole of my life, I see that I am, in fact, one of the last in some areas as well.  In our parable, we see the last as those who waited in the market place, anxious to work, contribute, and provide for family in whatever pitiful way they may be permitted.  Even when entering the vineyard to work, they are given no promise of acceptable compensation, only that they will be paid “whatever is right.”  And they are forced to accept.  When I am brave enough to examine my own self, my world, and my story, I realize that there are places in which I am also among the last. As one who, by virtue of the absurdities of physical gender, has been denied the opportunity to speak, been seen as having little to offer, been refused the chance to work. I find myself in good company among those who were hired last.  And there is good news here: those who are last will be first.

But what for the ones who are first?  Will this remain a tale of God’s injustice?  Is there no redemption for those who are first?  Are they simply doomed to be last?  If the first are indeed hopeless by virtue of their position, how can I continue to call God good?  And so I must return to the question that I always go back to: what is God doing here?  What is the point?  The motivation?  Why is Jesus telling this parable?  What does he hope to accomplish?

This parable is more than a mere illustration; it is a call.  It is a continuation of the call that Jesus had begun making at the beginning of this journey: to participate with the Reign of God.  It is a call to accept the little children, to honor your spouse, to cease the exploitation of the poor…it is a call to make oneself last, as Luke’s Gospel puts it, to sit at the foot of the table, in the place of the least honor.  It is an illustration of and call to a dramatic reordering of things.

So then, where is the good news for the first?  Firstly, in that God offers choice.  Unlike in the equality-gone-wrong world of Harrison Bergeron, God offers the opportunity for each of us to become part of this radical community which chooses to lower itself, chooses to be last.  Also, that by choosing to participate in the Reign of God, in choosing to make oneself last, something beautiful happens.  The last are made first.  The one who sits at the foot of the table is called up.  And we are all called to this posture. 

Where are you first?  Where is it that you have a voice?  Where are you honored, respected, and valued?  It is here that you must make yourself last.  It is here that you must in humility, value others above yourself (Philippians 2:3b).  It is here that you may participate in the radical new order of things, in the Reign of God.

Where are you last? What is that place where you are not valued?  Where is it that you are silenced, dismissed, or demeaned?  Take heart.  It is here that you may, following in the footsteps of Christ, make yourself nothing, take on the very form of a servant (Philippians 2:7a). Agree to be the worker in the vineyard who comes in late and accepts whatever pay is offered.  It is in this submission that you too may participate in the Reign of God.

Jesus begins and ends this parable by saying that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  And yet, within the story, all the workers are paid the same.  When we, as Christian brothers and sisters, sit at the foot of the table together, those who were placed there and those who have chosen it, we may all be called up together.  We may all be made first.

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[1] In this paragraph, I rely heavily on Warren Carter’s Matthew and the margins: a sociopolitical and religious reading. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2000. 376-393.

Why Am I Here?

The time has come.  I have a blog.  Why?  To remind myself that I have something to say.  To practice saying it.  And, I suppose, if you are reading this, a chance for you to hear what I have to say.  And so it begins...