Christian formation Archives - 51��Ƶ

Homily for Choral Evensong before Commencement

nancy — Thu, 21 May 2015 22:44:19 +0000

Ezekiel 36:24-28
Mark 10:35-45
At Commencement at Harvard University, the minister at the Memorial Church renowned preacher, Peter Gomes, used to tell the graduates this famous bible story:
“As they were being driven out of Eden, and at the east the flaming sword barricaded the tree of life and blocked the way back, Eve turned to Adam and said, ‘My dear, we are entering a time of transition.’”
Unlike undergraduates leaving college, those who graduate from 51��Ƶ tomorrow do not romanticize their time here nor do they imagine this campus, beautiful as it is, to have been paradise. However, there may be some regret tonight,
some sense of loss, of these friendships, of this intense time of formation that will never be exactly replicated again.
Really the “transition” you prepare for tonight is one episode in an ongoing transition.
It is a transition that those who leave share with those who remain here to teach and lead and welcome the new class in August.
In our tradition this is the transition of a lifetime, and it is called, “drinking the cup that Jesus drinks and being baptized with the baptism with which Jesus is baptized.”
The scripture of Israel tells the story of testing and of trial, of suffering, of repentance, and restoration, of a people, scattered and sinning, whom God washes and brings back to their land.
The gospels tell the story of a Jesus, tested, pursued, tortured, and killed, whom God raises from the dead, bringing a whole people back to life and giving them a role, a job, a task, marching orders, an agenda.
In this transition we undergo, enact, perform this story.
Your education has enculturated you into that story, socialized you, made you into a person with a certain kind of character, equipped with knowledge, so that you can carry out that agenda given by God.
First, this transition is A Losing.
Gosh, how much you have had to lose!
Arrogance.
Certainty that you knew it all.
Superiority.
Fantasy about how holy and special and superhuman a counselor, chaplain, priest, spiritual director is. (James and John had to lose all this too – those seats at Jesus’ right and left hand – seemed just within reach…)
Control. (“You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross”)
Centrality.
Perfection.
At the same time, this transition is A Gaining, A Getting, A Saving —
Receiving Life from the stone cold tomb.
Gaining companionship, classmates, friends, belonging to a body, taking a role in the economy and ecology of the body of Christ,
Becoming Friends.
Purpose and connection with the deep, high, wide, broad mission of God.
Receiving Joy – deep joy.
This transition is A Sending –
Martha Horne, dean emerita of Virginia Seminary says that seminary is academy, abbey, apostolate. This transition is the apostolate.
He is not here – go to Galilee – there you will see him.
World beyond Eden.
Austin, Alabama, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia…
According to the story – People of Israel are not just supposed to hang out in the land, at ease in Zion, but get to the work of obeying the commandments and being a light to the nations.
According to the story – People of God are not just supposed to enjoy the liturgy, but head out into Galilee where there are still human beings mentally ill, hungry, abused, thirsty, naked and poor and there are still plenty of tyrants, arrogant, greedy, and dangerous.
Whatever our job… we are trying to live into our baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection.
You see this transition, this losing and gaining, is a Transformation.
This is our work, whether we go or stay –
Living into our baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection.
51��Ƶ is for sure not Eden. But it is a place of life, good work, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
At this time of transition, let us give thanks to God for the friendship, company, joy, wisdom, we have gained, the renewed sense of purpose, and insight into the mystery of God.
Amen.

