Happy New Year! (Believing is Seeing & Seeing Changes the Way We Move)

Sermon for St. Francis House, Aug 30, the first Eucharist of the fall semester.

Happy new year! (Fire the confetti popper!)

It’s 1st Eucharist Sunday! Good to see you. Time to celebrate! Fireworks on the patio after the blessing. If only, right? It’s not that straightforward. At least that’s what the fire marshal told me on Thursday. 

No, the academic new year is more parts restraint than splash, and for some good reasons. It’s not just that the new year on campus occasions excitement and challenge in equal measure; the return both to rhythms of friendship and disciplined routines of study - there’s some natural anxiety that comes with this beginning. It’s also that we’re not all in town yet! Classes don't start until Wednesday. The RSO fair is the week after that. Kick-off is still two weeks away. Fall retreat, a whole month from today. So has your chaplain jumped the gun?

No. Definitely not. Well, maybe. Especially if I have to sweep this all up by myself. I mean, it’s possible. I don’t think so.

Yes, it is the case that our beginning tonight looks less like New Year’s Day and more like Advent - less ball drop in Times Square and more an Advent wreath on a family table with just one candle lit - but it’s still a beginning. Every oak tree needs its acorn and every virtuoso learned a first major chord. 

Beginnings are like this. Like an angel’s conversation with a teenage girl that no one else can see. Mary. Like work and prayer without a spotlight, requiring a heart of faith and patience. A first step is not a journey but every journey has first steps.

So the new academic year begins. And you wait. Wait for old friends to arrive and new friends to be made. Wait for the start of classes and their attending syllabi. Wait for work and school schedules to fall into place. Wait for the weather to change. Wait, no. Don’t wait for that. Soak it all in. Dinner tonight on the Terrace!

Here’s the point, though: just because we are waiting doesn’t mean we're not already beginning, because - and you know this - the best beginnings aren’t always big. They seldom are, actually. Five loaves and two fish. Twelve disciples. A handful of women with some incredible news. A mustard seed. Bread and wine in a red brick chapel. Innocuous, mundane. As ordinary as eating. Mixed in with the everyday earth and dirt of life. There, in the mud, the unexpected movement of God, the beginning of something that, years later, you will look back on and say was the moment, an encounter, that changed everything.

God shows up before things get big. Before we feel ready or have ourselves put together, God is there. The first words of Scripture are, “In the beginning, God…” Even before things begin, God’s on the job. All things belong to God. Even better, as James reminds us, all things are beloved of God. Even the seemingly insignificant place, person, or moment belongs to God. And, in the economy of God, nothing is wasted. My mom would yell out at my brothers on me (on well-deserved occasions), “What, were you born in a barn?” No, but Christ was. Nothing is God's economics is wasted.

To begin to trust that God is with us before we are with it is to pray to see things differently. So Christians ask, even in small and ordinary things, how is God at work? Believing that God is at work. We ask God’s help to take our time differently, in our tasks and with one another. We promise, with God’s help, to live and move and breathe distinctly in this world. To love our neighbors. Our enemies, too. To pray. To serve. To forgive. To ask for and trust God’s forgiveness of us. To walk gently in this world; because we are beginning to live in the world as God is teaching us to see the world. As God sees the world. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” 

So most nights, Rebekah goes to bed before I do and turns out the lights in the house as she goes, long before I get off the couch to begin my own bedtime routine. She usually leaves one light on, with instructions to turn it off last. The tricky part of that simple instruction is that that last light is still three rooms from our bed, which leaves a couple of ominous corners for me to maneuver in the dark. So I can attest to the fact that seeing things changes the way we move. When the lights are on, I am a picture of elegance, grace. A better looking Fred Astaire. When the lights are out, my goals quickly become more modest: don’t break the furniture, or my nose. I walk like a zombie: arms out and no elbows. Lights on, different story. But lights off, it’s bad news. It is sometimes said that seeing is believing but Christians have also long said the opposite: that believing is seeing. And seeing changes the way we move.

