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Leading with Joy

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by The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello

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9/9/2018

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March 9, 2020

Sermon for March 8, 2020 — Lent 2A

Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17When I pray I am grateful for the assured confidentiality that comes with that arrangement.I can say whatever I want to God, and God won’t tell anyone.I am also grateful for the grace that comes to me in those conversations.  I do not feel harshly judged, or shamed, or ridiculed for the questions in my head or the contents of my heart.  Any judgement or shame or ridicule I do hear or feel, comes from a source other than the God of love to whom I am praying.I am grateful, too, for the perspective my conversations with God give me.  For a time, I’m able to see the struggles of my life, my deepest questions and longings in a perspective that is bigger than my own. A view from above, if you will.Most of all, though, I am grateful for the love I feel surrounded by when I pray.  Though I am over 50 and my parents are now deceased, the desire to be held, assured and loved unconditionally has not waned.  God seldom disappoints, though I may not feel it all the time.We are, in this season of Lent, in the “Pray” part of our Way of Love journey this year.  Teach me your ways, O Lord.  Teach me to pray.Being able to pray is a gift, and it is not one I have always enjoyed.  The ability to pray can seem to come and go as unpredictably as the wind Jesus references in the reading from John’s gospel.  I believe prayer is a response to, not a conjuring of, God.  That is, whenever we pray, we are responding to an invitation from God to “come and have a chat.”  When we worship, it is the same. We are here this morning not to make God happen. We are here because God happened and we responded.Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  Now, erase from your mind that paradigm of “pharisee-bad, Jesus good.”  The Pharisees were one group of Jewish people in the time of Jesus.  The Pharisee is a learned man, as Jesus was, who would have known the Torah inside and out.But he has something to say to this fellow Jew and rabbi colleague Jesus.  “We know,” Nicodemus says. “We know that you are from God.”I see in this story a man who has made his life about being an authority invited to consider that, despite all his training and his stature in the community, there might just be something left for him to learn.  There might be something new to understand about how God might be moving in his life.Nicodemus couldn’t doubt, he didn’t feel like he had permission to wonder.  He needed the cover of night to hide this encounter for fear his friends and family and other colleagues might discover he didn’t have all the answers.  It's not Nicodemus’ fault. It’s how he was groomed.For his courage, for taking this risk in asking the foolish question or seeking a connection with Jesus he isn’t supposed to want, Nicodemus is rewarded.  In this encounter, he receives grace. Jesus doesn’t send him away and tell him to come back when he isn’t ashamed. Jesus doesn’t say, as I may have, “Come back when you can sit with me in the daylight.” Further, Jesus tells him that his seeking and his wondering shows that he has, in fact, been borne from above.  He is able to see things others cannot see. He has a perspective that is beyond his grooming. It is a God perspective. What a beautiful, wise, loving response to Nicodemus.  Nicodemus teaches us to pray.  And Jesus shows us what we might expect when we do.   Like any time we spend in prayer, Nicodemus is met with Grace, and Wisdom.  Oh yeah, and Love.“God so loved the world” Jesus tells Nicodemus near the end of their encounter.  God SO loved the world. That’s why Jesus is doing what he is doing, and saying what he is saying.  Not to condemn the world, but to love it into transformation. “You are loved, Nicodemus. You are loved more than you can imagine.”This interaction with Nicodemus teaches us to pray in our conversations with God. But it also holds deep wisdom for how we might pray through our actions in the world.As a white male in America, I have been groomed to believe that I should know all the answers and be able to imagine all the possible solutions.  Not knowing the answer, not having a way to fix a problem undoes me in a way I am often embarrassed to admit.  I struggle, as a leader in the church, that I don’t know what will fix all the problems we face as a people in this world; poverty, racism, sexism and misogyny.  I am confronted with my limitations as I try to face these challenges that are generations, centuries or millennia in the making. Despair tempts me as I think of the work in front of us, and the time it will take to get there.Too often, I am forced to stand with Nicodemus as he wonders with God simply, “How can these things be?”Sometimes, when I am at my boldest, I might seek wisdom under the cover of darkness, afraid I will say the wrong thing, ask the wrong question or betray an ignorance I ought not to have.I wonder if this interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus doesn’t hold deep wisdom for how we might move forward together as God’s people in the world today.I wonder if, like Nicodemus, we might risk asking questions we don’t think we should have.  If we might risk vulnerability we have been encouraged to seal over. If we might open our hearts to the wisdom of someone we aren’t “supposed” to listen to.  If we might practice sitting at the feet of those we have been told to stand over.I wonder what might happen if we encouraged each other to have all the questions, not all the answers.  If we supported each other in listening for the way the Spirit is moving and held one another in abundant Grace and abiding Love while we fumble our way through, together.We might begin by speaking aloud to God what we cannot yet imagine ourselves saying out loud to anyone else.  We might begin by asking God the questions to which we are supposed to have the answers. We might start by asking God for the perspective we can’t yet see or the way forward we don’t yet know.  And maybe, just maybe, when we take it to God, and we receive that Grace and Love and Wisdom Nicodemus received, we might just risk taking it to one another.And when we take it to each other, we create relationships of grace, communities of mercy built on the solid foundation of the love God has for us, made known to us in the one who came because God loved us, loves us, so.So, then, in word and deed, let us pray.AMEN.© 2020 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

