Monthly Archives: December 2011

Christmas in Chelsea Square

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My alma mater, The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, was featured in a CBS Special this Christmas Eve. In fact, they aired opposite the Midnight Mass with the Pope from the Saint Peter’s Basillica in Rome. Except ours was all in English, with four-part harmonies in the music. Point GTS, I dare say.

In case you missed it, because you were busy doing things like, say, sleeping at 11:35 pm on Christmas Eve, you can now watch it online, in glorious 1080p if you so choose.

Merry Christmas!

Ordination and the Time Thereafter…

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It has become standard in the letters of agreement in the Diocese of Long Island for parish clergy to receive the weeks after Christmas and Easter off. I can’t even begin to say how grateful I am for this, especially given how momentous this December has been: in the span of two weeks, I was ordained as a priest, observed the final two Sundays of Advent, had our Transitioning Clergy meeting in Garden City (where I was asked to celebrate the Eucharist), the regular assortment of holiday parties and festivities, and finally, celebrated and preached at my first Christmas Eve Midnight Mass and Christmas Day mass. It has been an incredibly busy time, and I’m just now starting to have a chance to catch my breath, to reflect, to rest.

"Therefore, Father, through Jesus Christ your Son, give your Holy Spirit to David; fill him with grace and power, and make him a priest in your Church."

One of the questions I was asked most often after my priesting - by parishioners, clergy colleagues, family and friends alike - was “do you feel any different?” I’ve struggled to answer that question on so many different levels. If the question was “are you any different?” the answer would be simple - yes. I’m catholic enough to believe that there is an ontological change at ordination; ordination is not simply the church’s recognition of a pre-existing reality, or an installation into an office: ordination confers grace. That’s an easy question to answer from my perspective. But “do you feel any different?” - well - yes and no. I was struck at my first celebration of the mass on Advent III how often I felt like I was “play-acting.” At a core level, I know I wasn’t - but it was so very strange when, after 26 years of watching other people at the altar celebrating the mass using these same prayers, suddenly, it was me. I grew up as an Episcopalian, and have known nothing but the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, so the words I was praying were abundantly familiar. But for 26 years, they had come from some other person’s lips. Not mine. Perhaps the most astounding moment of my first mass, at least to my thinking, was when I elevated the chalice at the per ipsum at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, and saw my own face reflected in the silver. It was sort of like having a loud voice shout at me, “Ready or not, you’re a priest now! Hope you like what you see…”

In time, I imagine celebrating the mass will turn back into prayer for me, as it was before I was ordained, either as a deacon or as a priest. It doesn’t feel like it yet. Perhaps because the smell of chrism is still quite fresh on my palms, and I’m very, very much new to this gig. It’s hard when the normal patterns of prayer are disrupted, when any big event fundamentally changes the way you relate to other people and to God. In time, you live into that new reality - but it does take some time. Falling down a few times as you get used to the new terrain. And being willing to get up, fall down a few more times, until the ground that once seemed so unsteady becomes the new normal.

So when did I first begin to actually breathe in the new reality - to not just be different, but feel different? Exactly one week later. One week later, I made the trek from my far corner of southwest Brooklyn to Larchmont, New York, to participate in a friend’s ordination to the priesthood. Interestingly enough, priesthood became real to me when I added my hands to the “holy huddle” in making someone else a priest. Not because I was no longer the “newest priest in the Church.” That common introduction of new clergy fades very rapidly, and at least to me, doesn’t mean much. Perhaps it was because in laying my hands on another person at their ordination, it was among the very first times I had was able to very clearly, visibly, and tangibly be a part of someone else living out their own call to discipleship. He went under the hands of the bishop, the college of presbyters lent our hands to the pile - and he came out a priest. And while I imagine he didn’t feel any different - at that point, I did. Because I could see where I played a part - a teeny-weeny, small, peripheral part - but a part nonetheless - in making a priest. A disciple. Just like Jesus told us to.

My job is awesome.

Sermon for Christmas Eve - Midnight Mass

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The room that is supposed to be the master bedroom of my rectory is largely empty. I actually sleep in a room that is immediately next to the master bedroom – my room has a ceiling fan, and so that room is slightly more comfortable, especially during the summertime. Thus the master bedroom has remained pretty much empty. In fact, when I arrived in June, even the room’s radiator had been taken out! The only thing was in the master bedroom when I moved in was a single, very large work of art. On this huge piece of wood is an image of the Virgin Mary, tenderly cradling an infant Jesus in her arms. Outside of the frame, in the upper levels of the piece, is an image of an adult Jesus, surrounded by the faces of the angels. They eyes of all of them look down on the serene image of the Madonna and Child that sits below them. This painting, this icon, remains the only thing in that bedroom. I haven’t managed to repaint and refinish the room yet, and I don’t have enough furniture to fill the space, so it remains as it is – empty, except for that portrait of the Madonna and Child leaning up against the southwest wall. One would expect to find the portrait somewhere in a church, or over an altar – which is precisely from whence it came. The portrait normally hangs over the altar in the Chapel of Peace next door. But time has taken its toll on our roof, and as leaks started to plague the chapel, it was moved into the rectory for safekeeping. And so it sits, a giant non-sequitur in the middle of my rectory. Here, where you would expect to find a bed and dressing chest, or perhaps some chairs and a table, you find nothing – nothing except for that giant, unexpected, out-of-place icon of Madonna and Child. But there it lies.

