So, this is a difficult parable. Even before we get to the difficulty of what the parable may or may not be asking Jesus’ followers to do and whether we think we can do that, whether we’re willing to do that, this is simply a hard parable to understand. If you say it’s not, you’re lying because part of the difficulty is that the parable concludes with four separate interpretations, four different things the parable tells us it’s about. It’s trying to be difficult! It’s not just you.
I do think this difficult parable has become slightly less difficult in recent years. Specifically, after 2008 and Occupy Wall Street and thousands of protesters flooding the capitol, it is easier to imagine the possibility that the rich man with which the story begins is someone other than God. And that begins to open things up, imagining that the rich man is someone other than God.
So let’s start with that groundbreaking hypothesis: God is not a rich man. I know, it sounds obvious when we say it that way, but most of the time, when we read the parables, God is the owner of the vineyard or the head honcho in charge or whomever else, but that information does not always come from the story, right? Sometimes, in some stories, we supply it. We make assumptions. It’s called projection. Something to talk to your therapist about.
So, to say the obvious again: Jesus doesn’t call the rich man God. In fact, since one of the four interpretations says you can’t serve both God and wealth, and since the story that follows this story is about a poor man, Lazarus, and an unnamed rich man being licked by flames in hell, let’s go out on a limb and say with some certainty, at least for today, this rich man is not God. This won’t be a September stewardship sermon about extracting wealth for God, whether from yourself or others.
But let’s also say, since we’re out climbing limbs, that the confession God is not a rich man, even when it sounds absurdly obvious, is still not easy for us to believe, all the way. We can tell we don’t believe that the rich man isn’t God when we, from time to time, take wealth to be a sign of God’s favor in our own lives and in the lives of others; when we regard people according to their dollar value or the position we think we stand to get from them.
I want to give an example of what I mean:
I was watching one of the countless presidential debates back a few months ago. And a commentator was stacking up pictures of all of the candidates’ heads on a sharp looking graphic, and you’ll remember there were a lot of heads to line up, at the outset at the election cycle. And next to each of the faces of the candidates was a number: the estimated net worth of each face. And part of the commentary involved whether the candidates in question were actually worth the numbers next to their faces. But implied in that commentary was the evidently undebatable and bipartisan assumption that a higher net worth equaled greater qualification for office. Wealth was assumed to be a sign of leadership, success, and suitability, even as the politicians were pushed hard to defend the authenticity of their faiths, and none of this was staged ironically. No moderator asked the candidates to defend their suitability for office in spite of their wealth, in light of their faith. And I thought, Christians know better!
If God is not the rich man, it follows that the rich man is something or someone other than God. The manager, then, is a person caught up in a system, a structure, that has him serving someone or something other than God. In return for accountability to this someone or something, the manager gets status, a position. And then he loses it. It’s gone. Over. The gig is up.
What will our hero do next? That’s the question on which the parable hangs. It’s also the question on which Israel hangs. It’s the kind of question that takes on existential stakes in light of Israel’s history played out over hundreds of years - a history of exile, return, and now Roman occupation. What will you do when you’ve lost, when it’s gone? is also a question that haunts most of us, even if the “it” that we stand to lose is different for each of us. Of course it’s a question about life and death, but it’s also a question about Alzheimers and memory. It’s a question about physical strength and career aspirations. It’s a question about reputation. It’s a question about life with those whom we love. It’s a question about wealth. It’s a question about legacy and self-importance. It’s a question about the day after failure and the truth that the only thing worse than failing, for those who haven’t failed, is the paralyzing question of when. It’s a question that cuts like a knife through the illusions we keep about the things we can’t keep and who we are, really.
So, what does our hero do next?
In Jesus’ parable, what our hero does next is begin to undo the social isolation he had previously self-inflicted out of loyalty to the rich man and his understanding of what maintaining his position required. What our hero does next is pick back up some of the relationships he had been told to sacrifice in order to maintain his standing. As he does so, he uncovers the extent to which he had entangled questions of worth and identity with his work and ambitions. What our hero does next is honestly name for himself how he had allowed the promise of his position to enslave him. What our hero does next is counter the ruthlessness of the rich man with a mercy and generosity the rich man’s world says isn’t the manager’s to give. In short, our hero gives up making himself a hero of anything.
Theologian Stephen Colbert one time told a bunch of college grads that they could not win their lives. Sometimes losing can save your life, especially if it ends the charade and gives you permission to return to what was most important in the first place. No more posturing over-against or harboring hopes of defeating the others through threat or violence or sheer strength of will. Just the good stuff. Nothing to lose, because you've already lost it. Love without fear. And this isn’t just good advice. In fact, if it’s just good advice, it isn’t true advice. But this is more than good advice, it is the beginning of the way of Jesus:
…if there is anything to this Christian “stuff,” it must surely involve the conviction that the Son would rather die on the cross than for the world to be redeemed by violence. Moreover, the defeat of death through resurrection makes possible as well as necessary that Christians live nonviolently in a world of violence.
In today’s parable, to live non-violently is the beginning of friendship, as position and power are exchanged for vulnerability and new possibilities; is to enter into a world in which we belong in true ways to God and one another. And it is, finally, to show up in the only way Jesus has promised to meet us. For we follow one, says St. Paul
who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).
So this is the promise: fear replaced by forgiveness, mercy, and unexpected friendships. Because God in Christ has unexpectedly made us of friends of God and one another. God, give us courage to believe all the way.
War should feel different from not being at war. You should know war when you’re in it. But for the last thirteen years, at least, this country has been at war (by various congressional definitions), which means there’s a good chance you and I have forgotten what it feels like not to be at war. It’s like when the electricity goes out in your home, and the buzzing of all the electric appliances stops and you hear a silence more silent than what you had grown to call silence - and you discover you’d forgotten that a silence like this one was possible. For thirteen years, though, the buzzing hasn’t stopped.
