Community Parson: The two gardens that God loves

Monday, May 21, 2012

The two gardens that God loves

Easter 6-B May 13, 2012

The Celebration of the Arts

Acts 10:44-48
Chichester Psalms: 108; 100; 23; 2; 131; 133

1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

We are surrounded today by beauty: by the beauty of this building, of the extraordinary art work that is in it, of the music we have heard – the voices and instruments. We have seen all this beauty framed by an astounding spring weekend: in the words of the hymn we will sing at the Offertory, God has tempered “fair with gentle air the sunshine and the rain,” and the “kindly earth with timely birth” has yielded “her fruits again.”

In the old traditions of the church, these are the Rogation Days: the time when we “rogare”, in Latin – when we ask God to bless the fields we plow and the crops we plant, when we pray for seasonable weather and a good harvest. In these less agricultural times, we ask God to bless all those who labor, and today, especially, all those artists and craftsmen and musicians whose work is to produce beautiful things.

This church sits in a garden, and this weekend, as most weekends, this church is filled with flowers – God’s most ephemeral bits of beauty are captured for a few hours. We live in a part of the world blessed by fertile soil and ample water. I find it amusing that in “fancier” cities, further away from fields and gardens, locally grown food is all the – high-priced – rage. We here in Central New York can take some of that “farm to table” bounty for granted. It is almost as though Jesus himself were our next door neighbor, our good friend who would share with us out of his great abundance all that we could want, or need, or enjoy.

The bountiful earth, this extraordinary art show, this beautiful music – these are all signs of God’s love. Our lessons today tell us over and over how much God loves us, and shows us this love in an over-flowing and spirit-filled way.

How contrary those lessons are to the lessons the world tries to shove down our throats. How often are we made to feel NOT loveable? Let me count the ways: through advertising that reminds us we will never be as beautiful, or as thin, or as elegant that THAT girl; through hateful words that remind us that our skin color or family background or country of origin will prevent us from every REALLY BELONGING here; through economic disparities, reinforced generation after generation, that tell us that some people will always be poor and stuck in a rut and others will have the red carpet rolled out in front of them wherever they go.

Imagine two streets in our community. Imagine … this one, for example. Well tended lawns, bright blossoms, pavement swept clean, weeds kept at bay. Imagine another street, in downtown Syracuse, say. Broken sidewalks, weeds growing through cracks, trash collecting in corners, the once-lush canopy of elm trees that protected that street a long-faded memory.

These streets are a few miles apart. Both of these streets are in God’s garden. Both of these streets are loved by God. On both of these streets, live God’s friends. For the people who live on both of these streets, people who are told by the world in a variety of ways that they are maybe or maybe not loved – for all of these people, Jesus laid down his life. Jesus demonstrated that this love, this friendship is far more powerful than any of the negative messages, the cold shoulders, the violent rebuffs that the world can ever dish out.

Jesus loves us, yes, but Jesus also expects some things from us. “Abide in my love,” Jesus says. “Keep my commandments. Love one another as I have loved you.”

I once read of a Quaker biblical scholar, who lived in a time and a place wracked by violence and discord. There are “… two kinds of people in the world,” he said to his Quaker community:

… there are therefore people, and there are however people. Therefore people say, ‘There are children going to bed hungry in our community. Therefore …’ and they proceed to devise and define the ways in which they can meet the need in their community. However people make the same beginning statement – ‘There are children going to bed hungry in our community’ – but they follow it with, “However …’ and they explain why nothing can be done about it.[i]

We have experienced some extraordinary things this week. Artists have talked about how much they appreciate being able to show their works here – that they are asked to show their new, adventurous work, the new places where the spirit of their art is calling them. We, then, who view these works are not mere passive observers but witnesses, cheerleaders to these new and exciting expressions of risky creativity. We have listened to three amazing performances – and here again, those performances have been enriched, enhanced, made even more exciting by our being there to applaud them.

This week, in this Celebration of the Arts, we have seen what it means to be “therefore” people. We have experienced these flashes of the beauty of God’s creation, channeled through the work of these very talented artists. We hold these gifts in our hearts – and THEREFORE we can take them into the world that very much needs them. We know these gifts cannot be hoarded at the end of Jamar Drive. We know that God’s love and friendship spills out all around us, and that the more we share that love and friendship, the more we have, and will always have. As Jesus assures us, we CAN love one another. There is more than enough to go around: more than enough art, music, beauty, joy, connection and grace. More than enough flowers and rutabagas and sweet corn and apple pie. More than enough cookies and more than enough champagne.

Dear friends, if you are here for the first time, welcome. If you have been here before, welcome back. Thank you for being part of this Celebration of the Arts. Help us to take some of the blessings we have all received here out into all of the streets and all of the gardens that God loves.

[i] Henry Joel Cadbury (1883-1974), Professor of Divinity at Harvard University. Quoted in Synthesis: A Weekly Resource for Preaching and Worship in the Episcopal Tradition (May 8, 1994)

No comments:

Post a Comment

Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.