Tag: episcopal

When God Smacks You in the Head

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized5 Comments

I’ve been wanting to write more about my recent transition from the Presbyterian Church to the Episcopal Church, but a hectic schedule has not allowed. Hopefully, I will get to that soon. I’m sorry for leaving my readers in the dark, but living life has taken precedence over documenting it.

The transition process has been full of providential coincidences, deepening relationships, and a profound sense of finally settling into a church tradition where I can feel at home.

I have had a steep learning curve in my new job as parish administrator at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Battle Creek. I’m grateful that the community there has been wonderfully welcoming and patient with me as I learn how to juggle these new responsibilities. I have desperately needed to learn the administrative and financial aspects of church life, which this job allows me to do. Knowing about these things will make me a much stronger presbyter when I (hopefully) return to that role in a few years. I believe I am exactly where God has called me to be for this moment.

At the same time, this new season is not without its own pain and anxiety. First of all, I am still grieving my previous call as pastor of North Presbyterian Church, Kalamazoo. I had hoped to remain in that position for much longer than I did. Even after I came to the realization that I was not a Presbyterian, I was determined to stay on for the sake of serving that amazing group of people. Unfortunately, the financial realities made it impossible for me to continue in the call.

Second, the reality has begun to sink in that I am taking a substantial risk by hopping between denominations like this. The Anglican commitment to the historic episcopate (a theological commitment I have come to agree with, btw) means that I will have to re-enter the discernment process for ordination. The process will take several years. And there is the possibility, however slight, that a bishop might look at my situation and not decide to move forward with ordination. My priest assures me that this, while technically possible, is highly unlikely. Nevertheless, the fear sometimes keeps me up at night. I felt it acutely this weekend at the Diocesan Church Development Institute (DCDI), where clergy and parishioners from two Michigan dioceses gathered to learn about helping members grow spiritually, live together in community, and nurture transformative change. I was thinking about how much I love this when the terror struck that I might never again be able to invest my whole life in pastoral ministry, as I have for the last decade.

But God is not without a sense of humor.

Today’s epistle reading at the Daily Office was from 1 Peter 5:1-11. St. Peter writes as an apostle, bishop, and priest (presbyter, translated as “elder” in the NRSV) in the Church. He exhorts the leaders of the Church “to tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it not for sordid gain but eagerly.” (1 Pe 5:2)

I heard the following words as if they were spoken directly to me in this moment:

“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Pe 5:6-7)

And I then I read the following as a promise:

“And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.” (1 Pe 5:10)

As one trained in the arts of biblical exegesis and church history, I am fully aware of the dangerous situations that arise when one inserts one’s personal desires and fears into the text of Scripture. Furthermore, I know how church bodies work and have come to trust in the process of discernment that happens with the bishop in concert with relevant committees. There are no guarantees that I will ever become a priest in the Episcopal Church. Even if I do, the path will not be short or easy.

But the promise I hear in this text is that my life is destined to reflect God’s “eternal glory in Christ” and I will be given whatever manna I need to make that journey safely. I write these words from a place of faith, knowing that those same old fears are likely to reassert themselves in the next few years, days, or even moments. May God grant me the grace to trust the promise, even as my own heart screams in terror.

Last night, I was venting these fears to my wife at some length (ad nauseum, she might say). I eventually paused to go say Evening Prayer. Reaching down to get a hymnal from the bottom shelf, something must have shifted. There was a noise on the shelf above me and a sudden, stinging pain in the back of the head. I turned around to see what had fallen and hit me… it was my ordination certificate.

PCUSA Ordination Certificate.JPG

Resistance

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Love is our resistance.
They’ll keep us apart
and they won’t stop breaking us down.
Hold me.
Our lips must always be sealed.
The night has reached its end,
we can’t pretend,
we must run…

“People who say they follow a poor, itinerant savior who came to bring good news to the poor and freedom to captives have elected a president who speaks contemptuously of women and people of color, and whose election has sparked celebration by the Ku Klux Klan and outbreaks of violence and harassment against Muslims, Jews, Latinos, women, immigrants and LGBT people.

Christians who voted for Trump may claim policy or economic reasons for having done so. But by electing a man whose words and actions support and incite hatred and violence, the church has failed the country, and we have a lot of soul searching to do.” -the Rev. Gay Clark-Jennings, President of the House of Deputies, the Episcopal Church

Click here for more details on how this resistance will look for the next 4 to 8 years, from Gay Clark-Jennings, President of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church.

Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey Stuff: Benedictine Monasticism and the Sanctification of Time

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments

In early 2014, I realized something needed to change in my life.

I was regularly working twelve to fourteen hours a day, sometimes going a month without taking a single day off. I had a moment of clarity while sitting in my office at 2 o’clock in the morning on a Saturday. At first, I felt proud of myself for being such a hard worker, but then I thought, “Wait a minute, this is insane. Who does this?”

After returning from my second trip to the emergency room with stress-related illness, I decided that I needed to find a better sense of balance in my life. I thought, “Who understands balance and rhythm? Monks! I wonder if there’s a monastery somewhere near me?”