Truthfully, it has felt like war for longer. At least since 9/11. Fifteen years ago today. A friend reminded me the other day that this year’s freshmen were three when it happened. So much for exchanging “Where were you when?” stories. Of course, 9/11 was murder, not war. But one Christian thinker suggests that we called it “war” to normalize the chaos. Because Americans are good at war. We can do war. War gives us confidence.
My children were born into war. They have never not known it. They have no memories of landing at the airport and exiting the plane while craning their necks to find loved ones come early to meet them at the gate. The letters “TSA” dominated our family’s first travel experiences. Bedlam over stuffed animals forcibly relinquished and run through the requisite scanners. I am not one of those who thinks the added security steps are unnecessary. I appreciate the visible interest in our security. Still, when I was traveling through a crowded Chicago airport a couple of years ago and the security guard yelled out, “Keep your shoes on! Your government trust you! Your country trusts you! I don’t trust you, but your government trusts you. Keep your shoes on!” I felt uncontrollable tears fill my eyes. You can be shaped by war even when the wars are fought far away.
I believe we can say we want the buzzing to stop without dishonoring this country’s military, many of whom pray the prayer for lasting peace with an intensity I’ll never know. In fact, I think defending war with appeals to this country’s military personnel is worse than dishonest because it obscures the conflicts our servicemen and women carry. My grandfather served as a lieutenant colonel in the United States army. He fought in World War II and Korea. He would have fought in Vietnam, but my Granny said she’d leave him. He retired, reluctantly, and sold used cars, frequently to members of the great Dallas Cowboys teams of the 1970s, scoring occasional autographed souvenirs for my dad. My grandfather never talked about war. He drank about war. And carried the stories alone. He died of liver disease two years before I was born.
Today, the global movement “22Kill” is raising awareness toward the twenty-two veterans who take their own lives every day, suffering from PTSD and other mental health issues. Nevertheless, war remains the last, great bipartisan commitment.
But we are not here today to be partisan, or even bi-partisan. We are here to be a part of the kingdom of God. Shortly after 9/11, Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas wrote,
…if there is anything to this Christian “stuff,” it must surely involve the conviction that the Son would rather die on the cross than for the world to be redeemed by violence. Moreover, the defeat of death through resurrection makes possible as well as necessary that Christians live nonviolently in a world of violence. Christian nonviolence is not a strategy to rid the world of violence, but rather the way Christians must live in a world of violence. In short Christians are not nonviolent because we believe our nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war, but rather because faithful followers of Christ in a world of war cannot imagine being anything else than nonviolent.
Hauerwas thinks that peace is not just the absence of war but, for Christians, the presence of friendships that God, in Christ, has made possible. It’s not a bad summary for the whole salvation story: God in Christ makes us friends of God and one another. That’s short enough to tweet!
I’m willing to wager that each of us, in our lives, has at some point felt provoked to battle - literal or metaphorical; has felt flushed with emotion and triggered in the way of all creatures toward either fight or flight. And maybe it was comforting to call it war, to see no other way. The betrayal of a friend. The colleague or student who advances faster than we do, the resentments and obsessions that follow. The loss of a loved one. The allure of power. The prospect of failure. A break up. Impending uncertainty. Insecurity of all kinds. Financial distress. Even prosperity. And whatever it is, here, at this juncture, is our opportunity to choose the alternative to desperation and violence: to walk with Jesus Christ.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.” And those sentences aren't together by accident. For Paul, where war and violence forget the nearness of God, gentleness and vulnerable engagement with the powers profess that Christ is at hand. Patience becomes the confession that God is present and can be trusted to act, even in the midst of disappointment and things we do not control. Finally then, for Paul, worship and prayer become the most truthful things Christians can do.
Which leads us at last to our gospel. In Luke’s gospel today, Jesus describes God’s faithfulness to God’s promise. It’s the same promise Moses holds up to God in our reading from Exodus, which is the same promise God made to Abraham: y’all are gonna be my children, are gonna flourish and shine like a light that’s gonna keep your neighbors up at night. Y’all are gonna be like the stars and shine in the sky and people will see things they didn’t see before you came along by your light. Beautiful things that will bless them. “God,” Moses interrupts, generations later, “We, no, they, um, your children, how do I say this? They built a cow out of grandma’s wedding band and some other stuff and said that was just as good as your promise of stars, just as shiny, but, um, before you smash us all to pieces, let me humbly remind you that, even so, you made a promise to bless, keep, and flourish them.” And so, more centuries later, Jesus describes God as a widow with a broom in her hand, scouring the floor for the one that got away; as a shepherd who, just as he’s about to call it a night, counts the sheep one more time. One’s missing. In an instant, he’s back in the hills.
The biggest thing about faithfulness in Luke’s gospel is that it doesn’t primarily refer to the faithfulness of Jesus’ followers. Faithfulness describes God’s commitment to God’s people, no matter what else they do or don’t do. God is the shepherd. God is a widow with a broom in her hand. You are a coin. Me, too! And it’s assumed we sometimes get spun on our heads; that we need help; that repentance and forgiveness and new life and mercy and the pursuit of these things are vital to what the life of the kingdom, with God, will mean.
And maybe you’ve already felt it. I’m almost sure you have. One day, some day, recently or long ago, you looked up, and heard a strange sound, a sound you would later call broom bristles against the tile. Maybe you felt the surprising and initially uncomfortable push of the straw on your back, only to find yourself, moments later, swept up in awe. Into the hands of the One who sought you and loves you, whose love makes you lovely. Who came after you. Who found you. Maybe you’ve felt the pull, the gravity, of God’s reconciling work in your life: you, even you, swept up and gathered into the purposes of God. Maybe you have tasted the forgiveness that comes from the prayer when the psalmist sings, “Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed. Make me hear of joy and gladness, that the body you have broken may rejoice.”
God in Christ makes us friends of God and one another. Friends are those people who are learning to care about the things the people they care about care about. We are friends of God! He’s found us. Thanks be to God.
