______________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
SEPTEMBER 20, 2020
The 16th Sunday after Pentecost
Debbie McCanless, Preacher
Good
morning my friends.
It
has been my honor and privilege to be with you these past several months. Now,
I share my final homily with you.
Two
of our lectionary readings are about fairness. First Jonah. When I think about
Jonah, I automatically go to my childhood Sunday School days and Jonah’s under
sea voyage as he is swallowed into the belly of the whale, (although scripture
say it is a large fish). And truthfully, this is an image of what I feel like
we’re going through today, being in the belly of the whale and I am hoping to
be spit back on the shore someday.
But
there is ‘the rest of the story’ of Jonah. Our lesson is about the conversion
of Nineveh and God’s mercy. In the verses preceding our reading we find that Jonah
finally does what God has been telling him to do. He goes to Nineveh calling on
the people to repent. And they do – the people donned sackcloth and fasted. When
the king heard this, he declared that “all shall turn from their evil ways and
from the violence that is in their hands.” Jonah was not expecting this. When
God saw their penitence, God changed his mind and did not bring disaster to the
city.
And
Jonah was not happy. It wasn’t fair that God just forgave these sinners. Jonah
was furious, filled with self-righteous indignation, “I’m so angry, I’d rather
die than live” he said. Jonah wanted retribution for the people of Nineveh. He
wanted them to get what they deserved for all the sins they’ve committed. God
then asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry?
How
many times have I been filled with self-righteous indignation over a wrong
committed against me? I can understand Jonah’s want for retribution. How dare
God offer forgiveness and grace instead? As the writer Debi Thomas says, “Isn’t
it right to be angry that God’s grace is so reckless and wasteful, it
challenges our most cherished assumptions about justice? Theologian Richard
Rohr calls this type of forgiveness “restorative justice” as opposed to
retribution and the penal system that we are so used to today.
The
truth is that even the people of Nineveh are God’s children, they are made in
the image of God just as Jonah. Just as we are, you and me as well as our
enemies. Like Jonah, sometimes it is difficult for me, dare I say us, to see
our sins and that we are living wholly by the mercy of God. Jonah does not
understand the mystery of God’s mercy and if I’m honest, neither do I. Just as
God asked Jonah, I have to ask myself, “Is it right for you, Debbie, to be
angry?”
Speaking
of anger and grumbling, we move to the New Testament reading which offers
another understanding of fairness. The familiar parable of the Laborers in the
Vineyard.
The
landowner goes out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.
There is an agreement between them for the usual daily wage, a denarius. Later,
about 9:00 he goes out and finds others and tells them to go into the vineyard
and he will pay them what is right, no agreement, no haggling over pay. Several
more times, (about every three hours), he goes out and does the same, sending more
workers into the vineyard. Finely, around 5:00 he went out and found others
standing around. “Why are you standing here idle all day? They said to him,
‘Because no one has hired us.’ He too sent them to the vineyard to work. Mind
you, they did not say they did not want to work, but that no one has hired
them.
At
the end of the workday, the landowner has his manager bring the laborers in to
pay them. Herein lies the rub. Those whom he hired last are brought forward
first and paid the usual daily wage, a denarius; remember they were told they
would be paid what is right, no set amount. Lastly the early laborers are
brought forth and having seen what has gone on with the late comers are
thinking, oh boy, I’m going to get extra, I showed up early and have been here
all day. But they do not. They get the denarius that was agreed upon that
morning. And they were not happy. It was not fair! But the landowner says, “Am
I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious
because I am generous?”
Several
scholars see this parable as the right to work and an economic truth. It was
the custom for the laborer to come into the village looking for work. Notice
the workers who were hired last did not say, ‘we do not want to work’, they said,
“no one has hired us”. Why is that? Maybe they had to walk farther, were not as
skilled, didn’t speak the language and had greater challenges that those who
could arrive early. They did not haggle over the pay, they just wanted to work.