Each of our readings today, in separate ways, ask Christians to consider whether we will allow our worship and religious practice to change the way we move: to open up our hearts. It’s possible, say the scriptures, to go about life with locked arms and no elbows. Even in church, to show up to be seen - by others or God - and to lose sight of the dance to which God invites us. And there’s a beautiful reminder in even that sad possibility. The reminder is that our worship on Sunday is meant to inform and connect to our movements on Monday, on sidewalks, with neighbors. Sam Wells writes about the Eucharist as a game of fetch with God in which we bring a tennis ball, covered with bits of earth and dirt and saliva and life - all that we are - into this place and lift it up high with our hearts in thanksgiving to God. God blesses these bits of earth and dirt and life and transforms them in the presence of Christ and then - the best part - the deacon sends us back out, launching the ball out into the world again, where we’ll go out and find it, caked with new bits of earth, and bring them back here to this place. For the worshiping community, worship isn’t a performance for the impressive, it is the first part of the rhythm of breathing with God: the inhale of praise joined to the long, slow exhale of daily life, lived in relationship with God. Worship helps us see the world the way God sees the world, and the way God sees the world is meant for joy as beloved of God.

An example of this forming process at work. In the epistle today, James wants to help us see better, by resurrection light, and so he directs our attention to our speech: the words we speak. James thinks words and those who speak them should be generous because every good gift comes from God. So James thinks worship of the God who, in Christ, poured out God’s self in love for us on the cross, should make us generous, especially toward those on the margins of economic viability. James is talking about habits - like speech habits - the instincts that reveal the inner disposition of the heart, suggesting that these are worth tending and cultivating. Eucharist can be practice in giving away your life.

James’ concern, like Jesus’ in the gospel, is that observances meant to open our hearts sometimes disconnect from our non-Sunday lives, where God also has plans. Observances can turn into passive nouns for people of faith. As in, I’ll observe from a distance. I’ll watch. Or I’ll perform the act but keep closed my soul and the rest of my life. At their best, though, the observances of Christians are more than either watching others passively or performing for others vainly; when Christians come with hands outstretched to life up our hearts and beg our bread, to find new life, these living observances can align one’s life with what one sees and receives.

So here’s the million dollar question: what do you see and receive when you look at Jesus? If you were able to gaze upon Jesus and sustain that gaze - throughout an hour, a day, a life - and then align your life with what you saw, what would you become? What has the Eucharist taught you to see about God and the world? What has the community of faith, here or back home, given you that helps you to seek and serve God in the world more clearly?

What God has shown you, what God has given you to see God and the world by, is a treasure to be tended. Don’t take it for granted. Take time to know it. Keep tokens of Christ’s joy in you always at hand. After all, dynamic observance - or aligning one’s life - is not about whether or not you have achieved the end of perfect love - as if love was a test you or I could take once and pass - a video game level to complete. Instead, observances that grow the life of faith are about the daily act of showing up in love, beginning each day in conversation with God, noticing and taking a single faithful step ten thousand times across a lifetime, keeping the tennis ball in play. This kind of observance is not about what you’ve done up until now or what you will do with your degree once you’ve got it; it’s about how God is inviting you to follow Jesus today; is about tuning your soul in each moment to the seemingly insignificant place, practice, or person before you, that belongs completely to God.

A single step. Made over and over again. In love. Without fear. Because, - and here’s the best part - you, too, belong to God. By the waters of baptism, you are Christ’s own. You are God’s beloved.

Thanks be to God. And happy, new year.

Amen.

Washing Feet Out Of Season (When Every Day Is Maundy Thursday)

My daughter Annie's foot. I've washed it more than any other, save her other one and my own.
God knows she's poured her balm on me as well.

Christians wash each others' feet. Symbolically. Metaphorically. Once-a-year literally. As a kid, the once-a-year occasion was the one I most remembered. The church, all in shadows, all awash in the singing of hauntingly beautiful song. The church leader bent over on one knee, expectant, towel in hand. The approach, the sitting there, the embrace. Then cheeks flushed with fire. A slight tremble at the miracle of another's foot held in my hand. Cleansing a child of God. Pangs of unworthiness. Another embrace. The life God intends for the people of God's table. The pathway to Easter.

Later, in college, I took a summer job as a residential counselor for the physically and mentally challenged. I learned to feed paraplegics and assist campers in tending to basic bodily rhythms in ways that were profoundly holy, entirely ordinary, and most decidedly not once-a-year. Every minute was service. The posture of a heart bent to serve and towel in hand became less act and more disposition. That summer was at once impossibly difficult and one of the greatest privileges I have ever known.