Lord, trusting your friendship, make us gentle toward ourselves, gentle toward one another, and gentle toward you. Show us where we do not yet trust you as we could, and then show us your joy, that we may share it generously for your sake and be surprised. Finally, give us your peace, still the buzzing in our hearts, that we may be your peace in this world. We ask these things in Jesus’ Name.
Sermon preached at St. Luke's Madison, on the readings appointed to the day: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33. I'll post to the audio when it becomes available; this one left the script.
One of the things I love best about Jesus is the parables. The stories. The riddles and truths. It’s not so much that Jesus hides truth in them, but he never gives us disembodied truth. With Jesus, every truth has a story, a name, and faces. Likewise, Jesus invites us to live truth, in our bodies, with our names and faces. To wear truth, is the invitation. To move from inside it. Paul says we put on Christ; we wear Christ, because he is the truth.
I love the parables.
Only.
I sometimes misremember the parables. Or remember only certain ones.
I remember the parables about mustard seeds and trees with branches that become homes for all of the birds. That’s one of my favorites. I remember the parables about lilies and fields and believing that God will beautifully clothe me. I even remember the parable about the farmer and the seed and the different kinds of soil, a sort of parable of generosity and unexpected hope. Of course, who could forget the parable of the prodigal son and the loving embrace of the father. So many parables and pictures of faith. So many good stories. I love the parables.
But sometimes. Well.
Take Jesus this morning. He’s got a large crowd. Everybody’s happy. The sky is blue and birds are singing. He’s saying something godlike as they all nod their heads and walk down the road. Suddenly, he spins around and says, “Can I give you a picture of what it’s like to follow me?” Sure, Jesus. Please! “Great. Following me is like going to war. Against God. Only as you get closer and closer to God, you begin to doubt you can pull it off. Or, you should begin to doubt you can pull it off, defeating the Almighty. So you surrender instead. And you’ve got to know this surrender is not a negotiation, but a total take over. You lay down your life and lose everything. Family, heirlooms. Nothing’s safe. And,” if we can inject some of Jesus from a few chapters later, “Try to hold on and you’ll die. Lose your life, though, and you will save it.”
This parable doesn’t get included in most Sunday school curriculums. You don’t see as many artistic renderings of this parable. If parables invite us to put on Jesus and wear the truth, this one fits too tight and wears like a stainless steel sponge.
What do you make of Jesus’ implying that you and I are out to conquer God, or at least out to get as close to God as possible while keeping ourselves for ourselves? “You don’t have enough,” Jesus says, “to keep yourself to yourself and be a self apart from the love and mercy of God.” So put down your arms. And all the other stuff you would use to make yourself a proper self without relationship with God. Put it down. You look ridiculous. Put on Christ. Wear your baptism. In Old Testament terms, it's God's shouting in Deuteronomy today, “Choose life!” Surrender it all and feel for yourself that mercy comes in your size. It’s for you!
But you have to put it down. All of it. You can’t put on the new shirt, your new clothes, with two heaping armfuls of Justifying Yourself. Surrender.
Well, that was close! We had almost stumbled into warfare with God! And not just with God, with all the other people we would have tried to impress or conquer or hurt with all of the “see what I did by myself” stuff we were carrying. You could poke an eye out like that! But, putting them down, we’re invited to explore how our fights out there, with God and others, are connected to the fears in here, inside of ourselves. We’re invited to remember God’s promise that our surrender will meet God’s mercy. We’re invited to stretch ourselves and be opened, where once we were curved in on ourselves.
I’m an expert on stretching. Or I’m learning to be. You see, a few months ago, I went to the doctor with symptoms that scared me. Unpredictable pain. Tingling in my fingers and other limbs. Numbness. It was starting to affect the way I interacted with the world. But it turns out the conflict wasn’t between me and things outside me; it was a conflict within me. Specifically, my trapezius didn’t trust my shoulders enough to give them room to operate. The trapezius was doing everything, running the show. It was killing me! Sometimes it pinched areas outside of its purview. Thus the tingling and numbness. And, if you’ll make room for metaphor with me, maybe you’ve experienced a time in life in which you were operating primarily out of only one part of yourself, at war with yourself and one side was winning, and it changed the way you engaged the world, and not for the good; it altered your perspective. Maybe it left you unsure of yourself or mistrustful of others. Maybe it hurt. Maybe it left you numb.
A pastor on Facebook this week pointed out that, across the country, its the beginning of the school year and, for a lot of places, program year for the church. And he said there are three ways Christians can stretch themselves if they want to continue to grow in Christ, and - as fate would have it - those three ways correspond to three of the stretches that have opened my body, helped me surrender myself, and engage the world around me again. Three opportunities to be opened up. I want to share them with you.
The first stretch is up. [Off script here (doing exercises), but talking about serving God in worship.]
The second stretch is out. [Talking about serving one another and neighbors, keeping the elbows in.]
The third stretch is back toward myself. [Talking about investing in one’s own spiritual life.]
There’s a last stretch. It’s the hardest and the easiest. You don’t do this stretch. It’s the stretch that does you. [Foam roller as Eucharist.]
It’s takes all of them. One without the other leaves untapped potential to be opened. And once you get a taste for it, it’s hard to leave untapped potential on the table. It’s hard to walk away from the kingdom you’ve felt in your bones as the new possible. So we stretch - up, out, and inside. We feel the shape of his kingdom under our backs. We get up and go out, paying attention to the changes, seeing how long we can carry them. And we’re glad to come back. This new posture, this new kingdom, is not a fix for a moment but the way of living and being and loving and praising for which God has made us. There’s joy in this knowledge, and we hold onto this joy, and we stretch ourselves again and again toward him who stretched out his arms in his love for us.
In the gospel today, Jesus is at a party. Not just a party, a party. The kind you dress up for. It’s swank. And the fanciest of the fancy people just arrived at the swank-fest and handed his topcoat and hat to the help on his way to a large mahogany chair, up by the head of the table. It’s impressive: the ritual raising of knowing eyebrows between the host and this particular guest. The exchange of subtle smirks. The whole room is watching, and not just watching, but murmuring, flowing, moving around the interaction in the same way all the birds of the sky scatter when a bald eagle breaks the horizon; in the way that fish in the aquarium keep a bead on a shark’s location, at all times, you know, for informational purposes.
