JAZZ EUCHARIST SERMON 7. 13.07 Mission House
May our work in the world be a vehicle for Your Love; May it shine and light up all darkened places. Be with us, O Lord. Amen. (Adapted from Marianne Williamson’s Illuminata.)
When I was a teenager growing up in the Quad Cities (those are the four cities—Davenport, Moline, Rock Island and Bettendorf-- where Illinois and Iowa meet at the Mississippi River,) I was privileged to attend the Bix Beiderbecke Jazz festival for several years running. As some of you may know, Bix was a home town hero; the festival took place every July on the levee in Davenport. Scheduled concerts occurred from about ten in the morning until 9:00 at night and the jam sessions in the down town bars went on until they could go no further. People brought blankets and something to eat or drink and the general idea was to lie around absorbing the rays and the sounds in sort of an idyllic haze. OK, it was the seventies—there may have been more to that haze!! The festival happens to this day, but of course it is now ‘ginormous’-- (I needed to use that word since Webster added it this week!) Now there are several venues at the festival to make it easier for people to listen to good jazz.
But in those days, it was all on the levee, and there was an accepted protocol of quiet reverence in that makeshift weekend community, and a shared sense of space. Considering the fact that even in those early days there were hundreds of people, that peacefulness amazes me when I think of it now. The very serious listeners knew every musician and every piece of music, delighting in the individual variations. My Aunt Kath was like that—a walking biographical and musical dictionary but only before and after the music, never during. The less serious, like I was at that age, were content to just absorb the richness of the experience, appreciating what appealed and following our own stream of consciousness against the rest of it.
So as I was preparing for today, and recalling that experience, I wondered “What do St. Benedict, Jazz and the readings today have in common?” More than you might think!
For instance, I came across a quote by Jazz great Stan Getz. Getz was a brilliant saxophone player, heavy into the Bossa Nova movement. He led a rather troubled life but did manage to pull it together by the end of it. He said: “There are four qualities essential to a great Jazz player. They are taste, courage, individuality and irreverence.”
I wondered as I read that if these were not also qualities that might make a good Christian. I wondered if these would be good qualities for someone willing to walk with “loving and willing hearts in the school of the Lord’s service.”
After some mental gymnastics—(the only kind I attempt!) I decided perhaps there was a correlation. On the surface, you might not see the connections. But bear with me as we look at Getz’s qualities and let’s see what happens.
Taste is defined in The American Heritage Dictionary as “the sense of what is proper, seemly, or least likely to give offense.”
That’s helpful in community.
Ultimately though, and I am not speaking of the socially acceptable kind of taste with which all Episcopalians are indoctrinated; I do not mean the “White Gloves and Party Manners” kind of taste. I am not sure that is what Getz means either. I am speaking of something more simple, of knowing what fits in the context of what we are trying to achieve. I am speaking of recognizing and understanding the wisdom and truth we hear in Scripture, and of trying to understand how we can make that mesh with our lives. As Rowan Williams says about St. Benedict’s work, “the Rule, after all, is not an archaeological document but something that is continually being reinterpreted in the life of the communities that are based upon it – like the Scriptures themselves.”
This obviously connects with the reading from Proverbs we heard tonight. If you were able to hear it over the helicopter, you might remember the beginning of that passage--
If we accept,
If we incline our hearts
If we cry out for insight
If we seek it like silver (like treasure; this is a wisdom literature tradition,)
Then we will understand . . .and find knowledge of God. We might even see taste and discernment in the same light as we consider how this passage inspires us. But it’s not always so easy to just recognize these actions of moving toward God. We can know that we need to incline our hearts, but that does not make it so. That leads us to the second of Getz’s four characteristics: courage.
Our Gospel today surely addresses this characteristic. Luke uses images to make connections to previous passage, (the dinner with the guests who would not attend.) As Luke always argues, possessions and personal commitments aren’t the primary mission; the network might keep one from picking up the cross. One commentary puts it another way, “Radical Allegiance is necessary.”
Courage indeed.
But then, life is not for the faint hearted. Why should our relationship with God be superficial?
Of course, courage is not always our first instinct. In truth we often only commit in our ‘instant gratification world’ with the back pedaling safety net of a later refusal. Statistics show that most people will change careers at least three times. I have been travel agent, librarian, and now clergy. I think I am done now!! Although it is possible to see the thread between them if you look carefully (after all, each of those help people get where they need to go!) it is also honest to see the restless disentanglement between the shifts. And yet, it is interesting to note that 75 % of 26-31 year olds believe that a long term relationship with one employer is preferable.
