A Syllabus for the UW Episcopal Community @ St. Francis House

A Syllabus for the UW Episcopal Community 

@ St. Francis House, 2014-2015

“A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.” Wendell Berry

About Coming Together

One of St. Francis House’s core qualities is a thing we call, “No strings.” No strings is the idea that you are always welcome in this community as you are, without condition. In turn, this place, her student leaders, and staff, commit to share themselves as they are. As people committed to following the one who is Truth, we commit to be truthful with one another. And yet, no strings is more than that. As it turns out, in the commitment to love without condition and be truthful with each other, we discover we need each other in order to be truthful.

No strings means your level of participation in St. Francis House comes without judgment. Whenever you are here, you are welcome.

That being true, the truth also compels us to tell you that our community’s experience in engaging God’s ministry of reconciliation together is enhanced by each one’s regular participation in the life of the community. You matter here. Regular participation in Sunday worship, Wednesday dialogues, or both, will bless and grow our fellowship. We believe regular participation will most bless and grow you, too.

No one will be here all of the time - not even the Chaplain - but know that being welcomed here includes being valued here. We value the unique gifts each one of you brings to this community.

Sundays at the Episcopal Center

Every week, our community gathers in the St. Francis Chapel at 5 pm for worship. Most weeks, we celebrate the Holy Eucharist together. On the 2nd Sunday of each month, however, our community celebrates “A Service of Light,” in the style of Taizé. 

There are several ways to be involved on Sundays. Talk to Fr. Jonathan or anybody you see doing any of these things if you’re interested in learning more. 

Ways to be involved on Sunday:

• Help prepare the altar area for worship before the service.
• Read the lessons and/or prayers of the people.
• Bake communion bread.
• Play an instrument during worship.*
• Assist the priest during the service, serve the wine at Eucharist.*
• Read a lesson in a foreign language (Taizé service).
• Lead a Taizé service.
• Serve on a dishwashing team.

Wednesdays at the Episcopal Center (“Life Together”)

Each Wednesday, our community gathers in the Club House (downstairs) at 6:30 pm for a student meal, followed by a short presentation and small group conversations. At 8:00 pm, our time concludes with Compline in the Chapel.

Ways to be involved on Wednesday:

• Prepare a meal with friends.
• Play music for Compline.
• Lead Compline.
• Serve on a dishwashing team.

FALL RETREAT

SEPT 26-28!

REGISTER/INFO ONLINE

www.stfrancisuw.org

“Worship and Dinner,” Sundays, Fall 2014

Sept 7 Holy Eucharist and Dinner
Sept 14           1st Service of Light (2nd Sunday) with Taizé worship
Sept 21           House Blessing Eucharist
Sept 26-28      RETREAT at Lutherdale Camp, Elkhorn, WI.
Oct 5               St. Francis Sunday
Oct 12 Service of Light with Taizé worship
Oct 19 Holy Eucharist and Dinner
Oct 26 Holy Eucharist and Dinner
Nov 2 All Saints’ Sunday
Nov 9 Service of Light with Taizé worship
Nov 16 Holy Eucharist and Dinner
Nov 23 Christ the King Sunday
Nov 30 1st Sunday of Advent
Dec 7 Holy Eucharist and Dinner
Dec 14          Pre-Christmas Hymn Sing (last Sunday of the semester)
Dec 20           SFH closes for winter break
Jan 18          1st service of the Spring semester

“Life Together,” Wednesdays, Fall 2014

Sept 10 Good Beginnings

Sept 17 Slow Church, Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus

Sept 24 Slow Church, Stability and Patience

Oct 1 Slow Church, Sabbath, Reconciliation, and Wholeness

Oct 8 Slow Church, Receiving and Generously Sharing God’s Gifts

Oct 15 Open Gathering

Oct 22 From Prayer to Service, at the His House Community

Oct 29 From Prayer to Service, at the St. Francis House Community

Nov 5 From Prayer to Service, service project night

Nov 12 From Prayer to Service, debriefing

Nov 19 Open Gathering

Nov 26 No Gathering (Thanksgiving)

