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Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sermon for January 30 by The Rev Ted Cobden

The scriptures for today invite us to consider a subject we
may have ambivalent feelings about: Humility.
Mic. 6.8 !God has told you, O mortal, what is good;
! ! and what does the LORD require of you
! but to do justice, and to love kindness,
! ! and to walk humbly with your God?
Five or six years ago, I had to go to physical therapy to try
to loosen up my shoulder. The muscles had become so
tensed up I could hardly move my arm. The therapist said
we are going to fix your shoulder, but you may experience
some pain as we massage it, exercise it and stretch some of
the muscles to loosen it up. The therapist did help my
shoulder to heal, but she was right, there were some
painful stretching moments. And even now after exercise I
have to firmly stretch my arms to keep the shoulder
flexible.
Practicing humility is like that. It requires painful stretching.
It challenges the way things are.
Jesus captures that unpleasant challenging tone in his
teaching which we read today. He enjoins us to be poor in
spirit and to be meek. That is his way of telling us that God
wants us to be humble.
It’s hard for anyone to be humble. The dictionary defines
humility as having a modest or low estimate of one’s own
importance. It is, I think, especially challenging for
Americans. We don’t want to be humble. We want to be the
best. On this Superbowl weekend we see the opposite of
humility. When a player scores a touchdown he does all
sorts of antics to display his hubris slamming the ball,
pounding his chest and hooting in pride.
There may be a place for this unrestrained exuberance on a
playing field. But we have seen how ugly this arrogance can
be. Francie spoke about it last week when she mentioned
the way public rhetoric can be divisive and caustic
suggesting to unbalanced people to do horrendous acts as
one did in Tuscon Arizona a few weeks ago. She said this
arrogance can do bad things in the church also. For
instance, we anathematize others who do not believe just
as we do. We have divided the church into factions.
So what is the payoff for humility? In the biblical perspective
humility allows us to take God more seriously and ourselves
less seriously. When we take ourselves too seriously, we get
all puffed up with our point of view, with our agenda. We
can’t hear others. We have little room to be open to God’s
surprises and God’s possibilities.
When we are swollen up and rigid with self, we have a hard
time laughing at ourselves. A good sense of humor is a
barometer of humility.
When we take ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously, we will be open to the way God cares for us even
in the darkest places. We need not sulk alone or cower in
dread, we will be looking for the companion who knows the
way of the cross.
When we take ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously, we are less likely to make an idol of our religious
preconceptions. As if we know it all. When we are poor in
spirit, we are open to the huge mystery of God. We stand
before God poor in spirit but rich in awe.
When we tale ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously, we plan for the future in a broader way. I have
been a planner. I enjoy it. I have succeed by doing it. But the
experience of these past 2 or 3 years as a member of St.
James have humbled me.
I used to plan this way. I would confer with stake holders in
an enterprise -- often an aspect of a ministry or mission of
the church. We would state the goal and steps to reach the
goal, and then we would ask God to bless our goal.
Now in the process we at St. James are in, we are trying to
take God more seriously—to see the goal as God’s goal. We
have to stretch to be humble and open to God because the
situation is in flux, the components are changing, and the
opportunities are opening up in wonderful ways.
We have been blessed to have Crissy Farm in this interim
period, but we see the limitations here and we know we will
need to press on. We have been blessed to have St.
George’s congregation join us on this journey as they are
going through their exodus. We have begun to explore the
future mission of the Episcopal Church in the South
Berkshire deanery, and we ask what strategy does God want
us to undertake in the next five years. We will be
celebrating the 250th anniversary of St. James next year. We
are presently making plans for that. It will be a wonderful
opportunity to look at our past and ask how St. James will
fit into God’s mission in the future.
Then last Wednesday evening the Men’s group had the
privilege of hearing from Fred Harris how the plans for St.
James Place are progressing. Fred gave us a very impressive
and encouraging report of their vision and the outline of
the steps they will take to meet their goals. St. James Place
will renovate the buildings and provide opportunities for
many non profit organizations to use this inviting space.
I won’t say more because my hope is that Sally and Fred will
give our congregation as a whole the opportunity to hear of
their vision and the progress they are making.
One thing I will say is that in the face of all the challenges
and opportunities God is opening up for us, God wants us
to be humble and see the future as God’s future and that he
will guide us into the future. God will guide us as long as
we love kindness and justice. That is that we respect each
other and our various view points. Recognize that each of
us is doing the best we can to do God’s will. That by
conversing with one another and giving each other respect
and kindness we will make more room and comfort for new
possibilities to emerge.
Lastly when we take ourselves less seriously and God more
seriously we are open to the dimensions of kindness and
justice. When we walk humbly with God and allow ourselves
to be shaped by God’s desires and will, we love as God
does. We begin to see more vividly the needs of others. We
see those whom society has demeaned and marginalized --
women, blacks, Latinos, gays and lesbians, the mentally ill,
the addicted, the poor--in humility we ask what would
Jesus have us do to stand with them.
One of the acts of kindness and justice we take as a
congregation is the support of Gideon’s Garden. It is a
humble act undertaken largely by the youth using simple,
straight forward work in the soil with seeds, water and
manure. The fruits of the labor go to help those in need
through the People’s Pantry and Breaking Bread Kitchen. Yet
this humble effort is a model for all of us to remind us how
God wants us to do justice, and to love kindness, and to
walk humbly with our God.
And don’t forget to stretch.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Rector's Report--Annual Meeting

