Will You Come and Follow Me?

[For my "Episcopal Liturgics" course this term, we had to write a sermon on the Feast of Christ's Baptism from our own perspective as a future priest or deacon, or as a layperson. This is what I came up with, and I thought I would share it with you all. The sermon leads out of the sequence hymn, which you can listen to below.]

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?

Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?

Will you let my love be shown,

Will you let my name be known,

Will you let my life be grown in you and you in me?

That hymn that we just sang: it sounds like a call story, doesn’t it? You might more often expect to hear it when we talk about Jesus showing up at the lake and hollering to Peter and James and John to come and follow him, to be his disciples. We don’t get that story this year—Lent comes too quickly for that—but we want to sing this hymn anyway.

We hear this hymn and we think of ourselves in the position of Peter and James and John by the lake, meeting Jesus for the first time, becoming disciples.

But if you think about it, the story we heard today is, in some ways, a call story. It is the call story of Jesus. Not that he’s been a wallflower up to this point—in the story as Luke tells it, we’ve seen his miraculous birth, we’ve seen him show up in the temple as a child and confound his parents, learn from the elders. But until now we have not seen him working as a prophet, as a teacher. This is the part where Jesus shows up and is called by name.
But—you’ll notice—he did not hear “Hey Jesus!” He did not hear that sort of name. Instead, we hear “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am well pleased.” And that’s what makes Jesus’ call story different from the other prophetic calls we have heard: Jesus is named as God’s Son.

That name happens in relationship. We’re not reading it this week, but right after today’s readings stops, Luke lists off Jesus’ entire family tree, through his stepfather Joseph: “He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son of Matthat, son of Levi…” dot dot dot, all the way back to “son of Adam, son of God.” This whole series places Jesus in context, in relationship.

Because isn’t that how it’s done, when you’re meeting someone for the first time? When you introduce someone, or when you are introduced to someone you’re just meeting, that’s perhaps the most helpful thing aside from your name: who are you in relationship to? This is Susie: she’s Margaret’s mother. This is Tom: he’s Cati’s husband. Using those words places people in context: in the context of relationship. And that’s part of what is the most important thing God has to say about Jesus, so important that it must be shouted from the heavens so all can hear:
This is my Son,
the Beloved,
with whom I am well pleased.

And this is Jesus’ call, the beginning of Jesus’ ministry—he is named as the Son of God, in relationship.

We see this also in the passage from Isaiah, as God reaffirms God’s relationship with the people of Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” God loves this people with a fierce and passionate love. And you’ll notice this is also a naming of relationship: “bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth—everyone who is called by my name.” Because that’s what it meant to be people of Israel: people who lived by God’s name.

The Israelites of Isaiah’s day needed to hear that message—because they were in exile, cast out of their homeland, far from everything they held dear. God acknowledges that the road will not be easy. The fire and the overflowing waters in this text, it’s not an if but a when. God’s people will experience danger and suffering. But God promises to be with them during that time, to protect them.

So what does this have to do with us here today? As Christians,  we bear the name of Christ: we too are people who live by God’s name. We are named in relationship to God.
And getting called by that name, like we heard in today’s hymn, can be frightening. Being in relationship with God means we are called to love God’s world, in ways that stretch and change us so that we can never be the same.

That’s certainly what happened to Jesus, after this moment of call. Don’t forget what happens after Jesus’ baptism: he leaves the Jordan and is driven into the wilderness, for forty days of fasting and temptation. Stepping out of those waters is, for Jesus, the first step on the road to the cross.

Maybe that is why he needed to hear those words, to know that truth: that he was Beloved of God. Maybe that is our good news: that the voice that calls us to do the difficult work of reconciliation in this world—the work that fills us so we can never be the same—that same voice is the voice that calls us by name and says Fear not: you are my Beloved, with you I am well-pleased.

There’s a Lutheran preacher, Nadia Bolz-Weber, whose blog I follow, and whose sermons I love. In many of her sermons there’s a particular refrain she repeats, after she proclaims the good news of God’s love and God’s mission: “nothing else gets to tell you who you are.” Not the fiery trials and the overflowing waters – it is your identity as God’s beloved that stands at the very core of you.

That is sometimes a hard message to remember. Which is why we need to hear it again, and again. Each week we come to the table, to remember—in tasting the bread and wine we taste God’s presence, and God’s promise. We remind each other who we are, and whose we are.
And on some special days, days like today, we remember in a different way: we remember through the waters of baptism. Today on our way to the table, we’ll pass the font—and you’ll be invited to touch the water, remember your own baptism, and take a stone to remind you of it in the weeks to come.