Years later, Rebekah was stretched out on the floor of our birth-instructor's home, with a dozen other women and their partners. I held my hand to her back as we breathed to relax while our leader conveyed the message with which she began every class: "Remember. You are about to give birth to a twenty-four hour a day need." More than once since that day, I'm smiled, cried, laughed, and/or screamed at that truth. "Parenthood. Where it's always Maundy Thursday," I sigh.

Last night, my three-year old son comes into the dining room with mud-covered feet. A day well-lived, I think to myself, smiling. My son's not amused. "I want a bath!" he demands. "You've had a bath and a shower the last two nights..." I offer. "I WANT A BATH!" "You're clean!" I shout back like a madman, "You don't need a bath. A clean person doesn't need a whole bath. Just your feet - " Huh. Maundy Thursday, indeed.

On the Thursday before Easter - Maundy Thursday - Christians gather to do two things that, on the night before he died, Jesus asked his first disciples to do: 1) we celebrate the Eucharist, the holy meal of bread and wine at and in which Episcopalians (not uniquely) believe Christ is present and 2) we wash each others' feet. In the course of the Christian year, we'll celebrate the Eucharist a lot: most of us do so every Sunday, plus at other feasts and occasions throughout the week. Foot-washing, however, is mostly reserved for Maundy Thursday, with the possible exception of youth retreats like Happening, which is awesome and - if you're a teenager - you should totally go.

Because Episcopalians log disproportionate reps at the communion rail relative to the foot washing basin, we sometimes act awkwardly when it comes time to strip off the socks and get our soak on. Everyone's a little nervous because we don't wash each others' feet in church often enough to do it without a few hiccups along the way. Of course, infrequency of practice has the primary benefit of  drawing Christians into the Holy Week story of Christ's death and resurrection intimately and thereby conveying a holy reverence. We don't have the luxury of taking the act for granted. Scarcity of practice, with its attendant clumsiness, instills a sense of nervousness and the act's importance.

My children have taught me, however, that an act's importance does not hinge on its scarcity. Witness the realization of the Book of Common Prayer 1979, when its compilers made the Eucharist normative for a faith community's principle weekly worship. Contra the practice of the Middle Ages and even the 20th century church prior to the BCP 1979, sometimes reflective of concerns that frequency of practice would dilute the significance of the act and/or the readiness of the recipient, the BCP 1979 asserted the constancy of weekly Eucharistic practice, habit, and formation.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened had the Episcopal church opted - as some denominations in the Christian tradition have from time to time opted - from the two commandments Christ gave that night, to make of foot washing a weekly practice, too. What if, instead of a once-a-year occasion that elicited quiet pre-service chuckles about how gross our feet are, the practice was so common as to be assumed. This is what we do. We bare our feet for each other. We sit in the humility of grace received from another. We hold onto each other. Christ's words in our ears, his example before us, Christ's Spirit upon us, we pour out the pitcher for our sisters and brothers again. And again. And again. And again.

With prayer book revision now on the table, is weekly foot washing an open possibility?

This post is not an argument. I am convinced that a church that doesn't wash feet weekly is as fully capable of faithfulness and brokenness as any other. I suppose I'm writing a question mixed with imagination. I write it because, while Jesus gave us the instructions that night to "do this," he was admittedly vague on the particulars. Thus, I'm also not married to literalism: my new deacon and I will walk over to Porchlight - a neighbor non-profit serving men and women transitioning out of prison and homelessness - in a few minutes to talk with the organizers there about more regular rhythms of connection between our two communities.

Of course, the danger is that the literal or metaphorical foot washing act, done weekly, loses its pizazz over time. I would argue, however, that losing pizazz is not the same as losing meaning. Granted, the meaning we discover in the rhythm of the practice may well be different from the one we first thought it would be or the one we first wanted. Maybe, despite our best efforts, the line between act and disposition gradually blurs inside us until we, ourselves, are no longer our own to control, but we are lost to the service of Christ in our neighbor. That was my experience as a camp counselor at summer camp, and it is certainly my experience as a husband and parent. As a priest, also, and as friend and brother in Christ. On my good days, loss of that control names my thanks for my life as a Christian:

"This is the life God intends for the people of God's table. This is the pathway to Easter."