Dec 3 Ephesians 4, Unity in the Body of Christ

Dec 10 Galatians 5 - 6, The Fruit of the Spirit and Bearing Each Others’ Burdens

Dec 17 Open Gathering

Young Adult Leadership Council

Anna Barker, Retreat                                

Michael Fleischman, Life Communication                 

Shannon Jablonski, Social                              

Terri Roth, Building and Grounds                       

Claire Spence, Music

Noah Van Dam, Meal Coordination

What Leadership Looks Like

* Offer your gifts in a regular way for the life of our community
* Regularly participate in Sun and/or Wed gatherings
* Keep the Episcopal Center, students, staff, mission in your prayers
* Participate in twice monthly meetings of the YALC

Look For These

Monthly Women’s Group * October Pumpkin Carving * Thanksgiving Dinner 

Slow Church: an EpiscoBadger conversation in 4 parts

Tonight is week 2 of a 4 week conversation we're having at the UW-Episcopal Center based on the book 'Slow Church.' In case you missed last week, here's the outline we (mostly) followed. Tonight's a new night, and we'll be looking at the first large portion of the book, which talks bout the relationship of ethics to taste, stability, and patience. Dinner's at 6:30p, convo at 7p, Compline to close. Come!

Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus 

(a 4 week conversation at the UW-Episcopal Center)

“Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually; to be spiritual is to be amazed.” Abraham Heschel

“Above all, trust the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“We are impatient, anxious to see the whole picture, but God lets us see things slowly, quietly. The Church [has] to learn to wait.” Pope Francis

Themes

The Drama of God’s Story

Act One: Creation
Act Two: The Fall 
Act Three: Israel
Act Four: Jesus
Act Five: The Church

“The biblical narrative is the story of the whole creation, from the beginning through the present to the end - and yet it’s not so much a story that we mechanically act out but rather a story that serves to form us into the people we need to be.”

Improvisation: 3 Rules

1. Always agree with your improv partner
2. Not just yes, but YES AND.
3. There are no mistakes, only opportunities

Patience and Collaboration: A God Willing to Move Slowly

“All around us we see the ‘huge spontaneous upheaval of the entire human race’ that Thomas Merton talked about, a revolution he rightly predicted would be manifested in desperation, cynicism, violence, self-contradiction, fear and hope, doubt and belief, creation, destruction, and ‘obsessive attachments to images, idols, slogans, programs that only dull the general anguish for a moment until it bursts out everywhere.’ In the midst of the frantic, churning, disturbed and roiling shallow waters of modernity, Slow Church seeks to anchor itself in the deep, still waters of a remarkably patient yet radically immanent God…

“In everything, Slow Church looks ahead to the eschatological redemption that is the climax of the central drama of the world. Slow Church takes the long view, examining all thought and culture, every ideology and assumption, all action and faction by the messianic light of the last day. Paradoxically, taking the long view allows us to be truly attentive to the details of the here and now. It all matters, nothing is wasted.”

Scriptures illuminating the patience of God: Matthew 13, 1 Corinthians 13. 

“God’s plan has always been centered on the gathering of a peculiar people who will embody reconciliation.” Reconciliation all things to God is the mission of God: the healing of creation, us to God and one another.

Chaplain’s note: reconciliation is both the love of the community for the world around it *and* the love of the community for one another: Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector were each called to be Jesus’ disciples. They were opposites within the twelve.

We are learning to act out the drama of God’s reconciliation, an improvisation, without fear.

“The resurrection of Jesus relieves us of the fear of death.” 1 Cor 15:55 “Those who love their sisters and brothers have already passed from death to life (1 John 3:14)

“The primary work of Slow Church is not attracting people to our church buildings, but rather cultivating together the resurrection life of Christ, by deeply and selflessly loving our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and even our enemies. As we holistically embody God’s love, we find joy that we pray will draw people closer to Christ.”

“The nature of the drama being played out in creation is that the troupe of actors who were conscious of the drama and actively cooperating with it began small, but it is slowly expanding, gradually winning the trust of all humanity until everyone is playing his or her role.”

Conversation Starters

According to Scripture, what is the ultimate end to which God is bringing all of creation? What is God doing in and with the world?

According to Scripture, how has God chosen to accomplish God’s mission in the world? What is the role that the Church has been given?

What are the particular strategic initiatives to which God has called our local faith community, in its particular time and place, in participation with God’s mission?

What are the theological and practical convictions that we share as a faith community and that give shape to our following together in the way of Jesus?

What are our shared practices for intentionally nurturing the formation of our local faith community?