Coming to the font with us today is Ellie H. Right now, we know her best in relationship: as the baby daughter of members of this church. But she will be understood now as a part of St X’s Episcopal Church—and part of the family of God. Right now she has a gift of smiles, strong lungs, an open heart. What her gifts and calls will be, we will not know until later, perhaps. But we know that Jesus needs them, that Jesus has a place for her and work for her to do, as a minister of the church of God.

For that’s what she’s becoming, what we are: ministers of God. Yes, even those of us without the collar. Like you, I’m a lay person myself. I’ve never stood before the altar and made vows of ordination. But I did make vows of my own: or rather, my parents made them on my behalf, and I turn to renew them every year. My vows to keep fellowship with the people of God; to turn away from evil; to tell God’s story in the world; to serve my neighbor; and to work for everyone’s dignity. My vows to believe, love, and serve: all with God’s help.

Later this morning we will stand and say these vows together. We will say them for Ellie, and for ourselves, and for this community gathered here today. Because we have been called by name, and as Beloved of God, this is our chance to respond, with love for the world God made.

We are sealed by the Holy Spirit,
marked as Christ’s own forever—
and nothing else gets to tell us who we are.
Amen.

See my work at State of Formation soon!

Just wanted to share some exciting news with you: I've been accepted as a Contributing Scholar at State of Formation, an interfaith blog forum for emerging scholars of many traditions. I'll be writing there about once a month.

I'll still be posting here regularly, and most likely cross-posting on both sites from time to time, but I'm excited to have another venue to connect with people blogging about faith and culture. Do check out the site: it's got some great articles that ask some of the same big questions I find so fascinating. (I especially liked this recent essay about why the latest scandal about "Jesus' wife" matters to women in ministry.)

Hope your weekends are starting out well!

On writing, conversation, and public faith

How public is your faith (or lack thereof) on the Internet? According to a recent survey, most folks in America may espouse some sort of religion, but you wouldn't know it by looking at their Facebook or Twitter.

I recently read an article at Good Letters (a Christianity+art blog) by a regular contributor who keeps his blogging quiet at work:

Simply put, four years and seventy-six posts since this blogging gig started, I am still something of a closet Christian around friends and colleagues who don’t know this side of me, or a mealy-mouthed one around those who do.

The author of this post is a screenwriter, and he feels it might be detrimental to his career to publicize his faith in a largely secular industry.

I find myself reflecting on this as I start my new program as a MA in religion at Claremont School of Theology. I'm entering a program of Christian study at a Christian school. So far in my blogging life, what I write has flopped back and forth between explicitly Christian stories and pieces more about the writing/creative process. As I dig deeper into my studies here, Jesus may start showing up in my posts more often.

Photo via Claremont Lincoln University

Is that going to alienate my audience?

How public of a Christian do I want to be?

On the one hand, I want to write about what I love. I am passionate about stories, in all media—writing, music, film. Religion fascinates me, in part, because of the web of stories it represents: tales told and retold since ancient times, tales that have served as frameworks for people as they live their own life stories. And in the end, I do believe that my story makes more sense when written between the lines of this great Story. I believe that the story of Jesus is a story worth sharing.

On the other hand, I don't want to abandon talking about art in ways that are not explicitly religious. Maybe that's what the screenwriter meant: he didn't want to be typecast, pigeonholed, written off as a "Christian" writer who only writes a specific type of film. I don't want my writing about art and creativity to suffer.

I also can't deny that writing has consequences. Christians have a reputation for talking over other people, especially in this country where Christianity is often considered the "default" religion. That same Story that has changed my life has been used as a weapon. The last thing I want is for my words to contribute to that pain in any way.

So what do I do?

I've been doodling versions of this question in the margins of my notebook throughout my first few weeks at CST. For those of you who don't know, in the past couple of years CST has begun a Claremont Lincoln University, a new school dedicated to bringing together scholars/practitioners of all faiths and none, to learn from each other. CST is the Christian partner of this new consortium. I'm still in Christian-specific classes, but my core courses are shared with people of all different backgrounds.

This means that I'm in class with Muslim and Jewish and humanist students, as well as Christians—prospective scholars and ministers of many traditions, not just one. Here my fellow students and I are not asked to hide our faith or try to pretend it doesn't matter to our lives. Rather, we are encouraged to claim our own faiths proudly, while talking with others with different beliefs in a spirit of respect and friendship.

CST/CLU's whole experiment is rooted in the belief that this is possible: that interfaith conversation is sustainable, and that claiming your story in that conversation can be not a hindrance but a help.

If it's possible at school, it may be possible for me as a writer as well.

One could say this is part of my responsibility—what I can do as a Christian in a world where Christianity shouts loudly. Because if progressive Christians on the Internet keep quiet about their faith, then those who disagree with them will be the only public voices of Christianity that anyone ends up hearing. Can I be a public Christian who tries to listen and participate in conversation, rather than talk over people of other faiths? I certainly mean to try.