On a night no different from their ordinary, shepherds were out in the fields outside their city, straining to keep awake and watch over their flocks, as it was the season that lambs would be born. Suddenly, a bright light appears, and the shepherds sense that they are in the presence of the profoundly holy. They are left speechless, and they begin reaching out, trying and failing to find one another in the midst of the blinding light. In the middle of their terror, a voice sounds to them: “Do not be afraid… I bring you good news of great joy for every person – in the city has been born a Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. You will find the child wrapped in cloths, and sleeping in a manger.” And just as suddenly as the light had appeared, it went away. The shepherds were left standing there; each thought that he must have had a dream or a hallucination. Finally, one of them told the others about his dream, and they all rapidly realize that they had each seen and heard the same thing. This was no dream. With the night almost done, and ready to return home, they decide to look after the child, the Savior of whom they had been told. As they returned to the city – grimy, dirty, tired from their work – they suddenly feel led to a cave, next to a house – none of them could say how or why – and there they saw him. It was just as the voice had said – a young child, sleeping, lying in a feeding trough. But this was not what they had expected: they had been told, after all, that this was the Messiah, the Lord – surely he would have been born in a house near the center of the city, where the Great King had been born generations ago; not in this small cave, filled with the ordinary and the earthy – filled with the odor of sweat and blood, with the sight ripped cloths fashioned into blankets and diapers, and with that same child, that same Messiah, resting in the same kind of trough that would normally feed their sheep. Surely, this birth should have been somewhere else. Not here. But they had found everything as the voice had said; and the fact that the voice had spoken to them – marginal shepherds on the edges of society – was a surprise in and of itself. It all didn’t fit, it didn’t make sense – it was a giant non-sequitur from everything that they had been taught to hope for– but there the child lay, just as the voice had said. There he was.

In today’s world, Christmas is very often a very mechanical, orchestrated, orderly and expected affair. As I was growing up, Christmas Eve always meant the Lessons & Carols broadcast from King’s College Cambridge at 10:00 am, Dinner with family friends around 7:00 pm, and finally, Midnight Mass at 10:30pm. Christmas Day would bring the opening of presents – no earlier than 7:00 am, a family meal around 2:00 pm, and phone calls to friends and family. Even tonight’s Gospel from Luke we expect and know by heart – who can’t picture Linus reading tonight’s passage in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”?

But tonight’s Gospel, and everything about the incarnation, is messy. No matter how many times I have heard the story of Christ’s birth in that poor, lowly stable in Bethlehem, no matter how many times I have heard of the shepherds summoned to his cradle, no matter how often I have been left sitting with Mary, pondering all that she has seen in her heart, no matter how much I feel I have this whole thing down – Christmas reminds me that God defies everything that we expect. That even as we expect and look for the Lord enthroned in heavenly splendor, God becomes just as human as we are in Christ Jesus – as the great carol says, “day by day like us he grew; he was little, weak and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew; and he feeleth for our sadness, and he shareth in our gladness.” Christmas reminds us that God is not only the God to whom cherubim and seraphim sing in ceaseless praise, but that God became and knows us as we are – that God in Christ Jesus is Word that existed in the beginning before creation, and the Word who also knows bruised elbows and scraped knees, deepest pain and joyous delight.

This is the great joy of Christmas – that God made himself as we are so that we might ever become what he is – that we, too, may share in the divine life of him who humbled himself to share own humanity. Christmas reminds us that Jesus truly is Emmanuel – God with us – and not only God with us, but God for us. God among us. God who loves us.

And it is because we experience this joy of the incarnation – the joy and peace brought by this Holy Child – because we know that great love shown to us at the manger, and because we still have God with us today as we meet him in sacraments - that we go and tell others. We tell everyone just how great and unexpected this new grace shown to us at Christmas is - that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all here and now, in the person of that holy child, lying in the manger. We tell everyone, just as the angels did on that night two thousand years ago: “Fear not! Fear not! For behold, I tell you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

Let us pray.
Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of
your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our
hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our
Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

 

The best of times, the worst of times.

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Life has been incredibly hectic over the past week and a half - a combination of goings on in the office and preparations for my ordination to the priesthood this weekend. For anyone who may have been looking for a post, its coming; I simply have been too busy to give my energy to the web at the moment.

In the meantime, it is Advent. Enjoy this clip of the Lichfield Cathedral Choir’s performance of “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjn3fBTvBjY]

Also, I have a Spotify playlist of great Advent music. If you’re not a Spotify subscriber, you should be - but that’s for a future post. For those of you that are, you can check that playlist out here:

Spotify: Music for Advent

 

More anon.