A Prayer for the Last Day of September

Here we are at the last day of September.  I feel like I've lost the whole month of September, and in many ways I have.  Let me offer here a prayer:

God of Changing Seasons,

The storms of September have cast me adrift.  My prayer book collects dust on the bedside table beside the bed where I have not always slept this month.  I resolve to return to a practice of daily prayer in October.

I know that I am lucky.  I have a minimally damaged home, unlike so many others in Texas, Florida, and almost every Caribbean island.  I pray for those who need so much.

I pray for us all who are so exhausted by the tasks at hand and by the tasks that lie ahead of us.

The Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels

Today, the Church celebrates the role of angels in the divine plan, my prayer book tells me (The Divine Hours, written by Phyllis Tickle). Our Orthodox brothers and sisters handle the question of angels better than most Protestants. Most of the Lutheran churches that I've been a member of don't talk about angels much, and based on the ideas of some of my students, many Protestant churches do talk about angels, but with a very shaky theology.

I'll never forget one time teaching Paradise Lost to South Carolina students in my Brit Lit survey class at a community college. One woman seemed particularly confused about all the angels in the story. "How could there be angels," she asked, "when nobody has died?"

It took me a few attempts to understand her question. She knew about angels from church, but only in the sense that we become angels when we die--which is a very recent idea about angels. I explained the more ancient idea about angels, which is that they are a species completely separate from humans. We got into a bit of a theology lesson, but I could see that she wasn't happy with these ideas about angels. She was much more comfortable with the idea of the angels being Grandma and Grandpa who died when she was a child. The idea of angels as a separate kind of entity with no free will? No thanks.

In a way, I understand. Angels are scary. Death is scary. It's rather brilliant to come up with the idea that we become angels when we die--and yet, this shaky theology defangs several concepts which should, in fact, be scary. We will die--and before that, everything we love will die. How do we cope with that idea?

Some of us cope by clinging to the idea that there is a Divine God with a plan and a vision that's vaster than anything we could develop on our own. This God has more power than we can conceive of--including legions of angels, angels that are there for us too.

Let me confess that I don't do angels well either. They seem a bit too New Agey for me, especially with the spate of angel books that were published 20 years ago, books that promised me that I would get to know my angels, books in which getting to know my angels was very similar to enslaving my angels to do my will. Blcch. Giving the angels a mission is God's job, not mine.

I often joked that I should combine two publishing trends and publish a diet book: Your Angels Want You to Be Thin! The Know Your Angels Diet Book. I'm not that mercenary, though (and if you are, feel free to steal my title), not that willing to make money off the real troubles and gullibility of humans. To borrow words from Blake, I don't want to be the one that makes a Heaven off of misery.

But now, years later, I find myself a bit envious of those people who grew up in traditions that had theologically sound approaches to angels. Again and again, I find in the traditions of others something I feel lacking in mine.

Luckily, I'm part of a Lutheran tradition that doesn't insist that we remain closed off to traditions that might enrich us spiritually, even if Luther didn't sanction them. We've seen an explosion of exploration of labyrinths. Maybe angels will be next.

For those of you who want some special Scripture for this high feast day, here's what the Lutheran church (ELCA) recommends:

First Reading: Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3
Psalm: Psalm 103:1-5, 20-22
Second Reading: Revelation 12:7-12
Gospel: Luke 10:17-20

Preparing for the Feast Day of Michael and All Angels

On September 29, the Church celebrates the role of angels in the divine plan, my prayer book tells me with the Feast Day of Michael and All Angels.  Do we need to prepare today so that we can celebrate tomorrow?

It's the kind of feast day that could slip right by--especially for those of us in denominations that don't really emphasize angels.  And yet, occasionally the angels come to even those denominations, especially at Advent.

Part of me has a light-hearted approach:  let's have angel food cake.

Or we could create in other ways.  If we created a visual representation of an angel that avoided clichés, what would they look like?

Maybe we just want to think about wings.

Or maybe we want to read.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez offers an interesting vision of winged creatures in the short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings."  In "The Dead," James Joyce names his main characters after the angels Gabriel and Michael, which gives the story a resonance and richness.

