Deceiving Ourselves?

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, God, who is faithful and just, will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. -- Opening Sentence for Morning Prayer in Lent, BCP page 76
As I read the above sentence at the beginning of Morning Prayer this morning, I was reminded of all the times that I, as a child, denied to my parents that I had done something I wasn't supposed to do -- notwithstanding the obvious fact that I had done it. I was also reminded of the times my children did that to me. And if they are blessed with children some day, I suppose their children will do the same thing to them. It is in the nature of children to want to please their parents and to wish away the events that we think will not be pleasing.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the holy season in which we focus on coming clean before God. We do so not out of fear, but secure in the assurance that God knows all of our imperfections and failings, and loves us anyway. Our God "who sees in secret and hears in secret" (Mt 6) created us and loves us. We are reminded in the service for Ash Wednesday (BCP page 269) that God "desires not the death of sinners, but rather that they may turn from their wickedness and live." God knows we have had our hands in the cookie jar -- and far worse -- and asks us to acknowledge our failures as the necessary first step to reconciliation and the sharing of the promise of the Resurrection on Easter day.
Your brother in Christ, Don+

Greetings from Florida - Shrove Tuesday 2009

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ!
I am writing from the home of Horace and Fay Johnson, who, for those of you who don't know them, are former Trinity members and Horace was Assistant Rector before his retirement in 2006. Horace and I have been performing excavation on some of the local golf courses since Friday.
For the past week I have been doing a lot of driving. I left Debbie's aunt and uncle, Eleanor and Brian, in Punta Gorda on the West Coast of Florida and drove across the state for a brief visit with Bruce and Nancy Whitcomb in Sebastian. While Bruce and I had planned to go on a fishing excursion, that was cancelled by 10 foot seas on the day we were going. So we visited some of the sites in that area. They are doing well (along with their dog, Laddie, a beautiful labradoodle who provided hospitality by being persistent in bringing us various items from my room) and send their regards to everyone at Trinity.
Next I drove up to Horace and Fay's, where Horace and I have been catching up on each other's news and making our best efforts at golf. On Sunday morning, I worshipped at St. Thomas where Horace is a Priest Associate and was the celebrant at the 8:45 service. This is styled as a "contemporary" service, with a praise band that consists of several guitars, a bass, bongos, and a small group of singers who provide some harmony. The diversity of the congregation was not unlike Trinity, and the entire service was in a three-ring binder that contained all of the songs that were sung. An interesting addition was that the woman who is in charge of the youth ministry assembled all of the young people in the front of the church before the Gospel and told them what to listen for in the Gospel lesson -- it was about a 5 minute mini-homily, and after they Gospel they all processed to the back of the church to listen to the sermon, which was offered by a visiting priest from Food for the Poor.
After meeting some of the St. Thomas parishioners, I then drove north to Jacksonville to visit another clergy friend, Rev. Vincent "Chip" Seadale and his wife, Colleen. Chip, like yours truly, is a lawyer-turned-Episcopal priest, whose home parish is St. Peter's in Cheshire, CT. For thepast 14 months, Chip has been the rector of Church of the Redeemer in Jacksonville, where much of the congregation and the previous clergy left the Episcopal church to affiliate with a church from Africa. It was wonderful to meet some of the members of the congregation (I arrived in time for fellowship hour), and to catch up with Chip and Colleen on their exciting ministry in this new setting. He asked that we pray for them as they continue in their ministry of helping to rebuild that congregation.
Today, after a walk ont the beach (with windbreakers) and lunch with Horace, I will drive back to Punta Gorda for a last couple of days with Debbie's aunt and uncle. I will attend Ash Wednesday services at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Punta Gorda, where I have worshipped for more than 20 years, and then return to Connecticut on Thursday. As satisfying and enriching as it has been to be away, it will be good to get back home.
Prayers for a blessed day, and a prayerful beginning of the season of Lent.
Your brother in Christ, Don+