Jan. 23, 2011
The Rev. Frances A. Hills

Well, I can’t say it was just another ordinary year here at sunny St. James…
What a year we’ve had together!

If your remember a year ago we had Three Committees gathering as much information as possible in a necessarily short period of time, To help us discern a way forward. The committees were very well-run and did good work. We heard their final reports at a parish meeting on Feb. 23. At that meeting, everyone had an opportunity to write what they thought was helpful and not helpful about each committee’s plan. Everyone also had an opportunity to write what they felt God was calling us to do. We had so hoped that through that process a way forward would be clear. But it wasn’t. About half the congregation was interested in trying to restore the building, and the other half, although they had various solutions, did not want to restore the building. The idea of taking down the building was almost too painful for anyone to think about for very long, although our insurance would most probably have covered the costs of demolition & clearing. Given our financial situation, either restoring the building or building something new seemed out of reach. It was a terrible place to be, and all the while, the insurance company was breathing down our necks threatening to cancel our insurance. On top of that, the Diocese would not let us keep the building up, if it wasn’t insured.

To keep the insurance company from cancelling our insurance, we had to make a monthly report to them during 2010, telling them the progress we’d made toward resolution. By working at a resolution and sending in our reports, we negotiated three extensions on the insurance last year. Then on Feb. 24, we received an offer to buy the building from an anonymous non-profit. Of course now we know the non-profit is St. James Place (SJP), headed by our own Sally and Fred Harris. The spring and summer was spent in negotiations…Lots of back and forth. The sale price was going to be $390,000, until, as a result of the survey, we discovered there was ½-acre less property than the Town records had indicated. We went back to negotiations and settled on $300,000. The sales price was derived from the value of the property cleared (~$700,000) less the cost of demolition and removal f the building (~$400,000).

Although there was quite a bit of conversation early on in the negotiations
about this being a Purchase-Sale-Lease Agreement, when the Vestry received
the actual documents, it was only a Purchase & Sale Agreement. There was no part of the agreement that included the parish of St. James leasing back the building.
You need to know that.

There is a possibility of the Parish leasing the worship space for worship or perhaps for weddings and funerals, if we decide that is the best thing to do.
But I also know that SJP is exploring at lots of exciting ways the building might be used otherwise. The Vestry has invited SJP, when they’re ready, to present a power-point about the building use options they are exploring at Crissey Farm after church. At this time it seems  there would not be space for parish offices or storage or classrooms that we could leave set-up in the Parish House. There are lots of questions, and certainly one of them is a time frame for when the building might be useable.