Don't Make the Rocks Cry OutA Call for Stories of God at Work

Rocks with stories, from the Chapel garden at St. Francis House.

"The key to the future is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known." Pete Seeger

My wife texted me that quote, which she read on a bumper sticker, this morning. She texted me that quote as an encouragement because she says ol' Pete was an artist and storyteller like me. I don't know if I'm a storyteller. I know I like to talk. I also love to listen. Especially to stories. And I am convinced that the world is more beautiful when and where stories are told, because it is not easy to share a story without also sharing a part of yourself. To tell a story is to admit that this thing and not that thing caught your attention, commanded your interest. Something grabbed you and, in the grabbing, showed you something about yourself.

To tell a story is to reveal the gravity of your heart, as well as the things that most pull into that gravity. Stories, of course, are full of ideas, details, deep truths, and meaning. In addition to these, the gravity of the heart picks up things like fears and sadnesses, hopes, passions, and joys. 

A friend on campus told me recently, "I need to hear stories of Jesus at work in the lives of other people."

I love stories. I love my Church. With my friend, I long for my Church to tell more of her stories.

Modesty, false or true - along with God knows what else - silences far too many stories with the potential to speak to the longing of my friend. But storytelling can only feel like boasting when the longing of my friend and others like her is forgotten. Stories are living water for the a thirsty soul. Who, possessing such water, would deny it to another? 

In an email from my Gathering of Leader peeps this morning: 

It is important for us to know, really know, whether our efforts to become a loving community of worship, education, and outreach bearing witness to Christ’s redeeming grace are bearing fruit. What we believe about this impacts our ministry and identity. How do we add, as a tool of assessment, our stories of transformed lives?

And then, as I am writing this post, a PhD candidate unaware of this post comes in to tell me his advisor has given him only one question with which to frame his dissertation: "What is the story you're trying to tell?"

To see and speak the things we have seen - these are the actions of those who belong to the Story of God With Us. Scripture and Spirit. 

What are your stories of the Spirit at work in your faith community, your neighborhood community, strangers, your family - in you? What are your stories of unexpected joy in the promised-still-surprising presence of Jesus? What part of the story of Scripture is the Spirit singing back to you these days in the lives of those around you? 

How will you tell the stories you see? With love, of course, but how else? In a book? Through your vocation? On a blog? Through your art? In music? Dancing? How else will you tell them?

Promise us you'll find some way to give voice to the stories you see.

Did you know that some of the people you are afraid to tell these stories to are longing with all that they are to hear them?

"I want to hear stories of Jesus at work in the lives of other people," said my friend. 

I do too.

An Unsolicited (but Awesome) Idea For Your Church's Next Photo Directory

Put a map in the back, with dots marking everywhere a member of your faith community lives AND works. Keep the dots anonymous if you need to, but leave no one out!

You are never far from saints.

PS If you do this, let me know. I'd love to see it and hear how it changed (or didn't change) your faith community's imagination for being Church.

A Prayer for UW-Madison at the Start of a New Academic Year

Gracious God, our heavenly Father, the Son you sent among us collected his followers for three years of training. These disciples appear - from the record of the gospels - to have learned very little during that time. Three of them slept through the closest thing to a final Jesus gave them. Lord, have mercy. The example of your friends does not ease our fear that we will find ourselves in the course of the year ahead stepping up to challenges that will expose us. Thank God for your Spirit.

Patient God, may the example of the disciples a) keep the rest of us from making enslaving idols of our failures, and b) save us from our illusions of self-importance.

God of Anna, Simeon, and all who longed to see your promise in their lifetime, in the semester ahead, show us Jesus. Show us Jesus in the usual places, yet surprise us, like Moses, with fiery challenges to our presumptions to know where you belong and so also where and through whom you will talk to us. Give us your Spirit. Train our eyes to see the Spirit's active presence in language labs, science centers, coffee shops, and even on State Street. Seeing your Spirit, give us courage to laugh and be gentle.

God of parables, teach us the humility necessary to seek knowledge not for the sake of curiosity, vanity, or - God help us - money, but - as Bernard would remind us - for the sake of the love that is knowledge in order to serve.

Finally, God of victory over death and lots of other possibilities we haven't yet imagined, make of the Episcopal community at St. Francis House a living parable of community, love, and joy in the Gospel of Jesus, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, for ever and then some. We love you, and we ask these things in Jesus' name.

