For Xavier

I had to go down into my basement and find it, but after a few minutes of sorting through a mass of accumulated boxes from 14 moves in the last 21 years, there it was.  A brown moving box with my mom’s handwriting in thick black sharpie, “Joey’s Yearbooks.”  In my hands  – “In the 1995 Doghouse”.  Our senior high yearbook.  All I have to do is turn to page 8, bottom row, third from the left, and there he is.

I look at that picture, the one where the words are written underneath “Xavier Davis”.  I haven’t seen Xavier since 1995.  Yeah, when we graduated high school together. I’m reminded that he was class president. I’m reminded that he was “Most Likely to Succeed”.  Along with Kristin Miller, who’s in Indiana, saving souls and surrounded by a trio of kids who look just like him.  Or Whitney Wells, who helps bring children into the world as a nurse on the maternity wing and has a beautiful family of her own (do you still have those boots?). And Nadia Ryder, who I thought was awesome in High School and who I lost touch with but I’m sure she’s still as kick-ass now as she was then.

I think about a lot of kids from our class.  Kevin Land, who I remember from our Califf days when we would get to school early, help set up the lunchroom, and then Coach Dudley or Coach Harrington would let us play basketball until school started.  He’s got a beautiful family now.  Kim Markham is up near Seattle, with two awesome kids, a love for robots, and has a bad-ass motorcycle gang.  Vermonica Sands is in Philly, molding young lives and giving them the tools to be productive citizens just like she is.  David Jones is a rock star, looking like a mix between Duck Dynasty and some Old Testament prophet, and that is just incredible. Valvin Hambrick, the leading rusher of the Jones County football team, is making sure kids are coached and taught in the right way and he has a beautiful wife. So many more stories to be told.

There’s a lot of sawdust and baggage and musty stuff crammed in my head between now and nearly 22 years ago.  On the one hand, I’ve a notion of what life was like for Xavier – his career as a teacher, his imprint on young and impressionable minds seeking to learn math (or forced by the state to do so, but then again, math counts!). I don’t know how hard life was for him, though, what he struggled with, how he was recovering from a car accident from a few years back, what his relationships with his family and friends were like.  A void of sorts, something I’m comfortable with because it’s seemingly impossible to keep track of virtually every person you have ever encountered.  But the key here, and this is why I’m writing this, is that hearing that Xavier has died has left a mark on me somehow.

That’s just it, the pain and sorrow for someone that I didn’t really know or have the energy or drive to keep in touch with, and yet I want to express that his life did mean something, to me and countless others.   This is a testament to the time I spent with Xavier, a way of acknowledging a deeper truth about my reality, our connectedness to each other in life and death, and how that fits into the overarching tapestry of the Universe.

I guess I first meet Xavier when our classes were combined between Mattie Wells Elementary School and Gray Elementary and we were all lumped together at Califf Middle School.  Here’s a real nostalgia bomb – I could write on and on about middle school awkwardness and pain and fun and shame and humiliation and goodness – but I don’t want to get too lost in the weeds of what was and what would never be.  But as I met Xavier and we journeyed together through middle school and on to Jones County High School, the sense that I’m left with is that, in the daily encounters that I had with him, he always made me feel good about who I was, he always made me laugh, and at the end of the day, he made me feel like I fit in, that I could be comfortable in my own skin, just who I was even if I didn’t know who that was.

This is the essence of soul, isn’t it? That God created us in God’s image to be beautiful and loving and kind and to give from what we have and to do no harm.  How much beauty did Xavier give in singing with NXS (best R&B group of the ‘90’s, hands down).  Or how did you want to come to Xavier’s defense when he would push back against a teacher in trying to figure out what we were supposed to learn?  I remember him having that kind of intellectual bravery, asking those questions of “why do I need to be tested on this?” I was always a little too chicken-shit to “rebel”, afraid of getting in trouble or not being perfect or letting people down.  The insecurity of Joey Greene, short, white, nerdy, playful, funny (at least I think I’m funny), a teenager that was unsure of the world and what I was supposed to do in it.

But Xavier’s fellowship and friendship inspired me in a way I didn’t know but acknowledged through a way that nowadays would have been preserved on the internet.  The Jones County High School Academic Team went on WMAZ Channel 13’s “Teen Challenge”, a quiz show hosted by Frank Malloy, and I sat on the team with Kristin Miller, Rebecca Hawkins, and Sarah Shell, and we answered all sorts of questions about all kinds of things (in my boredom as a child I read the encyclopedia and I remember Jodi Bray calling me “Doogie Howser”).  In the intro segments, we would get to say something about ourselves, and I remember giving a “shout-out” to Xavier on t.v.  My three minutes of adolescent fame, awkwardly squirming in front of the bright lights of a Middle Georgia television studio on that hill in Macon right by Shoney’s, nerdy, bowl-cut Joey saying hi to Xavier, who I think was actually sitting in the audience with Mrs. Simpson when we taped the broadcast.