Now I’ve mentioned that our insurance would most probably have covered the $400,000 demolition of the building and clearing of the lot. Had we gone that route, the parish would now have a prime piece of cleared real estate valued at $700,000. But the Vestry of this congregation did not choose to go that route. We didn’t take that option because we know the importance of that 150-year-old building to the people of this parish and to the Town. So, as a parish we sacrificed perhaps $400,000 because we very much want SJP to succeed—regardless of whether this congregation uses the building again or not.  You need to know that.

And I also want you to know there was the possibility of another option. In June a person came to me and said he would very much like to buy the property for about $700,000, as is. That was at a time when we were in good-faith negotiations with SJP. Again sacrificing about $400,000, the parish supported the dream of SJP and did not pursue this informal offer, because we want SJP to happen—regardless of whether the congregation ever uses that building again. You need to know that.
         
Now I know I’ve talked a lot about the building sale today because I think those things really needed to be said, and I hope they were heard.

The year 2010 had a lot of other things happening in the life of this congregation
as well. At our Vestry Retreat in January, we drafted a Missional Challenge Question:“How does St. James become a Christian community relevant to youth, young parents, and the next generation by taking God’s gifts of nurturing and hospitality out to the unchurched?”

We worked on this through Gideon’s Garden. There we found God’s mission in a variety of surprising ways. In 2010, with the leadership of Pennie Curry and Brendan Farnam, our church developed some amazing relationships with the WIC Program (Through Community Health Programs); with  B.R.I.D.G.E., especially through their multi-cultural children’s camp; with the Rail Road St. Youth; People’s Pantry, and Breaking Bread Kitchen.  With several community organizations, we helped write and sponsor a grant to help eradicate hunger in South County. If you were at the Sunday service on Oct. 10, you heard about the kinds of Friendship, Growth, Knowledge, Mentoring, Compassion, and Responsibility that’s being cultivated in that missional garden, as well as vegetables to feed hungry people.

In 2010 during Lent at Crissey Farm, we shared “A Season of Common Worship” with Christ Church Episcopal-Trinity Lutheran, St. Paul, Good Shepherd, and St. George. Many thought this was a wonderful coming together of Episcopalians from South Berkshire County, so some of us joined together again during Advent.
St. George and St. James were the “regulars”, and CCE-TLC joined us for one Sunday. A highlight of Advent was our joining St. George in Lee for their last service with their Rector Donna Trebilcox and the last Sunday service in their church. Since St. Paul and Good Shepherd are listening to God’s Spirit and finding their way in a new relationship together, they did not choose to interrupt that by being part of the Advent worship. However, we did join St. Paul in Stockbridge on Christmas Day and the Sunday following. During Epiphany we have extended our common worship with St. George Lee, and they will be worshiping with us for the time being.

We will continue our conversations with St. George and see how the Spirit leads us in terms of our possibly coming together in a more formal way. For now this is just a conversation. Nothing has been “decided”.  You need to know that.
It is a joy and privilege to welcome the people of St. George into this community, as they grieve the loss of their rector and eventually their buildings; and look forward with vision and courage to what God has in store for them next.
Something else about 2010 I’d like to highlight is the Artist of the Month Program.
We have just completed three-years of this wonderful, life-giving program that came to us as a gift from the creative soul of Charlene Peet. The Artist of the Month Program is now having a little “hiatus” as the Spirit helps it regroup.
Back three years ago, Charlene came to me with a dream that it would be wonderful to invite people in the parish to share their art, and to ask them to tell us how they felt God might be working through their creativity. I don’t think any of us could have imagined…First of all how much incredible talent there is among us!
And how many people were willing to grace us with their gifts. Or what a rich addition to our Coffee Hours the artist program would be. Or how many of us started getting to get to know each other in a very different, deeper way---Seeing art and talking about it. I imagine some of you have worshipped with some of these artists for years and had no idea they created such beautiful things! Charlene, my prayer is that the Artist of the Month program will find the new life, direction, and leadership you are hoping for. But for now…THANK YOU. THANK YOU for blessing St. James with this amazing program!

