I just came from a wonderful visit. Mike Odian and I went to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey to donate $3000 from the Brake the Hunger Cycle Tour. This year 75% of the proceeds from the Tour went to Episcopal Relief and Development projects in Latin America, and 25% stayed in northern New Jersey. Phyllis Dunlop, Vice President and Resource Development and Marketing, took the time to show us their operation.
The Community FoodBank was chosen because it fulfills our goal of feeding people. It was founded 30 years ago by Kathleen DiChiara. Today it is much more than a warehouse and distribution facility for local soup kitchens. It also provides free school lunches and snacks, as well as clothing and school supplies, for students in need. Now they have a training school for food-service providers. Many of the students are people who have not had a job, or who have been in prison, and who are looking for a new start. For some the program is the first time they have graduated from something. Lives are being changed at the FoodBank.
We learned that much of the labor of sorting donated food and clothing is done by volunteers. The FoodBank could not afford to pay all the hours it takes to do this work. Some people volunteer regularly, but often groups will come in and do a day at the FoodBank. Corporate groups, church groups, and others all find their lives enriched by time spent there. The FoodBank also has a “wish list” of items they need. I will post that on my door at church. If you feel called to donate, please consider taking your donation down in person and seeing the work in our midst.
God’s people are in need. God’s people are being fed, and they are feeding others. I’m inspired by the vision and the determination of Kathleen DiChiara and the thousands of volunteers and students who are sowing new life. Let this seed drop into your heart. I’m letting it sprout in mine. Let me know what grows in your garden!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
God's sinners - us
Sorry - I forgot to post this last week.
In the Daily Office we’ve been reading the story of David’s rise to power, his abuses of power, and his struggles to keep power. Today (Wednesday) we read of David’s learning that his son, Absalom, has been killed in battle – a battle that Absalom initiated, to wrest power from his father. A first courier arrives to declare victory over the opposition, but all David wants to know is, “What happened to my son?” When he learns that Absalom is dead, he laments: “Oh Absalom my son, my son! Would that I had died instead of you!”
The story of David is a story of glory, but also of loss and sin. David is anointed by Samuel at God’s instruction. He forms a united kingdom for the first time in Israel. But he also forcibly takes his poor neighbor’s wife Bathsheba, and sends her husband to die in battle so he can have her. He is gifted, called by God, but also a sinner. And that’s why this is such an important story to me.
It’s so easy to think that God divides us up into good and bad, and that’s the end of it. Many writings, in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, say that we are all one or the other. Most of those writings seem to be written by people who see themselves as righteous. The sinners are someone else, somewhere else. But David’s story is more complicated, and more true to life. We are beloved by God. We are “God’s chosen.” And we are also sinners - schemers, coveters, scorners – pick your poison. That’s why we need regular confession as well as constant celebration. We need to acknowledge both sides of our selves if we are really to be united with God. God doesn’t leave us, but we are always open to temptation.
Let me encourage you to spend some time in Second Samuel and the books of Kings this fall. Like novels, these stories can tell us more about God and the world than some other forms of writing. Let yourself take in the mysterious reality of God’s work in a fallen world. What would your story be like?
In the Daily Office we’ve been reading the story of David’s rise to power, his abuses of power, and his struggles to keep power. Today (Wednesday) we read of David’s learning that his son, Absalom, has been killed in battle – a battle that Absalom initiated, to wrest power from his father. A first courier arrives to declare victory over the opposition, but all David wants to know is, “What happened to my son?” When he learns that Absalom is dead, he laments: “Oh Absalom my son, my son! Would that I had died instead of you!”
The story of David is a story of glory, but also of loss and sin. David is anointed by Samuel at God’s instruction. He forms a united kingdom for the first time in Israel. But he also forcibly takes his poor neighbor’s wife Bathsheba, and sends her husband to die in battle so he can have her. He is gifted, called by God, but also a sinner. And that’s why this is such an important story to me.
It’s so easy to think that God divides us up into good and bad, and that’s the end of it. Many writings, in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, say that we are all one or the other. Most of those writings seem to be written by people who see themselves as righteous. The sinners are someone else, somewhere else. But David’s story is more complicated, and more true to life. We are beloved by God. We are “God’s chosen.” And we are also sinners - schemers, coveters, scorners – pick your poison. That’s why we need regular confession as well as constant celebration. We need to acknowledge both sides of our selves if we are really to be united with God. God doesn’t leave us, but we are always open to temptation.
Let me encourage you to spend some time in Second Samuel and the books of Kings this fall. Like novels, these stories can tell us more about God and the world than some other forms of writing. Let yourself take in the mysterious reality of God’s work in a fallen world. What would your story be like?
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
as a little child . . .
Jeanne Wertheimer left Kinnelon on Monday to go live in Cyprus. She and her partner Chris came to us a year ago, “just for a little while,” but the visa process stretched out and we got used to them being here. Jeanne immediately got busy in outreach to local seniors, helping with the service at Cedar Crest and visiting a woman who needed help but couldn’t afford it. She also joined the Wednesday Bible Study.
Jeanne’s voice was a key part of that Bible Study group. Each week we read the lessons for the coming Sunday. Usually we study the Gospel in depth. Over and over, Jeanne would bring us to the question, “did this really happen?” If something was in three or four of the Gospels, she’d be more insistent that it must have been historically true. She was worried when I talked about the Gospel as stories told to a later community to illustrate the experience of being with Jesus. She wanted it to be historically true.
Jeanne’s clarity and willingness to argue pushed the rest of us to grow – to think through our viewpoints, to express them without anxiety, to be engaged without being aggressive. She surely helped me.