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Election Day Sermon

nancy — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:41:33 +0000

Luke 14:25-33
Eight years ago almost to the day, when I was a new interim theology professor at SSW, I stood in this pulpit and preached my very first sermon in Christ Chapel. It was 2 days after we sent George W Bush back to the White House for 4 more years, and 3 or 4 days after the Lambeth Commission released the Windsor Report, giving a theological and ecclesiastical response to the controversies in the Episcopal Church surrounding human sexuality.
I suggested at the time that pushing the new interim theology professor into the pulpit on such a day must be the seminary equivalent of hazing.
SSW was a different place in those days. There were fractures and fissures running throughout our community—between board members and faculty and administration, among the faculty, and among the student body. It was during that semester that Nancy Springer-Baldwin and I worked with a group of students to compose the first draft of our conversation covenant. It was also during that semester that I began my first experiments with theological disputations, banking on the counter-intuitive idea that in a climate of silent resentment and antipathy, nothing opens the windows on grace like a good old-fashioned argument. After the first disputation I asked the senior MDiv students for feedback on the exercise, and one of them responded that it was the most deeply unchristian thing he’d been asked to do while at seminary. I’m not sure I ever convinced him otherwise. How could I? Not by arguing, right?
Although the timing of my first preaching was a challenge, the text was a big, fat, 16-inch softball lobbed across the plate. Zacchaeus: the funny little man who showed us how to search for Jesus amidst the crowd, the noise, and the chaos. I asked the community, so deeply divided politically and theologically, what our deepest desires were: A Democratic president? A Republican president? Our own convictions turned into state or church polity? Or a savior? And if it was the latter, were we willing to climb up a tree like an 8 year-old child in order to find one?
51��Ƶ is a different place now. We’re not without challenges, and sometimes our vices and egos get the best of us, but those old fissures have for the most part healed. We’re learning the art of charitable dialogue, we search for ways to give voice to different points of view, and some of you even seem to enjoy a good theological argument now and then. (There was a good bit of laughter, at least, during this morning’s disputation on the filioque.)
This is SSW’s Elizabethan Settlement, the days of calm after the years of storm and strife. The Travis-ian Settlement.
And there is also a risk in such times, as there was in that era of Anglican history. A risk, in short, that now that the crowd and chaos have dispersed, we’ll forget that our calling remains that of Zacchaeus—to find and follow the Savior.
Today’s gospel has always puzzled me. It sounds as if Jesus is telling us to count the cost before taking up our cross, so that we know what we’re getting into. But it comes as a kind of non-sequitur. “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost?” What does that 2d sentence have to do with the first? In order to make it work, we usually supply an implied line—- “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. [And the reason that I’m telling you this now is so you’ll know what you’re in for.] For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost?”
But I’d like to suggest a different reading, without that added line in the middle. This is the Jesus of the “you have heard it said, but I tell you” sayings. The Jesus who offers a bit of folk wisdom, and then shows how the logic of the kingdom of heaven surpasses such wisdom so excessively as to appear foolish to the eyes of the world.
We all know, Jesus is saying, that if you’re going to build a tower, you need count the cost. Do a risk-benefit analysis. Make sure you’ve planned the spending so there’s enough left to see the project through. When a king marches into battle, he’d better have laid out strategies and tactics for accomplishing his goal, or else the realm is in trouble.
When a people participate in the civic liturgy known as election day, they’d better have done some research and reflecting on the issues and the candidates. It’d be foolish not to. You have to reckon the cost of tax hikes against the cost of spending cuts. Of new road construction vs. commuter alternatives and regulations.
�ճ󲹳�’s how you follow a king into battle. �ճ󲹳�’s how you follow a builder of things. You count the cost. �ճ󲹳�’s how you follow a leader.
But that’s not how you follow a Savior. There’s no point in counting that cost, because we already know what discipleship will cost us. Everything.
You have heard it said that no one builds a tower without keeping some rainy day funds in the bank. But I tell you, you cannot be my disciple unless you give up all that you have, and wind up looking foolish like a busted construction company, a king with no exit strategy, a crucified rabbi.
What does this gospel demand of you? Many of you have given up careers, homes, wealth. Some have lost friends and brothers and sisters. Students have come through this campus from homes where they were daily at risk of giving up their lives. Do you count that cost? Do you measure the weight of the cross on your shoulder against a projected future without it? �ճ󲹳�’s how you follow a king, a President, a leader. But it’s not how you follow a Savior.
What does this gospel demand of you? What more does it demand of you?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote nearly 80 years ago that the world was at risk of forgetting that discipleship is a costly thing. In this season of goodwill and charity at SSW, when election year vitriol hasn’t managed to split us into factions, let’s offer thanks for good friendship, for trust, and for good arguments. And then let’s recall together what it is to follow a savior, to offer our selves, our souls and our bodies, to Christ. Not to count the cost or to strategize, but to throw ourselves together into his service, assuming that this vocation will be the end of us. Let’s contemplate together the conclusion that Bonhoeffer drew, in what remain 11 of the most poignant and disturbing words written in the last 100 years: “When Jesus calls to us, he bids us come and die.”
�ճ󲹳�’s how you follow a savior.

