SERMONS & NEWSLETTER ARTICLES
______________SERMONSA NEW/OLD NORMAL A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. AMEN. ~ The Collect for the Third Sunday of Lent Soon after I began to serve as the rector of an historic downtown church in another state, the husband of one of the parish matriarchs died. He was a retired military officer, someone well-known in those parts. The Bishop, whom I had met during my interview process just a few months earlier, was asked to preside and preach at his funeral. My only job was to be a pastor to his widow. As has often been my experience, she was a pastor to me. She had come to grips fairly quickly with the untimely death of her husband. My sense was that she was someone from whom I, still relatively new as a priest, might learn some lessons. Before the funeral she told me she had been considering what life without her husband might be like. She declared, “This is my new normal.” On that day, a grieving wife gave me some wisdom for the ages. Since then, I’ve often heard and used the phrase “new normal.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve had several seasons in my life during which a new normal began. I’ve also learned there’s something my new normal moments and seasons have in common: for me, they always seem to have something to do with grief and loss. We may be shocked at the arrival and presence of this novel Coronavirus called COVID-19. We may be looking forward to things getting back to “normal,” whatever that normal was or is for us. A local columnist recently came to a different conclusion: “Just because we’re...using sanitizer and bumping elbows doesn’t mean we won’t be affected in the Mid-South....This is the new normal for now” (Bruce VanWyngarden, Memphis Flyer, 3/12/20). Whatever this season of our common life becomes, I believe it is our new normal, at least for now. It feels hard, if not impossible - borrowing words from the Serenity Prayer - to accept this thing we cannot change. So many of our old behaviors have been turned into new warnings (“Don’t touch your face! Keep your distance!”). At least for now, we have lost the ways we’ve been used to, ways in which we have lived, moved, and had our being in the world. I believe that as a church, a nation, a world, we are in grief, and in the days to come, we do not know what else we may need to grieve. We do know we don’t have to go it alone. We can and we must care for one another in our grief. (I’ll have more to say about grief in the April Tract newsletter.) Throughout the New Testament, people misunderstand Jesus when they first encounter him. The story of the woman at the well in John’s Gospel (4:5-42) is not unlike the stories about the disciples when they met Jesus. His friends had a certain belief, a theological understanding of who their Jewish Messiah would be and what he would do. The Samaritan woman also thought she knew how this strange, Jewish man would behave - until he says, “Give me a drink” (4:7). She replies, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” By the way, John says that “Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans” (4:9). But Jesus is not your normal Jew. He explains that he can give her a new kind of water, living water, that “will become...a spring...gushing up into eternal life” (4:14). His water is also not “normal.” The Samaritan woman asks Jesus for that living water, and he does give it to her. But here’s the catch: First, he tells her everything she’s ever done - including the fact that she has been married five times. And the fact that the man she’s with currently is not her husband. No fake news here. Now, she knows Jesus is a prophet, and yet, once again, Jesus is not offering normal prophecy. He is also the Christ, the One who heals in God’s name. Suddenly, the disciples appear, astonished to find him speaking to a woman. She returns to the city, and exclaims, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” Then she asks, “He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” Once the woman’s Samaritan friends hear her share this Good News, they start catching what she caught. “Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony” (4:39). Jesus is not a virus. But Jesus is definitely contagious. Fear is also contagious, but God’s highly contagious love casts out fear. When we encounter Jesus, he invites us to let go of our losses, so we can catch something liberating and life-giving: a new/old normal called love. In these trying times, how does Jesus want to be caught now? How is he inviting us to follow him into a new/old normal? What if this season of Lent is about those old practices - prayer, fasting, and self-denial - done in a new way? Poet and minister Lynn Ungar wrote a piece about COVID-19 last week. Perhaps her words have some answers for us: PANDEMIC What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath— the most sacred of times? Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different than it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down. And when your body has become still, reach out with your heart. Know that we are connected in ways that are terrifying and beautiful. (You could hardly deny it now.) Know that our lives are in one another’s hands. (Surely, that has come clear.) Do not reach out your hands. Reach out your heart. Reach out your words. Reach out all the tendrils of compassion that move, invisibly, where we cannot touch. Promise this world your love-- for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, so long as we all shall live. ~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg March 14, 2020
FEBRUARY/MARCH LENTENTIDE OPPORTUNITIES & CHANGES from the February TRINITARIAN Newsletter
The
Spiritual State of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church: Part One
Like
living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house...