February 24, 2020

Sermon for February 23 — Last Epiphany Year A — “Practicing Transfiguration”

Eighth Sunday after Epiphany; February 23, 2020 (Year A); Preached at St. Paul’s BrooklineExodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9This morning we remember the Transfiguration, when Jesus ascends the mountain with three of his followers, is transfigured before them, and stands with Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets. This morning we remember Peter, whose impulse it is to build places for Jesus and Moses and Elijah to stay.  We remember God’s voice again proclaiming Jesus God’s beloved child. And we remember that all of this disappeared as quickly as it arrived, as Jesus and his followers go back down the mountain, toward Jerusalem and all that waits for them there.This morning, we are invited to consider how we might “practice Transfiguration”in our own lives, today.Chances are that most of you are here this morning because, at some point in your life, you experienced a transfiguration of your own, though you may not have used that language.But you may have had an experience of God that planted a seed within you that would keep you seeking that experience for the remainder of your lifetime; a word spoken by an elder; knowing the unconditional love of another, or offering it yourself.I know I have had mine.  The reason I find myself ordained and leading a congregation is due to a deep desire I have for others to know what I have known in my life about the transformative love of God in Christ, and to experience those moments of Transfiguration again for myself.I wonder what transformative, if not transfigurative, experiences are being held in your heart that have sustained you in your lives.Or maybe you are here because you have heard someone talk about an experience of God they have had in their life and you long for a mountain-top experience like that for yourself.Whatever longing you have in your heart, God has placed it there, and it’s all there in this story from Matthew’s Gospel.  Though it seems ancient and maybe a little sci-fi, I love this story because it strikes at a basic truth for all of us who strive to follow Jesus.  And that truth is that we might glimpse God on a mountaintop, and that glimpse might leave us certain of the presence of God in our life, but we are always led, from those experiences, back into the “real” world where we are to serve God, no matter how unsure of the presence of God we might again become.We keep trying to climb mountaintops, and God keeps sending us into hard work of the world.Peter wants things to stay like they were at the peak, up in the clouds.  He offers to build tents for Jesus and Moses and Elijah. Set apart from the world, basking in the certainty of God’s voice and Jesus’ glow, Peter wants things to stay just like that.  And who can blame him? Peter, quite literally, has his head in the clouds.But Jesus knows that the Kingdom of God is not on that mountain peak. It is back down the mountain and toward Jerusalem where he is certain of the task in front of him. The path down the mountain will lead him to the cross.We climb the mountain with Jesus, Peter, James and John this morning as we do every year on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, the last Sunday before Lent.This feast is, in our liturgical calendar, the moment we descend the mountain top seasons of Christmas and Epiphany and head into the forty days of Lent that leads us to Jerusalem and to the cross.  We will turn our attention from the radiant experiences of God’s revelations among us; as an infant, as one worshiped by the Magi, presented in the temple, and baptized in the River Jordan. For weeks we have heard the stories of our faith that center on the revelation of God to the world, weeks reminded of where God is in the world and how God is moving.  