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Dr. Stanley Hauerwas’ sermon for 2012 Commencement

nancy — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:08:37 +0000

Because It Is True

A Commencement Sermon

The 51��Ƶ

May 8, 2012

Exodus 19: 3-8
Psalm 15
Matthew 16: 24-27

            Because it is true. On this celebratory occasion, an occasion that is at once an end and beginning, my prayer for you is that in the future, when you are asked why you came to seminary, why you sought ordination, why you were willing to be a priest in a confused and compromised church, or even why you are a Christian, all you will be able to say is, “Because it is true.” That all you can say is, “Because it is true,” may mean you have had a difficult life, that is, a life stripped of what many associate with standards of success. Yet I side with the Psalmist who insists that those who would abide in the Lord’s tent must “speak the truth from their heart.” “Because it is true” is the necessary condition for such speech.
            I do not mean to suggest that if your life has been successful, or at least happy, you have failed to speak heartfelt truth. But we live in a time when Christians are tempted to make truth irrelevant for why anyone might consider being a Christian. Faced with the church’s declining membership and status, a cottage industry has developed to entice people to give Christianity a try. These strategies for church growth are designed to work in a manner that makes irrelevant questions of truth. I have no reason to deny that being a Christian may give your life meaning– whatever that may mean or whatever good it may do―may save your marriage, or even get you to work on time, but it is also the case that to speak the truth from the heart may disrupt our presumptions of success.
            Of course it is not only Christians who have given up on truth. Voltaire no longer thought he needed God as an explanatory hypothesis. In the same spirit Richard Rorty, one of our most distinguished contemporary philosophers, argued that truth is not a concept needed to sustain the work of philosophy or science. Nietzsche gave this denial of truth classical expression when he observed:
                        What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which,                                 after long usage, seem to people to be fixed, canonical and binding. Truths are illusions we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.
This eloquent denial of truth earned Nietzsche the characterization “nihilist.” But ironically he was anything but a nihilist. At least he was not a nihilist if you acknowledge he was in fact passionately committed to living a life free of self-deception. As he wrote in The Gay Science the “’will to truth’ does not mean ‘I do not want to let myself be deceived’ but—there is no alternative—‘I will not deceive, not even myself’; and with that we stand on moral ground.” Yet Nietzsche knew that to avoid living free of deception must be an ongoing struggle for we so love the lie. Nietzsche is a witness Christians dare not ignore.
            Nietzsche was surely right to observe that we do not like to be deceived, but it is also true that we wish others to regard us more highly than we deserve. That is why Pascal observes that we hate the truth and those who would tell us the truth. We desire that others be deceived in our favor, that is, we want to be esteemed by others in a manner that confirms the illusions we harbor to sustain our life projects. That is why, Pascal suggests, few friendships would endure if each friend knew what was said by their friends in their absence. According to Pascal it is a fact that if everyone knew what was said of the them by others there would not be four friends in the world.
            From Pascal’s perspective human society is founded on mutual deceit because our loves, and in particular our self-love, requires that we hide from one another and ourselves the truth. We fear wounding one another with the truth because we so desperately want to be loved. We do not wish, therefore, for anyone to tell us the truth and we avoid telling it to others. These habits of deception become rooted in the heart making it impossible for us to speak truthfully from the heart.
            I fear you will find Pascal’s account of deceit all too relevant for your calling as a priest. After all you are a human being. You will want to be loved by those you serve. In particular you will be called to be present to your people when their lives are in crisis. Do not be surprised, however, because you have been present at such times those to whom you have been present will find it difficult to love you. Because you are a priest you will be welcomed by people even when they are without protection and have no way to disguise their vulnerability. In the midst of the crisis you will be loved, or at least admired, for your presence and care. But after the crisis is over you will discover the very intimacy established by the crisis between you and those to whom you were present now means they fear what you know of them. You have been allowed to see truthfully who they are which will often mean that they want as much distance from you as they can get.
            To sustain a community capable of having the lies that constitute our lives exposed, to sustain the practice of speaking the truth from the heart requires, as our Psalmist suggests, requires the creation of a people who do not slander one another. Rather they are people with a genius for friendship refusing to do evil to their friends. Nor do they reproach their neighbors because they honor all who fear the Lord. They stand by their oath even when it is not to their advantage, and they do not lend money at interest or take bribes against the innocent. The Psalmist seems to suggest these are the necessary conditions for a community of trust because without trust we are incapable of being truthful about ourselves. And if we are incapable of being truthful to ourselves we will eventually discover that we cannot be truthful to one another.