In Defense of Church Shopping

A couple of young adults - and good friends - in different parts of the country have recently and separately asked me about church shopping. Honestly, the integrity with which my friends have grappled with a question I assumed many young adults simply dismissed surprised me. In replying to one of my friends, I thought it might be useful to share a portion of my response (below). As is clear in what follows, I have a lot of personal ambivalence about the question, though not without some strong inclinations. That's all to say I'd be grateful for your own thoughts, insights, etc. in the comments at the end. Thanks!

Peace,

J

To my friend, just moved to a new city:

"I'll be honest, I find it confusing when the church at large chides Christians for church shopping - not because I'm for church shopping, but because I wonder how else people are supposed to make sense of the existence, for example, of 6 Episcopal faith communities in Madison, a city that stretches 6 miles, end to end. If 2 churches are equidistant from one's home, it seems arbitrary at best to say one is obligated to only attend the church first produced in the google search. I don't have a good reason for why the church is structurally at adds with its admonitions against church shopping, unless the admonitions really mean loyalty to the Episcopal brand, which I'm all for but which is, in practice, increasingly an illusion of vestries and other denominational leadership. Even if that's the case, the idea that church shopping only refers to denominational infidelity is nowhere reflected in the way most denominational churches regard and/or record membership. 

"So, yes. Church shop. What it means to church shop well becomes an interesting and valid question for me, and I don't pretend to have anything like a satisfactory answer for that one beyond 'shop to buy.' My own short list would be a community 1) centered on the waters of baptism (i.e., Easter Vigil) and the Eucharist, and their attending rhythms of prayer, 2) with Christ the center of the preaching, related to a love of Scripture, 3) in which the gifts of the laity are visibly lifted up and encouraged, 4) and where youth are visibly valued and invested in. Even there, I'm probably forgetting something that puts me close to heresy. My experience does tell me that when most people talk about 'being fed' they mostly mean feeding others - finding a place for their own gifts to bless and serve others in and outside of the community, which is an important part of finding belonging and is probably another name for the opportunity to love and be loved.

"Pragmatically, studies show that - absent a dogged loyalism - most folks also need 6-8 friends in a community in order to call a given church a longterm (more than six months) home. And all of this assumes a monogamous relationship (one person + one community of faith). My brother and his friends attended 6+ youth groups back in the day, which at least calls into question the assumption of ecclesial monogamy as normative. Myself, I'm all for ecclesial monogamy and I am sympathetic to Brother Emile of Taizé and his contention that 'you are not obligated to be faithful to (the churches') divisions.'"

That Time I was Mistaken for a Mormon Priest...Twice (Reclaiming Ordinary Symbols of Faith)

A few years ago, I made the decision to walk home for lunch during the season of Lent. I was serving a faith community outside of Corpus Christi, and I lived about a mile from the church; the roundtrip commute would take thirty minutes I figured, leaving another thirty minutes for lunch. Easy enough. I've written elsewhere about the intention and learnings of this Lenten exercise as spiritual practice. Today I am writing to tell you about a surprise discovery along the way.

The surprise came quickly, on the first day walking home, when a red sports car slowed to a crawl and came up alongside me. The passenger window came down and a man's voice called out to me from inside the car: "Hey!" He wait for me to stop. I stopped.

"Are you a Mormon minister? You know, a priest?"

I put my hands on my knees and leaned over to find the face of the man in the car, glad for the conversation but confused by the question. I realized I was wearing my collar. My mind began frantically scrolling through a mental rolodex of early morning conversations with my best friend from high school - a Mormon. Nope. No Mormon priests in there.

"No," I said. "I'm an Episcopal priest. We're a part of the Protestant tradition, but share a lot with Catholics, too. I work at the church over there." I pointed.

"Cool. Very cool. I could of sworn you were a Mormon priest!"

We exchanged pleasantries, said good bye, and the man drove off.

Quirky. Strange. An occasion to laugh. The I didn't think much about it, until two days later when it happened again, this time after lunch on the way back to church. A neighbor came out from his garage and asked the same question: "Are you a Mormon priest?" Weird.

That's when it hit me: by their steadfast practice, Mormons have been more successful claiming walking as a symbol of faith than Episcopalian clergy have been successful making the same of the collar. In these two men's minds - ordinary, workweek, lots of things going on minds - walking and religious person equalled "Mormon" faster than walking and collar equalled "any of the denominations that have collars or priests." Yikes.