Thanks.

Amen.

"The First Thing God Noticed" (And Why I've Stopped Writing Sermons)

I've been experimenting with noteless sermons lately. Thus fewer sermons here. Disaster, I know. You'll cope. And I'll have to come up with more honest-to-goodness blog-only posts. Like a real writer. You know, with original material. A win-win. And not forever, maybe. (I'm still talking myself into it.) We'll see.

Truthfully, I'm enjoying the noteless sermons. I think I most enjoy the openness I'm given to be surprised by the lessons on Sunday evening. Of course, I still read and pray the lessons in the week before each Sunday's liturgy, but if in the moment of the Assembly's worship, the Spirit whispers a compelling word or observation, I've already given myself permission to receive that whisper in a way that can change everything. An exercise in the discipline of being present to the present moment and God's activity in the present moment which - increasingly - is more in keeping with the shape and character of daily ministry. Improvisation at the Spirit's leading.

I know these sermons aren't as polished as my written ones, or half as clever. I hope they're less controlled and so also more honest, giving greater voice to the texts. I enjoy that these sermons belong to the worship and resist the preacher's attempt to cling to a sermon outside of the context of worship.

For that last reason especially, I'm not going to try to reassemble these spontaneous sermons here. Instead, I intend to utilize the blog on a regular basis as a space for debriefing - a place to collect some of the whispers I found most beautiful/challenging/encouraging/infuriating, whether these whispers made into the sermon or not.

Enough by way of setup and explanation. Here are some reflections from the readings for Proper 17, Year A.

Exodus 3:1-15

I had never noticed before how much noticing God does in these 15 verses. Three times, we're told, the story is moved along because of what God has seen. God has seen the misery of God's people and also how the Egyptians oppress them. Today, for the first time, I also saw that, before either of these, God notices Moses' notice of the flame in the unconsumed bush:

"When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!"

What a curious detail. Did God know Moses would eventually see? Was God waiting for the first person to come along and see? Could someone else have seen first and become Moses instead of Moses? How long had the bush been burning, waiting for Moses (or someone else) to notice? But when Moses turned aside to see, the LORD noticed.

Moses was a shepherd. On the clock. Which is to say he was noticed noticing God in the workplace. Where God was present and active. Had been present and active. For a long time, unnoticed. Maybe the shepherds before Moses knew better than to look for God on the job site. What does one make of the possibility that God is already present and active in the world to which we venture in any of our many vocations and careers? 

I was also much taken with Anathea Portier-Young's commentary in Working Preacher, especially her reflections on sandals as symbols of social contracts, status, and standing, and the corresponding claims and responsibilities of these to which we are subject. The LORD has Moses take off his sandals.

One of my favorite guilty pleasure songs is "Pumped Up Kicks," by Foster the People. The lyrics are terrible. And super catchy. A reminder that shoes - Air Jordans, Doc Martins, etc. - are no less symbols of status, standing and their attending attachments than sandals were for Moses in his Old Testament context. The LORD asks us to take off our shoes.

Like Moses, when called by God, we wonder who we are to receive such a calling. God's answer to Moses, and to us, is telling: "I will be you." In other words, standing without sandals, Moses finds his own identity reoriented in terms of God's action. Who are you? You are the one I am with. The one I continue to choose to be with. This is who you are.

Matthew 16:21-28

In light of the above, I love Kara Slade's reminder that the cross is "the burden that...unburdens us," insofar as we are asked to put away those things that get in the way of following Jesus, who is the tangible keeping of God's promise to be with us.

I find an imagination for taking up the cross in Jesus' rebuttal of Peter: "Get behind me, Satan!" Jesus doesn't destroy Peter, or seek to. He puts him behind him. The language makes me think of the actions necessary for layering objects in most word processing applications. In each one, some version of, "bring to front" or "send to back." Like Jesus with Peter. 

Sunday worship is definitely a "bring to front" moment with respect to Jesus for most of us, but in light of God's surprise appearance at Moses' job site, it's worth wondering what it might look like to develop a "bring to front" instinct with respect to the cross and Christ's promise to be with us for other places in our lives. For all the places in our lives. Even/especially in those places where verbal profession is not possible or helpful, remembering that the "bring to front" instinct can shape our posture and intention of our presence in ways that reveal the heart of God, we remember that we are not except for "with God," because with us is how God in Christ has chosen to be.