            For Christians the truth that makes such trust possible is no abstract truth. The truth that makes possible truthful speech, heartfelt speech, is a person. The “it” in “Because it is true” is a person. Truth for us is not a principle or system, not a structure of correct insights, not a doctrine. The expression of the truth may use any of these means to say what is true, but as Barth rightly insists, “Jesus Christ in the promise of the Spirit as His revelation in the sphere of our time and history is the truth.” Only in the person of Christ are we encountered by the one who can unmask our illusions without utterly destroying us. In Christ we are made intimate with God, making possible a nearness from which we do not flee.
            Jesus is the truth that judges and tests all other truths that would seek to be established independent of the love shown to us in Christ. Accordingly any attempt to judge Jesus by a theory of truth not determined by cross and resurrection can only tempt us to think we are the measure of what is true. Jesus is, as Barth maintains, the true witness who does not need to be confirmed or authorized by any other truth. Rather he is the truth from which all other claims of truth are to be judged. “He is the true Witness. He is Himself the truth and its expression. And in His existence and life as such He unmasks every other man.”
            Jesus is the heart from which the truth must be spoken. Thus the truth that must be spoken is known only through witness. Because he is the truth we can speak the truth. That speaking the truth takes the form of witness means we are confronted with this truth in a manner that does not allow us to distance ourselves from him. Any attempt to sunder truth from this the true witness, to make truth an idea about the relation between God and man, cannot be the truth. If the truth is thought to be but a symbol, no matter how exalted, it is but a falsehood. The true witness is this man of Gethsemane and Golgotha.
            Because the truth is this person, the one who endured Gethsemane and Golgotha, it is a truth that cannot resort to coercion to secure its status. The truth that is Christ, the truth that can only be known by witness, is a truth that must make its way in the world by refusing to use the desperate means of the world to force others to acknowledge what is claimed to be true. There can be nothing desperate about the witness that is Christ because what God has done through the Son cannot be undone. That is why the truth that is Christ is so compelling. It is compelling because those possessed by this truth are filled with joy.
            But then what are we to make of our Gospel for today in which we are told that any who would be a follower of Jesus must take up their cross and follow him? What are we to make of Jesus’ claim that those who would save their lives must be willing to lose their lives? I confess I cannot think of any advice more destructive for those called to the priesthood. Such advice cannot help but tempt you to think that your calling is sufficient for you to believe you are making a sacrifice of the self. Such a presumption, unfortunately, is a formula for priests to try to secure their status and power by becoming proficient at playing the game of passive aggressive behavior.
            Jesus, however, does not say that to live sacrificially is a good in and of itself. Rather he says that those who lose their life for my sake will find their life. “For my sake” means that we are invited to be a witness to the witness that is Jesus. That witness to be sure may require a sacrifice, but if the sacrifice is to be true it must not point to itself but to Jesus. It is the cross of Christ that is the sacrifice that has ended all sacrifices other than those whose end is Christ. By the grace of God we are invited to share in Christ’s sacrifice, but such a sharing makes possible lives no longer captured by our self-deceptive strategies to secure our own significance. The appropriate description for lives so determined is joy.
            Joy is the mark of lives shaped by the truth that is Christ. To be captivated by such a truth, to be as the Psalmist suggests, a heartfelt speaker of the truth, means those so determined will “never be moved.” “To never be moved” is the Psalmist’s way of saying that those whose lives are determined by Christ can be trusted to be who they say they are.   “Sincerity” and “integrity” are not sufficient to describe such people. Steadfast I think is closer to the mark. They are who they are by the grace of God.
            What a wonderful time to be a Christian. What a wonderful time to serve the Christian people. Odd sentiments if, as I suggested above, the church seems to be in a downward spiral. Yet that this is the case simply means we have nothing to lose by speaking the truth to ourselves, one another, and the world. It is surely the case that the world is dying –quite literally ― for a people capable of speaking the truth from their heart.   It is true that truth in our time is obscure and falsehood is well established, but that is no reason for us to despair of truthful speech. After all, God, through his Son, has shown us that to desire the truth requires loving the truth. For without love we cannot know the truth that moves the sun and the stars.
            So I end where I began, that is, I pray that when you are asked why you came to seminary; or later when you reflect on why you have given your life in service to the church, that is to say, why you have lived your life as a Christian, the only reason you have left to give ― and it is a sufficient reason ― is, “Because it is true.”