It’s mesmerizing. It’s social hierarchy. It’s the food chain, baby.
Jesus is also watching the dance. And, after watching the dance, Jesus does what most guests in his position would not do: he critiques it out loud. “You know,” Jesus says. “That guy who just came in with the certainty that he’s all that? He might be wrong. But a modest entrance leaves room for elevation.”
Jesus goes on to instruct his followers, and his host, to defy social convention. Invite to your parties, he suggests, the ones who don’t have parties to invite you to later. There’s a problem with Jesus’ party instructions to his followers: he’s saying it all the middle of the party he’s already at. While he’s still at the party. Jesus has only been at this swank-fest for a few minutes, but he’s already made his modest assessment: it’s a perversion of right relationship and an anti-kingdom of God.
Now, you and I both know that naming the emptiness of social pomp and circumstance, with all its predictable posturing and jockeying for status and social position, doesn’t make Jesus even mostly original. Lots of people have done that. Plenty of people throughout history have pointed out the pointlessness of living one’s life for the pat on the back, for the approval of others or the company promotion or the praise of one’s peers. In an ironic twist, some of them have even formed clubs in which rejection of conformity to the games of society becomes leverage for achieving social standing within their own new subcultures!
In the most interesting of these critiques, and count Jesus in them, it’s not that approval, promotions, and praise are bad in themselves, but divorced from one’s telos, one’s ultimate aim and objective, their emptiness is exposed. Without the telos, life becomes just a long line of appearances and pressure to keep them up. And that pressure can be overwhelming, can lead well-meaning people to hide the parts of themselves they’re afraid aren’t up to snuff. And hiding can be hard work. That pressure is the beginning of the recurring nightmare you have in which you’re making the big presentation, but you forgot to wear pants. It’s the fear of being found out. It’s the story of Adam and Eve and their hiding, all over again, up all night sewing fig leaves. Again and again, lived out in so many fears and maneuvers and vain appeals for affirmation, whether through test scores or Facebook likes or positive journal reviews or sermon feedback.
Or good seats at swank parties.
This is where Jesus breaks new ground, though: at the very end of the lesson, when Jesus connects his yet-to-be-published revised party planning instructions - about inviting the ones who can’t repay you - when he connects inviting those people to the resurrection of the righteous, Jesus reveals that he doesn’t just think the game of self-worth through social standing is empty; he thinks it’s idolatry. He thinks it’s about God. Jesus thinks that how people regard one another in relation to the personal benefit they think they’ll reap from the relationship, seeking prizes and approval, cozying up to some and leaving others behind, is a statement of faith. Idolatry, because the things the fancy people hope to score from one another are things they think they can substitute for the love and identity God gives all of God’s children as gift. In other words, competing for the the fancy chairs at the fancy parties allows the fanciest people to believe they have a standing or identity that transcends their standing and identity as children of God.
This campus [The campus where I work], with our cities, even most of our churches are full of people, clergy and lay, who have been made to believe they need to manufacture a standing and identity apart from the love of God in Christ Jesus for them, in order to have worth. The pursuit of an identity of their own construction is sold to them as freedom, but this so-called freedom quickly becomes an unbearable burden: the fanning of their suspicion that they aren’t yet enough and that they might never be enough. In such a climate, extracting personhood from performance is next to impossible, even when it is not clear who is performing for whom. Even worse, when we inevitably hide what we are sure are the weaker parts of ourselves in order to bolster the strength of the performance, we find ourselves alone and mistrustful even of those who love us.
This is the fruit of the poison of the anti-kingdoms of God. But the burden of that poison can be healed. There is another party. There is a party that undoes the fancy parties of the anti-kingdoms. There is a party convened by a crucified king with a towel around his waist whose manner of life makes identifying, much less claiming, the high places of honor impossible. There is a table around which the guests in attendance become holy friends, sisters, and brothers, through the love of the host whose love makes them lovely. At this feast, at this party that undoes the anti-kingdoms, the saints find reconnection to their telos. As they grow in love and trust of the host they even risk becoming blessings for others. Though they know all too well the temptation to hide, they lift up their hearts and their lives and they offer themselves because they know, by his love, they are enough. When they offer themselves, they experience this truth through the kindness of God. Self-offering, for them, becomes almost an act of defiance to the lies of the anti-kingdoms. Loving others, they do not fear them. More than that, they make space around the table even for the ones who despise them. They are convinced there is always room at that table, just as there is mercy and forgiveness in the cup. They have tasted and know that the cup of salvation is also the cup of forgiveness. They are learning to trust the blood in the cup. And they pour out the cup for others.
In case you were wondering, this is that feast, and this is that table. This is the kingdom of love’s overcoming your preoccupations and fears about whether, in a moment of disappointment or crisis, you were wrong or right or in the right and whether God’s forgiveness and love are possible any longer for you. This is the kingdom of remembering. This is the kingdom of encounter with God. This is the kingdom of healing, laughter, acceptance, and trust. This is feast of victory for our God! Let us sing God’s praise and remember this table and keep the feast and love one another, with grateful hearts and joy.
My ecumenical counterpart laughed an awkwardly loud laugh, then poked at his fries. "Y'all are doing great, though," he said, suddenly looking up with earnest eyes. "Don't misread either the successes or failures for trends, and you'll be fine. One coffee, one conversation at a time. You're doing it. And - trust me, I've been at it for twenty-plus years - you're doing it well."
At the time of this conversation - not quite three years ago - I had been chaplain at St. Francis House, the Episcopal campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for just over a year. My first year with the ministry was the ministry's second year without a permanent home; the building and chapel had been temporarily closed and permanently relocated to accommodate a new, adjacent student apartment building. I came on the scene in the middle of the "exile season," to gather the remaining students and make a stab at new community before transitioning back to our permanent location.