Remembering Sabbath

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world rested from all your works and sanctified a day of rest for all your creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties, may be duly prepared for the service of your sanctuary, and that our rest here on earth may be a preparation for the eternal rest promised to your people in heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. A Collect for Saturdays, BCP 56
As I prayed the Daily Office this morning, I was once again reminded that the traditional day of rest is Saturday -- Sunday is the day when we celebrate the Lord's resurrection. Believe it or not, one of the hardest things for me to "get into" as I begin this professional development leave is the concept of letting go and drawing away . It is hard to do even during a time that is designed for that purpose -- we all know how much harder it is in the midst of busy lives. How important it is, then, for us to grab those little bits of time where we can, even as Jesus did so often, to find some quiet time with God. It is the one "pause" that truly refreshes. Have a blessed sabbath! Your brother in Christ, Don+

Don is on professional development leave until May 15.

The Sabbatical Begins . . .

Grace and Peace to you in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ! I pray that this finds you well in body, mind and spirit!
While my Professional Development Leave (alias, "sabbatical") officially began after our services on February 1, I wound up (not unexpectedly) tying up loose ends and attending to things "left undone" during all of the ensuing week. It was a reminder to me of how essentially bound (in a good sense) we are to one another and how difficult it is (for me, at least) to be separated from the life and ministry of Trinity. And for me, upon reflection, I find that there are two important parts to this: First is a reminder of the love affair that I have with this community of faith, which, if anything, is much stronger today than it was when Debbie and I first arrived five years ago. The second piece -- and this is always hard -- is to be able to let go of things in the full faith and knowledge that God has a plan for us and has given this community all of the resources necessary to bring that plan closer to fruition.
My first real official day away from Trinity turned out to be last Sunday, when I travelled to St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Springfield, MA. The Rev. Dee Bright, a Liberian priest who has been in this country about 10 years, is the rector there. Dee was the celebrant and discussion leader at our TGIF service honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and it was a joy to worship with him and his congregation. At St. Peter's, the second Sunday of every month is "Youth Sunday" and the youth provide supplemental music to the hymns and also assist the Rector in the offering of the sermon. On this particular Sunday, as their offering to the observance of Black History Month, the youth had prepared posters bearing the images of famous Americans who were leaders in the American civil rights movement. The congregation was challenged to identify each person, and then one of the youth members read a brief biography of the person. It was a wonderful, uplifting service with both Gospel piano and many traditional hymns from both LEVAS and The Hymnal 1984. And there was much to enjoy -- the service lasted 2 1/4 hours, but it seemed to be over so quickly.
Monday was my Doctor of Ministry Day at Hartford Seminary, where this week we discussed a theory that when push comes to shove, most leaders make decisions using their instinct and guided by past experiences. Two of my classmates (Rev. Matt Calkins from St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Fairfield and the Rev. Hugh Haffenreffer from an ELCA church in Wethersfield) and I presented case studies which at various times both challenged and affirmed this theory. It was a good class.
Then on Tuesday I began in earnest the first phase of my sabbatical as I left for Florida. At the urging of the folks in cardiac rehab (and Debbie!), I came to my senses and gave up my plan to drive by myself via Kentucky and Alabama, and wound up flying instead. So rather than visiting some different churches in Kentucky, Alabama and North Carolina (on the way home), I will be visiting some additional churches here in Florida to look at how they understand God's mission in their congregations and how they work to carry it out.
I will do my best to update this regularly (is that vague enough?) and particularly to share with you my reflections during this initial time of rest and re-creation. Peace. Your brother in Christ, Don+

I Wonder What Would Happen If . . .

Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
Epiphany 3 – January 25, 2009

Jonah 3:1-10; Psalm 62:6
“I wonder what would happen if . . .”

Reflections on Being Radically Open to Jesus Christ
The Rev. Donald L. Hamer, Rector

