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Dear People of Christ Church,
As we continue to unfold ourselves, both personally and culturally, from the grief of the violence in Orlando last week, I wanted to share instead of more words, more prayers. Others have offered wonderful words of challenge, comfort, and Christ—most recently two posts from my Lutheran friend, The Rev. Angel Marrero, pastor of Santuario Waltham: A Pastoral Response from a Gay Latino Priest and, for considering the place of the church in anti-LGBT sentiment, The Pulse Martyrs: Confession Before Communion.

In the meantime, I offer only prayers—here are some I compiled for our Interfaith Vigil service on Monday. We had a beautiful service of light and prayer, and our collection for Waltham House, our local LGBT group home for teens, raised close to $300.

From one another and from God, we pray forgiveness for our part in the way our communities have been bruised and our world torn apart. We repent for words and deeds that provoke prejudice, hatred, and revenge. God of compassion and healing
Hear our prayer

Deliver us from suspicions and fears that stand in the way of reconciliation, particularly holding in love those who are Muslim who experience discrimination. God of compassion and healing
Hear our prayer

Deliver us from our unwillingness to confront our own privilege: racial, economic, by gender or sexual orientation, God of compassion and healing
Hear our prayer

For the community of the Pulse nightclub. For bartenders and bouncers, for DJs and dancers. For all who made it a place of refuge and safety, that a sanctuary may be restored. God of compassion and healing
Hear our prayer

We pray in hope that our beautiful world can be transformed through love and beauty. For all who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. For hearts to know God’s love revealed in all God’s children. God of compassion and healing
Hear our prayer

We pray in thanksgiving for our many religious traditions, and for the many names by which you are known, O God. For Yhwh, Allah, Spirit, and Christ. God of compassion and healing
Hear our prayer

We pray for fair politics and brave leaders. For an end to gun violence, for an end to the quiet assumption that nothing can be done and that carnage is inevitable. Give us the gift of holy hope,
And by your grace and healing presence join our hearts to yours.

Blessings,
Sara+

Miss the sermon on 6/12? It’s here!

Dear People of Christ Church,
When in my sermon on Sunday I talked about the place of fear in American culture, about the latest shooting in Colorado when a gunman murdered three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic, I did not expect so soon to need to review my comments in light of yet another attack, yet another tragic scene of mayhem and tragedy. Whether at the hands of Christians or Muslims or white supremacists, our world knows tragedy, suffering, and evil. Jesus knew these as well.

What I said on Sunday still holds—the Gospel good news of Jesus’ invitation to lift up our heads and not be afraid (Luke 21:25-36). Even as the National Rifle Association insists that guns make us safer. Even as every politician, from Donald Trump to Barack Obama, insists that war can lead to peace, Jesus tells us to lift up our heads and not be afraid. Even as it seems the world is spinning out of control, Jesus’ answer is the same: do not be afraid.

An image from the New York Daily News front page response to politicians’ weak announcements of “prayers for the victims” declares boldy that “God isn’t fixing this.” Some people have said they’re condemning prayer, but I don’t think that’s it at all. The condemnation is of empty prayer, prayer that isn’t backed up by action. We do need to pray. Sometimes it feels like it’s all we can do, and surely it’s the first thing we should do. But we also need to allow our prayers and God’s will for the world to soak into our lives, to permeate every cell, so they also lead us to act. The guns used in the San Bernardino shooting were purchased legally. The guns were operating as intended. God can’t fix that. God can only fix us.

And the Spirit moves in the world. That’s the other thing—Advent reminds us that God is acting. That’s where there is cause for hope. Hopefully, we will cease to fear each other. Hopefully, as the Spirit moves in the world, Muslims will cease being targeted for their faith. Hopefully, as the Spirit moves in the world, our hearts and minds will be moved to act to prevent violence. My friend Tom, who pastors at First Lutheran, told a story today in our interfaith clergy group about how he had gone to the Mosque on Moody Street the day after the Paris attacks to ask how he and his congregation could be of support in the days ahead. Imam Abdallah told him just one thing—to know that Islam is a religion of peace and love. Peace and love. As a Christian, I don’t want to claim the person who committed the attacks in Colorado last week any more than he wants to claim any terrorist acts committed in the name of his religion. We need to know and respect one another for who we are.

Finally, in our prayer and sadness, it seems important also to remember that these are the places where God enters. I’ll share this quote from Jean Vanier, a theologian who founded the L’Arche communities for those who are developmentally disabled and those who are not to live together.