Xavier made me feel normal and accepted.  And I wanted the world to know then as I do now that somehow, in the same way that I write this, it’s about something bigger than me, and him, and the details of our high school existence.  It’s about community and hope and goodness and freedom and leaving the world a better place than how we found it.

I bet in the past 22 years, since graduation, there are a lot of nuances and contours to Xavier’s life that we best leave where they are.  We are all broken and beat up and ashamed and sinful and have done bad things at times and have not always lived up to our full potential.  We probably look at each other’s Facebook pages and run the gamut of “Good for them!” or “oh, things haven’t changed much in two decades”, or “that’s just pitiful, now” and we may get upset in reading or learning that we have differing political viewpoints or religious ideas (you voted for who because Jesus told you to?), but at the end of the day, in 1995, when we graduated from JCHS we were a community sent forth into the world to just exist.  And everywhere we go we take a part of that community with us and weave it into the communities that we find ourselves in.

And the Xavier Davis’ of the world remind us that we can laugh, sing, learn, have fun, and struggle with each other and not have to be complete assholes because the world has enough assholes already.  We can be gentle and encourage each other, love each other, take care of ourselves and each other, breath in the possibilities of what the future holds because we are not alone and the heart and soul of this world, that which I call God and understand through the tradition given to me in Christianity, doesn’t change and that ground of love and belonging are holding Xavier in the light of no more sorrow or pain, and we are being welcomed toward it. He’s leaving a gift for me right now – a memory, a smile, a laugh, a willingness to harmonize and it sits in my soul like, “yes, it’s o.k.  Xavier is o.k.  You are o.k. Death sucks.  Life is hard. The world is a good place, a better place because of Xavier’s imprint, and we all belong.”

Rest, brother Xavier.  Sleep in the goodness of the Lord.  Say hi to Jermaine Orrington for us. Remember us.  And may light perpetual shine upon you.

“God Isn’t Fixing This”

One of the New York papers had this for a headline – “God isn’t fixing this”.  Of course, the main goal of such a headline is to sell papers.  Admittedly, when I saw this, I was offended. Here we go, I thought, bad theology for the sake of sensationalism, ready to neuter God, mock people of religious faith, show that people who believe in God are weak-minded or stupid.  Until I realized something:

It’s absolutely correct.

It’s not up to God to fix this. It’s like Rob Base said, “It takes two.”  It’s up to us to repent.  That headline was referring specifically to the shootings in San Bernardino.  We have to repent of the violence that is occurring in our country and around the world.  We need to repent of our addiction to complacency in the face of such violence.  We need to repent for the lives that have been lost.

We also need to repent of the polarization which is keeping us from having any meaningful dialogue in this country.

Before I go further, let me say this.  I have owned several handguns – revolvers, semi-automatic pistols.  I have owned several long guns – shotguns, deer rifles.  I have also had a serious change of heart about these things and no longer own any guns (marriage and having children made me reconsider this).  However, I have a number of friends and family members that own guns, that have permits to carry guns around concealed on their bodies, or that have government-issued guns they use for their work in law enforcement or the military.

I do not want to advocate taking guns away from people who are responsible, law-abiding citizens.  I know that there are a lot of good guys out there with firearms that know how to use them, store them responsibly, and are mentally stable and do not pose a danger or threat to themselves or those around them.  If you are reading this and you find that it is important that we maintain the right to bear arms, if you end up disagreeing with me, I understand.  But please keep reading.

We have to do something.  We get caught up in the distraction of labeling things:  were the people who killed 14 and injured 17 in California Muslims who were radicalized?  Did the man who shot up the Planned Parenthood clinic suffer from mental illness?  Maybe these are important questions, but they don’t get to what I think is the heart of the matter.  We are addicted to violence.

Polls seem to show a 50/50 split between those who favor stricter gun laws and those who don’t (this all depends on what polls you look at).  We are a nation that has valued the 2^nd Amendment and our right to own firearms.  On Black Friday, there were around 190,000 background checks performed for firearm purchases.  This is in large part due to sales going on, like sales for tvs or fitbits or clothes or toys, and most of those firearms will be Christmas presents and the largest majority of those firearms will be used for sporting purposes.  That’s great.  But what about that small percentage of those firearms that will be used in mass shootings and terrorist attacks in our country?  How do we prevent that?

It makes no sense to me that if I wanted to buy a gun, I wouldn’t be asked a number of questions and have to wait for a day or two in order to get the gun. As a law abiding citizen, I have no problem being thoroughly vetted before having access to a firearm.  I’m i.d.’ed for buying cold medicine.  I need a prescription for narcotic medications. I wait for hours at the DMV (aka hell on earth) for a driver’s license or car tag and registration.  Let’s put this in perspective:  if you think it’s an inconvenience to have to go through a tighter screening process to buy a firearm, what about those who have lost their lives by the bullet that exited a legally purchased gun?  How inconvenienced are they?

If you own a firearm and want to privately sell or trade them, please be aware of who you are selling the gun to.  I sold my guns to people I knew and trusted.  People who I hung out with and had a sense of who they were, what their lifestyle was like, etc.  Not everyone does that.  Maybe we need to find a way to regulate the private sale of firearms, also.

