Wherever Two Or Three Are Gathered

It was great to see ECUSA Bishop Eugene Robinson on the Daily Show.  He is the first openly gay man elected Bishop.  He was plugging his new book in favor of same sex marriage.  The premise of the book, in so many words is that love is from God.  When people of the same sex experience love, what they experience is from God, as there is not love apart from God. 

I wouldn’t want to push that analogy too hard, but as a basic operating principle it’s not bad. 

What was really great about his appearance on the Daily Show was another Christian voice added to this conversation.  Not just any voice.  A Christian leader. 

Too often, the Christian position is characterized in popular media by religious conservatives who’s answer to most things progressive follows the famous advice of Nancy Reagan; Just Say No. 

Bishop Robinson’s appearance affirmed again that there is diversity of opinion among people of faith.  I don’t think that can be stressed enough. 

No individual, no group, no theology, no doctrine, has a lock on the Truth. 

At Advent, that’s a big part of what we celebrate, isn’t it?  Emmanuel.  God with us.  When two or three are gathered.

When two or three are gathered, that’s when the fun starts.  Two or three gathered will produce at least two or three points of view.  Sometimes more.

And that’s where God is.  That’s where God has chosen to be.  Right smack in the middle of it.  In the unique messiness of life that happens whenever two or three are gathered. 

Reflections on the start of Advent

I sat on the edge of my bed the other night and thought how long I've waited for my "real life" to start.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"  The adult koan.  Reducing childhood to a time spent waiting to grow up.

Then, they send you to school to drive the point home.  The goal is to graduate, which means you are prepared for what comes next.   Real life, presumably, which will start when you got out of school.

Actually, that was kind of comforting.  How depressing to think that high school was "real life." 
Turns out, that wasn't far off.

We're prepped and primped for some "real life" future. 

What prepares me for Now? 

Advent is not about more waiting for real life, when Jesus comes.  Advent I think, is more about waking. 

Advent is about slipping off your shoes on the edge of your bed one night, switching off the lamp, and realizing that our "real lives" unfold in a thousand ordinary moments so staggering in their scope, we scarce can take it in.   

Luke 21: 29-30
 Then he told them a parable: "Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.  

Thanksgiving Thoughts

It is a beautiful clear November day. A day for giving thanks. Giving thanks is complicated because having things to be thankful for is complicated. Life is a field of wheat and tares. 

Perhaps, giving thanks is finally just a choice. A will toward a simplicity that is most grateful even for life's complexity. A move that without question or distinction takes all things into a single embrace of blessing and declares Alleluia.   

Alleluia, anyway.

ALL THE POWER YOU'LL NEVER REALLY NEED

I was not preaching today, so we visited a church just to see how the other half lives. We were real live, bona-fide visitors. Wondering where the bathrooms are, parking in the wrong spot, coming in late...

Met some lovely people and learned a lot about walking into a place of worship cold. Recommend it to everyone.

One of the drawbacks of being a preacher though is how hard it is to listen to someone else. You start taking the text in the direction you want to go, and I can be talked out of it if the preacher is good, but if not, I get annoyed and that is my problem, my sin of pride. I'm working on it.

The preacher I heard this morning did a wonderful job reading the Gospel, about Jesus sending out the 70, giving them wads of authority to shove around demons, and evil spirits in the name of Jesus! Wow, who wouldn't want that?! Where the hell was I when they were giving that power away? I didn't get anything like that in ordination, I'll tell you. Oh I got the poverty part of the instruction in spades... The church is very good at helping us pastors out with that. But as for the rest of it, I'm still waiting.

But then, the way the preacher read it, I realized that so much of the instruction was about when the townspeople reject those whom Jesus sends out, with all this atomic spiritual POWER.

If the townspeople reject you, Jesus says, shake off the dust from your shoes as testimony against them. Having just recently shaken the dust off my shoes, I can tell you the experience is nothing to write home about. Sort of anti-climatic really. An obscure little gesture that leaves people scratching their heads if they even bothered to stick around to see it.

"Why is he taking his shoes off in the street?"

"I don't know, I never knew what the hell he was doing when he was here, I don't expect I'll start now. That's why he had to go..."

