Reserve Seats

This past week, someone asked me if we could sell reserved seats on Christmas Eve. ‘What if we auctioned off the first two rows at 11 o’clock?” he asked. “We could make a Lot of money for a good cause!” This gave me pause. It would make a lot of money for charity, but what would come of it? What would happen to us if we had reserve seats?

Time and time again, people come to me asking where their place is in the church. They want to be fulfilled personally. They want to get plugged in. "What is my role? Where is my place?" they ask. And once they are planted in their ministry, don’t you dare displace them. That is my job, they say. That is my seat.

The synagogue in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, was no different. They had comfortable lives, they each knew their place. Everything was fine. Until Jesus came back changed.

Jesus had just been baptized. Immediately after his baptism, he had gone into the desert to pray and once his period of prayer and testing had passed, he went home. He went home to Nazareth, where he was known as the carpenter’s son.

It was the custom in Jesus’ day for the guest or returning friend to read the Scripture in worship. Jesus is invited to read and the passage that he is given is from the book of Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he reads. “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then Jesus tells the congregation that God has indeed brought Isaiah’s words to life. That He is the one who is to do all these things.

But the people of Nazareth cannot hear Jesus. You see, they had a reserved seat for him, a place. They knew him as Joseph’s son. It was not possible that he could proclaim good news to the poor, do things a Messiah ought to do. That was not his place. How dare he presume to be someone that he was not.

The people of Nazareth thought that they knew Jesus. They made up their mind about him. And in doing so, they shut their minds to him. When he tells them who he really is, they are incapable of hearing him. They are so threatened by his words that they try to kill him. They literally try to push him off a cliff!

You could say that Jesus didn’t do so well at home. It was a rough start. And from that day forward, he had no home. There was no reserve seat for Jesus.

We had to put our dog Roger to sleep yesterday. This was the dog who ate so fast and so furiously that he would gorge himself. The dog lived to eat. Saturday morning, I went down to feed him and he couldn’t get up. He wouldn’t eat. I knew that something was wrong. We lifted Roger into the car and took him to the animal hospital. After running some tests, they told us that a tumor had forced his spleen to rupture. There was blood all inside his abdomen. He was dying. His body was shutting down.

So we said goodbye to that old dog who had lived so faithfully with us for so many years. We all cried. And when we went home, the house seemed strange, like there was a family member missing. There was an empty space. His seat was empty. Would it ever be filled again?

We want so desperately to order our lives, to keep things the same. We make a place for everything and hope that it stays just the same always. But life keeps on moving, creatures die, and human beings change. Our rigid way of holding on is born of fear and can cause us to miss out on God’s work in our lives. But we get so scared. It comforts us to lock in and fight the change.

Unfortunatley, the people that we define the most are those closest to us, the ones we love. We decide that we know the people who love us and we stop listening to them.

About twenty years after Jesus’ resurrection, Paul wrote a letter to a new church in the city of Corinth. The people of this new church were struggling to be Christian. They did not know how to do it. They had no rules and would go to the pagan temple and worship the gods. They did not know how to move out of the lives that they had led before they turned to Jesus, so they were kind of a mess. They needed guidance and direction.

Paul told them that they were a body now. God saw them not just as individuals, but as a living body, an organism that derived its strength from each other. Paul wrote to them saying You are living and breathing body, with different roles and gifts for each one of you. Listen to each other. Give each other room to grow and change, yet understand that while you are unique, you are totally interdependent as well. You cannot live without one another. It is only together that you make up the Body of Christ.

Usually, when we look at the Body of Christ image, we think about our roles. Am I the hand? Am I the brain? We ask. We want to know our roles so that we can lock in and reserve our jobs. But what if our roles change? What if our gifts change? Paul didn’t mean for us to define each other once and more all. He was saying so much more.