I think the biggest thing that needs fixing is to get the gun lobby out of this.  The NRA and the gun manufacturers have immunity to being held liable for all of these gun deaths.  Lawmakers are handsomely rewarded with large donations if they side with these lobbyists.  And yet, what happened to the tobacco industry?  They were liable for thousands of death and had to pay.  If our lawmakers weren’t under the influence of these big money donors and their agenda to continue to make money off the sale of guns, despite the numbers of deaths that had occurred, maybe then we could have a reasonable dialogue about gun regulation where the right to bear arms is respected and yet it is that much more difficult for those that qualify to purchase guns to get them.

Again, you don’t have to agree with me.  I’m not trying to deny you a gun.  I’m only trying to get us to talk about fixing this culture of violence.  It does come back to God.  God isn’t going to fix this, but we have to.  And we can get a sense of what God has in mind when we recall the words of Jesus: “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52)  God is a God of peace and love, and calls us to look upon each other as His beloved creation.  We need to respect each other, not fear each other’s ideas and close our hearts and minds to what wisdom might be present when we seek to face down evil together.  After all, we all want a world that is safe and free from terror.

An Open Letter to Mark Richt

This is a letter that I wrote openly to Coach Mark Richt, the head coach of the University of Georgia football team.  It’s not necessarily about religion and certainly isn’t intended to be an official church communication.  Just some of my thoughts.

Dear Coach Richt,

We’ve never met and probably never will.  I’m also pretty sure I’m not the only person to write you an open letter and send it out, but I feel the need to.  I assume much about what your work has been like and maybe that’s why I’m writing this.  I was taught that you should always look for the similarities you may share in other people and in that you might learn something from them.  I’m an ordained minister, specifically Christian, and if you want to get down to brass tacks I’m an Episcopal priest.  I hold the degree of Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Georgia, where I graduated from in 2002.  You were just settling into Athens when I left to pursue my vocation.  I miss Athens – it’s a great city with some really great people, and my time at the University of Georgia is something that I’ll treasure forever.

I love football.  I’ve never really played the game other than in the back yard with my cousins (who growing up were basically like my brothers and friends and actually did play organized football).  But I’ve watched it all of my life.  On T.V.  In High School stadiums.  At Sanford Stadium.  I even spent a summer pressure-washing Sanford Stadium as a job while I was there in college, and then cleaning the place during football season.  I’d get to arrive early at the stadium and stock the bathrooms with toilet paper and make sure everything was ready and then would get to watch the game.  The next day, a Sunday, we’d get there early in the morning and would line up with blowers on our backs and blow the entire stadium.  It was dirty, nasty work.  It made me appreciate the work that janitors and custodians and maintenance people do every day and not just to earn beer money during college.

I also love Georgia.  I wear a lot of Red and Black.  I have Georgia Christmas tree ornaments, have had Georgia floor mats in my truck, a box of Georgia band-aids.  Occasional references to Georgia football show up in my sermons on Sunday morning or during the announcements.  It’s gotten a bit weird because I used to live and preach in Georgia, first in Suwanee and then just an hour south of Athens in Greensboro, but now I live in suburban New York, Westchester County, and some of the folks here who haven’t been blessed with experiencing Georgia football or the SEC think I’m maybe a day late and a dollar short sometimes.  But there is a thrill in wearing a hat with Uga on it, and walking down Broadway in New York City, or inside the Magic Kingdom down in Orlando, or anywhere, and having a stranger come up to you and say “Go Dawgs!”  I can attest to having called the Dawgs on the subway once, on the L train from Brooklyn to Manhattan, with some friends and fellow Georgia grads, but I will neither confirm nor deny if there had been any beer consumed on that day.

I love God, of course, given my line of work.  I know that you do too and you are not ashamed to be a man of faith.  I say good for you.  That’s probably why I like you so much and probably why I’m sad about what’s happened with the Georgia football program.  For the past 15 years, you’ve been the coach.  Sure, I admire and respect Vince Dooley and know that he’s a good man.  I know that there were a few years of questionable leadership on the football team.  But then you came.  You’ve been a bedrock for the football program.  Solid.  A winner.  Successful.  On and off the field, you’ve been nothing but a class act.  It’s great to have seen your family grow up in Athens.  It’s awesome to see how strong your marriage is.

There are so many players I can name that leave Georgia and go on to the NFL and are the type of men that I can look at my sons and say “That guy is a great athlete AND a good person”.  There are a ton of them.  Gurley, Stafford, Green, Moreno, Boss Bailey, I’m going to leave a whole lot of guys out, not because they don’t deserve name recognition, but just because I could go on and on.  I love some of those guys on the field this year, especially Malcolm Mitchell, because he’s got great hands and is fast but also loves to read and encourages others to do so too.  So many young men come to Georgia, play football under you, and leave for the pros or for any number of walks of life, and I believe that they are better people for it because of you and your leadership.  You teach them not only how to win at football but how to win at life.  You show them how to represent where they are from and who they are with integrity and pride, not foolishness or for show.  You play by the rules, even when the rules are shortsighted or outdated, even when the rules hinder the potential of those young men you try to shepherd.