What kind of power is this? Sure, you can kick Satan's ass, but don't mess with the little old lady who runs the altar guild. Sure, cast out demons in the name of GEEEZZZUSS, but don't piss off the old fart who never learned to deal with his life and don't want to see no Spanish in HIS church.

Because if you do, you'll be standing there in the middle of the street like an idiot holding your Crocs in your hand.

Here's what I wanted the preacher to say this morning...we are given all sorts of power, more than we will ever realize, except the power we most crave...the power to defend ourselves from being hurt. This power Jesus withholds. For when we exercise it, we become less than human, unworthy to be the bearers of grace and good news.

We love the "Mighty Fortress" God. But we don't fulfill our mission as bearers of Christ's love until we're standing in the middle of the street with our shoes in our hands...

THE GREEK FESTIVAL

It’s a cold, rainy weekend at the end of May. Must be time for the Greek Festival. Every year, those poor Greeks pick the crumbiest weekend of the year for their baklava, gyros, and souvlaki.

I went tonight, an annual tradition since coming to Long Island. This is my sixth Greek festival. I don’t know why I look forward to this like I do. While I was eating my Greek sausage, with grapes and bread and drinking Greek beer, watching the mist dripping off the blue and white canopy, I thought about that.

The only thing I can come up with is the Greek Festival represents all the good things I had hoped for in moving to Long Island. Coming home to NY and the city, feeling like I was among my own people again finally. Sitting among the Greeks, celebrating the diversity. The world was big here. It was generous. How easily it made room for you, for your few bucks all in a good cause. I could breathe. The Greek music, the raffles, the food and the drink. You would never see anything like this in PA. In PA, they would have the vapors and condemn this as immoral, especially for a church to do.

The first festival 6 years ago was about 4 weeks after we moved here. The boxes unpacked and put away, we were finding our way around and at least the immediate blocks were familiar. The call was still new, and hopeful. I didn’t know the full story of Epiphany yet. There was only promise, and hope and here I was, the newest member of the neighborhood taking part in my community.

Every year the Greek Festival rolls around as a reminder of those times. A little bit of the freshness, the wonder of this new place taken as it presents itself, none of the subtext visible yet, is there for the taking again, served up along with my gyro, an Athonos beer, and the baklava I will carry home in the white Styrofoam container.

+++++

They give tours of the cathedral, and the cathedral is absolutely gorgeous. Telly Savalas was a member of that parish, and gave the large narthex window. Just a bit of local color.

Seriously, I could be Greek Orthodox in my next life. I love the richness, all the missing bits of this weird American Bapto/Methodo Protestantism that you can never really completely escape here, filled in and fleshed out, and it’s like hearing a symphony live, after listening to a transistor radio plinging in your ear the rest of the year.

The Orthodox bring the whole cast of heaven along with them on the journey of faith. A rich raucous mob that sweeps you up and wants you to eat, eat. My sense is that the Orthodox are never lonely. There is always some heavenly ne’er do well at your door to be entertained.

Still, I had to smile, overhearing one of the tour guides, a typical lay person from the church, leading a group on a tour through the sanctuary. Very admirable. I stood apart, because I know I am a pain in the neck about this stuff. There I was, standing in the richness of glittering icons, the sacred chanting coming through the speakers, the faint traces of incense from the vespers liturgy, while the woman obviously trained not to assume anything at all about the people who would be coming through on the tours, explained about all the mosaics. They depict scenes and events from Jesus life she explained patiently.

I loved the woman’s explanations. She literally had explanations for everything.

She explained that Jesus didn’t go to school. He worked with his father as a carpenter until he was in his 20’s. We don’t know anything about Jesus from 20 to 30. We know that he was in the desert. Then, he started preaching when he was 30, and the first thing he had to do was prove to the people that he was the Messiah, so he did lots of miracles and things. He healed people, like this woman, who is Peter’s mother in law. Then he had to prove he was the Son of God to the apostles too.

Here is where Jesus walks on the water and Peter says, “I can do that too!” and he does, until he starts to drown and Jesus has to save him and that proves to the apostles that he is really the Son of God.

Ah, the sweet mystery of it all. I lit a candle, left a dollar offering and walked home in the mist. I’ll be back tomorrow for the baklava.