As for keeping my passion for creativity in my work--I hope I'll be all right. Because from my vantage point, faith and creativity aren't disconnected at all. It's not just the stories of my faith that I find inspiring, it's the faith itself, what it says about who I am and who God is. The God I believe in created the world and called it good, and created humans with the gift and responsibility to create themselves.

Plus, I bet Jesus would find plenty of things to geek out about, if he were here today. And I'm not just talking about gossip about his marital status, either.

So I'll keep studying, and writing, and trying to co-create. I'm excited to see what conversations the next two years have in store for me!

Seasons, Disciplines, and Changes of Lent

I seem to make a habit of coming back to this blog around the beginning of Lent each year. As long as I’ve been blogging, I seem to fall away during the holidays and come back during late February, early March. In past spring posts, I’ve shared my excitement for literary journalism, blogging/God-language, and Lenten practice itself.

It’s funny to re-read that last post, my Lent post for 2011, because without realizing it, the practices I’ve taken on this year are the same ones that I put in that post: daily writing and daily prayer. Last year I failed miserably at them—I’d given up within a week. This year, however, the practices of prayer and writing are starting to stick. I’ve kept up both consistently so far. (Yes, I know it’s only been a week—but at least I’m off to a good start, eh?)

Not that I feel that earns me any spiritual brownie points. My friend Tyler makes an excellent point about our tendency to make this season all about us—our personal sins and our own willpower to resist them. Lenten disciplines can easily fall into that trap. But this year I’m experiencing these disciplines more as guides through a confusing wilderness.

Transition times take hold of me in different ways. Last Lent was near the beginning of a crazy and wonderful year—I was planning a wedding to my wonderful partner and stepping up my involvement in a worship website. In the flurry of action that spring, and through the following year, I fled from all sorts of discipline.

This year my life is still in flux—maybe even more so. Drew and I are settling into marriage; the website, sadly, is no longer active. And I’m applying to graduate school and embarking on a new part of my career. This may be our last spring in Claremont.

In this time of transition, I find myself clinging to disciplines. The Daily Office and my journal are lifelines for me, consistent even as everything else changes. I’m discovering new depth in the psalms and prayers. And I’m remembering how to write without a filter or censor again.

Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that I have to rediscover this every year. Maybe we need a time to re-commit. Lent has traditionally been a time for new Christians to learn about the faith and prepare themselves for baptism at the Easter Vigil. But these days in many churches, even those with no new members in this season, at the Vigil the whole congregation renews their baptismal vows. We re-commit to the faith we came into many years ago.

One of the things I love about worship and liturgy—which is drawing me to study it in more detail in the future—is its relationship to the cyclical nature of time. The year turns, and the colors shift: blue to white to green to purple to red. The seasons change inside the church walls just as they do outside.

This gives me hope. If my prayer, or my writing, or my editing isn’t working now, maybe the changing seasons will bring those practices back to life again. We re-commit to faith as winter turns to spring, and we hope for what will happen as the wheel turns round again. 

Why I Write

Inspired by the question posed by the National Day on Writing

I write because I don’t know what I think until I’ve put it into words, and sometimes there’s no one around to say it to.

I write for the same reason that I need long walks and home cooked meals—my body needs it, so does my soul.

I write because it gets me out of my brain and into my body.

I write because I overhear conversations on the street or listen to anecdotes my friends tell me and my first response is “Wouldn’t that make a good story?”

I write because I can’t take photographs.

I write because I can’t tell lies.

I write because I am really bad at thinking on the fly. In writing I have time to come up with the perfect rebuttal, hours after the argument is over (the argument in which I said nothing, just stood and opened and closed my mouth like a fish).

I write because metaphors are miraculous. In that last sentence I added a fish even though, as far as we know, fish can’t argue.

I write because I love em dashes and colons and rolling repetitive rhythms. Oh, and alliteration.

I write because I think better with a pen in my hand.

I write to retell the good old stories. You know the ones I’m talking about— coming of age tales, heroic quests, love stories, testimonies of faith, death and rebirth. They may have been told thousands of times already across human history, but they are so big—so true—that they don’t fit into one retelling, or even a hundred retellings. There is still room for me in these old stories.

I write because telling stories, naming the world, is what makes us human.

I write because despite our best efforts, this is still a sexist, racist, unequal and indifferent world. And maybe if I can tell a story about one moment, real or imagined, where people manage to break free of that for a moment and live in compassion—maybe that changes things.

I write because placing myself in a character’s shoes reminds me that everyone in my life has a backstory I may not know.

I write to discover things I don’t know until I see them on the page.

I write to remember.