I think you have the ability to look at a person, a young man, and see beyond their race, economic circumstances, level of intelligence, religion, creed, ethnicity, etc. and see the potential that God put inside of them for greatness.  And you bring it out of them.  You let them shine.  You show them how to succeed and almost more importantly, you show them how to handle when they come up short.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve yelled at the t.v. a few times when I thought that you could have made a better call. I’ve gotten frustrated with time clock management, or play choices, or who should be quarterback. I don’t think you are perfect or some kind of miracle worker.  I’ve certainly seen you lose your cool a few times on the sidelines, but I’ve never once doubted that you are a man of integrity, faith, honesty, and courage.  It has made me proud to be a Georgia fan knowing that the players on that team are being taught how to handle not just the football but how to handle life with dignity, class, kindness, and service.

That’s why it hurts, Mark.  Because someone decided that they needed to make a change.  This is where the preacher and the coach are alike:  there are people out there that expect and demand perfection, whether it’s in the win column or in the Sunday attendance record and they are too caught up in a pipe dream of some human-created glory to see the beauty of consistency, patience, peace, humility, forgiveness, trust, and love.  They fail to see that there is actual winning happening.  Games are being won, lives are being changed, people are being given a sense of hope and belonging.

Let’s be honest here.  It’s just a game.  There are starving children out there.  Broken families, ISIS, people shooting up churches or movie theaters, unclean drinking water, illiteracy, tons of stuff way more important than football.  But to see you standing on the sidelines, playing it so cool, letting those guys have fun out on the field, encouraging them to be their best – that always gets me excited.  Excited for Georgia football.  Excited for life.  Excited for the potential that is being tapped into with those young athletes.

I guess I just want to say thank you.  Thanks for being a great coach and making it great to wear red and black on Saturdays (and every other day).  Thanks for making the lives of countless young people better by teaching them to respect themselves and their families and communities because they have value and worth that goes beyond any accomplishment on an athletic field. Thanks for winning a ton of games and bowl games and national recognition and all of those statistical things that sports fans love.

Thanks for committing to the G.  Always.

I don’t know what’s next for you and I’m not sure how I feel about what’s next for Georgia Bulldog football, but I know that wherever you end up (and I hope it’s in some way at the University of Georgia), I’m going to root for you and your team.  That’s part of what I do as a priest – I root for people, especially people that are doing God’s work “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the Body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12), a body as disparate as the Bulldog Nation and as tight as a church or football team.  You do that work.  And I’m sure you’ll continue in it in some way.  Let me know if I can help.

Peace,

The Rev. Joe Greene

Rector, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Larchmont, NY

 

My Job: A Numinous Manifesto

A man came into the office to talk to me about God.  It was one of those privileged conversations that I get to have as a priest – he was very open and vulnerable about how he had been sober for several months after having spent many years being addicted to drugs and alcohol.  We talked about the disease of addiction and how he was taking care of it, by going to meetings, seeing a therapist, exercising, etc.  And then it came out: “Well, I’m here because I want to have a more spiritual life, to know more about God, to have a sort of road map for belief.”

How refreshing!  A person that actually wants to talk about the very stuff that I went to seminary for, the stuff that I spend hours in my day praying and meditating and studying and mentally masticating on in order to live out my vocation!

And here’s what I told him: “Do you know how much I know about God?  Can you envision that little bit of air that’s left behind when a grasshopper jumps? Just a little whisspp!  That’s how much I know about God.”

He looked at me the same way that I probably looked at the young woman working behind the counter at Pizza Hut the one time I went there to order a pizza to go and she said she could not make the pizza because the computer was down.  Does the computer make the pizza?  Turn on the oven? Knead the dough?

This is the truth, though.  Some parishioners may be reading this and thinking, “Uh oh!”  But like Jesus said repeatedly to those who followed after him, “Fear not!”

It’s true that I’m pretty well acquainted with scripture.  I’ve read the entire Bible several times through.  I love it.  There are some great, terrible, joyful, sorrowful moments in the collected books of the Bible, both in the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.  I read and pray with the Holy Scriptures every day, imagining myself into the heart of the stories and lessons that pop out from the page.  Oh, sure, there are a lot of boring parts.  Endless geneaologies.  Lots of “And then this group of people went here, and they fought with these people, then they went there, and there was a drought, etc., etc., etc.” You know, history.  But what about Samuel?  His mom dropped him off to be raised by a priest, he started to actually HEAR GOD SPEAK TO HIM, and then lived a long life as a prophet and helped Israel to eventually get a king that was worth a damn and the whole time he’s afraid that he’s going to mess up somehow and has two sons who no one trusts to be anything like him least of all good.  What an awesome story! Or the entire book of the Acts of the Apostles, where all kinds of things go down in terms of Peter or Paul preaching about the Son of God dying on a cross and raising to life again and some people saying, “Well, that’s cool” and they go and get baptized and others saying “What a bunch of crazy s*&t” and throwing them in jail or torturing them or flat out executing them.  It’s amazing stuff!

