Give us this day our daily bread

I've often thought, as I pray the Lord's Prayer, about the "us" in the phrase, "Give us today our daily bread."

Are we praying for our own needs, our own daily bread? Usually this is what comes to mind. I'm praying that I will have enough food for me and my family to eat. But someone once told me that the "us" is everyone in the world.

That means that when we pray the Lord's Prayer, we're praying that everyone in the world will have enough to eat. Whoa. That's an entirely different prayer.

The Gospel reading for Sunday is the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus takes five loaves and two fish and feeds five thousand men plus perhaps another five thousand women and children. Jesus feeds everyone.

Give us this day our daily bread. Feed the planet. In a global economy, we're all connected, and our food supply is the same "basket" that people from Africa and South America are reaching into.

The current surge in food prices is affecting everyone worldwide. The recent use of corn and sugar cane in the production of biofuels has resulted in a scarcity of land and crops available for food, and so the prices have gone up dramatically.

Jesus fed everyone who gathered on the hillside. Can we feed everyone who is gathered on the planet?
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Faithful prayer

I saw this beautiful image of a woman in prayer on the front page of the Kitsap Sun this morning. She was at a prayer vigil in Winslow, called in response to the horrifying shooting in Tennessee a few days ago in which a man entered a Unitarian Church and opened fire on the people, shouting "hateful things" about liberals.

Her posture, folded hands, closed eyes, and expression of deep prayer show me that she's deeply grieved and she's offering this tragedy to God for healing. Her response to the terrible news is to pray.

This is faith. To turn to God and open one's heart, to offer the violence and pain of the world to a loving God is what faith is about. I can't understand how anyone could kill another person, especially in a church setting. This man's action shows the pain of a broken world. But offering even this hurt to God is the beginning of healing.

I think of my good friends who are Unitarians and I know they are praying, too. I'm sure they feel the pain of those who died - and possibly a little fear for themselves as well. May God watch over us all and protect us.
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A grace before meals: Psalm 145:15-16

When I was a child, we always said grace at meals. If nothing else, we at least said this one: "God is great, God is good, and we thank him for this food."

Grace before eating is a spiritual practice that helps us honor God every time we eat. It helps us remember that God is the source of all we have, and it give us humility. Grace is part of a regular spiritual life.

The Psalm for this Sunday offers us a beautiful grace to use at meals:

The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open wide your hand
and satisfy the needs of every living creature. (Ps.145:15-16)

My favorite version of this grace is the old King James version which I learned when singing the anthem by Jean Barger (1909-2002):

The eyes of all wait upon thee,
and thou givest them their meat in due season.
Thou openest thine hand,
and satisfiest the desire of every living thing.

What better way to remember God than pausing before meals with this grace?
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Whaling Days in Silverdale

This weekend was Whaling Days in Silverdale. The Old Town area was completely blocked off for booths and activities, and crowds of people strolled the streets the whole weekend. Vendors offered giant soft tacos, gyros, hamburgers, teriyaki chicken, blow-up toys, henna tattoos, psychedelic paintings, and of course the ever-present carnival rides and cotton candy.

There were old hipsters with Harley t-shirts, parents trailing kids, teens with low-slung pants and multi-colored hair, and comfortably round people with gray hair buying treats for their grandkids. It was a local festival!

St. Antony's had a booth on the main street. We offered free water for people and dogs, and we handed out lots of flyers for the upcoming Barn Sale and Vacation Bible School. We even got several registration forms returned for VBS. There was lots of information about St. Antony's as well.

Our volunteers in the booth were very interactive with people walking by, and they trumpeted the name of St. Antony's to everyone who walked by. The public visibility we got was excellent and I'm sure we'll get some people in church because of this event. It makes us truly part of our community.
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The old and the new

In the Gospel lesson for Sunday, Jesus offers a number of parables, ending with this one:

"Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

"A scribe who has been trained for the kingdom" sounds like a wise person, someone who we can admire. Jesus says this person brings out of his treasure both what is new and what is old. He seems to be saying that both new and old have something of value.