Thus my colleague's initial skepticism when he learned of my appointment: closing a building for two years, at a university that will replace more than half of its sizable population in that time, can effectively erase a place and/or people from the collective memory of the larger community. Other colleagues had been equally honest and supportive, telling me it would take years to reestablish a trusted presence, still insisting trust would come. Once trust was established - but not before - we could expect consistency. Five to seven years after moving into the building, one friend suggested. That my colleagues could be supportive while talking candidly about how difficult the road would be was an undeserved gift I still treasure.
While realistic about the challenges, I was also immensely grateful for the situation, even in that first year without a permanent home. For all its temporary inconvenience, the apartment project was the forward-thinking vision of my predecessor and my bishop, an imaginative and long-term way to sustain a vibrant campus presence through external revenues. The project required creativity and courage; it represented a fierce and remarkable commitment to young adults and, because UW-Madison is the flagship university of the Wisconsin, the state. I was honored to be entrusted with the next leg of the race.
"Besides," I told our students a lot in our vagabond year, "You and I don't have a building to tempt us to forget that the church is the people. How cool is that?" I did my best to look past the disbelief in their eyes and sound as convincing as possible. I did believe it. They would teach me how to live it.
___
The community that year became a beautiful parable of the church's being the people. Of course, we weren't that parable in the beginning; it took time. On my first Sunday, August 26, 2012, having been warned by my office coordinator to expect low numbers, I was pleasantly surprised to discover there were twelve of us! But then, as the service began and the nerves wore off, I started to look a little closer. A couple of folks were clearly not students. Upon still closer examination, a lot of the folks were clearly not students. Three students. Eight others who explained, at the Peace, they were there so I would not be discouraged. Many of them I would see again. Others, I never saw again. I still treasure the kindness they gave me on that first Sunday.
___
St. Francis House met at Grace Church that first year, about a mile and a half from campus. Can you imagine - college students - walking a mile and a half to church - in winter - in Wisconsin! The students that year did that and more, taught me so much, and day in and day out were amazing to work with. We worshiped each week, shared dinners, baked pizzas and Christmas cookies, and relied on the hospitality of area churches for meals over which to discover beginnings of community.
The beginning of community came toward the end of the first semester. I had asked the group - between eight and ten of us now - to pose for a picture in front of a Christmas tree in the Guild Hall. "Now, a silly one!" I encouraged them. No one moved. "You guys." I sighed my exasperation. "I have a half a dozen pictures from this semester that all look exactly like this one. Posed and poised. It's the same picture with different backgrounds - like a green room." I pleaded, "Give me something new!"
No one moved.
Suddenly, in a moment of holy inspiration, Chris, the law student, reared back and shoved Katie, one of the dearest people I know and a french language scholar, kneeling next to him - hard, with both hands - and Katie never saw it coming. The whole first row toppled over. Like dominos. Sprawled everywhere. Chaos. Laughter everywhere. Laughing and laughing. Between heaves, I snapped a blurry photo. At last. Something cracked, and the first sign of a visible community pushed its way up through the soil.
___
My first year with St. Francis House, it wasn't just the students who walked a lot. Without a home base, I kept office hours in coffee shops and met students for dinner at the Rathskeller on Thursdays. On Tuesdays, we'd meet for Bible Study at Union South. I'd park at Grace Church on the square, where I kept an office, and gradually trekked my way to, then across, campus. I'd stop at markets along the way and stuff snacks for the group into my backpack.
Most Tuesdays, I'd arrive at Union South by 6pm, in time to look up our room assignment and text it to the others. I'd grab a quick bite to eat, then go to one of a dozen empty conference rooms and wait. Sometimes for two people. One time for seven. Most times for some number between them. Occasionally for one. Only once or twice for no one. We'd talk, study, and pray Compline in unusual places, like the third story deck outside of the Sett. We began to learn honesty and care for each other. Usually, we'd wrap up about 9 pm, 9:30 pm if the conversation had been especially compelling and things ran long. Then, no matter how late or how cold it was when we ended (1° F one night), I'd walk back to my car, parked at Grace. And no matter how fast or how slow I walked, it always seemed to take exactly twenty-seven-and-a-half minutes. One night, I found my car frozen shut. The door handle snapped off in my hands.
___
It has been two and half years since that lunch conversation with my friend. Four years altogether. Three years in the historic St. Francis Chapel and building. Three years ago today, we were just so happy to be in the space. The construction fence had been down for maybe a week, and it would be several more weeks before we'd make any noticeable dent in the layers of construction dust. We were still in the process of sorting through two and a half storage units of mostly broken furniture and fifty years worth of limited-use altar supplies, including bleached wood pews made for another space. School would start in a week and a part of me, looking back, wonders why I didn't look to put off opening the space until January. But we didn't and, as the student community moved in and continued to grow, the community enfolded the building in its rhythms of worship, study, play, love, and hospitality. When I look back at photos from that time, every small change calls to mind a thousand conversations, so many hours, so much prayer, and so much generosity from alumni, students, and so many others. I thank God for all of them, for the holy friendships this space has held, and for the new things still to come.
We have lived a lot of life through partnerships. Partly because we were so small starting out, and mostly because the mission of God's people, says St. Paul, is reconciliation. Life is richer when God's friends come together.
There was the summer we partnered with St. Andrew's and invited students to read the Bible - the whole Bible! - in three months. The project accidentally went national, and over seventy-give people took up the challenge. Fewer than half of us finished the whole thing, which struck me as about right. Not too bad! The participants, though, were bummed at themselves. I told a colleague about the collective disappointment, and he was indignant. "Jonathan, how many got through Leviticus?" he asked me one day, with some fire in his voice. "How many?"
"All of us, Gary. It's at the beginning."
"Right. Do you know how many Episcopalians have read Leviticus? (dramatic pause) Two percent! They are now among the less than two percent of Episcopalians who have read Leviticus. Celebrate Leviticus!" Celebrate Leviticus! quickly became code in our community for "celebrate the good thing in front of you even in the face of uncertainty." In life, if you wait to know the ending before you celebrate successes along the way, you miss out on a lot of opportunities for gratitude. Together, we try not to miss those opportunities.