I was visiting recently with a priest in Waco, who was sharing with me his congregation's desire to process, liturgically, and live and move, physically, more and more outside the walls of the building. "The church that walks!" he joked. I laughed and told my friend what a great thing that could be, and I told him this story.

As a campus minister, the level of connection I feel to the life of prayer and the people around me is positively correlated to the number of steps I walk on campus. 10,000 is the goal, seldom reached, but failing by a few thousand has never felt so good. Theologically, this goal represents the missional conviction that God is there, to be found, in the neighborhood. Practically, the goal works against the temptation to perfect ideas for ministry apart from the community into which God sends God's people.

And yet, it is not just the walking. It is the identification of faith with the most fundamental, ordinary, and simple parts of life, I think, that makes strangers think of Mormons when they think of walking. An ordinary act performed countless times for others. Like parents and diapers. Like single moms and second shifts. Like daily prayer and petition for the world's deep wounds. Like priest and Eucharist. Like hands on heads and healing.

Of course, Mormons don't go around just walking. They walk in order to talk, and they talk, largely, with the aim of giving you a Book of Mormon. There are plenty of things they probably think they're about that are more important, in their own minds, than the walking. But it's the walking folks remember.

I wonder how it is the same with me, with my church. What truth names the difference between what I think is the point of ministry and the thing that God actually plants in the heart of the faithful. I wonder how God is daily alive in the ordinary in ways I am tempted to miss or discount. The rudiments of bread, wine, water, oil. Or Dix's "take, bless, break, and give." The assembly as it gathers, listens, lifts, and leaves. Christ as he gathers, speaks, touches, sends. The currents of prayer and Scripture that orient us in and around the life of the baptized, whose center is Jesus, crucified and risen.

My suspicion is that those times when I insist on an importance beyond these rudiments serve mainly to name my vanity. And likewise in my faith community and the larger church. For it is in simple acts lived to God with others, for others, that acts make clear their need, if they are to be intelligible, for God - and so find the freedom to become symbols of faith, pointing to the living God whose promise is not to be except to be with us.

Campus Ministry in July: Pro Tips from Gregory the Great & Stephen's Colbeard

Campus ministry in the summer. The good life, I am told. Peace. Quiet. Unlimited parking spaces. Of course, it is good. At the same time, summer is challenging. Challenging because if you didn't get into campus ministry to be around students, you probably got some very bad career advice along the way. Note: there aren't very many students on campus in the summer.

Thankfully, if you are a campus minister in the summer, there is still good work to do. In the summer, there is finally time to give full attention to the key maintenance issues you've been punting since March. There are renovations to oversee and bylaws to review and, in our happy case, a 100th anniversary celebration to organize with the help of alumni, supporters, and friends. Lots of phone calls, preparations, and partnerships. Way back in June, we conducted a search process and welcomed a new office coordinator for whom the summer is an ideal time of introduction to the ministry.

There are endless weeds to pull.

In fact, summer ends up being a great time to regularly connect with the handful of students still in town. This year, Rebekah and I hosted weekly meals at hour home on Wednesdays, which have blessed family and students alike; the quality of conversation afforded by the summer is often unlike anything we'll have come fall.

Summer is likewise a great time to reconnect with colleagues across the country, whose lives and ministries breathe courage and vision into my own. This year, I had the privilege of accompanying the newly appointed prior of the St. Anselm Community at Lambeth Palace - a dear friend - on a weeklong series of meetings with visionary leaders with a heart for Jesus and young adults in Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.

But, mostly, all of these only leave me waiting patiently - or impatiently - for the eventual gathering of the community without whom even the best summer ideas will never grow into anything else.



In a recent podcast, Stephen Colbert waxed philosophical on his network-necessary hiatus as he waits to begin his Late Show in the fall. Talking with his newly appointed band leader Jon Batiste - a jazz improv phenom - Colbert compared his own comedic improv art with that of the improv musician. The problem, Colbert explains, is that the instrument he plays is an audience, and the sound of his instrument is laughter. Which means right now he can do plenty of work - and there's lots to be done - but he can't really practice. "Until you're with an audience, you're not playing your instrument. And so I don't necessarily know how to make the great leap to a new show until I'm sitting there with the people who matter the most to me..." And later, "it's all just theology - it's not religion."