And, what about courage in relationships?
50% of first marriages and 60 % of second end in divorce. That mythical seven year itch is grounded in statistical fact. Seven year marriages are seen as the norm, not the exception. But we can be hopeful that 65 percent of marriages that last past seven years are still strong at the tenth anniversary. Despite these positive trends, it is discouragingly clear that we are a commitment- phobic society. Otherwise, Madison Avenue’s campaign for the new weight loss drug, Alli, would not hit home so well. “You can’t just try Alli,” the ad proclaims. “You have to commit.”
Ouch!
St. Benedict knew about the courage of commitment, just as he knew about individuality. To be sure, he was writing his Rule in 540 for a community. But that community was begun by the courageous act of an individual when St. Benedict withdrew from the horror of Rome to the caverns at Lake Subiaco. The community formed around him, but he took the courage first to incline his heart toward God in a very singular way.
In the jazz sense, perhaps St. Benedict was improvising. Improvization (or improv. if you are cooler than I am,) is defined as “spontaneously creating fresh melodies over the continuously repeating cycle of chord changes within a tune.” The Rule allows for individual gifts and the way in which they add to the gifts of the community. But you cannot be purely individual or the ‘improv.’ will not work. Rowan Williams alludes to that when he talks about the concept of obedience. “As the Rule insists, especially in its fifth chapter, obedience for the monk is the practice of constantly being ready to suspend a purely individual will or perception for the sake of discovering God's will in the common life of the community.” We must incline our hearts, but we must not forget to listen as well.
Getz’s fourth and final concept is irreverence. Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I advocate this, but you may not see what on earth it has to do with Jesus’ very serious warnings about the Cross being difficult to bear. My argument is this: Irreverence is only possible in the presence of great reverence. Irreverence allows me to handle the reverence at my own pace and in my own way. It allows me to hear Luke’s admonition against placing importance on possessions and simultaneously fight the urge to clean my closet out before finishing this sermon, --as well as to shamefacedly realize that putting things into my closet may well take too large a percentage of my time and attention. It allows me the balance that St. Benedict was so eloquent in promoting. The Archbishop of Canterbury has observed our societal quandary with this concept of balance. He says that, we do not understand either the concept of work or leisure, and we are obsessive about both. He sees time as an “undifferentiated continuum” in which we either consume or work, and work is a 24 hour occupation. We have no boundaries and no balance. We need to have both in order to be able to seek the treasure of this relationship with God. And in order to walk with willing and loving hearts in the school of the Lord’s service, we may also need that which a good Jazz musician needs-- taste, courage, individuality and irreverence.
And perhaps something more, something that Getz left out of his definition, but that neither the author of Proverbs or the Gospel of Luke could ignore. There is another term in the Jazz Glossary that I appreciate. “Woodshed” means to practice diligently. Again, if you are cool, you can just say “shed.” Jazz requires great discipline—and lots of “shed” to be free. So too as twenty-first century humans, frightened of commitment, unable to keep balance in our daily lives and yet yearning to incline our hearts to God, discipline is a characteristic we must “shed.”
But how do we carry this off? Personally, the only thing I dislike talking about more than sin is discipline. It is a constant battle for me, and I think it is tied up with the fact that God and I have an ongoing and intimate conversation about who is in control. Oh, I know absolutely that I am not in control.
I just manage to forget it on a daily basis.
I can hear my grandmother saying fondly, “Go ahead, hard head, and see what you come to.”
So in my case, this requires lots of “shed,” although perhaps for some here that is a lesser struggle. But there are some great places to begin as we think about it. One of my favorites is the Prayer of Self Dedication on page 832 of the BCP.
“Almighty and Eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you, and then use us, we pray you, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
This is a process. Taking up the cross is not easy or casual. It requires commitment. Part of that commitment is our Baptism, and part of that commitment is in our returning time after time to the Altar for Eucharist, to taste, to take courage and comfort, and to begin anew to incline our hearts toward God.
It is here also that we begin to remember and understand God’s commitment to us. As we proceed forth in this Eucharist, may it be so.
Amen
The Rev. Janey Wilson, July 13, 2007
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Monday, July 2, 2007
Canterbury Pub Schedule
July 31 How Does Our Liturgy Inform our Beliefs?