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John Hines Day 2011

nancy — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:44:55 +0000

John Hines Day
October 6, 2011
The Rt. Rev. David M. Reed, MDiv ’83, DD ‘08
Bishop Suffragan – Diocese of West Texas
Christ Chapel, 51��Ƶ
Amos 7:7-9a; Ps. 18:21-36; II Corinthians 4:5-12; Luke 9:23-26
Jh. In the Name of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.
INTRO: It’s a privilege and a blessing to be with you for this celebration of the life and ministry of John Hines, 4^th Bishop of Texas, 22^nd Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, and most importantly for our purposes here today, without which there wouldn’t be a here, here , for us to celebrate, Founder of 51��Ƶ almost 60 years ago. Born 1910, died 1997…the child of God, and heir of the Kingdom.
When Bishop Hines announced his plans for this seminary, the first to be established in the 20^th century, he dreamed of a seminary fully engaged with the culture, interpreting Christian theology in terms the modern world could understand and led by a faculty of intimidating intellect, stupendous scholarship, amazing good looks and rigorous yet incredibly merciful teaching methods. The seminarians from West Texas would like their professors to know that they feel the dream has come true.
It is an honor, and humbling, to be invited to preach on such a day as this, to stand in this chapel and this pulpit made possible by the vision and energy of Bishop Hines, a passionate and prophetic preacher. And to do so with his family and friends, and some of the clergy who were here when this place was built—it’s all a little intimidating. What was I thinking when I said yes? I haven’t preached here since my Senior Sermon in 1983, and am grateful to the dean for giving me another chance. It feels just the same, except I’m not being graded…well, yes, I guess I am…
The bishop’s passion and prophetic leadership grew out of, of all things, his love for Jesus. He could not imagine that following Jesus could lead anywhere else but to the poor, the overlooked, the alienated, the oppressed—to lead him to stand against segregation, apartheid and poverty. The Incarnation illumined his life and his ministry, and in the crucified, dead and risen Christ, he found the grace, the strength and the stubbornness to enter into and stand with those who suffer. And not just stand there, gawking like a turista, but to talk about it boldly, to call and recall the comfortable and secure Church of his day to pay attention to Jesus.
“The more you genuinely concentrate upon the person and ministry of Christ,” he told a gathering at the College of Preachers, “the more you will be driven into confrontations in his name with the powers of darkness and with the demonic structures that demean human life and frustrate and scar the human spirit.” Standing in this prophetic tradition, your dean said in a meeting last spring, “If we don’t tell the world it’s crazy, who will?” Or I guess the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel work, too: “If you want to follow me, deny yourselves, take up your cross, and come on.” I looked up Bishop Hines’ in the NY Times, and this was my favorite line: “He was accused by critics of overlooking administrative detail as he focused on social issues.” May that be engraved on all our tombstones.
It’s not easy being a prophet, and it’s even harder when you’re on the inside, and Bishop Hines was way on the inside. He was bishop and presiding bishop when that still carried a lot of weight and opened a lot of doors. And yet, not counting equality with the social movers and political shakers a thing to be grasped, he saw his office and authority as instruments and leverage for God’s Kingdom, ways in which he could confront the demonic structures that demean human life, go up against the love of power with the power of love, and get in the face of his own beloved Church and say, “Pay attention to Jesus.”
I suspect that one of the reasons most of us have a hard time hearing prophets—I mean, besides the fact that they’re usually talking about us—is that it seems to be a fine line between being a prophet and being a jerk. Real prophets seem to be pretty disinterested in their identity as prophets, don’t seem to dwell on it; it’s not about them, they say, and their words aren’t even their own. They seem overtaken by God’s Word. Fake prophets seem to be self-conscious, concerned with how they’re doing, maybe even enjoying how they’re upsetting everyone. Real prophets are heart-broken by the work God gives them. There’s plenty of righteous anger, but they are speaking against the people they love…because they love them. Who else will bother to tell these people they’re crazy?