There was that zany Acolyte Festival - over one-hundred people - most of them youth, from all around the Diocese of Milwaukee, most of them wondering what they came to, but - by the end - glad they came. Of course, what I had hoped they had come to was an invitation to imagine the good life of faith continuing on a university campus. Some months later, I was at the consecration of the new Bishop of Fond du Lac, and some teenagers started screaming in my direction from across a large reception space. "Jonathan! Father Jonathan!" I froze. I had no idea who they were or if I was supposed to know them. "Jonathan, the Acolyte Festival!" Immediately, something like scales fell from my eyes and I recognized them. We embraced and shared some memories from that day. As I turned to walk away, I remember marveling to myself, "It worked." We had wanted to make connections. My initial inability to recognize my new friends maybe named my doubt that we could. We had.
There was the time I asked a handful of students, on a whim, if they felt like a lifetime lived in the Episcopal tradition would equip them to pray for their sisters or brothers in person, out loud. "Jonathan," they said, "What about what we do makes you think we're being prepared for that?" The honesty of their answer caught me off guard. After a moment's silence, I asked them if the ability to pray for one another out loud was a gift they'd like to give and receive. "Yes," they said. So began a conversation with an ecumenical colleague and beautiful partnership between our students: the evangelicals shared their spontaneous prayer practices with us; we shared the prayer book tradition, lectio divina, and Compline with them. Later, we scrubbed bathrooms together at a housing unit for folks transitioning out of prison and homeless. And sang songs of praise while throwing stuffed animals at each other in someone's living room the next night. Parable of God's kingdom.
One October, we averaged between twenty-five and thirty people for three straight weeks, and a couple of students excitedly observed to me how it changed the dynamics. "We can't sit at one table. How cool is that?!" It was exciting, but a moment, not a trend. Midterms came, and the community's weekly gatherings thinned. Later, graduation came and sent half of them off for other places. And then summer came and went and we met, invited, and welcomed new students. A new day.
Last semester, our community played a small but important role in the gathering of 250 young people from 17 campus ministries. After six months of quiet relationship building in much smaller groups, we gathered with university and community leaders to discuss issues surrounding race and faith on campus. The next day, St. Francis House hosted an ecumenical Ash Wednesday service that was standing room only. Some sixty students crammed in that beautiful chapel with no more places to sit or squeeze chairs, gathered to join their own words of repentance to the words of the Prayer Book and, together, name our need of God and other another.
___
The local and national response to - and interaction with - our modest parable of community at St. Francis House has been humbling and deeply encouraging. We were trying to live the hard parts of the gospel in ways that others would find compelling and beautiful. We sought to build friendships around holy imagination and develop trade around a missional currency. In particular, these outside conversations and recognitions became encouragement that we were, indeed, contributing to the inspiration of a holy imagination:
In 2013, the Seminary of the Southwest reached out to us and did a tweet story on our community's intentional practices around showing interest in our neighbors: "The Missional Discipline of Being Interested."
Also in 2013, I was invited down to Camp Allen to serve as the "Abbott" for the annual All-Texas campus ministry fall gathering. The Abbott role was an invention of student leadership, who longed for prayer to order their annual time together in more intentional ways. I thought the idea was brilliant, but I wondered about my invitation. At the weekend, however, I discovered that these Texans had really given me an opportunity to share out of what St. Francis House was teaching me, who I was for them, and who we were already becoming in community.
In 2014, Virginia Theological Seminary invited me to write a short article for Episcopal Teacher on our community's experience of the formation of young adults.
Just prior, in 2014, I was awarded the Episcopal Church's Distinguished Leadership award for work with young adults and in campus ministry. I was stunned and, truthfully, thought someone had made a mistake. But the Rev. Mike Angell, the Episcopal Church's missioner for young adult and campus ministries at the time, spelled it out in ways that forced me to take the award seriously, saying that the award was intended for campus ministers
leading the field, showing exemplary work... [and that] the Rev. Jonathan Melton has made incredible strides in re-establishing a strong ministry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His impressive use of social media is coupled with a knack for community building that is helping college students connect with the Episcopal Church.
In 2015, one of our students led two inspiring sessions at the Province V spring retreat. In fact, her presence inspired the theme for the following year, faith and music. That retreat was the good work of a lot of people and solidified the spring retreat's continued resurgence. In 2016, then, several other of our students led a powerful workshop on race and faith. Context: when I first arrived at SFH, nobody was going to the Province V retreat; now, remarkable students God had since called together were helping to lead it.
In 2016, I was invited to reprise my prayer-leading Abbott role, this time for the national gathering of young adult and campus ministry leaders. I was humbled and honored, and I asked if one of our students could serve on the team, which turned out to be 1) a good call, and 2) joy beyond words. One of the things God has very clearly shown me in all of this is that the faith community is the gift. Or, as a nervous campus ministry newbie one time told the students he'd just met, "the Church is the people."
___
If our ministry has a celebrity, it's our sidewalk, chalkboard sign. I'll explain.
When I first arrived at UW, I met lots of people - students, campus ministry colleagues, faculty, janitors - none of whom knew anything about St. Francis House.
"We're next door to the Lutherans."
Nothing.
"By the new apartment complex, X01."
Nada.
"The Episco - never mind. Our building just got moved."
Unexpectedly, eyes light up. "OH! Why didn't you say so?? I know who you are. Not just that, I know where I was when the moving started! I watched it from the stairs of..."
It was all very humbling, and difficult to reconcile with my "Church is the people" mantra. But a year after we'd moved into the building, the conversations went differently.
"We're by the Lutherans."
Nothing.
"Episco - oh, never mind."
Between Luther Memorial and X01, across from Lathrop -"
"WAIT! You're the sign people! The sidewalk sign! I LOVE that sign. More than that, I love the warmth that comes through it. I'm always on my way to someplace else but, I kid you not, I look forward to passing your building each morning, and I smile when I do."