Presenter: The Rev. Elise Johnstone
Canterbury Pub is the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington’s program of theology on tap for young adults, ages 18+ (with age-appropriate beverages). We meet at Azur Restaurant's patio, in Beaumont Centre (east of Liquor Barn).
The last week we will explore how our liturgy reflects and also informs our beliefs. What is lex orandi, lex credendi? What is the eucharistic theology of Episcopalians? Do we believe that Christ is present in the wine and bread? How??
For more information, contact The Rev. Dr. Joyce Beaulieu, 859-252-6527.
Presenter: The Rev. Elise Johnstone
Canterbury Pub is the Episcopal Diocese of Lexington’s program of theology on tap for young adults, ages 18+ (with age-appropriate beverages). We meet at Azur Restaurant's patio, in Beaumont Centre (east of Liquor Barn).
The last week we will explore how our liturgy reflects and also informs our beliefs. What is lex orandi, lex credendi? What is the eucharistic theology of Episcopalians? Do we believe that Christ is present in the wine and bread? How??
For more information, contact The Rev. Dr. Joyce Beaulieu, 859-252-6527.
Sermon on Freedom in Christianity
Freedom is a charged word in our culture. It conjures up a host of images.
As individuals it can mean the ability to choose among a range of alternatives:
what we eat and wear, how we choose our life mate or chose the single life, or more profoundly, how we chose the last days of the end of our life—with all the health care that can be mustered on our behalf or not. Our choices can be meaningful, changing the course of the rest of our life, or they can be trite, affecting us and others for a few minutes.
As individuals in the United States, we take some freedoms for granted, and the founding fathers and mothers of our nation codified them in the Bill of Rights. We get caught up in them occasionally, disagree about what exactly they mean, but generally we don’t think about them unless someone tramples on one of them, or our life changes in a way that restricts our freedom, like having a debilitating illness, car crash, or being abused by another person. And we know people whose choices seem a lot more constricted than ours, such as single moms who sometimes don’t have a lot of resources or options, older adults who can’t get around as well as they used to, young adults, who are often strapped for the resources they need to pursue their studies, move to a job market, get married, or get the living arrangements they would prefer.
And there are whole classes of individuals who historically have been kept from making their own choices. The extreme of this is our country’s history of enslavement of Africans, and the continued prejudice that keeps many African-Americans today from realizing their full potential because their choices have been restricted. More recently Hispanic immigrants, both documented and undocumented, can’t exercise their choices because of the problems of our immigration system and systematic racism as well.
Anti-racism training is required of all seminarians in the Episcopal church now. This training helps us realize that racism can be found whenever our institutions—the church, school, business, government—use their power for or against any race. Prejudice with power is the definition of racism, and this training helps priests in training learn how to recognize when systemic racism underlies our thinking and actions. Martin Luther King pronounced in the 1960s that there was no more segregated place in America than our churches on Sunday morning. I know I have witnessed this segregation in both big cities like Chicago as well as our own bluegrass region, in Episcopal churches both in the north and the south.
How and why our churches have become so single-colored is pretty well known, given the history of racism in our country and the need for people of color to gather with each other to build up their spirits in the face of prejudice in their lives. How to change our churches so that they reflect many colors is the aim of the Union of Black Episcopalians. UBE encourages the involvement of Black people in the life of the Episcopal Church -- mission, stewardship, evangelism, education, liberation, leadership, governance, and politics. Its goal is to eradicate racism within the church, and they are meeting this week in Houston. This is a goal that is not achieved by a single act, but by choosing anti-racism every day.
When Martin Luther King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech at the march on Washington for civil rights, he finished his remarks by quoting the hymn we sang this morning: let freedom ring, and he called out all the places where freedom should ring—naming northern states, southern states. Then he said that as freedom came to all people, both black and white, men and women, Jews, Protestants and Catholics, we would really know the meaning of the words, we would be able to join hands together and sing the words of the Negro spiritual:
Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.
The powerful images of Martin Luther King come to me today as I hear Paul’s words to the Galatians: for freedom Christ has set us free. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
As a woman, the idea of serving others is not new, and I think all women should beware of using this scripture to be slaves of their families in ways that are hurtful to them psychically. But we are called to freedom in Christ, in love, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Our freedom is one of responsibility. We are used to defining freedom as getting our way, but this is not the freedom of Christ. The freedom of Christ lies in knowing and living like we are a forgiven people. Knowing that we are Christ’s own in love, so that we act out that sense of overwhelming love. Like the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet with her tears two weeks ago in our gospel reading, when we really know our freedom comes from being loved just as we are, we cannot do anything else than spill that love out onto others.