You know it’s really incredible how we have carried on here at Crissey Farm . . . for 2 ½ years now.  That is thanks to each one of you who faithfully continue to worship with this community and participate in God’s work.

I especially want to acknowledge the choir and our Minister of Music Charles Olegar for bringing us the Good News week after week in song and music, bells,
horn, drum, harp, strings, and even kazoo! We are indeed blessed by such remarkable, faithful and creative musicians.


And behind the scenes our Parish Secretary Bonnie Weiland continues to work at home to produce our bulletins and coordinate our ROTA schedules.

Thanks go as well to Fairview Hospital for letting us do most of our copying there (many hundreds of dollars) and for hosting our Executive Committee  and Vestry meetings.

Now just think about what all it takes to create our worship experience here at Crissey Farm! Our thanks to Gary and Andrew, the owners, who make this space available to us. We’re also really thankful this year to Rick from Crissey Farm, who is helping us with the heavy set up and take down each week.

Then there’s our great Hospitality, Altar Guild, Ushers, Greeters, Lectors, Prayer Writers, Acolytes, Chalice Bearers, Healing Ministers. Those who help set up, take down, and clean up. And those yummy coffee hours! ‘Special thanks to our Christian formation teachers, who quietly give up their own worship time to nurture our children in the faith.

We also owe our thanks to Wheeler & Taylor who provide a space for our Thursday Eucharist free of charge.

And I want to say thank you to the Vestry for their time, talent, wisdom  and dedication during a very challenging year. Finally, our Executive COMMITTEE.
There’s no way to tell you How many hours, How much talent, How much grace
These four people have given to this parish this year. It is not many Vestries and Executive Committees that ever have the experience of selling a church. Now we all know more about insurance, appraisals, and attorneys than we ever wanted to know! These four have been so FAITHFUL and LOVING and GOOD SPIRITED and WISE, that I hope you will join me in a huge show of thanks….
         
As St. James Episcopal Church, Great Barrington, we enter 2011 with lots of unknowns. The world around us has seen seismic changes in areas from technology to globalization. The world of the Church—Not just St. James, but all Churches—has also changed immensely. I’m reading a book now (Missional Map Makers, Alan Roxburg)h that talks about how strategic planning, which many of us are very experienced and good at, just doesn’t work anymore. The kinds of challenges and questions that need our attention just don’t fit into a neat box of Goal and Objectives.

But although the world and church  are changing in unprecedented ways,  we can face the future with courage because God has brought us through some really hard times, and we can trust God will continue to be with us and guide us as we continue to seek the future God has in mind for us. That’s what missional thinking is all about…Realizing it’s God who has the mission, already, and we don’t have to invent it (what a relief!). What we are called to do is to listen to scripture, each other and our community; and to discern God’s mission in our own time and place…AND THEN TO JOIN IT!

We’ve already experienced this through Gideon’s Garden. We’ve seen the Spirit move there in mighty ways. So I charge all of us to keep our eyes, ears and hearts
open and listening to the next place God calls us. Related to this, I’d like to leave you with a quote I just read, “It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission that has a church in the world…God is on the move and the church is always catching up with him. We join his mission. We should not ask him to join ours.” (Quoted in Dwight Zschelle paper p. 167. From Journal of Religious Leadership)

My prayer for St. James in 2011, as we prepare for our 250th Celebration in 2012,
is that we will gladly join God’s mission of forgiveness, reconciliation, hope and love and be signs of these to this sinful and broken world. Thank you.   

A Sermon Preached January 23, 2011, Epiphany 3A

By the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector
1 Corinthians 1:10-18

What happened in Tucson a couple of weeks ago is baffling. It’s hard to believe
someone’s insane frustration and anger can lead to something as devastating as that. . .Killing and injuring many and mostly innocent bystanders. We can’t begin to imagine the physical, spiritual, emotional and financial suffering that’s involved. No doubt the pain, suffering, fear and other repercussions will go on for a very long time. This incident has shaken the core of the people in the U.S. We’re horrified to realize (once again)…It CAN happen here. In the blink of an eye. Sane or insane, self-will was run riot in Tucson. Someone could only see the world through their own eyes, through the lens of their personal agenda; and people were killed. People were hurt.
                            