God’s
own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him
who
called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. ~ I Peter 2:5,9
I have
been your Vicar since June 1, 2019. For
twenty months we have been partners in ministry. The first half of our time together we were
“in person” at 3745 Kimball Avenue.
During the second half of this time, we’ve been learning how to be a
different kind of church, a different kind of spiritual house, a house of
marvelous light.
I
believe the spiritual state of Holy Trinity is strong, because you are doing
what you have always done: trying to love one another as Jesus loves. I believe we have been seeking and finding
ways, both old and new, to stay spiritually connected with each other and God
during these dark pandemic times. And I
believe we, as a 2021 church, are still being called to proclaim God’s mighty
acts in our own small, mighty way.
Let me say more about that within three of our major areas of our ministry:
Worship. Since Palm Sunday, 2020, we have been sharing
and experiencing what I now call “the blooming of Zoom” worship. (I wrote about this in last month’s Trinitarian
newsletter.) Now, as we begin Lent,
2021, our worship format will change.
Weather
permitting, we will offer what the Episcopal Church has come to call “Ashes to
Go” in the Holy Trinity parking lot on Ash Wednesday (February 17th), from 4:30
to 6:00 pm. Look for more details
early next week.
Beginning
with the First Sunday of Lent (February 21st), we will resume in-person
worship. It will be live-streamed on
Facebook as well as recorded. This means you can either join us in the Nave
on Sundays or watch services at your convenience. Look for more details early next week.
Education
and Formation. In addition to
the booklets we mail out every three months (“Forward Day by Day”), this Lent
we will be e-mailing you daily Lenten devotions from Episcopal Relief and
Development (ERD).
Starting Sunday afternoon, February 21st, at 4 pm, we will also offer a
virtual book study of our Presiding Bishop’s new book Love is the Way. Look for an invitation to join us in this
newsletter!
Prayer and Care.
Our need to pray for and care for one another and the world during this
Lenten season may never be more important.
Please help us help you by keeping our congregational Prayer List up
to date! Do not hesitate to add (or
remove, when the time comes) the names of anyone you know needing care or
prayer.
~ Love,
Tom+
SERMON - January 31 The 4th Sunday after the Epiphany The ANNUAL PARISH MEETING
The Authority of Healing: Do What You Say Mark 1:21-28
January 31, 2021
The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany and
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church’s Annual
Meeting Sunday
There’s an old joke that used to make its way around Episcopal church
circles. It starts with a question: What
is the source of all authority?
The answer? The source of all
authority in Catholic churches is the Pope.
The source of all authority in Protestant churches is the Bible. The source of all authority in Episcopal
churches? The previous priest.
In
today’s passage from the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus goes to a
synagogue to teach on the sabbath. His
new disciples are fresh from being hooked on a fishing trip, when he had
invited them to fish differently. Now,
they’re hooked again, “astounded” and “amazed.”
Why? Jesus taught them, Mark
says, with authority.
What is authority? In Paul’s letter to the church in Rome he
said that everyone is to “be subject to the governing authorities, for there is
no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist...have been
instituted by God” (13:1). Maybe, maybe not.
Paul’s words fall differently on our 2021 ears. After all, the elected official who held
primary governmental authority in our country has been impeached. Twice.
I guess you could say the great divide in these United States these days
has everything to do with authority: who has it, who wants it, who gets it and
how.