But this isn’t just about Jeanne. In the daily Office reading for Tuesday, Jesus tells the disciples that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Mk. 10:11). I think that Jeanne exemplified that. Receiving “as a little child” doesn’t mean just accepting it on authority, or reciting a creed. It means grabbing it, wrestling with it, not protecting it from questions or challenges but pushing forward in the knowledge that God can handle all our questions and doubts and needs. Little children don’t analyze or theorize; they absorb. As adults we are called to analyze and theorize as well as absorb, but Jesus – and Jeanne – remind me that this is a matter of life and death. We have to grab, and hold tight, to the Gospel. As Jacob wrestled with the angel, and was blessed (and marked!) for his effort, we are called to wrestle with the Word. We are blessed, and marked, at baptism, but it is in our struggle that we manifest the grace given us there.
So Godspeed, Jeanne. We’ll miss you. But we will wrestle, and rejoice, and remember. Come back soon.
Jeanne’s voice was a key part of that Bible Study group. Each week we read the lessons for the coming Sunday. Usually we study the Gospel in depth. Over and over, Jeanne would bring us to the question, “did this really happen?” If something was in three or four of the Gospels, she’d be more insistent that it must have been historically true. She was worried when I talked about the Gospel as stories told to a later community to illustrate the experience of being with Jesus. She wanted it to be historically true.
Jeanne’s clarity and willingness to argue pushed the rest of us to grow – to think through our viewpoints, to express them without anxiety, to be engaged without being aggressive. She surely helped me.
But this isn’t just about Jeanne. In the daily Office reading for Tuesday, Jesus tells the disciples that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it” (Mk. 10:11). I think that Jeanne exemplified that. Receiving “as a little child” doesn’t mean just accepting it on authority, or reciting a creed. It means grabbing it, wrestling with it, not protecting it from questions or challenges but pushing forward in the knowledge that God can handle all our questions and doubts and needs. Little children don’t analyze or theorize; they absorb. As adults we are called to analyze and theorize as well as absorb, but Jesus – and Jeanne – remind me that this is a matter of life and death. We have to grab, and hold tight, to the Gospel. As Jacob wrestled with the angel, and was blessed (and marked!) for his effort, we are called to wrestle with the Word. We are blessed, and marked, at baptism, but it is in our struggle that we manifest the grace given us there.
So Godspeed, Jeanne. We’ll miss you. But we will wrestle, and rejoice, and remember. Come back soon.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Both our Sunday Eucharistic readings and the Daily Office readings for the past week have featured failures of communication. In John chapter 6, the crowd follows Jesus because they want bread, but they demand a sign (as though they haven’t seen enough!). His claims about his relation to God, and about the bread of life, meet with derision and confusion. In Mark, Jesus feeds 5000 and then later feeds 4000 from a few loaves, but still the disciples don’t understand what they’re seeing and hearing. Jesus walks them through the history of the two miracles, and then asks, “Do you not yet understand?” (Mk. 8:21).
Well, no. I, for one, do not understand. I don’t understand where the loaves and the fishes came from. I don’t understand exactly what this “I am the bread of life” stuff means. I don’t get all the parables and instructions and signs. I don’t understand.
Fortunately, I’m not alone. A strong tradition in our church has always realized that understanding is not the key to a relationship with Jesus. This is exemplified in The Cloud of Unknowing, a book written in 14th-century England. The anonymous author is clearly intelligent and well-read, but he insists that understanding is not the high road to God. He argues that “all rational beings, angels and men, possess two faculties, the power of knowing and the power of loving. To the first, to the intellect, God who made them in forever unknowable, but to the second, to love, he is completely knowable.”
I don’t understand all the elements of faith. Thank God (I mean it!) I was taught that I didn’t have to. I don’t mean we should turn off our minds and act like robots. God gave us reason and awareness, and we are not to give them back. But God gave us more. God loved us into being, and loves us into being still. I was taught that love, not doctrine, was the measure of my faith. Jesus may be frustrated with me sometimes, but nothing will end our relationship.
So as we continue our journey through the sixth chapter of John, take in the words. Let yourself be baffled. Better disciples than we have been baffled, and yet their lives were transformed by the relationship they had with Jesus. Love. Do you not yet understand?
Well, no. I, for one, do not understand. I don’t understand where the loaves and the fishes came from. I don’t understand exactly what this “I am the bread of life” stuff means. I don’t get all the parables and instructions and signs. I don’t understand.
Fortunately, I’m not alone. A strong tradition in our church has always realized that understanding is not the key to a relationship with Jesus. This is exemplified in The Cloud of Unknowing, a book written in 14th-century England. The anonymous author is clearly intelligent and well-read, but he insists that understanding is not the high road to God. He argues that “all rational beings, angels and men, possess two faculties, the power of knowing and the power of loving. To the first, to the intellect, God who made them in forever unknowable, but to the second, to love, he is completely knowable.”
I don’t understand all the elements of faith. Thank God (I mean it!) I was taught that I didn’t have to. I don’t mean we should turn off our minds and act like robots. God gave us reason and awareness, and we are not to give them back. But God gave us more. God loved us into being, and loves us into being still. I was taught that love, not doctrine, was the measure of my faith. Jesus may be frustrated with me sometimes, but nothing will end our relationship.
So as we continue our journey through the sixth chapter of John, take in the words. Let yourself be baffled. Better disciples than we have been baffled, and yet their lives were transformed by the relationship they had with Jesus. Love. Do you not yet understand?
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