If you think of conservatives as those who hold on to what is valuable from the past, and liberals as those who strive to bring in new things of value, then Jesus is saying that there's something of value from both sides of the spectrum.

Jesus himself came to renew the Jewish faith, not to abolish it. He valued the old practices of Judaism but he wanted to give them new expression and make them inward instead of simply outward.

In our own time, we are struggling with what it means to be Anglican. We cherish our prayer book heritage which links us to our Anglican history, but we also know we must be relevant to the world around us. New challenges bring new solutions.

The challenge before us is how to be faithful to our Anglican heritage while giving it new life and relevance in a changing world.

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Mustard seeds

Mustard seeds

Usually when we think about our accomplishments, we think of the big things: the honors we've earned, the positions we've gained, the goals we've met. But when I think of what I've accomplished in my life, it's the small things that come to mind.

Making breakfast for my sons before they went to school was a small thing, but it's a good memory for me. And I wonder if all the lectures and teaching I gave them had a fraction of the impact of simply having pancakes available on their plate.

Sometimes people tell me, "Thanks for what you said to me back when. It had a big impact on me." Embarassingly, I often can't remember the incident!

There have been times when another person's slightest gesture or smile has lifted my whole day.

And when I think of how I have spent my time over the past years, I think the least known and most hidden activity - prayer - has probably been the most effective.

Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when it is grown it becomes a great tree, providing a home for the birds of the air."

Perhaps we ought to focus on the small things we do as much as the big things!
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Judgment -- or consequence?

In the Gospel lesson for Sunday, Jesus offers a variety images for the kingdom of heaven - a mustard seed, a pearl, a treasure. But the image that may leap out at us most strongly is the image of judgment:

"...at the end of the age....the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

This image of judgment is frightening, so of course it captures our attention. Taken literally and out of context, a person might take this to mean that God will judge people at some future date and throw the evil ones into the fires of hell.

However, I resist that interpretation. For one thing, this is a parable. A parable is a story meant to provoke the imagination, not to spell out literal truth. Jesus used parables as a way of inviting his listeners to imagine something more than the concrete reality that was all around them. So this is not a literal image of hell as a place of everlasting damnation.

For another thing, it isn't God who does the sorting and throwing in this parable -- it's angels that do it. If you think of angels as messengers for God, or agents of God, then in a way the parable is saying that we'll suffer the consequences for our evil actions. The "angels" are the inevitable consequences that flow from our bad behavior.

I resist the image of a judging and condemning God because it doesn't fit with the God I see in Jesus. Jesus came offering forgiveness and compassion, not judgment and condemnation. You may ask, what if a person does what is wrong and resists God''s love and forgiveness. Is there a judgment for them?

It's true that the Bible does speak of judgment. I think that all of us will be judged, but after the judgment, I imagine God offering forgiveness again and again. I don't think God will give up on any person until all have freely chosen salvation. For me, God will always be a God of love.
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Cursillo planning

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Mercer Island

On Saturday, Fr. Dick Scott and I attended a Cursillo planning meeting at Emmanuel Church in Mercer Island. Cursillo is a weekend "short course" in Christianity. designed to help people grow in their faith. I've agreed to be on the spiritual team for the Cursillo September 25-28.

I did my Cursillo weekend when I was in seminary, in 1993. It was a memorable weekend and helped me in my walk with Christ. Over the past thirty years, Cursillo has deepened the faith of many people and helped them become disciples of Christ, not just attenders of church.

What struck me at this meeting was the male-ness of it. This is a men's weekend and the planning team of 22 people were all male! I haven't been in an all-male group for a long time, and it took a little adjustment for me. These were obviously all men devoted to Cursillo and very gifted in their area. The planning, which is quite thorough, will produce a spectacular weekend, I'm sure.

After the meeting ended, I had a few minutes to make a sketch of Emmanuel Church (above).
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In the Gospel lesson for Sunday, Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds. A field is found to have both wheat and weeds growing in it. When the workers ask the owner if they should uproot the weeds, he tells them not to, because they would uproot the wheat as well. He tells them to leave the weeds to grow along with the wheat, and at harvest time they will be separated and the weeds burned.

