Waiting and Acting

 

The Boule

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Chapel via Zoom

Commemoration of James De Koven, March 22, 2021

Psalm 84:7-12; 2 Timothy 2:10-15; Matthew 13:31-33

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

I think you all know I love to cook, I especially love to bake. I think you also know that I like accomplishing things, and if I can do so quickly then all the better. Being an achievement oriented person whose life experience taught her at a young age that life is short, means that ideally I would like to have everything done yesterday. I am not good at sitting and contemplating. I am not good at waiting. 

So this means that making bread is a spiritual discipline for me. Especially with our favorite bread recipe, is an amazing no-knead bread recipe. It requires very little labor, just a lot of planning. It is remarkably simple, and remarkably similar to what is described in our Gospel reading today. You mix together flour, yeast, salt and water in a bowl. And you leave it be for 18 hours. After that you fold it over and form it into a ball. Leave it for another two hours. Then you bake it in a preheated dutch oven with the lid on. You remove the lid for the last 15 minutes. The result is an amazing crusty boule with a soft and chewy inside. This recipe creates the kind of hearty, delicious bread that makes you begin to imagine that it might actually be possible to live on bread alone - particularly if you have some nice olive oil and a delicious cheese to go with it. 

But you can only achieve that delicious result, if you follow the recipe. Waiting is the central and essential act of this bread recipe. It cannot be rushed. There are no shortcuts, no way of speeding it up. I have to have patience and faith. I think that is why bread is such a prominent feature in Scriptures and our faith life. Bread is a staple food, but it is not an instant food. It can fill us up and sustain us, but only if we have the patience and faith required to transform its simple ingredients into a food we can eat. 

This theme of waiting resonates with me this week. We are waiting. The world is waiting. For things to change. For enough of us to be vaccinated. To travel. To see and hug the people we love. To feel safe in a group of people again. We are waiting for transformation. 

But I think it is important to nuance the theme of waiting, while the bread recipe does require a lot of waiting, it is not without active participation. Without making the dough, and doing the baking, there would be no bread. A transformed world is not something we just passively wait for. We wear our masks. We get our shots. We love our neighbors. We speak out against horrific acts of hate and violence like those in Atlanta last week. We who are in positions of power and privilege keep learning, keep acting, keep doing our part to dismantle our culture of white supremacy. 

The change we long for is coming, and we can be a part of making it happen. Perhaps one of the lessons we can take from this pandemic is the ways in which small actions can have a huge impact, especially when we act together. If a few of us wash our hands and wear our masks, nothing would change. The more who do, the greater the effect. What else might we do? What other small sacrifices on our part would ripple out far beyond our own communities? As the world reopens and we return to old habits, may we not forget how deeply interconnected our lives are. 

And may we also have patience and faith in the midst of it all. Action is essential. Sometimes the action is urgent. If you don’t take the bread out of the oven when the timer goes off, it will burn. The realities of injustice are life and death realities in this country. 

On the other hand, if we tried to open the world too quickly, we would risk further harm. We need to be wise and discerning. Sometimes we need to act. Sometimes we need to have more patience. Patience is hard. Is this goopy, sticky dough we have in front of us ever going to turn into something delicious and beautiful? 

And yet. When we can have faith, when we can have patience. When we can trust that God is at work in ways we cannot even see or imagine, change happens. Transformation happens. We get to join God in creating something amazing, beautiful, and sustaining from the sticky mess in the mixing bowl. The waiting is worth it. The work is worth it.

As we work and as we wait, may we always remember that Jesus is indeed the Bread of Life. He is that which sustains us through the deserts and the challenging times. He is the source of wisdom and insight. He is the one whose presence gives our feasts of celebration a greater depth of joy. He is the one who inspires us to live lives that embody grace, generosity and gratitude. 

AMEN. 

Choosing Gratitude

with my grandmother on my wedding day

 

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Vincent de Paul, March 15, 2021

Psalm 37:19-42; Philippians 2:12-15; Luke 12:12-27

May God's word be spoken, May God's Word be heard, and May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A phone rang on a Sunday morning in September 1959.  It broke into the joyful chaos that is life with five children between the ages of three and fourteen.  It was a phone call she knew was coming, but that fact never does prepare one fully for the reality.  It was the phone call that told her that her husband, the love of her life, the father of her children was dead at thirty-eight.  The brain tumor that had taken his health and vitality, and had even begun to take his personality over the summer, had taken his life.   

Breaking into the silence of an empty nest, a phone rang in the summer of 1972.  She thought it might be one of her kids calling to say hi or perhaps her surgeon husband calling to say he was on his way home.  It was the phone call that told her that those swollen lymph nodes were not the lingering effects of a winter cold: they were cancer.  