Our brokenness is the wound
through which the full power of God
can penetrate our being and transfigure us in God.
Loneliness is not something from which we must flee
but the place from where we can cry out to God,
where God will find us and we can find God.
Yes, through our wounds
the power of God can penetrate us
and become like rivers of living water
to irrigate the arid earth within us.
Thus we may irrigate the arid earth of others,
so that hope and love are reborn.

– Jean Vanier
The Broken Body (1988, Paulist Press). Quoted by Suzanne Guthrie at www.edgeofenclosure.org

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,
This week I’m excited to be planning for an action-packed week ahead, with some very odd juxtapositions. On Sunday we’ll have our annual St Francis Day blessing of the animals at the 10am service—worshippers of all species will be welcomed with a blessing and sign of peace. I think we usually end up with more stuffed animal friends than living ones, but I hope if you’re a pet owner you’ll consider bringing, if not your pet, a picture of them. At my house we are not pet owners—our cat and dog both died within two months of each other 6 years ago, and to be honest we haven’t looked back. Caring for young children has seemed like enough for me. But…

There’s always a “but.” This summer a woodchuck moved into our yard. At first we thought there was just one, but there are distinctly now a fatter one and a thinner one, and with that combination I can only guess that there might be smaller woodchucks on the way. They ate our cucumber plants, but for the most part left the garden alone. The thing I appreciate about them is the sense of surprise they bring—my daughter races to the window at breakfast to see if “Chuckie” is also eating. In the hymn attributed to St Francis, “All Creatures of our God and King,” we sing the praises of creation and God’s blessing and provision for us. Watching for our woodchucks makes me feel part of a wider whole, a creature dwelling beside others. At least as long as the woodchucks continue to behave themselves reasonably well!

If on Sunday we remember the goodness and delight of our created nature, on Monday we remember the tragic dimension our relationships sometimes take, when grace and trust are replaced by control and the desire for power. In our service for hope and healing from domestic violence we’ll sing, pray, and listen to the voices of survivors. Alison (who is returning to her unmarried name of Shea, no longer Lasiewski) will sing, Anna Jones will preach, and MJ from Reach who also spoke last year will be joined by Marisa, also from Reach. The centerpiece of the service will be a time of candle lighting, when people are invited to come forward and light a candle of prayer for themselves or another. This year I’m glad to have as a partner Pastor Angel from Santuario Waltham, a new Spanish-speaking Lutheran congregation beginning in Waltham, based at First Lutheran Church.

It’s an ecumenical service—there won’t be communion, and, if you’ll pardon the term, it’s not terribly “Jesusy.” But I will be thinking of the crucifixion and resurrection, about how even in the most terrible places of suffering and pain the love of God finds a way to come through. Even though sharing the sacrament is important to our community, there is something lovely about making space for others to pray together, to set aside “my” practice for something that more people can share.

Blessings on these cooling fall days, and the presence of God in every aspect of our lives.

Peace,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,
This Sunday, we’ll hear the story of David and Goliath, a story we all know by heart. David, so young and so small he couldn’t even move trying to wear armor, hit Goliath in the middle of the eyes and knocked him down. Though everyone said it would be impossible, with God it would happen. Waking up to news this morning of a shooting at a historically black church in South Carolina, American racism feels like Goliath and we are all still on our way to battle.

In the story, David uses the same strength and skill that has brought him victory over all kinds of wild beasts. David knows himself. The United States, though? We don’t know ourselves. We don’t know each other. We don’t know our own minds, we don’t know each others’ experiences to free ourselves from this toxic fog of racism and hatred that seeps in everywhere. The assailant at the Emanuel shooting sat in Bible Study with his victims for an hour before beginning the attack. It’s beyond chilling.

So I don’t have a ton of words this evening, but I do have the Gospel. We can pray, pray, pray and be vulnerable to the suffering of others. We can remember their names and pray for Cynthia, Tywanza, DePayne, Ethel, Myra, Susie, Sharonda, Daniel Sr, and Clementa, each beloved children who rest in the arms of their Creator. We can remember that Jesus went to the cross rather than return violence for violence.

We can note that the terrorism perpetrated against this church is in a neighboring town to the place where Walter Scott was murdered just two months ago by police, also viewed with suspicion and hatred because he was black. And we can also say that they were martyrs, not only victims. We can say it is terrorism. Pray that we—you and me—have the courage to face our own racism and our own quiescence in the face of this violence.