I think landowner knew that. He also knew that a denarius was a just wage for a
day’s work at the time. Obtaining work and earning a fair wage meant the
difference between feeding your family or going home to a hungry family.
Remember,
Jesus, the carpenter, was a working man. I imagine him going into the village
of Nazareth seeking work. He had a mother and younger siblings to support. He
knew the difficulties and realities of making a living.
The
writer, William Barclay, offers another point; it could also be a lesson about
timing. It could be that those who come to God early in their life are no more
loved than those who become a Christian “till the shadows are falling on his
life.” God’s love makes no distinction, whether you come at the beginning of
your life, or the end, or somewhere in between. The unbounding and unmerited
gift of God’s generous love is there.
Unfortunately,
I can see a little of myself in this vineyard story. I follow the rules, show
up on time and do my work. It is fair that I get my full share. But as I have
gotten older, I know there is more to the story and things are not always as
they appear. Not everyone has the same privilege as I have had and continue to
have in order to have make a decent living.
As
Debi Thomas states, “I’ll be blunt: these two stories about fairness and
justice are for us. Stories for right now. Stories for the times we live in.”
and I agree. I am, we are, the beneficiary of God’s abundant justice – of God’s
generous love and grace. Why are some of us, especially those in power and
power comes in many forms, so willing to deny it to others; the “other” that we
want to ostracize, those different from us whether based on skin color,
ethnicity or nationality; to vilify and lock up instead of rehabilitate; to
mock and scorn anyone who is different; unwilling to care for our earth and her
resources; unwilling to care for each other in this pandemic?
We
are on this planet together. We need each other. We are dependent on each
other. But what if what is “fair” for me is not good for you or others? We must
re-examine our narrow notion of fairness and realize everyone - everyone has
worth and is worthy of dignity and has a place at the table. We need to be
building longer tables, not higher walls. How will I, how will we, work to
create a more just and fair society for all. How will we show God’s generosity
to others?
We cannot talk about justice without
remembering Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I leave you with the
Facebook post by Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry
11 hrs ·
He starts with a quote, “The late John Fitzgerald Kennedy once
said, “while on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
The he goes on to say “The sacred cause of liberty and justice,
dignity and equality decreed by God and meant for all has been advanced because
while on earth Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made God’s work her own. Because of
her the ancient words of the prophet Micah to do justice, love mercy and walk
humbly with God have found fulfillment. May we follow in her footprints. May
she rest in the arms of the God who is love and the author of true justice.
Rest In Peace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Shalom.”
I reiterate how will we advance the cause of liberty and
justice, dignity and equality for all?
Amen.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2020
The 14th Sunday after Pentecost
Father Thomas Momberg, Preacher
Church
Sins
Matthew
18:15-20
“If another member of the church
sins against you...” Nearly twenty-five
years ago I spent time with today’s Gospel text from Matthew. This week, while reflecting on this Biblical
process for restoring broken church relationships, I remembered what a New
Testament professor called “joining the conversation.” She invited us to talk with Jesus, asking
questions. So, I invite you to join a
conversation with Jesus and me today.
Let’s begin. My first question: Jesus, did you really say this about your church? It sounds like you, but it’s only found in
Matthew’s version of your Gospel. In
fact, the word “church” is found just twice in the Gospels, both in
Matthew. Did you say this?
Holy Trinity sisters and brothers, let me
bring you into the loop. A large church
I served as Rector had experienced problems for many, many years. Today we’d say they were in “generational
conflict.” When I joined them, I became
a participant in that church’s conflict, simply because of who I am and what I
did. Eventually, we decided to get some
professional help to work through things, and we hired a consultant. In other words, we were a church family that
needed counseling - and went and got it.
At one session, the consultant,
an Episcopal priest trained in conflict resolution, printed something for us to
sign. It was a very large copy of today’s
Gospel text, those six verses from Matthew 18.