And yet, sometimes I ask “Why doesn’t God talk to me the way that He talked to Samuel?” or “Why aren’t my sermons rattling the walls of the church and bringing in thousands of converts on Sunday morning?”  Maybe I should just be grateful that what I say isn’t offensive enough for the folks in the pews to throw rocks at me, right?

The answer to those questions, though, is painfully obvious:  “Why? You ask.  Because you don’t know much about God!”

It’s also true that I spend time each day in prayer, talking to God, getting quiet enough to listen.  I’m lucky enough to have a guidebook, at least to start out with.  Every morning, I read the daily office from the Book of Common Prayer.  It gives me selections from the bible, as well as prayers that have been around for centuries.  Now, hear me, it’s not as if every morning at prayer I have a deep, spiritual epiphany.  Some mornings, it’s like eating a good meal.  You feel satisfied and ready to begin your day.  Yes, on some occasions, you can’t imagine being anywhere other than deep in prayer.  You become transfixed and have entered into a real cosmic mystery.  Every part of your body tingles with expectation.  That’s not as creepy as it sounds.  It just means you’re locked into the source of life.  You’re close to those mountaintop experiences like Moses had.  Sometimes I find myself so deep in prayer that I wouldn’t even notice that the house was on fire.  At least until my two year old comes to ask me for chocolate milk.  But those occasions are few and far between.  More likely than not, I might as well be a reading a VCR repair manual.  Instead of a mountaintop experience, I’m getting that experience of Moses being lost in a desert, dry and waterless.  Or any conscious thought goes directly to what I think I have to take care of that day.  Maybe what bills need to be paid or what I’m going to have for lunch or what time the Braves are on TV.  Anything except for God or holiness or how to be a better person.

But that’s OK.

See, prayer time isn’t so much about trying to get a greater understanding of God.  It’s more about trying to be faithful to God.  Because the God that I don’t understand is faithful to me.  Probably more than I know.

Now, one of the places where I look exactly like I know a lot about God is on Sunday morning.  I love Sunday morning.  I love the traditions that are embedded in my own Episcopal faith.  I love the rituals.  I loved the vestments.  I love the Book of Common Prayer.  I love the organ and the choir.  I love standing behind the altar and praying for this thing that we call the Holy Spirit to come and take bread and wine and turn it into the Body and Blood of the Son of God.  I stand in front of the people and make proclamations about God, relying on my own study of the Holy Scriptures and then the volumes and volumes of theology that I read and learn from and try to make sense of.  Every time I read a theology book I feel at a disadvantage, as if the person who has written this book understands a lot more about God than I ever will.  But that doesn’t matter.  Because in reading some deliberate study about some aspect of God, it helps to give me a broader and deeper vocabulary about just what it is we talk about when we talk about God.  The added benefit is that it makes me look like I know a lot about God.

And here’s the thing: the priesthood is my road map for belief.  I’ve been called to this vocation and I live it out faithfully and it helps me to understand things.  Each day I grow in assurance that something really happened on that Easter morning.  Each time I say the creed I truly believe the words that I’m reciting.  I’m never going to be the type of Christian that will get into arguments with people of other faiths or atheists and try to defend in some logical and rational way why I believe what I believe.  I believe what I believe because I have faith.  And I have that faith because I let go of everything and followed faithfully where the road map was leading me. My faith is far from certainty and close to Truth. It’s not always been easy.  It’s not always made sense.  There have been times of tremendous sorrow and heartache.  But there have also been times of immense joy.  I often times find myself at the edge of a greater understanding of God, and just when I think I’m going to grasp it all, God pulls a quick one on me and I’m left with more questions.  And it doesn’t scare me.  Because I’m not afraid.  Fear is the opposite of faith and I’ve got faith.

I don’t give up on the spiritual life.  Because God has never given up on me.

In essence, what I told this man who was just given a new lease on life and is wanting to make it more rich and relevant on a spiritual level was that he’s got to find his own road map.  And God will help him.  And I will help him. I will invite him into the community of believers and doubters and strugglers that we call the church.  I will speak from the vast resources of our tradition, the Scriptures, and reason. I will speak honestly about the limits of my knowledge.  But I will also encourage him to let go and let God in.  He may, like me, wonder why bad things happen in the world or why he may have had to suffer with such an awful disease or why there’s famine or poverty and all sorts of bad things at work in the world.  And I will remind him about the gift of free will.  About how that runs so deeply within creation, how God made us, that even the molecules and chromosomes that are written into the fabric of our being can choose their own path and while for the most part they go with the way that they were perhaps designed to do, sometimes a little kink or little hiccup happens and biology takes over from there leading to things that aren’t optimal or the way we think they should be.  And I will remind him that in spite of that, God is still with us.  That God loves us for who we are.  That God understands us better than we will ever understand ourselves, much less grasp anything about Him.  That God loves us and God needs us and God gave himself for us.  A gift of his Son. A gift of salvation, a road map out of pain and into wholeness. There are accidents of nature and there is evil in this world but God is bigger than all of it.