If there's ever been a better metaphor for the church, I don't know what it is! For some reason we expect the church to be the gathering of the pure and holy, and we're shocked when we find out that church people are just as likely as anyone else to be small-minded, hypocritical, selfish, and power-hungry.

Over the course of history there have often been attempts to "purify" the church by casting out those who are unworthy. These attempts always fail, because the church is made up of sinners like you and me.

It's precisely when we begin to think that we're the good ones and those others are the bad ones that we begin to damage the church. It's only when we admit that we ourselves are a mixture of good and bad that we begin to realize that we must be tolerant of others even when we don't agree with them.

The important thing to remember is that God will take care of the separation of good and bad at the end of the age. We don't have to do that -- and it's a good thing!
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Don't judge others too quickly

The Gospel lesson for Sunday is the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Jesus says that an enemy has sown weeds into a field of good wheat. He warns the disciples not to root out the weeds, but to let them grow alongside the wheat until the harvest.

How easy it is for us to judge other people! We come to judgment after a quick assessment of the facts and we condemn others in our minds summarily. Then we bask in the glow of our own self-righteousness.

But Jesus says to withhold judgment. Don't root out the weeds but let them grow alongside the wheat. I think Jesus means that we should be slow to judge others, not just publicly, but also in the privacy of our own thoughts. When we're tempted to condemn another person in our minds, Jesus asks us to hold off. Often, time reveals that our initial judgment was superficial and hasty.

The Psalm for Sunday expresses the nature of God:

But you, O LORD, are gracious and full of compassion, *
slow to anger, and full of kindness and truth.

May we also be slow to anger.
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The people God sends to us

Someone once said to me, "Churches are like families - you can't choose the members of your family and you can't choose who goes to your church."

I'm embarrassed to admit there have been times when I've thought to myself, "So and so is such a problem person in our parish. Why can't she find another church?" And just then God has said to me, "I gave her to you to love, and why can't you love her?"

We don't get to choose the people who come to our church. Although we do get people who agree with us, people who are like us, people who affirm us and support us, we also get people who challenge us, who disagree with us, who annoy us and even hurt us. God sends all kinds of people to us, and we are to welcome them in and make them part of the family of God.

The people who come to our church are like seeds that God is sowing in us. Some people thrive in our parish; some people wither and fall away; some just get too busy to attend. But all of them are God's people, God's seeds. Our job is to receive them all and nurture them as best we can, so they might thrive and grow as children of God, and produce abundantly for the kingdom, some a hundred fold, some sixty, and some thirty.
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The mystery of spiritual growth

When I came to Silverdale looking for a house to rent, I had two things on my list. I wanted to find a place for Katy to have a garden, and I wanted a place close enough to the church so I could bicycle to work. I got both!

Katy planted her garden when we first got here, and last night we had the first salad made from lettuce she planted. It was delicious, and it tasted even better because we knew it was home-grown.

Katy loves working in her garden. She's spent many happy hours in the garden digging, planting, weeding and watering. It's such a wonderful mystery to put seeds in the ground and watch them come up and become food for eating.

In the Gospel parable for Sunday, Jesus talks about sowing seeds. He says, "A sower went out to sow." Some of the seeds the sower sows are lost to birds, dryness, or thorns, but some of the seed grow up and yield bountifully: "some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty."

Jesus explains to the disciples that the seed is the word of God. The word of God takes root and grows in some people; in others it doesn't. The growth of a seed is a great mystery. How does a seed know when to send out its shoot? How does it know to grow upwards toward the sun? Why do some seeds grow and not others?

This tells me that the working of the word of God is a mystery. We can't force it; we can't control it; all we can do it receive it and let it do its work on our souls. I think of James 1:21, "Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls."

I'm not sure how God's word has worked on me in my life. There were times when I had no good soil, and the word didn't grow in me. Other times there was tremendous growth in my spiritual life and in my relationship with God. Why sometimes and not others? It's a mystery.