Empty House

Footsteps echo
all the doors ajar
showing their black seams
bright squares hanging
on the bare walls
what do we take
when go?
what do we leave behind?

266, the Sum of Democracy

In the April 20 edition of the New York Times, the front-page headline over a one inch column of print declares that two terrorist detainees were waterboarded 266 times by the CIA, according to declassified CIA documents. One detainee was waterboarded 183 over a span of 30 days. That breaks down to 6 times a day.

Here’s what I continually come back to, in the mind numbing brutality of this…some one counted. Someone, after each session, recorded it, faithfully, dutifully. 266. Not 265. Not 260. Not more than 100 times, not more than 200 times, not even less than 300 times. 266. Thinking it important. Thinking that someone would want to know.

Did they write this in a notebook? A little black book with spiral binding? Did they develop their own shorthand? Did their language grow more spare as the number climbed, no longer words but simply letters and numbers, gasping for breath, W B 8/15/02?

Did they stand off in the corner, scribbling the details, a few drops at a time, while the events were still fresh, the floor still wet? Or did they wait until the end of the day, sitting alone at a computer in a dark room with a single bulb burning above the keyboard, and blurt it all out at once?

And, what did they want from those who would read it? Praise? Understanding? Pity? Admiration? Respect? Gratitude? Protection?

After 266 times, does any of that matter?

Everything Overlooked (a poem in one try)

I have turned off the TV
to write this
and now the night's neglected children;
the ticking cuckoo clock,
the refrigerator humming,
the traffic hissing on Fulton,
the spattering rain on the windows,
the sighing floorboards,
the walls shifting the change
in their pockets,
the dried yellow ficus leaf
dropping to the blue rug,
step into the room from out of the
blaring shadows
stand here blinking,
shifting noiselessly
from foot to foot
"we have someone for you to meet,"
they say
and this scrawny thing steps up
looking defiant and lost
and they say, "it's your life
we've done the best we could with him
take him now, he belongs to you."
But I'm not falling for that again
what do they take me for anyway?
I grab the remote
it's 11:03 and I'm missing the news.

Copyright: Charles Oberkehr

REFLECTIONS

When you look into the mirror
You are not alone
Every year someone else is with you
Relatives you never knew
In ragged wool coats from the old world
Big dreams and lint in their pockets

Who am I? you will ask them one morning
In a moment of weakness
Do not expect an answer
Beyond the nose on your face.

copyright: Charles Oberkehr

POEM A DAY FOR APRIL / POETRY MONTH

TWO GREEKS

Jesus realizes that his hour has arrived, when two Greeks seek him out. That always seemed an odd bit of trivia to me, more suited to Jeopardy than the Gospel of John. Jesus spoke with Samaritans, lepers, women, tax collectors, Roman soldiers, religious and community leaders. What’s the big deal about a couple of Greeks?

Then this text was read at our bilingual contemporary worship Sunday night, the appointed text for the 5th Sunday in Lent, and I realized what a big deal it was. Here we were, navigating the fault lines between English and Spanish, Black, White and Brown, Young and Old, Traditional and Contemporary; all in an effort to embody a larger reality. Something more true and foundational. We felt like a flame clinging to the match in the teeth of fierce cultural (even congregational) winds.

For the first time, I heard this little reference, which acts almost like a throwaway line in the narrative, as a critical marker at the intersection of the Kingdom of God and the Powers That Be. These two Greeks seeking Jesus out is the reality of the Kingdom’s presence that breaks into the world like a raging flood, washing the flimsy pilings out from under the houses of fear and isolation the world builds on the shore of diversity, in order to take advantage of the lovely view.

Of course Jesus knew that the end was near when these Greeks came looking for him. How could he not know? He was beginning to transcend the barriers of culture, the boundaries between communities---the inviolate borders that exist between people and which serve the interests of those in power.

Jesus threatened to make all of that irrelevant not by slicing and dicing people up into new groups, but by drawing a big circle around all of them: Jew, Gentile, Samaritan, Greek, Male, Female, Gay, Straight, Sinner, Redeemed.

It struck me how tone-deaf we are today in the church toward this marker of the Kingdom. We still treat it like a throwaway line in the Passion narrative, while we collude with the Powers That Be to preserve our institutions as much as the Scribes and the Pharisees ever did.