Now it’s good that kind of self-will and personal agenda never happens in the Church, isn’t it? But, of course, it does. We know it, and St. Paul knew it 2000 years ago when he wrote to the Church in Corinth. It seems they were fighting because of the loyalties they’d developed towards the persons who’d baptized them. Somehow they’d become competitive about which one was better. Obviously in doing this, they’d gotten off-track from the faith they were actually baptized into, and they’d made into idols the ones who’d initiated them into the faith of the crucified Christ. They were promising allegiance to Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, and arguing which was better…

Paul gets a report of these quarrels through Chloe’s friends, and calls them up short: “(So) Has Christ been divided?” In other words, “Have you just decided to cut up the body of Christ, which you yourselves are as his Church?” Then Paul calls them back to a unity of focus and allegiance: “What you are about as the body of Christ is living into the message of the Cross.” The important focus here is about Jesus, about his dying and rising. That’s what you’re baptized into! That’s what you must be in agreement about, and you must be united in the same mind and same purpose….‘None of this quarreling about these unimportant things, which you start to worship as idols, instead of Christ crucified and risen.

Now I must say St. James, it’s been reported to me (but not by Chloe) that there are some quarrels among you. So we must really take this scripture to heart, because we are bound together by the love of God in Christ and in the Cross of Christ. At St. James, we have (at least) two visions going on here among us: One is to go back and worship at 352 Main St., to try to reclaim life as it was in a beautiful, well-restored place. The other vision is to do something new and to be open to more possibilities: To let the Spirit lead us in our conversation with St. George Church, to become more and more a church that’s listening to God’s nudges to understand the future God wants for us.

Although there are these two visions, which may or may not intersect with each other, we are not free just to slam each other. We are not free just to complain and snipe about one another. When these things stay underground or to the parking lot, they poison us as Christ’s body. They divide the body of Christ, which is intended to be whole.  Now it’s not that we won’t have our differences, but as followers of Jesus, we’re called to a higher ground. We’re called to place our common commitment to Christ above anything else. So if something else is more important to us than Jesus, it becomes an idol—a false god, and conflict will inevitably escalate. Now an antidote to this is to really listen to each other so that giving and receiving forgiveness becomes possible. If forgiveness happens, it is a gift from God, but there are things we can do to help create an environment for it to happen. The contemplative Richard Rohr sheds some light on this when he writes: “Do not judge. To see clearly, we cannot start with ‘no’…We must start with ‘yes’. This is a ‘yes’ of basic acceptance, which means not too quickly labeling, analyzing, or categorizing things as ‘in or out’, ‘good or bad’, ‘up or down’. You have to leave the field open, a field in which God and grace can move.” Rohr continues, “The judgmental mind prevents you from being present to the full moment by trying to ‘divide and conquer’. Instead, you end up dividing and being conquered.”
 
As Christians, we are called to cultivate a life in common…It’s not about divide and conquer.  How we are with each other IS what matters. And the distraction conflict causes takes away precious energy from God’s work that needs doing. Like those first century Christians, what we are about as the Body of Christ is living into the message of the Cross.

My hope is that we can move to a place of deeper listening and understanding,
So that God’s Spirit has a chance to show us an even better vision than any we may already have—so God’s Spirit has a chance to help us find consensus, a way forward that serves the common good, regardless of our personal agendas. On this day of our 249th Annual Meeting, I invite us to consider the One into whose name we are baptized, the one who calls us to lose our lives to save them… Is his Cross foolishness to us? Or is it the very power of God?  

Sunday, January 16, 2011

A Sermon Preached January 16, 2011 by the Rev. Frances A. Hills, Rector

Epiphany 2 A
John 1:29-42

This morning I invite us to think about the best teachers we’ve ever had.
What were they like? I’m remembering especially my Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor, Ed.