Our Gospel story is, of course,
about the authority of God. In last
Sunday’s story from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus began his public ministry by
preaching: “Follow me and I will make you fish for people” (1:17). This week, he drives his preaching home by
teaching - in an amazing, authoritative way.
Jesus goes to a synagogue, the
Jewish place of public prayer, to teach as all good rabbis do. Suddenly he discovers a man with an “unclean
spirit” who cries out. Jesus casts the
spirit out of the man, and all are amazed.
Jesus teaches with authority.
Actually, Jesus teaches with the
authority of healing. At the root of the
word “authority” is the word “author.” In
one of our Eucharistic prayers, we call Jesus the “author of our salvation.” And
at the root of the word “salvation” is the word “salve.” Jesus is our balm of Gilead, the salve for
our sin-sick souls - the one whose healing authority and power comes from the
healing authority and power of God.
Agnes Sanford, both a mother and a wife of priests, was a
well-known teacher of prayer. She once
said the primary ministry of priests is to teach, to preach, and to heal. She went on to say that the clergy seem to
know quite a bit about preaching and teaching.
With the power and authority of her own experience, Sanford said this
about the clergy and healing: Clergy can be just as skeptical, just as
skittish, just as scared as anyone to offer healing or to receive it. After all, isn’t that a doctor’s job?
Several years ago an image
captured me. It’s stayed with me ever
since. It’s an image of the church, we
who seek to follow Jesus. I want to
share this image with you, on our Annual Meeting Sunday, because, for me, it
describes who the people of Holy Trinity are.
It also describes who you have become for me, your priest. It describes who we keep being called to be -
now, in what has become a long, long season of COVID-tide.
My image of the church began to take shape
during a continuing education experience - in Italy, for doctors. Eyleen and I were invited by a doctor friend
to join several other doctors and their significant others on what became, for
a time, an annual event. It was a
pleasure and privilege to travel Italy with them and to study the physical
health of people who live by what has come to be called the Mediterranean
diet. We also learned how cities like
Florence and Venice survived the Black Death.
It was an amazing opportunity for all of us to learn more about health
and wellness - especially us, the people of Memphis, where poverty and obesity
are particular challenges.
The title of our educational experience: “In Search of a Healthy City.” Afterward, I came upon an article entitled “A
Church that Heals.” The image of church
that came to me from that trip, from those two titles - the image that still
holds me captive today - happened when I put those two titles together: “In
Search of a Church that Heals.”
When a reporter asked Pope
Francis what kind of church the world needs, he replied, “I see the church as a
field hospital after battle. It is
useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about
the level of his blood sugars! You have
to heal his wounds. Then we can talk
about everything else.”
I believe everyone is in search of some kind of healing. Whether we want to admit it or not, whether
we know it or not, we are all in need, all our lives, of healing, health,
wholeness, wellness - in mind, in body, in spirit. The 2021 question is: How can Holy Trinity,
Emmanuel, or any church become, more and more, a church that heals?
As for Jesus the healer, one
preacher writes, “Too often in postmodern America, if Jesus is discussed at
all, he is considered...one teacher in a pantheon of other great teachers....In
Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is the...teacher worth attending to by setting everything
else aside....Even the most demonic forces of the day recognize the teaching,
healing, life-giving authority...of Jesus” (Gary Charles, Feasting on the
Gospels, p. 35).
Another preacher and teacher who translated the entire Bible puts today’s
second verse about authority like this: What’s going on here? A new teaching that does what it
says! (Eugene Peterson, The
Message, my emphasis)
Sisters and brothers in Christ, in these troubling times, what might it
mean for us, the people of God - especially the people of God called Holy Trinity
and Emmanuel, two churches worshiping together today - what might it mean to
follow Jesus, who is not just our preacher and our teacher, but also our
healer? In these times of trial, what
might it mean to be the kind of church other people search for: a church that
heals? In these tough times, what might
it mean for us to do what we say?