 *     *    *

Why I am a Writer, or why I call myself a Writer, is a different question than why I write. I used to write because I liked to read. Nerdy dreamy girls in books—Emily of New Moon, Vicky Austin, Harriet the Spy—ended up writers. And so did the women and men whose pictures I saw on the back jacket flap. I used to write because I loved stories and I hadn’t yet learned to fear what people thought of them.

Why do I still call myself a writer? I’m not sure. Today I’m more of an editor and occasional blogger. But I still introduce myself with that loaded word.

At a craft talk once a writer said—I can’t remember who—that real writers love sentences. I thought when I heard that, I do love sentences—the millions of ways they can look and sound. So maybe I am a real writer.

I also love to revise—to carefully dissect each sentence and stitch it back together to see if each phrase and word and consonant is saying what I wanted it to say. Many people say this is one of the worst parts of the writing process. So maybe if I love the hard things, I am a real writer.

I am a writer because I named myself a writer, almost six years ago, and I’ve been trying to live into that call ever since.

I write because I am a writer, and I don’t know what that means, but this is the only way I know to find out.

Confession

‎"Sacraments are our road maps home. God may not need them, but we do, and while they cannot make something happen, at least they make sure that we are in the right place if it should." Barbara Brown Taylor (via Clayfire)

Confession is a sacrament, isn't it? And writing can be confession. The blank page my listener. Holy One, may this be the right place tonight...

Lenten Disciplines: Giving Up vs Taking On

Happy Shrove Tuesday, everyone! At home we always celebrate Shrove Tuesday, the day before the season of Lent begins, with a pancake supper. In the medieval church, pancakes were a way to use up all the rich foods, like butter, milk, and eggs, that would be restricted or forbidden during Lent. I’m pretty sure, however, that medieval Shrove Tuesday pancakes didn’t contain quite as many chocolate chips as the ones I just made for Drew. :) Now I’m sluggish and full and not entirely ready for Lent to start.

So here’s my question. What are you giving up for Lent? Or should I ask, what discipline are you taking on?

More often in recent years, I’ve heard people champion this idea of adding something to your spiritual practice during Lent, instead of the traditional taking something away. I get that giving things up can turn into a self-help competition, a spiritually sanctioned crash diet. Taking on a discipline can give you a chance to try something new.

Usually, though, I’ve pushed back against that. I have a tendency to add and add and add things to my life. I’ll stack up disciplines and commitments until I’m buried under them. And when I get too busy to keep a particular promise I’ve made to myself, I’ll let it slide—one by one ‘til I’ve broken them all.

Whether we end up adding or subtracting, the question is, why do we fast during Lent in the first place? Why did the early church trade tasty pancakes for sparse meatless meals? As I understand it, the tradition of fasting is supposed to remind us of our need for God. When we give things up, things that we love and depend on, we stop leaning on the things we think we need, and learn again how to lean on God. We make space for God, in a way, by clearing out part of our inward-focused lives.

Which is all to say that I’m ignoring my own advice this year, and taking on instead of giving up. For a variety of reasons—I can’t find it in my heart to fast from Facebook anymore, though I have the past few years. But that was before large chunks of my income came from writing & editing online. Networks like Facebook aren’t quite the optional luxury they used to be.

I’ve also been inspired by other suggested spiritual practices that I’ve read. Kristin Berkey-Abbott has a list of creative practices that I love—her suggestions extend past the traditional artsy ideas to the everyday creative acts that I love: baking bread, taking photographs, planting a garden. She also suggests keeping a spiritual journal, which is funnily enough one of the few writing forms I haven’t tried. This Lent, this spiritual journal is the thing I’m taking on.

I am also going to try to pray the Daily Office each day. I’ve explored this form of prayer off and on over the past year, as I’ve been trying to understand more about the Anglican tradition that raised me. (You can get a good sense of this form of daily prayer at the Mission of St. Clare's website, or as always the trusty Book of Common Prayer Online.) Some of it’s familiar; after all, the Evening Prayer service forms the backbone of Holden Evening Prayer which is near to my heart. I like it because when you take a good look, it’s mostly poetry (in the form of scripture, psalms and prayers) and because it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. And the simplicity makes it easier to keep up with, and minimize slipping.

Mostly, I suppose, I want to listen. I have been flying in all different directions this year, muddling through an unscripted life, trying things at random to see if perhaps this might be what I’m called to do. If I try and take time to listen for God each day—well, maybe that is making space for God, no matter whether I am adding to or taking away from my daily routine.

The forty days of Lent are supposed to parallel the time Jesus spent in the wilderness. He entered as a fairly standard disciple of John the Baptist who’d just been hollered at by a supernatural voice—and he left as a teacher and a healer and someone who spent a lot of time on mountaintops listening for God. I wonder sometimes what he learned in the wilderness, in the parts of the story that the Bible skips over. I wonder what I will learn these forty days.