The sign is both an invitation and point of daily interaction, with thousands of conversation partners. Sometimes it's informational - "such and such is happening at such and such" - other times confrontational, "It's freezing outside. We have a fireplace and hot tea. You don't have a better place to be." Its simplest message was probably its first: "No strings."
["No strings" is a story in itself. Late one night at a fair of student organizations, a student who was helping me operate our booth complained to me that no one was taking our candy. "Why not?" I asked. "What do you see in their eyes as they don't take your candy?" The student's observation was spot-on: "I see, 'How much is this candy going to cost me?'" So we put a sign, "No strings" in the basket. Later, another student asked if such an intention could shape a whole community. I smiled and knew I loved my job.]
Anyway, the sign. It's invitational. Interactive Always changing. Our reminder that we're always for others.
On average, between thirty and forty young adults take the sign up on its offer each week, not counting program night, and make themselves at home in the Lounge. They study, relax, drink tea. Some help with projects around the House. Sometimes they are quiet. Sometimes they say things like this. Some come by themselves, others with friends, for recitals or language study groups, for AA. There's a group that uses the kitchen to repurpose unused food from area restaurants for the food insecure. We continue to open ourselves to conversation and prayer with neighbors and strangers through our sign, and the daily discipline of showing up to be present to God's being present to us and our neighbors.
A colleague passed me on the sidewalk the other day and said, "We finally got a sign like yours!" I smiled. About a half-dozen friends across the country have told me something like this, and it never gets old. All joy. "But," she said, "the problem with the sign -" Uh oh, I thought. "Is that you've always gotta do it. Every day. Erase. Write. Put it out there, bring it in," she said. "Every day."
I nodded. "And then convince the community it's worth doing on your off days, the days you are not there," I said.
"Exactly!"
The sign isn't a gimmick. The sign is a way of living toward others.
___
"You can't be yourself by yourself," is a truth about community we say a lot around here. It's true, because we don't always see the truth about ourselves. It's also true because nobody does anything worth doing alone.
Our alumni have blessed and encouraged us beyond all describing. When we reopened St. Francis House (the building) I grew accustomed meeting alumni who came back to St. Francis House expecting the worst. Some had heard reports of our demise and came to both pay homage to a once-sacred space and see the wreckage for themselves. A typical encounter might go like this:
Huh. You're still here. I thought they tore it all down. The did tear a lot of it down.It's still here. I thought it was gone. You're here. Tell me about what's going on. I see. Here's my card. Call me if you need anything. You're doing good work.
Time and again, an alum would show up, disoriented or angry, telling stories I cherished about their life in the House. Time and again, after a long walk through the building and memories shared, both the alum and I experienced the gift of relationship and hope restored.
___
The first time we attempted to gather alumni was a Christmas party at Memorial Union during that first vagabond year. We invited Art and Sue Lloyd to come and tell stories. Art, who passed away last summer, had been the chaplain at SFH for nearly a decade in the 1960s and 70s. Twenty-three alumni and students came. I gave attendees an ill-conceived game of human bingo at the door. It was a small turnout and a lot of work, but the night itself was magical. I will never forget the picture of our students sitting around a table, necks craning toward Art, as he regaled us with stories of God at work through some remarkable students at the turbulent time of the Vietnam War and the protests against it.
The Christmas party was a first step toward restoring friendships and, in a real sense, becoming whole again. We have hosted subsequent alumni events, and it has been a joy to see alumni come back again and again, sometimes bringing friends we didn't know before. This past year, over 110 alumni and friends came to two events celebrating the 100th anniversary of St. Francis House. You can hear some of their stories here:
Over one hundred and fifteen alumni, supporters, students, and friends came to our two 100th anniversary events. Each time we gather we learn more about each other and, because we belong to each other, ourselves.
___
Our alumni and supporters are generous friends. Through June of 2016 alone, St. Francis House's has received over 350% of our budgeted year-to-date donations and offerings. Projected over the course of the year - never a given, I realize - that's more than $20,000 above what we anticipated at the outset of the year. While unexpected, the giving has immediate use: each year, St. Francis House relies on a growing number of supporter dollars in addition to the significant revenue we receive from the visionary apartment project (which which the story began) to cover operating expenses and fund new initiatives. The number of supporter dollars we rely on grows because
the annual difference between our operating budget and the apartment revenue we receive widens with normal cost of living changes, and
we slowly grow our expenses. We slowly grow our expenses because we plan to continue to further the good things God has done, so that the circle of friends God touches through the faith community of St. Francis House is as large as it can be. Because life is richer when God's friends come together.
I don't take this generosity for granted. In fact, the generosity of our larger community makes me bolder when it comes to asking for more: I don't want to fail the vision for the new things God might do that the generosity of our supporters asks us to try. When someone comes by SFH and says, "That's an idea, a good one. I'll help get it started," I sometimes get nervous. I know we are all being asked to take a leap of faith; to move from idea to action. I know I owe it to the people who have shared their generosity to invite other supporters along to help. More than anything, I get nervous because the new possibility, with all the change it entails, just might happen. I know it, because I've seen it. Because, time and again, our supporters have done it, have encouraged our community into steps towards the dreams God has given us. Thanks be to God.
___
At the beginning of my fifth year at St. Francis House, I feel less alone than I ever have here. Importantly, in addition to our students and alumni, the St. Francis House Board, under the leadership of Bishop Miller, increasingly enables us to make strides we couldn't have taken alone. The 100th anniversary events are perhaps the best examples of this: without board leadership on the anniversary team, we likely aren't contacting every church in the state of Wisconsin or sending letters to friends instate and out. I know we aren't facilitating the team of a dozen community members who hit phone lines, contacted friends, and helped spread the word. More and more, our board members roll up their sleeves, give of themselves, and flat get things done. Community relationships, finances, building repairs, prayers. You name it, these folks step up.