I believe that to be a church
that heals, to be followers of Jesus, is to learn how to do what we say. If we say we are a church that heals, then
what do we need to be doing to incarnate that claim, to live into and out of
healing - like Jesus did. When Jesus
taught with the authority of healing, he was, he is doing what he says.
This Sunday, Jesus says to the man: Be silent! Preachers and teachers really do
need to learn how to be silent. Let me
start my silence by having someone else read the words of one more Christian
who reminds us: the source of all authority for Christians is Jesus. Her name is Debie Thomas. She writes:
Consider the question the (unclean)
spirit asked before it left its victim: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of
Nazareth?” There’s only one answer to that question. “Everything. I have everything to do
with you.” Wherever pain is, darkness is, torment is, God is. God
has everything to do with us, even and maybe especially when we're at our
worst. When the shadows overwhelm us, when the demons shriek the loudest,
when the hope of liberation feels like nothing more than fantasy -- that is
when Jesus’s authority (of healing) brings the walls
down.
More about doing what we say later.
“The Lord be with you....Let us pray.”
Sanctify, O Lord, all your ministers of healing, especially doctors,
nurses, and all whom you have called to the study and practice of the healing
arts. Strengthen them and us by your
life-giving Spirit, that by all our ministries the health of our communities
may be promoted and your creation glorified; through Jesus Christ, the author
of our salvation, our savior, our healer, our Lord (For Doctors and Nurses, alt., BCP, p.
460).
AMEN.
~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
3745 Kimball Avenue
Memphis, TN 38111
holytrinityec.org
fathermom1949@gmail.com
FATHER MOMBERG'S ARTICLE FROM THE JANUARY 2021 THE TRINITARIAN (formerly THE TRACT)
Winter clears the landscape,
however brutally,
giving us a chance to see ourselves and
each other more clearly,
to see the very ground of our being.
~ Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
I don’t know exactly when it
happened. I do know that, despite all
the challenges and differences it brings, I love “doing” and being church via
Zoom.
Maybe it happened when Ruth began to
join us for our 10 am Zoom worship on Sunday mornings. With help from Ann-Marie and Ruth’s daughter
Angela, Ruth now CALLS IN on Sundays. We
can’t see Ruth, but her voice always cheers us up. We continue to pray for her husband Chuck, in
hospice, who, thankfully, is home with her.
Maybe it was when Sam bought a new
speaker for his computer so he and his mother Mary Beth - our oldest “couple” -
could hear us better every Sunday morning for worship and every Wednesday noon
for Bible study. Whether it’s via Zoom
or in person, Sam and Mary Beth ALWAYS come to EVERYTHING Holy Trinity offers.
Maybe it was when Jamie and Tim
- our youngest couple - Zoomed in with us one Sunday morning, as they do. This time, we noticed something different:
they were not in their home. They were
joining us FROM THEIR BICYCLES, amidst sunshine and sunflowers. They wanted to be with us, no matter where
they were.
Or maybe it was when Ty, our
organist and administrator, said he would be glad to help Tommy, our “senior” Zoom
host, make Sunday mornings MORE MUSICAL.
Ty finds music videos that Tommy can “screen share” with all of us. We can’t sing in ways we used to, but that
version of “Joy to the World” sure did jazz up our Christmas Eve!
Maybe you can tell how “jazzed” I
am about all the ways we keep on staying connected, through this COVID
Christmas season and into the New Year we long to see. 2021 will definitely be different from last
year, but we do not yet know how. Some
say good riddance to 2020. I hear and
share that feeling. I am also feeling
some gratitude.
2020 was the year in which Holy
Trinity proved, once again, that God is not finished with us yet. We are still, as the little introductory
video we made for this year’s Diocesan Convention put it, “alive and KICKING!” While we prepare for Bishop Phoebe to make
her annual visitation - this year, it’s online: January 24th - let’s keep
kicking!