Weeks of mountaintop experiences.But we cannot stay there.  We cannot build tents and live in Christmas or Epiphany.  We must head into the world where the Kingdom of God lives.We must practice Transfiguration. (Many thanks to Carl Greg for his ideas on “practicing transfiguration.”  <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2011/02/lectionary-commentary-practicing-transfiguration-for-march-6-2011/">https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2011/02/lectionary-commentary-practicing-transfiguration-for-march-6-2011/</a>)To consider how we might practice Transfiguration in our own lives, we might ask ourselves how we are intentionally creating time and space to climb the mountain with Jesus as our guide.  How might you place yourself in the presence of God? What feeds your relationship with God and how intentional are you about practicing it? Maybe it is weekly worship, or daily prayer.  A time of intentional silence or a long quiet walk along the Muddy river.  Where is God waiting to meet you, to show you the radiance of God’s glory that you might be fed and sustained for the work ahead of you?That is practicing Transfiguration.Practicing Transfiguration is also asking ourselves what tents we have built in our lives to keep God from slipping through our grasp.  Is it hard to see Christ in the world because we have left him back up on the mountaintop?The tents we build have power over us.  Nostalgia tricks us into thinking God was more present “back then” or “back there.” We invent the “good old days” and we place God in a place and time not our own.  Remember back when Sunday schools were overflowing, back when churches were packed, back life was easier and people were nicer.More than shining faces and voices from clouds, the real myths of the Transfiguration are the tents we have built for God in our lives.  These tents do nothing but rob us from God’s presence in the here and now and they ignore the reality that, while some might have been living on the mountaintops of the “Good Old Days,” it was only because countless others were living out their lives on Calvary.We are not meant to live out our lives on the mountaintop. They are but momentary and fleeting glimpses of the Divine.  These glimpses serve to nourish us for the journey back into the world where we see the face of Christ in everyone we see.  Down the mountain and in the world where we clothe the body of Christ, liberate the prisoner Christ, free the slave Christ, feed the hungry Christ, soothe the suffering Christ, and heal the broken Christ.  We do all this, sustained by the power of the Risen Christ who is always waiting to greet us at the empty tomb.So, come.  Hear the Good News.  Receive the Peace of Christ and hear that you are God’s beloved.  Share with us in the Breaking of Bread where we know the Lord Jesus.  Experience the healing power of Christ’s Love.  Bask in the radiance of God’s glory sung in joyful voices.  Be transformed, and maybe even transfigured.  Enjoy this time on the mountain, for there is a world of Jerusalems waiting for you, needing you, just on the other side of those doors.  Alleluia. Amen.While all direct and indirect quotes are always cited, there are sources I read regularly in preparation for sermon writing.  Chances are thoughts have been spurred by these sources and so I list the usual suspects here: David Lose, In the Meantime, The New Interpreters Bible, Sacra Pagina .© 2020 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

February 10, 2020

Salt and Light — Rector’s Address for the 2019 Annual Meeting of St. Paul’s Brookline