The board's spirit of self-giving and teamwork is especially timely because I have more of a team with which to work than I've had in four years: Kate, our part-time office coordinator; Bill, our deacon whom we share with St. Paul's, Watertown; Mark, our treasurer; Ted, our Sunday musician; Amy, Terri, and Connor, our residential house fellows; Rebekah, my amazing wife, who - among countless other things - leads the women's small group; every one of the students. More and more, significant things - like changing toilet paper rolls - get done without me, directly, which I hope is less a statement of repressed egotism and more a testament to our growing entrepreneurial development.
For example, I vividly remember a student, Anna, coming to me before the beginning of my third year at St. Francis House. She suggested that the community was ready for a student-led fall retreat. "It'll be student-led, Jonathan," she told me. "Not more work for you. You arrange the food and the place, but we'll do the rest. You don't have to do anything."
I stared back blankly at Anna. I didn't say that arranging food and lodging sounded, in fact, like a good deal of work. I thought to myself. Finally, I said
Yes, this sounds good. I'm on board. Really on board. It's just - you know that'll be hard for me. I mean, I've served on large staffs and I've been the rector of a congregation. I've delegated plenty. But these past two years - if something got done, I did it. Or directly asked someone to do it. And then followed up when they forgot. And, sometimes, cut the losses and did it myself. I want you to know that I want "student led," too. Tell me when I'm offering help you don't need. I'm trusting you to do that. And also to tell me when you need help.
The retreat was fantastic. Anna did a great job. In the days before the retreat, we spent a lot of time talking together about the proceedings, but never out of my neuroses. (Okay, maybe one time.) And she and the others did it.
___
True Things About Our Community
(Things God has shown us so far)
No strings. Be yourself. Come as you are. Bring your whole self. I'll do the same. I'll be me, and you'll be you, and we'll seek God in each other and the space between us.
Holy friendship. God in Christ makes us friends of God and one another. Holy friendships are those of a particular quality, involving particular commitments, which we discover together and through the waters of baptism.
The commitment to tell the truth is rare and one that we promise each other. Following the Truth - Jesus - should make us more truthful.
Individually and together, we experience acceptance in the community of faith as we risk sharing ourselves and our gifts for others.
Christ is in our neighbor. There’s always Good to see and learn in the other.
Because form is content, faith requires practical expression in our lives, thus “What” and “How” go together.
We live in expectation of the presence of strangers and new friends.
2 questions we commit to regularly ask:
What light does Scripture shed on the question/issue/challenge/possibility in front of us?
Who can we ask for help?
___
I sometimes forget that it could be otherwise, but I never take for granted that I walk past a chapel every day I come to work and every time I take the stairs. Going up or coming down, I spy the red candle that promises Christ's presence. We light candles at the Offertory each week, each person lighting a candle and placing it in a small dish of sand, and I'll explain as they do it that the certainty when Christians gather is God's presence. The question mark is ours. The candle in the sand represents my intention to be as present to God as God in Christ is to us. I'll say this on Sundays, but I remember this truth and grow in this truth every time I take the stairs.
I begin each morning with prayer in the chapel. Most days, I'll light a charcoal briquet as the prayers begin and sprinkle some incense on it as I leave. The fragrance of the incense calls me back to God's presence as I smell it in the space between the prayers. The fragrance of prayer calls me back to the truth about life together, that Vanier and Bonhoeffer where right when they said that whatever I think is most important about the work of today, there is no more important task in the community of faith than forgiving and being forgiven. Communion with God and all of God's friends. To transform the space between the prayers is probably my truest hope for our students, my family, myself; that Christ who is making all things new would make us whole - individually, together, with God.
___
An Appendix of Prayer (prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, 1979) "Lo," Jesus said. "I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our
being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by
your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our
life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are
ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Eternal God, who led your ancient people into freedom by apillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night: Grant that we who walk in the light of your presence may rejoice in the liberty of the children of God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Almighty, everlasting God, let our prayer in your sight be as incense, the lifting up of our hands as the evening sacrifice. Give us grace to behold you, present in your Word and Sacraments, and to recognize you in the lives of those around us. Stir up in us the flame of that love which burned in the heart of your Son as he bore his passion, and let it burn in us to eternal life and to the ages of ages. Amen.
1) The reasons people like you and me follow the news and current events are not as noble and civically minded as we often report. (Check out "Why Do We Really Follow the News?" from Freakonomics.) Among the reasons we follow the news, the podcast offers
entertainment,
status (in being someone "in the know"),
personal utility, and
the desire "to be told a story that matches the story we are already telling ourselves, about ourselves."
2) In light of the above, and for its treatment of fantasy and reality, Rowan Williams' Silence and Honey Cakes may be the most important short book a Christian can read in 2016. 3) In faith communities, families, etc., it is a good practice to notice what doesn't get talked about in proportion to its occurrence in our communities. A short-list might begin with alcoholism, sexual assault, and familial estrangement. 4) The presidential election, in caricature, is Trump the fear monger verses Clinton the hope candidate. But as soon as some portion of the electorate attempts to pressure undecided voters to vote for Clinton over a third-party candidate as a matter of essential political strategy, both parties reveal themselves to be motivated by fear. We shouldn't judge this, but we should name it. The fear vs. hope façade is self-serving (on both sides) and self-deceptive. More positively, that we are all afraid may turn out to be the beginning of an honesty unity. 5) Not sure how to vote? This is a beautiful idea. 6) War is getting a free pass in this election cycle. I often refer to war as the United States' bipartisan addiction. I say this with tremendous respect for the men and women of this country's armed forces, a number of whom share my desire to see declines in occasions of war (and its unofficial manifestations). 7) Faith communities should not take it as a given that it is easy to vote without succumbing to idolatry. It is possible, I think, to vote without succumbing to idolatry, but not without help. To do so takes wise counsel, accountability, and the benefit of holy friendships in the community of faith. One measure, among many, of our success in resisting idolatry is the flourishing of our capacity to love one another.