Our freedom cannot be divorced from others’ freedom. We cannot be free unless all are free, and this dilemma is central to our Christian awareness. We cannot love some and not others, just as God does not love some and not others. If our love of neighbor is to mirror God’s love for us, our freedom is expansive as well. We are called to love all, we are free and love is for all. This freedom is what Dr. King was talking about —that when we clasp hands together as free, then we all become free to love.
As we approach Independence Day this week, these issues of freedom for all are at the forefront of our minds. How can we make sure that our freedom as Christians to love and serve our neighbor does not get distorted into a kind of restricted freedom, where we love some and not others, because they are not like us in religion or thinking or color. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said more than a century ago that when individuals, or small groups, like a church, or nations become isolated whether as a result of ignorance or arrogance, Oppression or depression, our way of thinking begins to be distorted. As individuals and as a nation we do better when we think about freedom in relation to others.
As Christians, being free happens best when we are in community. This community we know as the church, where we test out our sense of being loved, where we come together to learn how to love our neighbor, to serve our neighbor together. Whether we give donations to the food pantry, provide rides to sick older folks, or scholarships to young adults, we have decided, in our Christian freedom, to choose how to love our neighbor. We love best when we love together and serve together those around us who need to see the love of Christ.
Our nation was built on these principles of Christian freedom, by some of the same founding fathers and mothers who designed how the Episcopal church would work. They wrote both our US and Episcopal constitutions, basing decision making on the principles that all are equal partners in freedom. While our nation has not always used this freedom wisely, for the benefit of others, or loved our neighbors with the sense that we have been blessed by God with goodness, we have tried, through our freedoms, to allow diverse opinions to be heard. In this time of conflict in Iraq, our nation and its leaders especially needs our prayers that our choices in freedom are the ones God would have us make.
In Lift Every Voice and Sing there are many negro spirituals with images of freedom. We will sing one from Abraham Lincoln’s era and the war he presided over, another time in our nation’s history where people had different ideas about what freedom meant. I believe our nation came through the crisis over slavery in a way that showed Christ’s love for all people. But that freedom came at a great cost, as people in the Commonwealth of Kentucky were very much involved, sometimes brother fighting against brother.
The freedom Christ provides us came at a great cost—the cost of the cross. But just as lives were freed from slavery by the resurrection of our nation after the Civil War, our lives are free through Jesus’s resurrection. Freedom in Christ is freedom from slavery to hate, hate of ourselves and of others. We are free to mirror the love of God in Christ, through the love we know in Christ. Just like anti-racism must be worked on every day, our freedom in Christ must be realized over and over again, every day of our lives.
As individuals it can mean the ability to choose among a range of alternatives:
what we eat and wear, how we choose our life mate or chose the single life, or more profoundly, how we chose the last days of the end of our life—with all the health care that can be mustered on our behalf or not. Our choices can be meaningful, changing the course of the rest of our life, or they can be trite, affecting us and others for a few minutes.
As individuals in the United States, we take some freedoms for granted, and the founding fathers and mothers of our nation codified them in the Bill of Rights. We get caught up in them occasionally, disagree about what exactly they mean, but generally we don’t think about them unless someone tramples on one of them, or our life changes in a way that restricts our freedom, like having a debilitating illness, car crash, or being abused by another person. And we know people whose choices seem a lot more constricted than ours, such as single moms who sometimes don’t have a lot of resources or options, older adults who can’t get around as well as they used to, young adults, who are often strapped for the resources they need to pursue their studies, move to a job market, get married, or get the living arrangements they would prefer.
And there are whole classes of individuals who historically have been kept from making their own choices. The extreme of this is our country’s history of enslavement of Africans, and the continued prejudice that keeps many African-Americans today from realizing their full potential because their choices have been restricted. More recently Hispanic immigrants, both documented and undocumented, can’t exercise their choices because of the problems of our immigration system and systematic racism as well.
Anti-racism training is required of all seminarians in the Episcopal church now. This training helps us realize that racism can be found whenever our institutions—the church, school, business, government—use their power for or against any race. Prejudice with power is the definition of racism, and this training helps priests in training learn how to recognize when systemic racism underlies our thinking and actions. Martin Luther King pronounced in the 1960s that there was no more segregated place in America than our churches on Sunday morning. I know I have witnessed this segregation in both big cities like Chicago as well as our own bluegrass region, in Episcopal churches both in the north and the south.