The 2021 winter will “clear the
landscape.” Meanwhile, we keep being
given the opportunity to see ourselves and each other, albeit virtually, more
and more clearly. May Parker Palmer’s
wisdom be especially true for Holy Trinity in this brand, new year.
Love in Christ,
Tom+
|
|
SERMON - FEBRUARY 14
See
What You Hear The
Last Sunday after the Epiphany
Mark
9:2-9
Have you ever had a mountaintop
experience? Here’s how one man described
his: I've been to the mountaintop....Like anybody, I would like to live a
long life. But I'm not concerned about
that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the
mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land.
Those aren’t the words of Peter,
James, or John. They are words spoken by
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the day before he died in Memphis. For years he had heard God’s Word. He knew everything began with the Word of
God. In the beginning, there was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). Finally,
Dr. King went up the mountain. He saw
the promised land. He got a glimpse of
God’s kingdom, God’s reign - here, on earth.
What about Peter, James, and John,
on their mountaintop? What did they
see?Here’s a bit of context: Today, we are at the beginning of the ninth
chapter of Mark’s Gospel account. Since
the 1st chapter of Mark, Jesus has been preaching, teaching, and healing. Everything Jesus says or does begins with and
comes from the Word of God.
Mark, Chapter 1: The kingdom
of God has come near; repent, and believe in the Good News (1:15). Chapter 2: Those who are well have no need
of a physician, but those who are sick... (2:17). Chapter 3: If a house is divided against
itself, that house will not be able to stand (3:25).
It doesn’t end with Chapter
3. Peter, James, John and the other
disciples kept hearing the Word of God from the lips of Jesus, all the way up
to and past today’s text in Chapter 9.
They heard him, and they heard him, and they heard him. Often, what they heard was not easy to
hear. Not easy for them or for us. Especially by the end of Chapter 8. Just before today’s Gospel text, Jesus began
to teach: The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected...and
be killed.
Jesus did add, “and after three
days rise again.” But Peter, his prime
pupil, took Jesus aside and tried to teach Jesus a thing or two, to tell him he
was all wrong. And Jesus turned to his
disciples, corrected Peter, called out to the crowd all around them, and said: If any want to become my followers, let
them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the
Gospel will save it (8:31-35).
This was the Word
of God the three heard before that mountaintop experience.
Let me give you a bit more
context. The Rev. Dr. Mitzi Minor,
professor of New Testament at Memphis Theological Seminary, says we need to
remember that, in the time of the Gospel of Mark and of all the Gospels, there
was no democracy. There was no middle
class, no separation of church and state, and no diversity, equity, or
inclusion. The Roman Empire ran the
world in a “divide and conquer,” us-versus-them, hierarchy. It’s in this setting that Jesus declares the
kingdom of God has come near.
And it is in this, today’s
setting, in the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, that Jesus lives into,
illuminates, and embodies that reign of God, that heavenly kingdom, as if it
had come very near indeed. The bottom
line of his teaching, the point of his parables and preaching, Dr. Minor says,
is to help Jesus disciples’ see what he is saying. In other words, Jesus helps his disciples, then
and now, to...See. What. You.
Hear.
See. What.
You. Hear. Early on in the Black Lives Matter
movement, the young women who were mobilizing things said to their white allies
- especially us well-intentioned white clergymen - something like this: “Shut
up; sit down; listen to what we are saying; and then, believe what you are
hearing.” Hmm. Sounds like Jesus to me.
Perhaps Dr. Minor is telling us
that Jesus was saying, especially in Mark’s Gospel, that, unless and until we
listen and hear the Word of God and believe what we are hearing, we will not
see. For Peter, James, and John, the
Transfiguration, seeing Jesus change from the inside out on that mountaintop,
seeing God’s glory revealed, will depend on them hearing what God says to
them: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (9:7). Only then, when they listen, can they see
what they’ve been hearing.
On my journey with Jesus, I have
gone up and down the mountain, more than once.