Welcome to campus ministry in the summer.

So I've grown my Colbeard, and shaved it off. Like Colbert, I've gone off the grid, only to come back with an eager zeal just a couple months too soon. I'll be okay. I'll wait. Hit the beach. Continue praying and preparing. I'll set out each day to be present to God in the moment before me. I'll enjoy the ease of parking. And, for all the reasons Colbert names, I still won't be ready in the fall. But I'll be ready to not be ready. I'll learn to wait on the Lord.

Here's a passage from Gregory the Great that came as a great consolation and joy the other day:

Summer is hard for me physically, and has brought about a long interruption in my explanations of the gospel. But because I've been silent my love has not ceased. I'm only saying what you all know within yourselves. Our expression of love is often hindered by other concerns; it remains undiminished in our hearts even though our actions do not show it. When the sun is covered with clouds we on earth can't see it, but it is still there in the sky. It is the same with love: it produces energy within us even if it does not reveal itself outwardly in our activities. But it is time now for me to speak again. Your enthusiasm is stirring me as I see you eagerly awaiting my words (Be Friends of God, 59).

I don't flatter myself that the students of St. Francis House are "eagerly awaiting my words," but God knows I am awaiting - and eagerly - the life and conversations we'll share as the people of God in this place; God's people reassembled, together, as we follow the risen Christ.

Um, Stephen, you forgot the "monkey tail."

Campus Ministry and the Liturgical Calendar: The Odd Couple of Christian Discipleship

Campus Ministry (L) and the Liturgical Calendar (R) make a better couple than you would think. But a full appreciation for the pairing takes time to acquire.

After five years of ordained ministry in the parish, this August will mark the beginning of my fourth year in campus ministry. The number four is significant, because it signals the start of my second trip through the lectionary on this campus. (Luke, here we come!) This personal lectionary anniversary makes me think that clergy should probably take a page from dogs in determining their RCA (Real Clergy Age). Dogs, of course, multiple their years by seven. A two year old puppy is really a moody adolescent. Similarly, clergy should count divide their years of ordained service by three. Twenty-one years in ministry is seven trips through gauntlet. Seven trips to be enthusiastically celebrated.

With the average age of seminary graduates still hovering near forty-eight, I suspect many will welcome my proposed RCA - with its invitation to a younger age - so long as the HAC number is unaffected (admittedly no sure thing). But I digress.

Anyway, this is why I'm pumped for this lectionary anniversary:

I vividly remember the clergy friend, now retired, who shared his excitement for me when I told him about the new call to serve with students. He, too, had served as a campus minister for a number of years, prior to my knowing him. The best, he said, was when the liturgical and academic calendars began speaking to each other and, together, to the preacher. He warned that this takes a few years, to discern the annual pattern of faith that the community at St. Francis House would experience together, such that we would engage that pattern toward flourishing, and not frustration.

Campus ministries, of course, never celebrate Christmas together. If we played by the wholly good rules of the Advent purists (like my dad), we'd never sing Christmas hymns! Imagine - four years together without one "Joy to the World!" That's all before you reckon with the fact that Holy Week is frequently Spring Break. (Easter is Low Sunday.) And Pentecost sometimes catches graduation weekend, but largely falls into the summer. Summer, for its part, is either a mix of Eucharist and evening prayer with whomever is still around or, as this year - with a significant number of the community interning elsewhere - we designate the student center as fallow cropland. In lieu of Sunday worship, students are invited to weekly meals at the Melton home, praying Compline together after. Some weeks, there are as many as thirteen or fourteen on hand, earning me a long glare from my wife (to whom I had promised dinner attendance would be minimal). Other times, my family eats alone. Such is summer.

While we give up a lot, we get a lot, too. "Ritual observances" include the annual house blessing of the student center, fall and Province V retreats, pumpkin carving at the Meltons, St. Francis celebrations - all animals on deck, the spectacularly awesome pre-Christmas hymn sing, student graduation reflections, game days, lock-ins, and the rest. It's a give and take. Weekly Compline by candlelight has become a transformative part of my own rule of life.