The world draws us to it like iron to a magnet. We drag our faith along with us, and the world turns our faith into traditions and gives it back to us de-fanged and de-clawed. Traditions are faith tamed and made manageable. They are to faith as the cardboard cutouts of celebrities we stand next to like tourists having our pictures taken.

Can we hope to be the church and ignore this central component of the Kingdom that breaks down our Us and Them world into the Family of God? Can we continue without understanding that our faith, by its very existence, calls into question the Powers that Be every single day.

These Greeks coming to seek Jesus out were the down payment on a new world order that unites instead of dividing, by holding up the one thing that trumps all else. The all en-compassing Love of God that transforms everything, even the judgment of the cross, and makes us new here and now.

A CLEAN WHITE PAGE

We all begin here:
the silent enormity of
eternity’s bored stare;
the wish before the candles
are lit,
the pointy hat,
the elastic cutting your chin.
One morning you stand before the mirror
fogged with steam
a rainbow of clarity
rubbed in with a towel
and the familiar face
you’ve been attending to for years
hands you a note from your father.

The clean white page
is the measure of the universe
it is E=MC2
it is every pair of socks you packed
and carried from place to place
and never needed.
You are as inconsequential
between the margins and the faint blue lines.
Your pen is filled with smoke.
The angels will fly through the words you write
blowing them apart
like the wise gray heads of dandelions
muttering their little pronouncements
straight from the mouth of God.

Copyright: Charles Oberkehr

Parentheses

When my wife left for work this morning
I bolted the door,
(a dead bolt it just occurred to me)
because out of the blue
(or maybe not)
the click of the cylinder
reminded me of dying.
I went back to the kitchen
to finish my breakfast and coffee
considering that maybe my life ends
just this easily
a flick of the wrist
and eternity is as inconsequential
as a bowl of half warm oats
and a newspaper forever waiting to be read.
And then my father
(dead eight years)
sat down in his checkered robe and slippers
his hair going in a thousand directions at once
and took the Sports page.
I started to object
but who knows when forever
actually starts
everything immutable is in parentheses
the rest is up for grabs.
Tonight my wife
will turn her key in the lock
with a flick of the wrist
and (God willing) announce “I’m home”
(at least that’s what I’m expecting)

Copyright Charles Oberkehr, 2009

The Big Night Finally Arrives

Last night, we held our first bilingual contemporary liturgy, getting it in under the wire before a major winter storm hit. Today there’s a foot of snow on the ground, and I am letting the flu-ey bug that I held at bay with varying degrees of success yesterday, have its way with me.

Even with forecasters calling for a violent nor’easter to hit just about the time the liturgy was supposed to begin, we managed to have about 30 people there. Not bad for a first try.

On Thursday, we took out a section of 5 pews to make a place for the musicians and singers to be in the nave on the same level as the congregation. The young people loved it, the older folks…not so much. At the 10:00am service there were a lot double takes, smiles and frowns.

During the sermon, I said that some people will love this and some will hate it. But whether you love it or hate it is really beside the point. The point is whether arranging the sanctuary this way helps us to further the mission of our congregation. Will we be able to reach people with this liturgy and this arrangement that we wouldn’t reach otherwise? That’s really what it’s all about. If it doesn’t do that, we put everything back and try something else. I can see some people are going to have to chew on that awhile.

We had two keyboards, a teenage girl on the drums who insisted that her grandmother get her there so she could play, two guitars, and four singers. Being on the same level with the congregation lent a sense of intimacy to the liturgy. The whole thing lasted about 50 minutes. Snow was just beginning to fall as a few of the people were leaving. Two widows who live in the same building were beaming as they left. They said how exciting it was. I watched them cross the snowy street to their apartment building. Of all the people I pictured coming to this service, I never would have imagined it would be someone like them. God always has something to surprise you up his sleeve.

Inside, most of the people were talking in the aisle. There was a sense that the wind had shifted, and there was a kind of freshness in the air, like after a rain. We still have a lot of wrinkles to iron out, but there was a sense in the sanctuary that something unique had happened and even the imperfections were part of it. Maybe the most important part.