Now Ed had a PhD in psychology, and he was theologically well-trained at Duke Divinity School. He was brilliant! He could have taught didactically all day long, with learned lectures and charts and graphs and immense knowledge. But he didn’t. He told stories. ‘Used metaphors. ‘Asked us to reflect on our experience. And he listened. And he asked us (the students in my CPE group) to tell stories...
The stories of our experiences as hospital chaplains with our patients, and the stories of what was going on in our lives and spirits as we did this work. Then he’d ask us to think of a Bible story that might have the same dynamics as we were experiencing in our lives and ministries. It was a real challenge and discipline to learn to think theologically like that about our lives and work and how they might be related to the Bible narrative.


Now if we students asked Ed a question he usually asked us one back…Along the lines of, “What do YOU think about it?” Or instead of giving us a direct answer, he’d tell us a story. (Kind of like how Jesus told parables to answer questions.) Somehow in his stories and open-ended questions there was always room for our own thoughts and associations to move around freely. He wasn’t too interested in our just learning facts and therapeutic techniques (although those were important).What he really wanted was for us to become very honest about and observant of human nature. He wanted us to “listen” to the human stories and to Holy Scripture and to appropriate the deep truths of the Gospel into our very beings. This takes time…a lifetime, to be exact! And it took learning to trust the people in our CPE Group enough to share the stories that really mattered. It took a lot of story-telling and listening before we really came to know ourselves and each other. So, if anyone ever asked me about my CPE supervisor, I would say FIRST and foremost he was a gifted teacher (”rabbi”).


Now remember in today’s Gospel when Jesus asked Andrew and the other what they were looking for (What was their heart’s desire) they didn’t answer the question directly. I wonder if perhaps, like John the Baptizer before them, they did recognize in Jesus exactly what they were looking for, and so named it by calling Jesus, “Rabbi” (Teacher). And then to advance their cause of learning as much as they could from this rabbi, they asked him, “Where are you staying?”. They must have known they were not going to learn all they wanted from this man in one easy lesson. They needed to get to know him. And Jesus wisely knew they were not going to learn all they wanted from him with a few simple answers. So he responds to them with this great invitation, “Come and see”. My guess is
Jesus wanted to get to know them too.


In the Bible study class Tuesday, Susan Frantz observed about this story that Jesus had used a “wise-teacher technique”. Instead of giving a closed answer that shut them down, he opened the door even wider for their deeper questions when he said, “Come and see.” So they went to where Jesus was staying and no doubt talked. And listened. And told stories. They got to know each other better. Unlike John the Baptizer, who called Jesus “the Lamb of God”, Andrew calls him “Messiah”. After first recognizing Jesus as a great Rabbi, then being with him and knowing him better, Andrew’s first response is he wants to share this great joy with his brother Simon. After all, he’s found the “Messiah”! Of course he wants to tell his brother, and he wants to introduce Simon to Jesus in person. He wants to share his joy!


So the dynamics in this Gospel are about recognizing Jesus, then coming to know him better, and then bringing others to know him. In a sense, this is a pretty good description of the work of the Church! Certainly this recognizing, inviting and welcoming, and spending time with Jesus, is essential to us as individual Christians and as a parish community. And this can happen in many ways. Hopefully it happens in our worship, both corporate and individual. But it also happens by our helping to name where we see God in our lives and in the lives of others. If we start watching for God to show up in our lives, I think we will not be disappointed. And when we recognize God in our lives, it’s good just to spend time there…Enjoying God’s presence and savoring the story of how it all happened.


And then enthused by our experience, we ourselves, like Andrew, have the opportunity to become the teachers and the ones who invite others. By sharing our stories in ways that leave the other lots of space for their own thoughts and experiences, we become the wise teachers, who, like Jesus, know it’s not so much about the “correct answer”, “right plan” or the “quick fix” as the process of the relationship. This is the process of recognizing and coming to know each other by telling our stories and listening to each other.


We become teachers who “Know how to open the doors even wider so that the deeper questions can be asked.”


This is what today’s Gospel offers us… “Come and see”. Amen