What story might we create that uses angel imagery with subtlety and nuance?  Or maybe we want a poem about angels moving in the world.

If you need a meditation object to get you ready, here's a picture of a ladder of angels from the 2016 Create in Me retreat:

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, October 1, 2017:

First Reading: Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm: Psalm 25:1-8 (Psalm 25:1-9 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

Second Reading: Philippians 2:1-13

Gospel: Matthew 21:23-32


This Sunday's Gospel continues to explore the notion of fidelity and fairness. People ask about Jesus--who grants him authority?  Jesus gives them a question they're afraid to answer, for fear of getting the wrong answer, and Jesus refuses to answer the question. 

Instead, he gives a parable about two sons, neither of which is true to his word.  One says that he'll go work in the vineyard, and he doesn't.  One says he won't work, but then he does.  Which son represents you?

The lesson of this Gospel is clear: we get credit for our actions, not for our speech. This idea may fly in the face of what we believe to be good Lutheran theology. What about the idea of grace? Many of us were taught that we're such dreadful humans that there's nothing we could do to justify the gift of salvation. God swoops in and redeems us, even though we're fairly hopeless people. That was the message I got from many a church event, Lutheran and otherwise.

But as a grown up, going back to revisit these passages, I'm amazed at how often God requires more of us than just saying we believe in Christ, more than just accepting Christ as our saviour, more than just having faith. In the words of Luther, faith should move our feet. In the words of James, faith without works is dead.  We don't confess belief in Christ so that we can relax on the sofa.  We confess our faith and go to work in the vineyard.

Our goal each and every day is to be the light of the world, the yeast that makes the bread rise, the radiance that allows people to see God at work in the world.  Notice how small our actions can be.  The yeast is tiny, but from its small actions, flour and water transform into bread.

Ideally we're yeast and light, but the good news of today's Gospel, and many of the others that we read throughout our 3 year lectionary cycle, is that even when we fall short, God will still love us. If we've said we'd do the work, and we fail to do it, we have other days when we can show up. God will still welcome us. The world is full of darkness, waiting for our light.

Shelter from the Storm

We were not sure what to expect when we opened the storm shutters.

We expected to lose our power.

We expected to envy those who got their power restored earlier than we did.

We have stockpiled our books for this time of reading by candles and flashlights.

We grabbed sleep where we could.

We kept our sights on the one who gives us true shelter.

Improv Jonah

Yesterday at our interactive service, we approached the story of Jonah from 3 perspectives: Jonah's, God's, and the Ninevites'. I was in the Ninevite group--this is us, having moved away from the refreshment table which we used to signify our sinful patterns.   Here we are in our sackcloth and mourning faces, hoping to change God's mind and avoid destruction:

The Jonah group told the story of Jonah from Jonah's perspective.  I particularly liked the high school student who played the shrub who sheltered Jonah and then died.

The God group pondered Jonah and his approach to life in much the way a parent of an adolescent child would wonder why the teenager was making the life choices that the teenager did.

I liked this approach to the story of Jonah--it helps us wrestle with the ancient texts in a very different way.  I began the session rather grumpy--we had had a morning of trying to clean up after a roof leak, and as we were doing that, a huge chunk of a tree fell on the car and motorcycle in the driveway.  I was not in the mood for a vengeful God whose mind can be changed or a prophet who doesn't want to be bothered to do his job.

An interval of improv snapped me right out of my mood.  We had a good morning at church across all of the services, as we pondered the modern message of Jonah for our fractured time.  Why is it so hard for us to participate in God's vision of a redeemed world?  Why are we so likely to sit in a snit when the "wrong" people are saved?

Prayer to Go with Today's Gospel

Matthew 20: 1-16

Leader: God, you have promised to provide what we need.
Congregation: We are afraid that there will not be enough.

Leader: God, you invite us all to the vineyard.
Congregation: We are afraid others will get our share.

Leader: God, we often see you as the plantation boss.
Congregation: Let us see you as the one who hosts the party.

Leader: God, you know we often see our work as drudgery.
Congregation: Remind us every day that life with you is a festival.