In the Book of Amos, just after the passage we heard about Amos’ waking-dream about the plumbline used to test the sturdiness and straightness of a wall, the priest Amaziah reports to King Jeroboam that Amos is stirring up trouble “in the middle of the house of Israel.” He characterizes him as both a political subversive and a religious nutcase. The priest then goes to Amos and says, “Go, please, just go away. Go home to Judah and earn your living prophesying there.” Amos rejects both labels and responds heatedly, “I’m no prophet and not a prophet’s son, either. I’m a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees.” (According to my advanced research, that does not involve putting clothing on trees, but harvesting and cutting up figs.) Then he says, in effect, this was not my idea. “The Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’” (Amos 7:14-15) He was all caught up in this prophetic Word.
I don’t get any sense that Bishop Hines spent much time wondering if he was a prophet. He was a priest, then a bishop, and always a churchman who loved the Church, and loved the Lord of the Church. He was trying to follow him. Only someone who loves the Church and has a lot of confidence in God’s purposes for the Church could have devoted so many years to challenging his people to take up the cross and have real life. If you think of time as the measuring out of our lives, then in a very real way, Bishop Hines laid down his life for the love of Jesus.
Times have changed, of course, and the Church is not the way it was when Bishop Hines served it. But I’ve come to suspect that the Church has never been “the way it was.” We live in a time of anger, despair, fear, division, and distrust. And that’s just within the Church…What were you all thinking when you said yes? How will the prophetic Word be heard in our own day, in a culture whose interest in the Church seems to be descending to the level of reality TV: if it’s not about sex, power, fighting, yelling and bad behavior, who cares? How do we get a hearing for God’s Word?
I don’t know if God has called or will call any one of you to be his prophet. Best not to worry about it. But know for sure that he has called you through your baptism into a prophetic movement, a countercultural Way that is against the world for love of the world. Because Jesus is our true Prophet, his whole Church is prophetic by nature. Listen: You are here, for Christ’s sake…you’re here on a Thursday morning, in this chapel that a passion for the Gospel built. Have you not heard, and have you not seen, that gathering for worship, week by week, is an incredibly countercultural and prophetic act? (I was dragging my vestments in here earlier this morning, and walked right into Morning Prayer. What could I do, but stop and join my prayers to the prayers of those stopped to be recollected to God, those who stepped out of all their busyness to remember they have been set free, and to remember who now owns them. How countercultural is that?) Where else will people hear this life-giving Word? Where else will people be caught up in this Word, pressed down, sifted and transformed? And we come, week by week, not to hunker down and escape—we’re crazy if we think we can be at ease in Zion these days– but so that we can be comforted and confronted, strengthened, fed, lit up, and sent back out there, convinced that “in here” and “out there” are all the same to God.
In your time in this seminary, you will feast on words, you will be overstuffed with words, and they aren’t always going to taste like honey-dipped scrolls. But the point– what makes it all worthwhile—is not that you become really, really smart, but that you be transformed… made into God’s holy people…that your heart gets changed. You will find that you begin to look out these chapel windows differently, that you see differently, maybe with the eyes of Jesus, and that you have a language of hope and joy with which to describe what you see and know. It could just be that you get carried away by it all and end up doing something bold and prophetic, and people will say, “Well, yes, but he’s a political subversive, a religious nut,” or “Well, you know, she’s not much of an administrator.” And you’ll care, but not that much, because you’ve been caught up in a movement that takes your breath away and gives you the breath of God, the living Word…I think it’s something in the baptismal water.
Because Jesus is a prophet—calling for repentance, saying the hard and hope-filled truth, announcing and embodying this Kingdom, pointing to this new thing God is doing– the whole Church is, by nature, prophetic, standing like a cross jammed into the ground, recalling us…them…everyone and each one…to the redeeming love of God in Christ Jesus. To us has been given the compelling Word that sends us out again and again to confront all that demeans and destroys life, to stand with those who suffer, to overcome the love of power with the power of love, and to always, always, pay attention to Jesus. AMEN.

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“This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

wpengine — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:36:49 +0000

In the name of Jesucristo. Amen.
“This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” Now repeat after me and say it like you mean it:   “This is the day the Lord has made…. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” By God, I’ll make joyful Christians out of you yet!!