How do I know all of this?  Maybe I don’t.  Or maybe it’s called faith.  Regardless, it’s beautiful.

Charm City of God

I love spring.  I love the sunshine and the blooming trees.  I love the smell of freshly cut grass.  I love the sound of children playing and birds chirping.  It all reminds me and points me toward Resurrection, toward the reminder of God’s ability to destroy death through the raising up of Jesus from the tomb.

And yet, death pokes it’s head all around, as we have seen in the tension and anguish in Baltimore.

St. Augustine wrote a book entitled City of God, which outlined how human history was marked by a struggle between God and the forces of good against the Devil and his demonic allies.  Concurrently on earth there are two cities: the City of God and the City of the World (which is against God).  Augustine argues that human history is really about how eventually the world comes under the power of the City of God, the victory of which is shown through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

We live in the in-between time, that time after the Risen Lord ascended to heaven and that time when he will come again to complete the work of the redemption and salvation of the world.  But we’re not called to just sit around and wait.  We’re called to understand that the City of God and the City of the World is made up of the very same things, the difference being to what use it’s put.  Jesus rose from the dead in material continuity with what had died. His dead body, the same body used to heal, and teach, and walk among God’s children, wasn’t discarded and left to rot, but became the basis for a transformed and re-imagined Risen One, a body so completely remade and complex that the disciples had difficulty in recognizing Jesus – and yet it was the same body taken from the cross and placed in the tomb.  And why? Because flesh matters.  Because the material world we live in matters.  Because the Divine and Eternal isn’t far off in the distance, but right here working in us and through us.

The Risen Lord is in Baltimore, in the anguish and pain of generations of institutionalized and systemic racism and poverty.

Life is precious.  Black lives matter.  All lives matter.  The young people who left school on Monday and began to riot, loot, and turn violent were acting out on their city what they believe is acted out on them by authority structures symbolized by the police.  As someone who is white, who is middle-class, who is tucked away in a church and has no fear of persecution, it’s easy for me to 1) judge disdainfully the actions of those who burn down drug stores and destroy portions of their own neighborhood or 2) look at what is happening objectively from afar and think “it’s not my problem” or “I have no room to comment or get involved.”

I’ll likely never understand what it’s like to be poor, young, and black.  I don’t need to pretend otherwise.  What I do need to do is listen.  It’s what I practice for a living anyway:  listening to God, listening to parishioners, listening to what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.

In listening, I may hear the voice of Jesus, who called the weeping Mary by name as she grieved before the empty tomb.  I may understand that the bad things happening in Baltimore that look like the City of the World at work are affecting the flesh and blood which make up the City of God.  The fear, anxiety, anguish, mistrust, and oppression are not mine, but I can speak out against the powers and principalities that cause them, that want to drown out the voice of the Lord Jesus.

Because ultimately, death is not welcome in Baltimore, or Ferguson, or North Charleston, or even here in Larchmont, New York.  The tools of death that oppress the people of God need to be dashed against the rocks of truth and justice.  Once we honestly deal with racism and poverty in this country, maybe then we can see more clearly how the City of God is present in the here and now.

God says, “Behold, I make all things new.”  And that includes Baltimore.  And that includes you and me.

Resurrection: It’s not about you!

I picked up David Brooks’ “The Road to Character” yesterday, which profiles a number of people whose lives were more influential in how they lived them rather than in the tangible accomplishments they achieved.  I’m not ready to give a full review, because I haven’t finished the book, but I encourage you to pick it up because it is well-written and has some important things to say.  I enjoy Brooks’ writings both for the New York Times and in general, and while I certainly don’t agree with everything he has to say, I believe that he has a worthwhile voice on a very public platform.

Anyhow, early in the book he points out what is painfully obvious to me:  our culture is increasingly and insidiously narcissistic.  It’s all about trying to get our name out there, to be different, to show via social media how important or perfect our lives are, to be famous or popular, etc.  I can confess that my own narcissism comes out in putting up pictures of my children and fawning about how cute and adorable or smart and funny they are.  Because they are, you know, really cute and funny.  Want to see some more pictures?

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the narcissism thing.  It’s very true that we live in a “look at me” world.  How many of you are as excited as I am to have 18 months of potential presidential candidates vying for attention by pulling out all the stops in the smoke and mirror game?  Did that sound cynical?

Jesus didn’t rise from the dead on Easter for the photo op or for the number of retweets on Twitter.  He did it because as the living and embodied God, He wanted to show that death and sin had no power over any of us.  The crucifixion was a humiliating and shameful thing and Jesus did not return from death in some solipsistic fashion.  In fact, Jesus limited his appearances to a select number of people.

In the few encounters that the disciples had with the Risen Jesus, they were either hiding or keeping a low profile, anxious not to be noticed and yet at the same time being selfishly secretive with their resurrection experiences.  It wasn’t until Jesus gave them instructions to go out into the world and share the good news of God’s love made manifest in the Resurrection of Our Lord that they went out and began the hard work of having a public life that wasn’t about them but rather about God.  Pentecost came and equipped them even more to shed some of their own ego, to be willing to go out into the world, face the consequences of preaching to hearts hostile to that Good News, and for most of them to die a similar fate as the One they called friend and rabbi.