A phone rang in a farmhouse kitchen on a cold January morning in 1990.  The nurse on the other end confirmed what she already knew in her heart.  Her husband of twenty-seven years had died in the night.  His body had given out. The cancer that had spread throughout his body and sent him into a coma, had taken his life.  

The portable phone on the end table next to the couch rang on a fall afternoon in 2003 and interrupted the quiet solitude of an afternoon spent knitting and reading.  It was her doctor on the line.  The biopsy results were back. She had lymphoma. 

These four phone calls all came to the same woman. And each time she hung up the phone, she had a choice.  When she lost her parents or had to endure the pain of watching her own children or grandchildren suffer, she had a choice. A choice to let that piece of news, that painful, horrible loss be the defining event of her life.  She could choose to let it be the lens through which she viewed the world.  Such an approach would not add hours to her span of life. It would diminish the quality of her life.   

Or she could choose to look around her and be grateful.  She could choose to celebrate life and to celebrate joys of her children.  Choose to be an active and involved mother who continued to play tennis and take her children to the lake in the summer.  Choose to marry again and spend the happy years of her husband's retirement living on a farm in Maine.  She could choose to be host to her grandchildren for countless summers, reading to them and teaching them about the farm and their own family history.  She could choose to be a great-grandmother who moved to an apartment in the city to be nearer to her family and to be able to watch her great-grandchildren learn to walk. 

The woman on the receiving end of these phone calls was my grandmother. For me, she has been my preeminent example of not worrying.  She lives out the conviction at the heart of Jesus' question to his disciples: “And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”  We know that worrying does not add hours to our life and that worrying diminishes the quality of the hours we do have. 

Of course there have been plenty of things to worry about in the course of the past year. It is important to note here what I think Jesus meant by “worry.” I don’t think he meant the kind of appropriate thoughtful caution that keeps us wearing masks and washing our hands. An invitation to “not worry” is not an invitation to be careless or reckless. An invitation to “not worry” is an invitation to reframe our current situation. It is an invitation to be mindful of our blessings, of all that we have to be thankful for, even in the midst of tragedy and loss. 

Even when we are living daily, as we have for the last year, with the profound reminder that life is precious and uncertain. Even when we cannot possibly know what tomorrow will bring.  We can find joy in the present. 

We can find hope and joy in the knowledge that we are precious children of God.  Jesus has spent much of today's Gospel reading affirming that fact. We are valued and beloved of God. God cares for us. 

In the midst of challenges, in the midst of tragedy, in a time when it would be so easy to focus on all that we have lost, as individuals, as a community, as a nation and a world. In the midst of all of that, Jesus invites us to keep our eyes and hearts open, as my grandmother did, so that we can see the love that surrounds us. It is my hope that as we move through the coming days and weeks, for we are not out of the woods yet, we will keep finding ways to ground ourselves in the truth that we are beloved. And we will keep finding ways to fill our hearts with gratitude. Because as Johannes Gaertner reminds us: “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.”

AMEN.

Awe and wonder

    

with gratitude to my dad for a sense of wonder from the beginning

                                             

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

Gregory of Nyssa, March 9, 2021

Psalm 119:97-104; Wisdom 7:24-8:1; John 14:23-26 

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Somewhere in the collection of needlepointed kneelers neatly lined up in each row of St. Luke’s Cathedral in Portland, Maine is one with a quote by Gregory of Nyssa. “Concepts create idols. Only wonder comprehends anything.” My dad commissioned that kneeler. It is his all time favorite quote. Perhaps a “life quote” you might say. One that embodies his way of seeing the world. My dad loved science all through school. He is a lawyer. He has spent his professional life strongly bound to and placing a high value on “concepts.” But even in his practice of the law or his photography of the natural world, there is a foundational curiosity. A reverent awe for all that is beyond his understanding. My parents built the house in which I grew up. They purposefully oriented it on the compass so that you could watch the sunrise or sunset through enormous plate glass windows. Many a childhood dinner was put on pause, so that we could go watch the splendor of creation. There was a nearly flat roof above the living room, perfect for lying on one’s back or for placing a telescope to gaze at the wonders of the galaxy. 

Wonder. Awe. Reverence. These are valuable and essential to our life, to our faith, to the health of our souls. They invite us to inhabit a space, a way of being that fosters the wisdom so beautifully described in our Scriptures for today. An emmenation from God, a reflection of God’s goodness. There are opportunities to see that each and every day. Of course for many of us that can come easiest in the natural world, as my Dad has shown me. But he does not limit his sense of awe to Creation. There are moments of awe in worship, in learning, in small moments of human connection. While certainly those moments of wonder can be inspired by outside forces, by the glorious splendor of a sunset that takes your breath away, what my dad taught me most of all was that really it was about us. It was about the disposition of our hearts. My dad has shown me that our sense of wonder and awe can in fact lead us to a deeper connection with all that is good and holy in the world. It is really a matter of whether or not we are open and paying attention. 