Now I want all of you to turn to Psalm 100 and I want us to say it together and say it like you mean it, with a loud voice and your lungs full of joyful air! Psalm 100

Wow. Do you really believe that?   You sound like you do, but I want to convince you of it by recapping some of the events of the past 35 years or so that LSPS has been a part of this community.   We all know that today is the last official chapel day for LSPS; however, I refuse to be sad or to give in to depression, because you have almost convinced me in your confession of Psalm 100 that “The Lord is good and his steadfast Love endures forever, his faithfulness to all generations!” I read that “all” to mean you! LSPS and SSW and all those who visit with us today.   You have almost convinced me that you mean it so I’m going to give you a little more time to think about it and I’m going to offer some reflections to take you just over the top of your confession!
Let’s back up a bit …
Imagine with me,
It was 1971. I was a senior in high school. I was wearing bell bottoms and I had side burns down to here! But so was Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdinck … so there! Confession is good for the soul some crazy monk said once!   In 1971, LSPS did not exist as a Master of divinity program of Wartburg seminary. But in 1974 someone had a good idea that a Lutheran seminary program was needed here to teach students about Hispanic ministry in cross-cultural contexts.   A bishop and a few friends got together and convinced someone to donate $50.000.00 for this mission start and they convinced Wartburg Seminary to do it. So Wartburg in Texas was born. In 1974 LSPS had only one or two students, that was it.
Remember, in 1971 LSPS did not exist. Some folks had a vision for what the Spirit might be able to do in Willie Nelson country if folks could only grasp the vision and help make it a reality. And so they did, and the vision flourished, and folks from all over Texas starting contributing funds to make it happen.   Donors starting contributing to the vision and the dream that Texas could be a place where Lutheran students could study theology and become pastors became a reality.
A few years later, another idea was born.   The first professor of LSPS, Hilmer Krause, accepted a call to serve as a homiletics professor here at SSW and behold LSPS found a home here on this campus, and good neighbors became friends and mission partners became visionaries as we together fulfilled the call to common mission even before the wider church thought about it! How’s that for keeping the church weird and off-center? The poet Robert Frost once wrote with irony that “good fences make good neighbors.” What he meant by that was exactly the opposite! Fences don’t make good neighbors!   And here at LSPS and SSW we agree with him! We learned to tear them down for the sake of a grander vision of serving God in the world! And so in tearing them down “whiskeypalians” became friends with border-crossing Lutherans and the rest, as they say, is a 36 year history of “life together” as the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say.
But I have to confess something to you. When I first came here to interview with the former director, Augie Wenzell, back in the summer of 1988, I didn’t think I was going to like it here! Sorry! It was July, it was hot, the grass was yellow, and there was no one around to try to convince me of how great you all were. So he brought me here to show me the chapel to impress me, and then I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to like it.
Let me explain.   You have to admit folks, the chapel is a little skewed, shall we say?    That’s what Pastor Kerry Nelson remarked last Tuesday when he was here. He noticed the chapel space was not exactly linear; it’s a little bit off-center, and it has this weird altar space that curves around against that wall that now Eliseo has made weirder by turning the altar around.
So I explained that there was a theology behind this sacred space.   I told him that this wall represented the “wailing wall” of Jerusalem, and the chapel was supposed to represent a tent in the wilderness; in fact, those glass doors can slide open just to prove the point.    I told him that the Cross, our primary symbol of faith, was located outside the building to remind us of the mission of the church to serve Christ in the world. I explained to him that we learned to speak and sing and pray and even dance in Spanish because of the context of our mission. My explanation started to make sense to Pastor Kerry and I told him that if the place seemed skewed, off-center, it was because as missioners of Christ we were called to be a little off-center ourselves in our way of relating with the world outside. We were called to be a little weird perhaps, in a good Austin kind of way.
So let’s review what else we’ve learned by being a little off – center in this place over the years. I once heard Pastor Sandi Wilcox preach a sermon here on Jacob wrestling with an angel and how we too in our own wrestling with God may end up “walking funny”, after we have been blessed by God. We walk funny because we walk to the beat of a different drummer.   And even when the blessing has been delayed, as it has been for some of you, we have learned not to despair because as you have confessed to me this morning: “The Lord is Good and his steadfast Love endures forever!”   Say it with me! (Repeat). You have known and tasted this goodness here under this tent in the wilderness, while singing songs of praise in two languages! Oh, how good the Lord has been to us, how merciful, how gracious, how loving that God has made us for Godself and has spoken to us in the language of our hearts! Yes, I have learned to love this chapel and the people who worship here!