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. AMEN.
The City of Nineveh is brought to its knees by the Word of God, and transforms its very life from a haven of privilege to a sanctuary of public repentance.
St. Paul tells the people of Corinth that the appointed time has grown short, and that the present form of this world is passing away.
By the simple act of passing by the shore and inviting them to follow him, Jesus forever changes the lives of Simon, Andrew, James and John as they leave their lives as fisherman to become “fishers of people.”
Today I would like for us to reflect on how these passages from Scripture put out there for us God’s call to radical change in the way we humans look at the world, in the way we do things, in the way we steward the lives that God has given to us. Particularly in this week when the world has taken an unprecedented interest in a profound change in our national leadership, and we who live in this country have been participants in that change, I want to draw some parallels: Parallels between God’s story as told in Scripture and our story. Parallels between what we are being called to do as citizens of this nation and what God is calling us to do as members of this church.
Let’s begin our reflection this morning by looking at the twists and turns in the story of Jonah and how he handled his rather precarious place between a rock and a hard place – between God and the great Assyrian capital of Nineveh. And I choose this story in part because this is the first time we Episcopalians have heard this story in church – it does not appear in the Book of Common Prayer lectionary, but only in the Revised Common Lectionary which we have been using for the last two years.
Now, Jonah is not one of your typical prophets. First, the book itself it not the message of a prophet, but rather a short story about the prophet. Secondly, while it is true that most of the prophets – the true prophets, anyway – did not initially warm to the task of being tagged by God as a prophet, Jonah brought this to an art form. In Chapter One of the Book of Jonah, the prelude to the passage we heard this morning, God has told Jonah to go to Nineveh “at once” to warn them of the Lord’s displeasure so that they can change their ways and be saved. Now today, Nineveh no longer exists as a noteworthy city, but to place it in modern history, it is right across the Tigris River from the modern Iraqi city of Mosul, the site of such intense fighting in the present Iraq war.
So, getting back to our story, God asks Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah doesn’t want to go – not because he thinks he isn’t up to the task, but because he doesn’t want Nineveh – an enemy of Israel – to be saved. He doesn’t like God’s plan, so he’s going to make up one of his own. So instead of doing what God wants him to do, Jonah runs down to Joppa, buys a ticket for the next ship leaving port and sets sail for Tarshish – which is the opposite direction from Nineveh. He wants nothing of this assignment. But, to paraphrase the title of a play that was performed at Ford’s Theater 25 years ago, Jonah’s arms were too short to box with God. A great storm rages around the ship, and the crew determines that it is because Jonah is fleeing from the Lord that this calamity has befallen them.
There is an interesting side note here. Even as he is admitting that the storm is because of him, Jonah proclaims to his fellow sailors, “I am a Hebrew. . . I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” Talk about chutzpah! He claims that he worships the Lord, but he was high-tailing it out of the country to avoid Him!
Imagine that!
Well, most of us know how that part of the story ends. Jonah’s shipmates decide to throw him overboard in hopes that this will calm the storm – which it does. God then sends a large fish to swallow up Jonah, God tells the fish to spit Jonah up on the dry land and, lo and behold, Jonah lives to see another day – another day in which God gives him yet another chance to do what God is asking him to do.
But even this time, Jonah’s heart isn’t in it. We hear that Nineveh is a large city – nearly a three-days walk across, but Jonah only goes a third of the way in. And after making such a big deal over not wanting to do this – look at what happens: All he does is issue a simple proclamation, and the people of Nineveh sit up and take notice: They believed God and put on sackcloth. It reminds me of that night about 20 years ago when my daughter Katie spent 2 ½ hours throwing a tantrum because I wouldn’t help her with her homework – read, figure it for her – and when she finished screaming and got down to work, it took her exactly 14 minutes to finish it.
But not only do the citizens listen to Jonah – the King himself puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes – a traditional sign of mourning and repentance. He, too, comes to believe in God, and issues a decree setting forth three stages of repentance for the entire nation:
1. To admit their guilt and their sinfulness, and to do that by changing their behavior.
2. For each person to change his or her attitude toward others by turning away from evil and avoiding violence.
3. For the entire nation to open itself to the possibility that the God of Israel can love all of creation – even traditional enemies of Israel.
And this part of the story of Jonah ends with the people of Nineveh being saved by turning to God. And Jonah is still unhappy about it. . . . That part of the story is to be continued . . .