They all realized one thing:  Christ’s resurrection wasn’t about them.  Just as Jesus (or the human fullness of Jesus) knew that his death wasn’t about him.  The Resurrection isn’t about you, it’s about God.  Our God who loves us beyond death.  Our God who created us in His Image.  Our God who compels us to seek and serve the Christ in each other, taking special concern for the most fragile and the least included.

Want to practice Resurrection today?  Don’t make it about you.  A friend told me that anytime he gets too caught up in his own mind, too full of himself, too sure of his awesomeness or too afraid of his brokenness, he reaches out to someone else, offering to help, comfort, uplift, grieve with, feed, clothe, or just be there for anyone not him.  That sounds a lot like the Gospel to me.

5:30 a.m. Joy

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you? – 1 Thessalonians 3:9 (NIV)

I hear the slightest thump which comes from the next room, followed by the click of a door knob and the staccato pitter-patter of tiny feet.  Soon enough, scrambling up the bedspread and working his way into the space between me and my wife, my two-year old son makes his presence official with a warm, breathy “daddy” whispered into my ear.  I crane my neck, squinting to look at the alarm clock next to the bed.  It’s dark outside and the red LED display tells me it’s 5:30.

5:30.  Really?  We let him stay up later last night (9:30 is late for the little one) and Ashley and I didn’t get to bed until shortly after midnight, staying up just long enough to greet 2015.  We haven’t stayed up that late in a long while, and our crazy wild night of watching football and drinking hot chocolate added to the feeling of exhaustion that was creeping through the haze of realization that not even the crows were up yet.

“Lay down and go back night-night,” I say.  Reynolds complies to the first command.  And yet his little body doesn’t stop moving.  I feel his little feet digging into my thighs.  Soon, an arm reaches over to my face, a tiny hand at first only stroking my beard and then pulling.  I can hear his sibilant little whispers speaking to himself.  I begin to feel the slightest rise of frustration, almost anger, stir in my heart.  I just want to sleep!  Get with the program, kid!

I take a deep breath and on exhale I smile.  I laugh a little, look over at him, see his bright eyes smiling back at me, and am met with a quiet sense of immense joy.

Yes, joy.  Indescribable and fleeting.  He is free of sleep and ready to meet the day, and I respond with joy.

It reminds me of a quote from Thomas Merton:  “To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.”  Joy brings me away from that doorstep.  Knowing that this little boy is full of life and vigor draws me away from the selfishness that wants to make this moment one of contempt.

I get up and bring him out of bed with me.  We begin our day.  I thank God for the morning, and I thank God for coffee.

May 2015 bring you and yours true joy, joy that is a gift from the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

A Letter to my Parish

“Go to the limits of your longing” – Rainier Maria Rilke

“Follow me” – Jesus (Matthew 4:19)

I’m a bit of an oddball. I made a decision a while back to follow this man named Jesus of Nazareth, a 1st century Jew who wandered around with a group of men and women talking about God, showing works of wonders, embodying the Father, and through an earth-shattering act of Resurrection after his execution, proved that death and sin no longer have dominion over us. Jesus, the ultimate sacrament of God, was indeed the Savior, the Christ.

In making that decision to follow Jesus, I was brought to this place. I came as a young priest with a young family, called to be the rector of a gem of a parish, a place not too indifferent from some of those early Christian communities that Paul exchanged words with. Standing at the corner of Main St. and North St. in downtown Greensboro, I’ll never forget the tangible feeling I had when I first entered Redeemer. A holy place where holy people have been worshiping a Holy God for nearly 150 years.

I knew nothing about being a rector apart from what I had observed. But that didn’t matter. You allowed me to learn. You gave me grace and opportunity, put up with countless observations concerning college football, embraced me and my wife and my sons. Good things have happened in my time at Redeemer. Real relationships have formed. I believe that there are many good things and real relationships to come, by the grace of God and through the mercy of his Son.

And yet, my time is come – the longing that I have to be faithful to Jesus is pulling me in a new direction, along with Ashley and our boys. I have accepted the call to become the next Rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Larchmont, New York. It is a place of light and warmth, of history and holiness. In ways that are observable, it is like Redeemer. It is a place where the followers of the Risen God gather for the breaking of bread and for the prayers.

We will be leaving in January. The vestry has preparations underway for what is next at Redeemer. The diocesan staff are poised to offer wisdom, guidance, and prayer. This transition will not be easy. And yet I can’t help but think that Redeemer is in good shape, thanks to the work that we have done together. Mostly, though, I think about the way that Redeemer has shaped and transformed my priesthood, given me more holy equipment to go out into the world, to follow Jesus with all that I am and to continue to get ever closer to the limit of my longing for God. Appreciation and gratitude are not enough for me to express in words – I carry what Redeemer has given me everywhere I go, and those relationships and ministries that I join in with will hopefully join in thanksgiving for what God is doing at Redeemer.