As weird as the student Christian's liturgical calendar can be, it has this much for it: the community is reminded at every turn that the point is living the life of faith beyond these walls. If there's a point to being a part of an Episcopal community on a university campus (and there is!), that point has to include the connection of what we do together to everything we don't do together - all that happens somewhere else. Because a lot of life happens somewhere else.

That a lot of life happens outside of student centers is, I believe, why student communities are such fertile soil for mission mindsets. "Go!" Students are always going. The missional movement adds to that motion the primary conviction that God is already present to and active in the places to which you go. Among other things, to be a Christian is to be learning to see and name God at work in seemingly ordinary, pedestrian places. (Pedestrian here has the double sense - run of the mill and walking - because, God knows, if nothing else, to be a student is to walk your legs off.)

So when I sat down at a coffee shop this morning to sketch out the gospel lessons assigned for the first month of the fall semester, I had to fight back the goosebumps. Mark's gospel starts, "Jesus went..." He doesn't even have a posse yet. There is no church. The movement starts with his movement. Jesus walks into the neighborhood. The second gospel starts, "Jesus went, with his disciples..." People follow Jesus into the neighborhood because, in him, they see God at work there. The third gospel starts, "Jesus and his disciples went..." Three weeks in, Jesus' followers join Jesus as the subject of the sentence; they take an active share in the ministry.

Yes, I thought. Absolutely. Of course this is where and how the student Gospel begins.

Of course, in that beginning there's a lot yet to build on, unpack, listen to, talk about, and practice in our community. But my joy this morning came in that stand-alone and long-ago conversation remembered: my old friend's promise come true - the lectionary and her unyielding rhythms had finally started speaking Jesus in the venacular of the campus. I can't wait to hear what comes next.

Leadership, Laughter, and Michael Curry: Why a Playful Presiding Bishop is Serious Good News for the Church

A younger me and Rebekah, with Presiding Bishop-Elect Michael Curry,
on the occasion of Rebekah's confirmation (Easter Vigil, 2005)

In addition to Michael Curry's many and other gifts (see here), Michael Curry makes folks laugh. We Episcopalians don't laugh much in church. No judgment there, just observing. The real gift of Michael Curry, however, isn't just that he's funny; it's that he looks like he's having fun. As if the space, the place, where God in Christ meets God's people - even the church! - gives him joy and life and hope for a world in need. Like he'd preach all day, if he could. Like he really loves Jesus and people. Like he's glad to be there: glad to be with Scripture; glad to be at the Table; glad to be with the people; glad to be following the Jesus who leads us out of fear and sends us into the world God sent God's Son to save. As if to be so sent is the very best of all.

Karl Barth once wrote that "Laugher is the closest thing to the grace of God."

The truth is, seriousness is not the lone, responsible response to difficult challenges that require our total engagement, no matter what our parents told us (or their parents told them). In fact, Family Systems Theory has long asserted that seriousness can be a form of reactivity born of stuck-ness in anxiety. Such stuck-ness is exhibited in the coach who is always shouting "Just try harder!" and reflected in corporate cultures that answer every problem with exhortations to be "serious" and subsequently eliminate what are perceived to be elements extraneous to said serious pursuit of the goal. By contrast, says Family Systems Theory, when systems are capable of engaging challenges in a spirit of playfulness, unhooked from anxiety, new and unseen possibilities - new creativity, innovation, and better solutions - emerge. In other words, it's smart to be playful.

Most Playful CEO 2011 - Rob DeMartini, New Balance from Playworks on Vimeo.

To repeat the main point, seriousness is not the lone, responsible response to difficult challenges that require our total engagement. Thriving organizations insist on single-minded pursuit of their goals and approach these goals in ways that are in equal turns serious, playful, instructive, inspiring, structured, creative, and life-giving. We must, it seems, remember why we're here and know that thing to be an obvious source of joy. When we do, we're both more productive and more empowered. When we find ourselves unable to laugh, by contrast, we are not just failing to enjoy ourselves as we go about our work, we are failing the work itself; we are sacrificing a forward-moving future for a reactive climate of fear; we are exchanging thriving for surviving. When we forget to laugh, we forget our animating story. 

Michael Curry does not forget his animating story. I suspect that's both why he looks like he's having fun and why it's fun to be around him. That the story that animates him is the story of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is seriously good news for the church he has been elected to lead.