For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him this morning’s psalm begins. And it’s true, isn’t it? We all would go along with that sentiment. But unfortunately, as with Jonah, we like to believe in the idea of that verse, but for most of us it remains a sentiment. As with Jonah, our outward actions – the things we actually do in our daily lives – belie the truth that while we know as a spiritual matter that our hope is in God, we’re not all that confident that God will actually be there with that safety net when we really need help – we’re not sure that if we jump off of that boat, if we take that risk, that God will have a big fish there ready to scoop us up and bring us to safety to give us another chance.
Let’s look back at what the King says to the Ninevites when they hear Jonah’s warning:
1. They are to fast – to intentionally go without something in order to be open to the presence of God.
2. They are to turn their lives around and treat others without violence.
3. They are to believe in the reality that God really does have the power to redeem all people, no matter what they have done, even people who are perceived to be God’s enemies.
In the face of uncertainty, in the face of impending doom and destruction, the King didn’t call his people reflexively to strike back. He didn’t call them to make excuses. He didn’t call them to be defensive. He called upon them to take the risk of trusting God.
For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him.
This past Tuesday, as we look back on President Obama’s Inaugural Address, didn’t we hear some of the same themes? In successive paragraphs of his speech, he spoke to America’s allies and its foes; to people of all faiths, and to people of no faith; to the comfortable people of prosperous nations and to the suffering people of nations whose wealth is not measured by money. Some of his words might have been directed to Jonah, or to the people of Nineveh:
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition . . . that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. . . . This is the price and the promise of citizenship. . . . This is the source of our confidence – the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
In the face of crisis, we are being called not to fight or to flee, not to be defensive, not to embrace what our baser human instincts would lead us to, but instead to embrace the challenge and to do so by placing our confidence in God.
For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him.
Also this past week, as you know, this parish served as a “satellite” host site for the Trinity Institute from Trinity Church, Wall Street. The Theme was RADICAL ABUNDANCE: TOWARD A THEOLOGY OF SUSTAINABILITY. One of the speakers, Majora Carter, addressed the subject of crisis. Her own story is about returning to her home neighborhood in New York City’s south Bronx and leading its transformation from a desolate industrial wasteland to a vibrant, ecologically friendly neighborhood. When asked about the impact of the current economic crisis on efforts to create healthy communities, she thought a moment and then responded, “You know, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Think about it: We can react like Jonah and run and hide – we can be like ostriches and stick our head in the sand -- at our Vestry meeting the other night our treasurer, Jack Pearson reminded us what is left exposed when you stick your head in the sand . . . We can respond like Jonah, or we can respond like the King. And while it is both a shame and a missed opportunity when civil governments react to crisis without faith and without hope, it is senseless, indeed, it is the essence of sin, when churches – communities of faith – respond without faith.
And so, as our Sunday school children do each week and during our Godly Play Eucharist on the first Sunday of each month, I want to leave you to ponder some wondering questions:
I wonder what would happen if we really did trust that God will take care of us. . . .
I wonder what would happen if we trusted that God really does desire to bring all of creation into harmony and balance . . . .
I wonder what would happen if we thought of ourselves as spiritual beings having a human experience, instead of worldly beings having a spiritual experience . . . .
I wonder what would happen if each of us embraced Trinity church as a true center of spiritual inquiry and opened ourselves to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit . . . .
I wonder what would happen if the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives became our image of reality instead of the finite events of this world . . . .
I wonder what would happen if we focused on life as a series of opportunities to be embraced instead of a succession of problems to be solved. . . .
I wonder what would happen if, instead of focusing on overcoming those we perceive to be our adversaries, we focused instead on linking arms with those with whom we discover common interests. . . .
I wonder what would happen if we thought about wealth as having anything that has value, especially value that is beyond money. . . .
I wonder what would happen if we truly believed that God’s abundance has no limits . . . .
I wonder what would happen if we really believed that in order for us to have enough someone else does not have to go without . . . .
I wonder what would happen if every member of this congregation were committed to engage in at least one ministry of this church in the next three months . . . .
I wonder what would happen if each week, there was a different individual or family greeting parishioners at the Sigourney Street and Goodwin Hall doors . . . .
I wonder what would happen if every member of this congregation committed to achieve the Biblical tithe in their financial support of the mission of Trinity Church within the next five years. . . .
I wonder . . . .
For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him.
AMEN.
c 2009 The Rev. Donald L. Hamer