Mark Moore and Mel Antonio, two students who graduated last year told us of their experience of sacred space while eating in a humble home in Cuernavaca in a ravine so close to the river below that they could hear it as they went to bed at night.   It was not much of a “house” by our standards, but it was joyful and full of hospitality.   Those students learned to cross over their own comfort zones as they struggled to learn Spanish in Mexico and relate to a people who appeared to have so much less and yet shared so much with them.   They learned why folks become economic migrants much like our ancestors Abraham and Sarah.
We learned from Pastor Rose Mary Sánchez-Guzmán in El Paso in one of our cultural encuentro trips to the border why she ministers to the people of the border – simply put – because the Spirit of God insists on being present with the poor and the homeless, with border crossers, and economic migrants, with folks who dream of seeing the promises of God made real in their lives. We learned from her community of faith that it takes community to make it in this life; that we cannot make it on our own, and that accepting that truth can be the most liberating good news to a people who find value in relating to others in community. We learned from her friend, Doctora Mendoza of Juárez, Mexico that when the Spirit sends you on a mission, nothing can stop the missioner, not even the threat of death by unseen forces because the Spirit gives courage and faith.   Her ministry is one of restoring health and dignity to a people and we couldn’t help but catch her vision for what is possible when faith and Spirit meet.
We have learned from so many in this place over the years as we have shared and experienced life together, through both good and difficult times. Our learning has not been limited to the academic or theological. We have learned to be community as we have learned to live and love together.
Have there been tears shed in this place? You bet! I did my own wailing here last year near the wailing wall when we lamented the suspension of the M.Div. program, but that did not last for long because the community was there to support us. Many of you wept with us, and we wept with you when 14 Episcopal staff members were let go last December in order to keep the seminary sustainable; we prayed with them and for them and through it all we learned that God is faithful even in the darkest moments of our lives.   We continue to learn together that God can take death and turn it into life and God can sustain us through the power of the Spirit working faith in us so that we might say with the psalmist: ” The Lord is God, It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”   Ok, so sheep are not that smart, but God is patient with us, even when we are tempted to despair when prayers are not answered as institutionally quickly as we would like.
What else have we learned in this place?   We have learned that folks from different parts of the world can come together and become “familia“, family of faith and a community of love and support for each other. We have been gathered here from the four corners of the world with folks coming here from Slovakia, Africa, Pakistan, the Philippines, Mexico, the British Isles and I’m sure other places as well as we became one people, worshipping and learning together.   We have learned to cross denominational barriers and national borders in our quest to be faithful and in the process we became partners in ministry, visionaries, one learning from the other and becoming the richer for it. I have heard the sounds of mariachis in this place and who can forget how we sang “De colores” at the beginning of the academic year.    How sweet our time has been as we have learned to live together under a tent in the wilderness, in this chapel where we have tasted the abundant life.
I first came here as a student in 1988 convinced that I would not like this place, and here I am 22 years later as a professor and director, little knowing then that I would come to love this place and the people who make it what it is. This has been a place where we have forged friendships, where we have seen students come and go over the years. We have walked together, prayed together, worshipped together; struggled together, and yet, we have come back to this table, week after week to eat “juntos,” together, as a family. We have learned to love others beyond our own perceived limits of understanding and relating. We have also learned to forgive each other when our relating fell short because of our human frailties.
And who can deny not feeling the power of the Spirit moving among us – gathering us, sending us, equipping us to share God’s love in the world.   We have heard here that we are God’s very own, the beloved community, and so as I preach what may or may not be my last sermon here, let me leave you with this thought:   God is in love with you! We know it because God crossed the border for you, the one that separated us from God, and not even the death of dream, not even the death of a man called Jesus, Jesucristo, could separate us from this love. The cross is right outside waiting for you to go and tell the story so that others might know something of what we have experienced in this place. The proof awaits you at this table waiting to be set to feed you as familia.
The proof of that vision of so long was is almost 150 graduates now serving Christ in the world.
So convince me once again of your confession of faith by saying with me: “For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” Amen.

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