2019 Annual Meeting Rector’s Annual AddressFebruary 9, 2020Good morning, church!  And welcome to the one hundred and seventy-first annual meeting of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline.  This is my 11th Annual Address as your rector.  And, as is my practice each year, I want to start by reminding you how much I love you, and how much I love being your rector.  Let me state, once again, that it is a privilege to walk your journeys of faith with you and I am humbled by your faithfulness and your trust.I do not wish to subject you to a reading of the Annual Report. I hope you read the digital version emailed to you this week.  If you didn’t get a chance to, please do. You will be amazed -- even those of you who have been here for years will be amazed -- at the breadth and the depth of ministry happening in and from this place.I do want to take this opportunity to make sure you know who our ministry leadership team is.  These are the people with whom you should talk if you are curious about what God might be needing you to do next in this place.  If my math is correct, though I’m sure my count is incomplete, we are blessed with over 26 ministries at St. Paul’s led by over 30 members of the community.As I read your name, please stand and wave.  Let’s hold our thunderous applause until the end.Personnel Committee Ouida Foster Altar Guild Sharlene Wing and John Ferguson  Chalice Bearers Maryann KurkjianFlower Guild Maureen CarterHealing Prayer Steve Morrissey  Lectors Michael Scheffler   Ushers Sam Scott  Eucharistic Visitors Maryann KurkjianPastoral Care Team Maryann Kurkjian and Kate Kelley  Stewardship Stephen Morrissey and Leah Rugen  Yard Sale Steve Estes-Smargiassi  Be an Angel Paul Daigneault   B-Safe/B-Ready Piper Trelstad and Kate KelleyMinistry Outside the Parish Matshai Motimele and Tim Hintz  Mission Sundays Melissa DullaPrison Ministry Leahanne Sarlo   Gardens Julie Starr  Archives Pat Dunbar Education for Ministry Leah Rugen and Linda Sanches  Scripture Group Leah Rugen   Church School Teachers Julie Starr, Janet Rankin, Andrea Brue, Jason Fairchild, Chris Dulla, Maria O’MearaHospitality Alan Fried  Knitting Group Maureen Carter   Greeters and Newcomers Melissa Dulla, Leah Rugen, and Ayanna McPhail    Yoga Martha CurtisCentering Prayer Ann ColageoThank you to our ministry leaders. And our Vestry, led this past year by our Wardens Julie House and Brett Foster.  If you were on the Vestry this past year, please stand and accept our gratitude.And, finally, our staff.  This group of people we ask to work miracles each and every day.  Our nursery staff, our section leaders, our finance administrator Christine, our sexton James, our Parish Administrator Jill, our Director of Music and Organist Andy, and the best clergy team a rector could ask for; our Deacon Pat, our Curate Isaac and our Associate Rector Elise.  Let’s hear it for our staff.So many people to thank, and so many more of you who showed up and made 2019 at St. Paul’s another year to remember.2019 was yet another year in which God stretched us, stretched me, in new and unexpected ways.The budget certainly captured our attention.  Three years ago we made the decision to use a chunk of our endowment to match funds raised from the congregation for the renovation of the lower level, parish offices and backyard.  This might just be the year that work is completed!This decision was made carefully and with the understanding that the increased income from a lower level tenant would exceed the draw we would have taken on that amount.  And then our grand tower proved jealous of the attention our lower level was getting and required urgent repair to the tune of $700k. Rather than shrinking before the challenge, we decided to meet it; and meet it we have.Over the past three years, our deficit at the end of the year has ranged from 48K in 2017, to 72K in 2018 and 33K in 2019.  This year, we are projecting to cut that by 2/3rds with a projected deficit of about 10K.  I am so proud of the work the budget committee has done to get us here, under Brett Foster’s rigorous leadership.  It hasn’t been easy and tough conversations needed to be had, but I stand before you this morning feeling like I can look each one of you in the eye and promise you that each and every dollar you have entrusted to us for the work of God in this place is being stretched to its limits and not a penny is wasted.  Transparency and trust has always been at the core of our financial leadership.  If you want to know more about how your finances are being managed, please speak to Brett.  He’d be more than happy to talk with you. I mean, way more than happy to talk with you.And the even better news in all of this is that we have the power and the opportunity to erase that projected 10K budget gap before we’ve even closed the books on February.  If you haven’t yet submitted a pledge card, I ask you to seriously consider it. More than a financial commitment to the work of the parish, it is one way of saying “I’m in” to the values we hold and the ministry we share.  No pledge amount is too small or not needed. And if you have submitted a pledge form, I ask you to have a real conversation and spend time in real prayer about whether there might be room to stretch your pledge.Why would I ask you to do such a thing?  