Oh God, let the seeds of your word fall in the earth of my soul and grow abundantly.
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Reassurance for exiles

Bread for eating

The Old Testament lesson for Sunday is the beautiful passage from Isaiah in which God promises that his word will not go empty:

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty."

Isaiah is writing for the exiles in Babylon. They've been forcibly deported from their homeland and undoubtedly feel that God has failed them. Why did God let this happen?

But Isaiah writes to reassure them that God's plans never fail. The words that God speaks will come to pass, as sure as rain and snow bring forth grain for eating.

When we feel anxious and unsure, it's helpful to remember that God's words never go empty. We can trust that somehow, in some way, God will bring us through every difficult time. We don't need to control everything; we can let God take care of things.
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Fourth of July and patriotism

Last night Katy and I went to some friends' lake house for barbecue and fireworks. All around the little lake there were explosions and aerial starbursts as each of the neighbors attempted to outdo the others. Driving home along Dyes Inlet, we saw fireworks lighting the sky for miles and miles along the Kitsap peninsula.

It was as if everyone wanted to put on a display of great joy and fervor. Fireworks are high-energy bursts of color and noise...what better way is there to show excitement?

I've been reading about patriotism the last few days. One commentator suggests that conservatives view patriotism looking back at the past. They have a reverence for what our country has accomplished, and they understand patriotism as a matter of honoring our heroes. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to look to the future. They're critical of our country's past mistakes, and they consider it our patriotic duty to maintain our country's high ideals for the future.

Ronald Reagan, with his serene belief in American goodness, exemplifies the conservative side, while John F. Kennedy, with his stirring speeches about what we could do for the future, exemplifies the liberal side.

As a good Anglican, I say it's both: we honor those who have given of themselves to make our country what it is today, but we also remind ourselves of our high ideals for the future. I love my country both for what it's been and for what it can become.
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Psalm 145, a daily prayer

A portion of Psalm 145 is appointed for our reading this Sunday. This Psalm is well-loved by Jewish people who have recited it as part of their morning prayers for generations. The Psalm is meant to be recited slowly, lingering on each phrase, tasting the flavor of each word.

Psalm 145 is an acrostic; that is, each verse in Hebrew begins with another letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It weaves back and worth with praise and glory to the all-loving and compassionate God.

This Psalm reminds us especially of the universality of God. Sometimes I think we Christians tend to forget that God is God of the whole creation. "The LORD is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his works." (v. 9)

God cares for every living thing -- all animals and plants, the whole creation. God loves all that he has made, and his compassion extends to all people: "The Lord is loving to everyone."

Not only that, but the creation responds to God with praise: "All your works praise you, O LORD, and your faithful servants bless you." When we pray this Psalm, we join in the chorus of praise coming from the creation.

I think it's a good idea to emulate the Jewish practice of praying through this Psalm. We can enter the praise of God as we let this Psalm wash over us and fill us with God's love. "Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe!"
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Emergent church

Today I attended Clergy Day at Fremont Abbey in Seattle. The speaker was Ian Mobsby, a priest from the Church of England who spoke about his work with the "emergent church".

The emergent church is an attempt to make the Gospel accessible to people living in a psotmodern age. Ian reminded us how many people say, "I'm spiritual but not religious". That's a classic expression of postmodern society. People today are skeptical of authority and institutions, and they reject church structures. People in a consumer society think they should be able to shop for their spirituality, and so they create their own spiritual practices with a grab-bag attitude - a little of this, a little of that.

People today want experience over doctrine, and the emergent church tries to reach back to earlier forms of Christian worship that were highly experiential, like chant, incense, candles, and sung prayer. They try to live close to their neighborhoods, bringing social change close to home. They do their theology in coffee shops and bars, not in classrooms. Building community is a high priority for them.

I like the ideas I heard expressed. The Church of the Apostles, based at Fremont Abbey, is composed of twenty-somethings, and it's exciting to know they're finding new ways to follow Jesus. I think I may be too old to really understand the emergent church, but I'm glad someone's doing it.

After lunch I went outside and made a sketch of the church (above).
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