In a way, my work of becoming an anti-racist keeps me
mountain-climbing. In recent years my
sisters and brothers of color have helped me listen and learn how there is
always more to hear - and then, more to see - on this journey we all share.
February - Black History Month -
is a good time to listen, to hear, and to see what God is saying and doing
through the Word of God and the words of others in the life and work of women
and men of color. Several moments in
African American history have already been memorialized this month. Let me lift up three of them for us.
February 1st, 1960. Four Black college freshmen, Joseph McNeil,
Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. and David Richmond, sat down at a
"whites-only" Woolworth’s lunch counter in
Greensboro, North Carolina, and politely asked for service. In a time when mob violence has reared its
ugly head, the non-violent protests of the Greensboro Four and others are still
a witness to the Word of God speaking peace to us.
February 4th would have been
the 92nd birthday of Rosa Louise McCauley Parks. Ms. Parks’ memorialized moment on a
Montgomery, Alabama, bus gets in the way of celebrating the full, rich life of
service she offered our country. The
United States Congress called her “the mother of the freedom movement.” We need to learn more about how God spoke and
worked through Rosa Parks, so we can more clearly see her.
Yesterday, February 13th, was a
day on which we honor an official saint in our Episcopal Church calendar. While he was enslaved, this man taught
himself to read the New Testament.
Later, he saw his way clear to buy his own freedom. In 1802, Absalom Jones became the first
African American to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. There is now a Center for Racial Healing in
Atlanta named after him. The Union of
Black Episcopalians will honor Absalom Jones again this year on February 27th.
It has taken me years to listen
to Jesus and to hear what I now need to learn about diversity, equity, and
inclusion. There is so much more to
learn, as I listen to the Word of God and to those teachers who speak in their
own words. James Baldwin, Amanda Gorman,
Ibram Kendi, Catherine Meeks, Howard Thurman, Isabel Wilkerson. When I hear them, I begin to get a glimpse of
their vision of God’s kingdom on earth.
We give ourselves over to the
process of hearing-then-seeing imperfectly.
We should never underestimate the challenges to see, even when we hear. Peter babbles about building three dwellings
to his three heroes of the faith: Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. It’s so easy to want to build a shrine! “He did not know what to say,” Mark tells us,
“for they were terrified. Then a cloud
overshadowed them” (9:6-7). Following
Jesus can feel like traveling in a cloud.
Moments of clarity are rare indeed.
Hearing and seeing Jesus may uproot us from everything we think we hear,
see, or know.
See. What.
You. Hear. In 1985, Archbishop Desmond Tutu stepped away
from his social justice work in South Africa and took a sabbatical at the
seminary in New York City where I was a student. He exercised, rested, taught a class. He also visited and talked with the children,
including my toddler son, in the day care center. We all heard and learned many things from
him, including this: “We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”
I’d guess Bishop Tutu still has
a soft spot for children. All the
children loved it when Bishop Tutu made his weekly visit to spend time with
them. After he finished his sabbatical,
Bishop Tutu went back to South Africa and continued his anti-apartheid
work. Finally, apartheid ended, and in
1984, elections were held in South Africa.
Those were the country’s first elections in which citizens of all races
were allowed to take part. Talk about a
mountaintop! Talk about Good News!
A quarter-century ago, on the
day Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela voted for the first time, the whole world
was watching. My son, who was twelve,
saw Tutu on TV, and he cried out, “Look!
Bishop Tutu! I know that guy!” John and all of us who had ever been touched
by the lifelong work of Tutu and Mandela and so many others were finally seeing
what we had heard. The kingdom of God
had come very near to us.
See. What.
You. Hear. May God give us the wisdom so to
do. Amen.
~ The Rev. Thomas A.
Momberg
Holy Trinity Episcopal
Church
3745 Kimball Avenue
Memphis, TN 38111
fathermom1949@gmail.com
|
|
|
|