I will miss you. I love you all for who God calls us to be together. I thank you for what you have given me and my family. And I pray that the Lord of the Church, Christ Jesus, continues to bind and grow Redeemer as a holy place filled with holy people.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Joe+

Introducing “People” and “Everyone”

Why, hello, how are you?  It’s nice to meet you People and Everyone – I’ve heard a lot about you.  You know, things like, “Well, People say . . . ” or “Everyone thinks . . .”.  I’m glad we can finally sit down and have a face to face chat, clear the air a bit.  It seems you both have a lot of opinions and “factual information” about me and a lot of other good folks.

Living in a Christian community is not without its thrills.  I’ve experienced, and I know many of you have as well, hearing third or fourth hand information about myself that can be pejorative, insidious, and just flat out wrong.  I’ve heard through the grapevine things about myself that are actually right, feedback that could improve the way that I live and do my work.  But far too often, the way I hear about things is usually couched in ways that involve statements of a platitudinous nature such as “You know, people think . . .” or “Everyone is talking about . . .”.  Statements that have very little in the way of specifics but get passed around behind one’s back in a community, and statements that can damage not only an individual’s character, but the integrity of the community as a whole.

Let me be clear on one thing:  I have participated actively and passively in talking behind another’s back.  However, I learned a while back the value of approaching someone face to face, having a chat with them to air my grievance or seek reconciliation, and have found that to be productive in many cases, or at the very least to provide closure to an issue.

If we have a problem with how someone is doing their job, what good will it do them in improving if they are not given the opportunity to receive feedback or constructive criticism?  How can they have the choice of amending their ways?  Maybe we are afraid to confront people directly for fear that we may hurt their feelings or cause them to dislike us.  But the damage is far more severe when we talk behind their backs, despite the best of our intentions.

The thing is, when we discuss someone else’s business or critique their person behind their back, we are committing an act of spiritual violence.  Violence is the inability to have conflict.  It is highly unimaginative.  Conflict is not a bad thing – it opens up dialogues and helps people with differing opinions or ideologies to seek some common ground, whether along the lines of tolerance or agreement.  To bring an issue about someone directly to them, and to speak in a specific manner, is about entering into conflict, and when entering into conflict there is great hope in resolution.

But talking behind someone’s back or spreading gossip, rumor, etc. about someone is an act of spiritual immaturity and is violence against that person and against the community in which you live or work or worship.  It leads to destruction.  The question often is, who are these people?  What do you mean when you say everyone?  The right thing to do is to speak directly, speak for oneself, and speak specifically.  Anything less creates division.  James wrote “The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6).  Those are pretty harsh words, but I would imagine that James, known as the brother of Jesus and being the Bishop of Jerusalem, had a lot of negative comments flying around behind his back questioning his devotion, his leadership, or his attitude.

The point is this:  Say what you need to say to the person you need to say it to.  You can’t control their emotions or reactions. Anything less is childish and insensitive.  This goes for social media as well – it you wouldn’t say it to their face, then don’t post it online.

If you are the one finding out that “everyone” is talking about you, remember the advice from the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, “Do not give heed to everything the people say, or you may hear your servant cursing you; your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.” (Eccl. 7:21-22).  And pray.  Pray that those with something to say may approach you directly, so you can strengthen your relationship, correct your errors, and look with hope towards a better, less violent tomorrow.

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day . . .

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;

I would my true love did so chance

To see the legend of my play,

To call my true love to my dance;

Sing, Oh my love! oh my love, my love, my love

This have I done for my true love!

– Traditional English Carol

My oldest son has gotten to the age where the mystery and surprise of receiving a gift brings him sheer joy, and in turn brings joy to the gift giver.  He shouts with delight, his eyes widen, his smile radiates with unbounded happiness.  It’s a reaction that draws you in, that invites you to participate in that childlike joy.  It’s an excitement that will give energy and life, and I can’t wait to see his glee on Christmas morning when he discovers what may be there for him under the tree.

We should all have a sense of that same joy at Christmas.  After all, we are being given a gift of love Incarnate when we celebrate the birth of Christ.  It is a gift of mystery and surprise beyond anything we can ever experience.  It is a moment of true peace and happiness in the midst of great activity, a reminder of God’s creative expression of love for us even as we are seemingly surrounded by darkness and doubt.  I know that I will not be able to shield my child from the harsher realities of life, realities we all experience:  pain, loneliness, sorrow, fear, death.  But Christmas is a time that we can take a time-out, to remember that it is in spite of the harshness of life that God chose to take on the veil of human flesh.  God shares with us in our pain and sorrow, but more so God calls us to celebrate the joy of life and to see that we are baptized into the love and grace of his Son, Emmanuel, “God-with-us”.

I pray that this season of Christmas may bring you much peace, joy, hope, and love.  I pray that you will share in the beauty of this season with your Church family.  I pray that you will share in the blessings that God has given to you by giving to those who are not as fortunate.  

And I pray, above all, that you may greet the birth of the Prince of Peace with the joy of a child, receiving the blessing of this Gift in your heart in such a way that it will delight the Giver.

Peace and blessings to you and your family,

Joe+