In this time, when our worlds have largely shrunk to our own living spaces and the screen in front of us seems to be our connection to everything. When there are pings and notifications nonstop. Life can feel frenetic and harried. We are pulled this way and that. It could be easy to lose our sense of wonder. To feel disconnected from those moments that ground us and bring us more fully into God’s presence. 

We long to be on a mountaintop or a beach. At a lake or on an airplane. We long to see different vistas. Increasingly we are able or will soon be able to do that. Thanks be to God. 

And I think there is an important invitation to us, in this moment, on this feast of St. Gregory, as we mark a year of life in a pandemic this week. It is an invitation to remember that we can cultivate our sense of wonder in the smallest moments. It is easy to feel awe as we gaze across the ocean or at the “vast expanse of interstellar space.” Yet we can find that same sense of awe in the midst of the quiet moments of daily life too.  

We can be grateful for this technology that allows us to see and hear each other. To gather together across many time zones. We can marvel at tenacious trees and plants that push their way up to the sun. We can marvel at a moment of human connection. The simple joy of a cup of tea or coffee. The beauty of the light coming through our windows and the increasing daylight hours. The list can go on and on. 

So in these days, especially when it will be easy to get agitated as we wait for things to open and to be able to do more and more, let us remember to pause, to find moments each day for wonder. Moments to connect with God and grow in wisdom. AMEN. 

Holding the big picture

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

DFMS Noonday Prayer via Zoom

March 2, 2021

Chad of Lichfield

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Our Saint for today is best known for not being the Archbishop of York, or at least that is how is biographical statement begins. Of course, if that were his only claim to fame, it would be a wonder we even know anything about him. I mean in the grand sweep of Church history, there are millions upon millions of us who are “not the Archbishop of York.” The difference for Chad was that he actually had all the qualifications and was elected to serve. But in the face of disputes and controversy he chose to withdraw. He had the grace and humility to know when to step down and to not make it about him. He opted to affirm the unity of the Church over his own self interest or promotion. 

Chad’s course of action is admirable. He saw the bigger picture and did not want the ministry of the Gospel to get subsumed in political controversy. Now, history has decidedly taught us that we should not always follow in Chad’s footsteps. There are many moments in our history when someone could have stopped pushing, stopped agitating, stopped seeking justice in the interest of the “unity of the Church.” No doubt people asked or at least wished that Absalom Jones or Florence Li Tim Oi or the Philadelphia 11 or Barbara Harris would step aside in the interests of unity. Martin Luther King, Jr. had to write the Letter from a Birmingham Jail because white clergy (including our own) asked him to wait. 

There are times when we should be like Chad. And there are times when we need to be like Barbara and Martin. 

But I think it is interesting to note that there is a unifying principle behind the actions of both. It is not about them. All of those faithful servants lived out our Gospel for today, they did not seek their own personal glory first. They saw the bigger picture. They saw their part to play. They saw how their actions whether on the world stage or in a quiet moment could be used to further God’s kingdom. 

Most of us are not likely to have our names remembered centuries later, like Chad or Absalom, but I doubt either of them were even thinking about that when they made their decisions. As our psalm states, one day in the courts of God is better than a thousand in our own room. It is not about us. It is about God. 

Now it could be easy to take the lessons from today as criticism (trust me, I am expert at hearing criticism even when that is not the intention). As admonitions to make us feel small. As admonitions about us being self-centered or egotistical. A particular challenge when our worlds seem to have shrunk to our own living spaces, and we can feel disconnected from community. We could go down the critical route, but I don’t think that is the intention, nor do I think it is helpful. 

Actually, I think there is a real opportunity here for us to find freedom, inspiration and an unburdening. There is an invitation, in the life story of Chad, in our readings, to open wide our hearts and our perspective. It is about remembering that God, the world, the arc of history, are all so much bigger than we might think at this particular moment. That vastness is not about making us feel small in a negative sense, it is about inviting us to remember that we are a part of something much bigger. We all have a role to play. Who we are, what we do, and how we live our lives matters. We might get to see our impact. We might not. But it would be a pretty small view of God to think that our life and ministry in our little corner of the kingdom did not play a vital role in the wider story. 

So, I hope that today you will hear an invitation to let go. An invitation to remember that it is much more about being faithful to God and who God is calling you to be than it is about a particular accolade or outcome. Remember that you are beloved. Who you are matters. What you do matters. Keep your perspective wide. God is at work in the world. Each day there are countless examples of God’s restoring, reconciling love at work in the world, if we keep our eyes and our ears open. We are called to join in that work. Sometimes we do that by stepping aside to let someone else move ahead. Sometimes that means standing firmly planted and speaking our truth until it is heard in the halls of power. Sometimes that means working quietly out of the limelight, trusting that God uses all of us to transform the world. Amen.