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP).

Please join me and members of the wider community at Christ Church on Saturday, June 20, at 6pm for an Interfaith Prayer Vigil for Peace and and End to Racism, hosted by the Waltham Ministerial Association.

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear People of Christ Church,

This week, I’ve been praying around sin—appropriate enough for Lent, of course—but in particular around criminal justice as well. The Tsarnaev trial, of course, is impossible to ignore, and on Tuesday I was also drawn into another case through a colleague in Georgia. Georgia was set to execute Kelly Gissendaner, prosecuted for her role in the murder of her husband. In her time in prison, her life was changed; she studied theology and began a correspondence with the theologian Jürgen Moltmann, ministered to her fellow prisoners and was, by all accounts, completely changed. Her story was a compelling one; Georgia hasn’t executed a woman in more than fifty years, and her story of conversion and compassion reminded me of everything we want to believe about human nature. We can change and we do change, even under difficult circumstances, even living through the consequences of the depth of our sin.

For our Tuesday night services, we’re using a Eucharistic prayer from the Church in Scotland which contains this line:
Lifted on the Cross, [Christ’s] suffering and forgiveness spanned the gulf our sins had made.
To which, of course, I would add—Christ’s ministry, and suffering, and forgiveness spanned the gulf of our sins. What I like so much about this phrasing is the visual metaphor—our sin separates us from God. We can sense that God is there, that there is hope and joy and forgiveness—but we can’t get there on our own. That gulf of sin is not intractable. God has already bridged it. But I need to acknowledge it as there, because without the awareness of sin, I slip into thinking that I’ve got everything figured out. Not because Jesus died as some blood sacrifice for my guilt, but because the crucifixion is a mirror of reality.
Twelve year old kids getting shot by police who are supposed to protect them, immediately seen as suspicious because of the color of their skin. Muslim women being harassed (and worse) for wearing headscarves. Synagogues defaced. The Charlie Hebdo massacre, girls kidnapped in Pakistan and Nigeria for going to school. The Marathon bombing. Human trafficking. The crucifixion happens every day.

When crucifixion happens, how does our society respond? Too often, we lash out with more violence. The death penalty is a prime example of this. The old Biblical injunction “an eye for an eye” gets quoted a lot, but in its initial context, that was intended to minimize punishment, not maximize (we might also recall that Jesus said some things that undid that logic). Kelly Gissendaner wasn’t executed, after all—after thousands of petitions and phone calls to the governor’s office, the prison said that the drugs for lethal injection looked “cloudy.” Maybe if all the petitions and phone calls hadn’t been made, she would have still been put to death; I don’t know. She’s alive, though, and for her, that is a blessing.

In Massachusetts, no one has been executed since 1947, though governors and legislatures have tried to bring back the death penalty a number of times. The Tsarnaev trial is a federal one, so even though our state doesn’t have the death penalty, federal prosecutors are asking for it and most of the defense, at this point, is around convincing jurors that mitigating circumstances make Tsernaev less culpable of his crime.

I’m not on the jury, so it doesn’t really matter whether I think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is guilty, not guilty, or somewhere in between. I do, though, think it matters what all of us think and do about the death penalty itself. I signed the petition for Kelly Gissendaner because I was moved by her story. I’m glad to know about her and I’m glad she’s not been executed. But the death penalty isn’t about how good or how bad the defendant is. The death penalty is about what kind of society we create. And that’s about all of us. If we promise to respect the dignity of every human being every time we baptize someone, that includes the possibility—even the certainty!—that those human beings will fail. We are always bound by those vows, no matter how we think we can justify breaking them.

Blessings,
Sara+

For an article about the Episcopal Church’s work on death penalty abolition see here and on the movement in general here.

Dear People of Christ Church,
Blessings on this week of Epiphany!
This year through both Advent and Christmas I’ve continually felt drawn toward the multiplicity of our narratives—from Matthew to Mark to Luke to John, the church has long told many stories to explain our faith. To be religious is to be bound by a certain set of questions and symbols, but at the same time to hold a radical openness to truth—to stand at the doorway of Scripture and see shepherds at the manger on our left and Magi at the house with Jesus on the right and be able to extend our arms wide and say to both, “yes,” “thank you,” “Amen.” The shepherds teach me that God’s truth is revealed in some unlikely corners of society; the Magi teach me that the revelation of truth sometimes comes from far away.