How and why our churches have become so single-colored is pretty well known, given the history of racism in our country and the need for people of color to gather with each other to build up their spirits in the face of prejudice in their lives. How to change our churches so that they reflect many colors is the aim of the Union of Black Episcopalians. UBE encourages the involvement of Black people in the life of the Episcopal Church -- mission, stewardship, evangelism, education, liberation, leadership, governance, and politics. Its goal is to eradicate racism within the church, and they are meeting this week in Houston. This is a goal that is not achieved by a single act, but by choosing anti-racism every day.
When Martin Luther King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech at the march on Washington for civil rights, he finished his remarks by quoting the hymn we sang this morning: let freedom ring, and he called out all the places where freedom should ring—naming northern states, southern states. Then he said that as freedom came to all people, both black and white, men and women, Jews, Protestants and Catholics, we would really know the meaning of the words, we would be able to join hands together and sing the words of the Negro spiritual:
Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.
The powerful images of Martin Luther King come to me today as I hear Paul’s words to the Galatians: for freedom Christ has set us free. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
As a woman, the idea of serving others is not new, and I think all women should beware of using this scripture to be slaves of their families in ways that are hurtful to them psychically. But we are called to freedom in Christ, in love, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Our freedom is one of responsibility. We are used to defining freedom as getting our way, but this is not the freedom of Christ. The freedom of Christ lies in knowing and living like we are a forgiven people. Knowing that we are Christ’s own in love, so that we act out that sense of overwhelming love. Like the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet with her tears two weeks ago in our gospel reading, when we really know our freedom comes from being loved just as we are, we cannot do anything else than spill that love out onto others.
Our freedom cannot be divorced from others’ freedom. We cannot be free unless all are free, and this dilemma is central to our Christian awareness. We cannot love some and not others, just as God does not love some and not others. If our love of neighbor is to mirror God’s love for us, our freedom is expansive as well. We are called to love all, we are free and love is for all. This freedom is what Dr. King was talking about —that when we clasp hands together as free, then we all become free to love.
As we approach Independence Day this week, these issues of freedom for all are at the forefront of our minds. How can we make sure that our freedom as Christians to love and serve our neighbor does not get distorted into a kind of restricted freedom, where we love some and not others, because they are not like us in religion or thinking or color. Samuel Taylor Coleridge said more than a century ago that when individuals, or small groups, like a church, or nations become isolated whether as a result of ignorance or arrogance, Oppression or depression, our way of thinking begins to be distorted. As individuals and as a nation we do better when we think about freedom in relation to others.
As Christians, being free happens best when we are in community. This community we know as the church, where we test out our sense of being loved, where we come together to learn how to love our neighbor, to serve our neighbor together. Whether we give donations to the food pantry, provide rides to sick older folks, or scholarships to young adults, we have decided, in our Christian freedom, to choose how to love our neighbor. We love best when we love together and serve together those around us who need to see the love of Christ.
Our nation was built on these principles of Christian freedom, by some of the same founding fathers and mothers who designed how the Episcopal church would work. They wrote both our US and Episcopal constitutions, basing decision making on the principles that all are equal partners in freedom. While our nation has not always used this freedom wisely, for the benefit of others, or loved our neighbors with the sense that we have been blessed by God with goodness, we have tried, through our freedoms, to allow diverse opinions to be heard. In this time of conflict in Iraq, our nation and its leaders especially needs our prayers that our choices in freedom are the ones God would have us make.
In Lift Every Voice and Sing there are many negro spirituals with images of freedom. We will sing one from Abraham Lincoln’s era and the war he presided over, another time in our nation’s history where people had different ideas about what freedom meant. I believe our nation came through the crisis over slavery in a way that showed Christ’s love for all people. But that freedom came at a great cost, as people in the Commonwealth of Kentucky were very much involved, sometimes brother fighting against brother.
The freedom Christ provides us came at a great cost—the cost of the cross. But just as lives were freed from slavery by the resurrection of our nation after the Civil War, our lives are free through Jesus’s resurrection. Freedom in Christ is freedom from slavery to hate, hate of ourselves and of others. We are free to mirror the love of God in Christ, through the love we know in Christ. Just like anti-racism must be worked on every day, our freedom in Christ must be realized over and over again, every day of our lives.
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