A Google search revealed that I lived a mere forty-minute drive away from St. Gregory’s Abbey, an Episcopal Benedictine monastery in Three Rivers, Michigan. Without even calling home to check with my wife, I called and booked a week-long retreat in April.

That week changed my life. Sitting in the abbey church, I felt quiet on the inside for the first time ever. I had long felt an attraction to contemplative Christian spirituality, but had never given myself permission to stop long enough to try it.

The first insight I gleaned from the Benedictines is a different conception of time than I had previously held. To quote the British sci-fi series Doctor Who:

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”

I had presumed that time is a line, progressing inexorably from Point A to Point B. As one who exists on this timeline, my goal was success: asserting my powers of will to make the timeline go in the direction I wanted.

What I learned from the monks is that time is actually a circle, or perhaps a spiral. Making the daily rounds of the Divine Office and the Mass, we keep going around and around, returning to the same point in the liturgy again and again. It wouldn’t be all that far-off to say that the Eucharist itself is a form of “time-travel”, wherein the Church in finds herself gathered around the table with Christ and his Apostles at the Last Supper. Saints and angels from all of time and space gather with us in the Paschal mystery. Likewise, the hours of the Divine Office are often called “the sanctification of time.”

The goal of history in this circular vision of time is not success, but faithfulness. We return to the same points again and again. We cannot go forward without going around. This is very much in-tune with the circular rhythms of the natural world. Day follows night as the planet rotates. We pass through the lunar and seasonal phases as we go around the sun, year after year. The monks mark the passage of time with prayer, pausing to feel the earth twisting and turning beneath their feet. They return to the hours of the Office and the Mass in order to renew their conscious contact with the Source of motion. It is their faithfulness to this daily rhythm that makes them monks.

Between the hours, the earth continues rotating and revolving. There are periods of work and rest: guests need attending to, meals need to be prepared and eaten, dishes need to be washed, buildings need repair, books need to be written and read, library shelves need to be dusted, leaves need to be raked, snow needs to be shoveled, but the spiral rhythm remains constant. A symphony is just a jumbled mess of noise without the pauses and rests between the notes.

This is the first insight I learned from my time with the monks at St. Gregory’s. It has changed the way I approach my life at work and at home. Time is not a line, but a spiral. The goal is not success, but faithfulness. One can only move forward by going around.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to step away from this computer screen and go recite one of the Hours.

PAX

The Baptismal Covenant

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Fr. Randall Warren drew our attention to the Baptismal Covenant during last Sunday’s sermon at St. Luke’s. You can read the Covenant by clicking here or by flipping to page 304 of the Book of Common Prayer (if you’re one of those old-fashioned people who still remember how books work). This brilliant summary of the Christian faith was born from the womb of liturgical renewal in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since its inclusion in the the 1979 Prayer Book, Episcopalians have “fallen in love with it,” according to Fr. Randall.

Reading and reflecting on the text later that day, it occurred to me that this brief Covenant provides a helpful starting point for thinking about the way the Church practices its mission in the world.

Do you believe in God the Father?
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?

We begin by reciting the Apostles’ Creed. This is our way of saying that faith begins, not with us, but in God. And God is not a monolithic entity but a community, a network of relationships, between divine persons (i.e. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) that we collectively refer to as the Trinity. This is how Christians are able to say that “God is Love” (1 John 4:16). A single person can be loving, in the adjectival sense, but Christians believe that God is love, in the active sense. God is relationship. To borrow a phrase, “God is a verb.” God happens.

Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

The place where God happens is the Church.

Of course, the Church is not the only place where God happens. All communities and relationships reflect, to one degree or another, the relational nature of the Trinity: friends, families, societies, ecosystems, even the gravitational relationship that exists between planets and stars. God meets us in all of these places, but the Church is the particular community where human beings are invited into a special covenant relationship with each other and with the Triune God through the person Jesus Christ, who is present with us in the Scriptures and the Sacraments.

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

Relationships are never easy. Relationships are raw. Intimacy strips away our fig leaves and exposes all our parts: the good, the bad, and the ugly. When we come into the Church, a network of relationships that spans all of time and space, and is itself enfolded into the network of relationships that is the Trinity, we come as we are, with all our baggage in hand.

Standing in the light of Christ’s perfect humanity, we are confronted with the fact that we, in our selfishness, behave in ways that are less than fully human and lead to broken relationships.

The good news is that God refuses to break up with us, even when we try to do so with God and each other. God is like a mother in a department store whose toddler is throwing a tempter tantrum. The child screams, “I hate you!” And God adjusts the purse strap on her shoulder, takes us by the hand, and says, “You can hate me if you want to, but I still love you. Come along now; it’s time to go home.”

Christ dares us to get honest about our shortcomings. Christ invites us to begin again… and again… and again, knowing we are bound to fail. Success is measured, not in how many times we fall down, but in how many times we get back up. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “Recovery is about progress, not perfection.” Salvation is a journey, not a destination.

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

The result of this continual falling down and getting back up is that we grow in confidence that we are fully loved and accepted, no matter what.

This is big news.