There is much in the media this week over the attacks against the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which twelve staff members were shot this week in an attack apparently by Islamic fundamentalists. Is religion the problem? One of my favorite authors, Salman Rushdie, says it is, and calls it “a medieval form of unreason,” and says religion deserves our “fearless disrespect.” Certainly I have little sympathy for homicidal fundamentalists, but it seems unuseful to lump every impulse toward transcendence and mystery in the same category. Religious violence has endured through millennia. The Egyptians oppressed the Hebrews and the Spanish Inquisition oppressed non-Catholics. Christian fundamentalists have bombed abortion clinics and now Islamic fundamentalists attack cartoonists and school girls. The thing those all have in common is contempt and violence, not religion. Charlie Hebdo was contemptuous (and from what I’ve seen, probably racist, too)—but not violent, and not deserving of murder. It’s cruel irony that one of the police officers murdered in the attack was Muslim, risking his life to protect those on the magazine who pilloried his prophet.

So what to do? As thousands in France held up their pens in support of the writers and artists who were killed on Tuesday, as a religious person I hold out two open hands. I hold out open hands for mystery, for attentiveness and for curiosity. Open hands to say that I don’t come to Scripture—or even my own life!— with certainty, but with faith. I’ll imagine the magi in the stable and give thanks for the holy strangeness of kings in a barn. I’ll imagine the shepherds at the house and hope that their lambs don’t wander into the kitchen. I’ll get out of bed every day to meet my own chaotic life of distraction and wonder—parenting and preaching and learning and falling and getting up again—through all of it so grateful for a faith big enough to hold the pieces together.

At Epiphany, we remember the magi following a star and listening to the invitation in their dream to go home by another way. What new path are you on today? What’s the power of your faith against violence? Where do you need the stars to illuminate your road?

Blessings,
Sara+

Dear people of Christ Church,
This week, I’m praying for the Middle East, for listening there and listening everywhere. Wednesday’s Daily Office reading had the story of Jesus weeping for Jerusalem, which felt particularly poignant given the heightening of conflict that’s erupted in the last week. Scripture tells the story of the people of Israel-those descended from Jacob, whom we’re reading about in our Old Testament lessons this summer. Jacob wrestling with the angel is a far distance from rockets fired into Gaza.

As Christians, we are given a place to stand that offers us some resources. I heard a story once about someone asking Ghandi about what he thought about Christianity and he said something to the effect of “I think it’s great. Christians should try it out!” The not-so-subtle critique there being that his own enacted philosophy and practice of nonviolence were more consistent with the teaching of Jesus than those who follow him. Ouch. Non violent change is slow, impractical, and expensive. But practically, it is the only thing that can actually work. Trouble is, so often in politics and global conflict it seems that violence is the only way. This is a deadly thing to be so confident about.

I heard an interview last week on my way to church on the show, On Being, about the religious founding of our country. Yes, absolutely, it was founded on Judeo Christian values-I can share that perspective with the Hobby Lobby. The difference, though, and the founding attitude I think we need more of now (notably apart from the desire to impose our beliefs on others) is humility. Steven Waldman said that the major difference between religion in public life now is that we no longer have a sense of humility about our nation. We can get this wrong. We do get this wrong. Often! In America the Beautiful, we sing our prayer for God to “mend [America’s] every flaw” because there are flaws. How are we, as a country, treating the most vulnerable? How are we coming to the aid of those in need, in our own borders and out of them, and in the boundary in between? Not very well, right now.

Along for peace in Israel and Palestine, pray, pray, pray for a sense of humility to enter our conversations. In my sermon on Sunday I was thinking about how our failure to be in relationship with those whom we differ is the source of so much conflict-if you’re not in relationship, you can’t listen. The Hobby Lobby isn’t listening to scientific research about birth control, and the Supreme Court isn’t listening to women. A border patrol agent almost by definition can’t listen to the child who’s just turned himself in. Listen, listen, listen.

And pray:
O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
…Prayer for the Human Family, BCP 815

Amen.

Blessings,
Sara+

PS: For some good witnessing to the power of presence, see how St John’s Episcopal Church in McAllen, Texas, is aiding asylum seekers in partnership with Episcopal Relief and Development: . Also for a nice rendering of Earth and All Stars, which we sing this Sunday in the praise of the Lord for boiling test tubes and knowledge and truth, see here.