He said that, if we were truly serious about resolving our issues and
moving forward together, we could use Matthew 18:15-20, sign that big copy of
it, and post it in the parish hall. He
also suggested we reduce and reprint the signed copy in every Sunday
bulletin. I still have one of those Bulletin
inserts.
Now, as you know, it’s one thing
to agree and sign on to some kind of a pledge, an oath, a covenant of behavior,
whether it’s for Christians or for some other group. It’s another thing to live it out, day by
day. Matthew 18 says the church member
who has been offended or hurt by another church member is the one to take the
first step in resolving things. In other
words, the one who was offended confronts the offender.
But Jesus, in Matthew’s day,
only men were real members of a church.
What was healing supposed to be like back then for women against whom
men sinned?
If someone hurts you, this code
of conduct says, you are to go to them and tell them so, privately. The problem, as you know, is that the one who
hurts may end up hurting the one who hurt them - or someone else. Hurt people hurt people. Jesus, sometimes someone is so hurt, so
victimized, so oppressed, they just can’t see how to confront their oppressor. Sometimes, the one oppressed rises up in
anger against their oppressor. What
should they do then?
My sisters and brothers in Christ, we
say we believe sin hurts people.
“If another member of the church sins against you....” The question
here, if we are willing to answer it, is: What is sin? Sin, our Prayer Book Catechism tells us,
is “the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God” (BCP, p. 848). That means when we sin, we are essentially
saying, “MY will, not Thy will, be done.”
And what are the consequences of
sinful behavior? Our Catechism says it “distort(s)
our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” In other words, when I try to get MY way, to
do MY will, it messes up all my relationships, even those
relationships I’m not even thinking about.
There are many ways to sin, ways
to make a mess with the people, places, and things in our lives, not to mention
with God. But this Gospel text is about
a particular kind of sin. In chapter 18,
Matthew has Jesus talking about the kind of sin that happens in church. If one church member sins against another
church member - actually, it’s “if a church member sins against YOU....” if and when that happens, what do you do?
I’d probably ask myself, “How
well do I know this person who sinned against me, who hurt me?” Then, I might wonder, “What’s really going
on? What happened to this person?” And then, “How big is this sin, really? How much does it hurt?” I wouldn’t automatically go and “point out
that fault” directly to the church member.
I might go and talk to them privately, speaking my truth in love. I might not.
It depends.
Jesus, is “it depends” an
acceptable response? Friends, this
is the first big problem I have with this conflict resolution process. Steps two three, and four - take one or two
others along, then tell the whole church, and then, if nothing else works, let
them go - all those make sense to me.
But I think confronting sin and sinners, including the sin in ourselves,
is a whole lot more complicated than we hear about in this kind of “if this,
then that” process. If it were simple,
why would we be in the messes we’ve been in?
Here’s what I think is
simple. When people get hurt in the
Episcopal Church, when one Episcopalian gets hurt by another one, and then,
gets angry, here’s what usually happens.
They leave. They leave and do one
of two things. One thing Episcopalians
do is: stay home, for months, years, even decades. Of course, in COVID-19 days, staying home is
what we do to stay well. However, it may
be that staying home can become a good excuse for losing contact with sisters
and brothers.
In any event, when a hurt, angry Episcopalian
stays home, they will, hopefully, some day, find their way back to their church
home or a new one. Hopefully, when they
return to church, it’s because enough time has passed for their wounds to heal,
at least heal enough to come home. It
all depends. Right, Jesus?
And yet there will always be folks
who get so hurt and angry with their church - their priest, or their vestry, or
their fellow member - they just stay home and never come back. Until, perhaps,
their own funeral. It is a great sadness
for me when I, the current priest, have never heard of a person or of their
family’s woes, until the word comes of their loved one’s death and a desire to
bury them from their church home. This
is just a reminder: if you know of someone who needs pastoral care, please let
me or one of your Vestry members know, before it’s too late for us to offer it.