This is big news in a world where a person’s appearance and performance are analyzed and judged with ruthless scrutiny. This is big news in a world where the “worth” of a person or an ecosystem can be quantified and calculated with dollar signs. This is big news in a world that prizes whiteness, maleness, and straightness. This is big news in a world where “might makes right” and “the best defense is a good offense.”

The absolute and unconditional love of God is big news because it renders irrelevant all the noise of news broadcasts and the temptations of commercial advertisements in between. People who know they are loved don’t need those trappings. People who know they are loved don’t fear what others fear. People who know they are loved by God have found something worth dying for, and therefore have something to live for too.

Love changes everything. Love makes the world go round and turns it upside down. Love wins. This is big news. It’s worth sharing. It needs to be said. The rest of world needs to hear it.

The Church is a community of people who have been changed by God’s love and try, to the best of their limited ability, to embody that love in the way they treat others. Evangelism is a “show and tell” enterprise… in that order. We do our best to show love first, and when the world asks us why we love so radically, then (and only then) we have earned the right to talk about Jesus.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Some Christians have mistakenly conflated evangelism and proselytism. They think the proclamation of the good news means arguing with people until they see things from your point of view. They think their job is to bring Christ to the world, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is that Christ is already present in the world. Christ is in that homeless person, that sex worker, that meth cook, that terrorist, that presidential candidate. Christ lives in them and loves them at the level of their true self, which is deeper than all their problems and insecurities. They don’t see it, most of the time, and neither does the rest of the world. That is why most people falsely identify with things that are less than their true selves: appearance, occupation, possessions, criminal record, diagnosis, disability, race, national origin, political party, etc.

What breaks the spell of these false selves is when we enter into a relationship with someone who treats us as though we are Christ because, at a certain level, that is exactly who we are. The role of the evangelist is to help us realize this truth in ourselves and live it out in relationship with others in the Church and the world. So, in the end, all evangelism is simply Christ loving Christ through Christ.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

This is where the rubber meets the road. This is what it looks like to seek and serve Christ in others, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ, and to be the Church on Earth.

When we do this, we can expect the powers-that-be to get angry. Proclaiming the truth that God loves everyone completely, equally, and unconditionally is a direct affront to the lies they peddle. Bishop Gene Robinson once asked me, “If you aren’t getting in trouble because of your faith, is it really the Gospel you believe?”

Striving for justice and peace and respecting the dignity of every human being will undoubtedly put us at odds with this world system of domination and manipulation. When we march on the picket line, write to an elected official, volunteer at the shelter, let go of an old grudge, bring a casserole to a sick neighbor, or sit through another committee meeting, we are turning the world upside down.

The same holds true for those who teach, heal, practice law, raise kids, run for office, work the McDonald’s drive-thru, or greet customers at Wal-Mart. You are the hands and feet of Jesus in the world and the work you do, when undertaken with this Baptismal Covenant in mind, is the ministry of the gospel.

And here’s the really amazing thing: it works.

When we begin to practice these promises in our lives, the world will take notice.

People are spiritually hungry. They intuitively sense that something is wrong with the way things are, but have no idea how to remedy the situation. Sadly, centuries of Christian dogmatism and judgmentalism have led many to believe that the Church has nothing to contribute. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

The Church’s mission begins and ends in love because we believe that “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 John 4:16) Our Baptismal Covenant begins with the perfect love of the Triune God at the heart of reality and quickly ripples outward in concentric circles, embracing us, the Church, and the whole universe in the everlasting arms.

“We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

(Reblog) God Loves Chutzpah

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

“Jesus doesn’t need any more admirers — he needs disciples willing to get into some Gospel trouble on God’s behalf.”

Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson at All Saints Church, Pasadena
Celebration of Ministries Sunday, September 22, 2013.
Readings: Amos 8:4-7 and Luke 16:1-13.

For more about the work and witness of All Saints Church visit our website: http://www.allsaints-pas.org | Follow us on twitter @ASCpas

(Reblog) On gay bishops, what a difference a decade makes

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

By Bishop Gene Robinson

Reblogged from the Washington Post:

Twenty or 30 years ago, most Americans would have told you they didn’t know anyone gay.  By that, they would have been claiming not to know anyone who openly and proudly disclosed their sexual orientation – and certainly not in the ranks of the clergy.  Now, is there any family in America left who doesn’t know some family member, co-worker or former classmate to be gay?  And once they know someone gay, know their relationships and their families, people are simply not willing to believe all the awful things said about us – especially by religious institutions.

Every denomination, no matter how clear and unwavering their condemnation of homosexuality and homosexual relationships, is struggling with this societal and religious issue.  A substantial majority of Roman Catholic laity in America now support marriage equality – a momentous step beyond mere acceptance of homosexual people.  Mormons and evangelicals are softening their language about gay people at a minimum; some are reassessing their traditional stances and moving toward greater acceptance.

Religious institutions of all stripes are asking this big question:  Could the church have gotten it wrong in using a few verses of scripture to condemn homosexual people, just as it got it wrong about using isolated verses to justify slavery and the denigration/subjugation of women?  More and more religious people and institutions are moving toward a “yes” in response to that question.  The church has misunderstood God’s will before, but over time, we get it right.  I believe that this is one of those moments.

Click here to read the whole article