Because I believe we are making a difference.  I have proof. And because I believe there has never been a better time to be the church, or to be St. Paul’s Brookline.There is a scripture passage that has been on my mind and in my heart these past few months, and it keeps popping up, which is usually God’s way of getting my attention.It comes from the book of Esther.  It’s a great story, and tells the story behind the Jewish festival of Purim.  But, in brief, Esther is queen and secretly Jewish. Her uncle Mordacai discovers a plan made by the king’s right hand man to kill anyone who is Jewish and begs Esther to intercede on her people’s behalf.Esther is afraid.  She is not supposed to take audience with the king unless summoned, an offense punishable by death, and she is afraid to tell the king that she is Jewish.Her uncle Mordacai pleads with her and asks her this question:Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for a time such as this?That’s a great question for the church. Maybe it is exactly a time such as this that the church is needed most.And it’s a great question for St. Paul’s.  I have every reason to believe it is for a time exactly like the times in which we live for which St. Paul’s might exist.And it’s a great question for each one of you.  Maybe this is exactly the time in our community’s life for which you are needed the most, maybe now is the time for which God brought you here.This is the time.  As Jesus reminds us in this morning’s Gospel, we have a calling to be salt and light in a world losing both its flavor and its vision.  St. Paul’s continues to be salt and light.As racism and oppression continue to stain our national life, our Anti-Racism Group is choosing to go deeper in unpacking racism and white supremacy through their participation in Sacred Ground.  Salt.This fall, Elise, Pat, Jocelyn Collen and Leahanne Sarlo brought the sacrament of the body of Christ to women at the South Bay correctional facility. It was the first time most of them had seen a woman preside at the altar.  Light.As anti-semitic and anti-muslim rhetoric and violence feels increasingly common, we invited our Muslim neighbors to come and share their story with us.  Light.We participated in the first ever Brookline Interfaith Service in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Temple Sinai. Salt.These are not small things.  As individual acts they might not change the world, but they go along way to make sure the world does not change us.  Our longing to be in closer relationship with God continues to grow.  This past year we started three new ministries meant to feed our Spirits; to keep us salty and burning bright.We experimented with “Eat, Pray, Work” during lent, offering a daytime monastic-like co-working space.  Our first Education for Ministry class began in the fall with 11 participants and two co-mentors.  Ann Colageo and Isaac began our new Wednesday morning Contemplative Prayer Group.2019 was a year that St. Paul’s continued to live into Frederick Buechner’s concept of vocation, or calling.  He writes, “Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.”How blessed are we that our greatest joys as a community is exactly what the world needs right now.When we committed to repairing the tower, one of the most convincing arguments I heard was from a long time parishioner who reminded me, reminded us, that this place; the buildings, the ministries, the spirit of this place, we are the stewards of all of it.Those who have come before us, those whose names surround us etched in granite, they have passed it on to us for a time.  And we will, one day, pass it on to those who will come after us. It is our job to care for it and all it represents with all the love and courage that it demands.But we are not meant to leave it just as we found it.  God needs us to leave this place better than we found it; healthier than we found it, more robust than it was when it was given to us.  We are meant to leave it saltier and more filled with light than it ever has been.God needs us to push this place and the people in it to be no less than a glimpse of Kingdom that God dreams for us to be.And that is what this next year is for.  Each year, a new gift, a new opportunity for us to ask, as a community and individuals where God needs us next, where God needs you next.  This will be a year that tries the fabric of our country.  This will be a year that demands we remember who we are, whose we are and who God needs us to be.  We will not all vote for the same candidate, we will not all vote for the same party.  We can, however, show the world, show each other that we can love one another as fiercely as we disagree with each other.  We can show the world, in ways big and small, what it means to be a people who can most easily be described for the love we have for one another, and for the ways we love and care for the least, the lost and the lonely.We can be salt in a world losing its flavor and we can be light in a world losing its vision.People of St. Paul’s, may 2020 be exactly the time for which we were made. AMEN.© 2020  The Rev’d Jeffrey W. Mello

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