When God looks at you and me, God looks at an individual, but he also has another perspective. God looks at the BODY, the whole community. He sees your individual needs but he also is able to see how you can serve the whole community. God sees us as one. There is no competition, no reserve seats, just a moving, changing body that is called to come closer to God. How can we possibly understand what God sees? God sees so much more than we do. God sees from everyone’s perspective and God sees the whole picture. God sees the present and God sees the future. God sees change and God sees our resistance to change. We cling to order and control, while God urges us to let go and trust the movement of the Body.

Our bodies change so much while we are alive. They go from small and totally dependent to strong and independent. They get illnesses, they get in shape. They get old and wrinkled. Bodies change and grow as the members change and grow. They are incredibly adaptable. Dear old Roger’s body changed dramatically in his last few days, getting grey and old, slowing down. Our bodies too will change dramatically over the course of our lives. Why do we insist that they remain the same? How could they possibly do that? The cells of our bodies are constantly in motion, constantly changing and developing. There is no stagnancy, there is only change.

Paul also tells us that we are to care especially for the members who are frail and in need. The members of the body who are frail are ESSENTIAL, he says. Don’t ignore them just because they change. Listen to them. Listen to the children and listen to the elderly. Listen to the poor and the homeless, listen to the sick and the suffering. Listen to the teenagers. Never forget that each member is capable of infinite possibilities. Never give a member a permanent seat. Never define each member’s role forever. Roles change, seats change. The Body depends on that change. It is part of God’s plan.

If the people of Nazareth had only listened to Jesus, if only they had been able to hear the change that had occurred in him, they might have been saved. They might have known the Savior of the world. Instead, they missed out because they had reserved seats. They couldn’t move. They had made up their minds.

The Body of Christ is ever moving and changing. It doesn’t stand still.

Promise me that there will never be reserved seats in your life. Promise me that you will always have a place for everyone, favoring no one. Promise me that you will care for the poor. Promise me that you will love children and the elderly and listen to their needs with special attention. Christ is speaking all around us and He moves our seats according to His purpose.

A Panoramic View

The day before Dr. King was shot, he gave a speech in which he spoke about his life. He said that if he could choose when to be born and when to live, he would chose to be born at the very period in which God had placed him. He said that God had given him a panoramic view of history. Dr. King knew that his work with civil rights would impact the future of humanity.

Dr. King was willing to give his life for something that he believed in. He was not a perfect man by any means, but he knew when to stand up for something. He could see injustice and he found a just way to combat that injustice. He had a clear perspective on the sins of his time.

What are the injustices of our day? It strikes me that the earthquakes in Haiti are a message to us all. We must begin to find a way to care for one another economically. I think that the greatest injustices of our day have to do with money and its distribution.

The only way to combat the inequalities of this global economy is through radical generosity. I do not believe in communism, not after living in Russian and seeing the destruction of that countrys motivation and productivity. I am not a socialist. Nor do I believe that capitalism can run wild without some kind of checks and balances. I think that the only answer to poverty at its deepest level is radical generosity.

Jesus spoke about money all the time. He spoke about money more than he spoke about prayer. He urged us to give without ceasing. He told us that we would grow closer to God and usher in God's kingdom if we gave generously. He told us that to give abundantly was to live abundantly. God blesses those who give. And those who do not give cannot enter God's kingdom.

As I pray, I ask God to give me a panoramic view of our time. This panoramic view shows me that many are suffering from lack of food, clean water, housing. Those of us who have an abundance of possessions must consider the future of this planet and give. Give radically, thankfully and joyfully. Give to Haiti and give to the homeless in our own cities. Give locally and give globally. And let the scales of injustice right themselves through the bountiful blessings of generosity.

Listening to God

I live in the San Jose neighborhood. My kids go to San Jose Episcopal School. While dropping off their forgotten lunch tickets, I passed an icon of St. Joseph at the school and it all clicked. Saint Joseph! I live in his neighborhood. And he was such a great parent.