There’s another question that
emerges when we consider sins in the church: What is the mission of the
church? It should go without saying
that the church is in the forgiveness business.
We’ll hear what Jesus has to say about forgiveness next Sunday. Churches, like all organizations, spend time
crafting mission statements.
Episcopalians already have one. “The
mission of the church,” our Prayer Book Catechism says, “is to restore all
people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (p. 855).
The word we hear more often in the
church than “restore” or “restoration” is reconciliation. As Episcopal Christians, our mission, should
we wish to accept it, is to be reconciled with those who sin against us. That sounds lovely, doesn’t it,
Jesus? I just love our Prayer Book! What some people now say is that, before
we can have any kind of reconciliation, we need to
start with conciliation.
Especially when there may be no real relationship to begin with. Especially when it comes to things
like...race.
The other problem I now have with this
method in Matthew of resolving church conflicts is far larger than “it depends.” It has to do with a much bigger sin than one
member might commit against another, even if that individual sinner is someone
like a bishop or a priest. The bigger
sin is the sin a church commits. In
other words, what if Jesus took this teaching to the next level? What if the
Gospel text went on to say, “If the church sins against you...”? Jesus, what would you like to say to us
about church sins?
There’s a new book about church sin
that’s getting a lot of positive press lately.
It’s called White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American
Christianity. Robert P. Jones, the
author, who grew up Southern Baptist and now runs the Public Religion Research
Institute (PRRI), uses all kinds of data to suggest that, over time, deeply
racist attitudes have become embedded in the DNA of White Christian
identity.
Jones writes: It is time -
indeed well beyond time - for white Christians in the United States to reckon
with the racism of our past and the willful amnesia of our present....White
Christians churches have not just been complacent; they have not only been
complicit; rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, (White churches)
have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect
white supremacy and resist black equality....Christian theology and
institutions have been the central tent pole holding up the very idea of white
supremacy (p. 6).
If this is true, and you are an
American Christian who is not White, and a White American Christian sins
against you, what do you do? If the
predominantly White Christian Church sins against you, a Christian of Color,
what do you do? What about if you are a
woman or an LGBTQ Christian, and a mostly straight White male church sins
against you? Might all of this have
something to do with the fact that more and more younger adults who would or
could be Christians say they are done with the Church?
Dear friends in Christ, I’m
not done with the church. I may be
wrong, but I think that today, the church as I know it and love it, the church
where, as a Christian song from the 60’s put it, you’ll know they are Christians
by their love - these days, I think we Episcopal Christians, imperfect as we
are - we are trying to live and love more and more like Jesus would have us do
- together. I’m talking about
that relatively big denomination of American churches called Episcopal,
and our smaller collection of churches called the Diocese of West Tennessee,
and this little church called Holy Trinity, where two or three, or twelve or
thirteen, or even more gather in Jesus’ name.
Whether it’s Presiding Bishop Michael
Curry’s initiative called “Becoming Beloved Community,” or the efforts our own
Bishop Phoebe Roaf is making to create, encourage, and restore healthy
community among us, or our own Wednesday Bible study or Sunday worship - I do
not see church sins happening the way I have in the past. I see us taking steps toward healing hurts,
resolving conflicts, and restoring unity along dividing lines.
Today, my sisters and brothers,
I see the church as I suspect Jesus envisioned it - all things considered, we
are alive, well, and preparing to go where Jesus calls us next. The question on this 2020 Labor Day weekend
is: What does the work of healing, the work of restoration, the work of
reconciliation look like for Holy Trinity, for the Diocese of West Tennessee,
for the Episcopal Church in the days ahead?
So, Jesus, what do you have to
say about all that? What would you have
us do next, in your name? What would you
do - through us?
~ The Rev. Thomas A. Momberg
Vicar, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
3745 Kimball Ave.
Memphis, TN 38111
holytrinityec.org
fathermom1949@gmail.com