To bring to front is to name there are places in my life where I have either given up hope of God's appearing or sometimes, perhaps, preferred God not appear. 

Romans 12:9-21

I didn't engage this passage much, but I loved hearing it for 1) the beautiful beginning of an imagination for the specifics of an identity determined by God's promised presence and 2) the reminder that the shape of the lives that take up the cross belongs to the people called Church.

For similar reasons, I am absolutely in love with the new blessing I'm using/borrowing from Dann Brown. It's the blessing with which he closed our Kindling Conference this past July. I think he got the words from a preacher before him. ;-)

"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 

"And the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be with you this day and remain with you always. Amen."

Living Parables of Hope

Ferguson. Israel. Gaza. ISIS. ALS. Church decline. An underlying and profound popular cynicism of institutions like the one to which I have given my life. Resonating, sometimes, with the institutional naysayers.

Oh, and I'm long overdue for my tetanus shot.

Lots of reasons to feel discouraged. Short of hopeless, maybe, but situations are dire. And that's before I screw up the courage to take seriously the forecasts of experts in any of myriad disciplines who tell me my children's children - and maybe my children - will long for days like mine.

Sigh.

If recent conversations with friends and neighbors are true indicators, I am not alone with my felt helplessness in the face of so much brokenness and pain. The saddest thing, for me, is the occasional reluctance I feel - in myself and in my communities of faith - to trust that prayer is a credible response to brokenness I cannot change.

"Cannot change" is, of course, debatable. At a worship service my family and I attended on our recent vacation, a priest blessed us - the congregation - at the end of the service with the "foolishness to believe we can change the world." But I am grateful for sermons like this one, which long ago persuaded me that foolishness in pursuit of Christ a) brings with it a joy that the foolishness of world-changing never can, and b) makes possible from a place of hope and joy sustained connections to situations and people I cannot fix/change - even myself.

To reach out to others in love from a place of confidence in God's love is not an insignificant gift of the Gospel.

The late Brother Roger, founder of the community at Taizé, called the common life of the brothers there "a parable of community." This phrase - a parable of community - gives me hope and inspires even playfulness in the face of unbearably difficult realities. Where "change the world" language implies a kind of violence and begins with a kind of anger at the world (for which there often is warrant, and for which there is certainly a place in the life of faith!), to be a parable of community for the world is to communicate a riddle to the world of which the world must make sense. The energy necessary to change the world requires vigilant attention to sources of frustration and disappointment; the energy needed to be a parable for the world emanates as if from an unseen source of new life and is nurtured by an attention to what God in Christ has made possible.

Thus, lament, I think, is chiefly about taking the time necessary to locate through honesty and struggle the personal level on which Christ's joy most clearly speaks a parable into, and opens, the wisdom of our anger and disappointments. To be angry at the destructive anger of the world is good and right, to start. To respond only in anger to the anger of the world is to add to it - and miss that surprising subversion of the Spirit - laughter - which God, on that first Easter morning, gave to God's people.

By appealing to laughter as a gift of resurrection, I do not at all mean to suggest that the brokenness with which Ferguson confronts us should or can be laughed away. But Easter names God's refusal to let anything other than God's love for us - neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, not any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else - be the most true thing about us. Thus, Karl Barth can write, "Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God." Laughter exposes the powers of this world.

With the help of the Spirit, we have become God's people of laughter. And we pray to become a string of small parables in the midst of a world we refuse to change by the violence that seemingly defines the world. Living parables. The best kinds of parables are unlikely friendships. Parables - embodied pictures and standalone stories - of faith. Of joy. Of laughter and hope. Of attention to what God in Christ has made possible. Parables of reconciliation and forgiveness. Parables like the kind Jesus told: enigmatic, confusing, strangely compelling, at the same time near to the heart and just out of reach. Beautiful. Requiring further exploring. Disturbing. Perplexing. Touching the protected and hidden parts of ourselves. Leaning toward Jesus.

The best part of the parables is Jesus' refusal (with some exceptions) to explain them. The power of parables is not measured by change in the other, but by inexplicable, wonderful witness to the new possibility. These days, with God's help, to be - with God's people - a living parable of hope is my daily, hourly prayer.

I wonder where Christ's joy and life's struggle in you just now finds imagination sufficient to craft a living parable today.