Joseph seriously listened to God. He had these dreams in which angels spoke to him and he listened. He didn't write off his dreams as frivilous expressions of his unconscious. He listened to them. And he also read the signs of his time. If there were newspapers in Joseph's day, he would have read them.

The Wise Men listened to. And they watched the sky. Both Joseph and the Wise Men were open to the movement of God in their lives. I want to be like that, to be open to God. But when I try to listen, I don't always know how to discern the difference between God's voice and the voices of my own desires, worries, other's expectations etc. How can we tell that it is really God?

In my years as a priest, it has occurred to me that God shows us signs of the Divine nature. If you are trying to listen and discern God’s voice from all the other voices that cloud your mind, you can be sure of a few signs.

First, God usually tells us to move. I have never had one person come to me to say that God told them to stay exactly the same. No, God seems interested in our growth, in having us move closer. Grow! Move! Risk! These seem to be some of God’s favorite words. Maybe that’s why in English we chose the name GO…D. Even heaven is not stagnant. It is described as eternal life, which means growth and change and development. Never once is heaven described as eternal stagnancy. No, loving God is a process of change and of movement. As C.S. Lewis wrote in his vision of heaven, Further in and Further up!

Joseph listened to the messengers of his dreams. He also listened to the signs of the times. He knew that Herod was dangerous and he knew that Herod’s son was no better. So he moved from Bethlehem to Egypt (and that was a major move on foot in those days, especially with a baby or toddler). Then he moved back into Judea but he was warned not to return to Bethlehem, so he settled in Nazareth. Joseph and his little family moved a lot. I wonder if Joseph ever wondered if he had made a mistake. I mean, if God told him to go to Egypt, why would God then tell him to move back to Israel? Does God reroute us sometimes?

Just a few months ago, my family and I moved. It was so hard. I loved my parish. I had been there for seven years and we loved one another. I was about to take a sabbatical and had just received a grant to travel to Costa Rica. I felt like I had gone mad. What was I doing, leaving such a wonderful place where I had been so happy? But something kept nudging me to move.
Now that I have moved, I really do think that it was God. As hard as it was to leave, I believe that I am here for a reason and that reason unfolds before me every day.

Another sign that I have identified is longevity. God’s call does not fade. God’s leading does not weaken. If something is of God, it will last.

I have heard the stories of several people who have encountered God in a dream. In all cases, the dream does not fade. It remains as vivid today as it was the night they experienced it.

Like my friend Brad who is a priest in Virginia. When he was in Seminary, his little girl died of leukemia. He was devastated, absolutely devastated. He thought of leaving Seminary. His friends told him to hold onto his faith and that just made him angry. They told him that it was God’s will and that made him angrier still. He did not know how he could continue to be in Seminary. It was not that he didn’t believe in God, it was just that he was so angry at God. How could God have robbed her of her life? She would never experience her first kiss, her prom, her wedding, having children. All of that was lost to her now and the thought of her missing out on life just enfuriated him. He was lost in darkness.

Then, one night, he had a dream. A short balding man with a kind face took his daughter by the hand. Together, they flew through all of life. She got to experience her first kiss, her prom, her wedding, having children, finding love- she got to experience all of it and more.

Brad awoke from that dream a changed man. He knew that his daughter was alright and that she was experiencing more than he could ever imagine. And he knew that his dream had been a gift from God.

Which brings me to the final identifier when it comes to discerning God’s voice. It is from without. It is something that you just know you did not come up with, something so full of love, so well that it had to come from somewhere else. Not from fear, not from the opinions of others or from your own mind, but from God. It is love expanded.

Saint Paul tells us that we are adopted as children of God in our baptism. What kind of a parent doesn't speak to his or her child?

I believe that God is talking to us ALL THE TIME. We are just too busy, too frantic, to afraid to listen. But once you start listening, you realize that God is trying to call us home all the time. God is saying, Come to Me. Come Inside.

Don’t be afraid to open your life and ask for God’s guidance. Joseph did.