Youth ministry

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

“I believe the children are our future …”

Um, no. The children are here now. They are our present. If you have spent five minutes with a child, you know how present they are. They are all about the right now. My son, when he was younger, learned to make complex sentences by challenging my view of time with his own:

“Mummy please may I have a drink not in a minute but right now please?”

(Yes, I am still dealing with the mommy guilt. And no, he hadn’t learned punctuation yet, even orally.)

Please understand that this post is not a complaint, gripe or snipe. I love our youth ministries. I love in particular the diocesan events that my own young people attend, because they love them so very much. I love Episcoprom (best idea ever, I am told), Happening, lock-ins, Spring Gatherings, Youth Leadership (formerly Peer Ministry) Trainings and the whole chabang, without having attended any of them, because they cause my children to come home joyful, intentional, and knowing themselves to be part of a real and loving community.

I am looking at all of this, though – and it helps to have readings to consider this week about the call of the boy David to be king (and although he will be king in the future, he is anointed NOW, and if he trips up or gets it wrong with Goliath next week, there will be no future) – and wondering whether we sometimes forget that youth ministry is at least a two-way street.

We tend to think about it in church planning as “working with the youth,” as planning things for them to do, for us to teach them, for us to take them to or tell them about or train them for. We think about raising the children and youth as future church members, future leaders. But what if we took seriously the idea that youth ministry is also and at least as much about the ministry of the youth, right here right now, to us?

We often talk about what we can do to build up our common life, and I look with wonder upon the community that the youth of this diocese has built, and I wonder what the rest of our parish households could learn about loving one another, leaning on one another, being a household of God together from our children. Can we let them teach us how to be a no-holds-barred, full-on, built-together spiritual edifice with Christ as our cornerstone and love for God and neighbour as cement?

Communications. Some of us are wringing our hands trying to keep up in a responsible way with a world gone viral. Our children know this world as their own. They can teach us, if we let them, and if we let go of just a little of our anxiety about chaos and change. Growing is all about chaos and change, after all.

My friend Ken yesterday wrote a moving piece about forgetting to dance and shoes that are too small ( http://ecumenicallife.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/my-shoes-are-too-tight ); children grow out of their inhibition-less exhibitions in the aisles as their feet grow. What if we let them teach us now, while they are still young enough to do it, how to praise God freely, without embarrassment, without shame, kicking off our shoes if they are too tight?

What if instead of depending upon the children as our future, we looked at their present, their presence, their gifts, as our call to be in the here and now?

As I said, this isn’t a complaint, a criticism, a rant. I am grateful to so many people for great ministry with my young people, and for allowing them their ministry. When my daughter preached at the cathedral a couple of weeks ago, the Dean didn’t say, “She’s going to be a preacher!” She said, “She is a preacher.”

The Canons of the Episcopal Church say that sixteen is the threshold for adult membership of the church. That means that as well as promoting “Special” youth representatives and delegates to conventions and vestries and committees (and those can be great opportunities, as long as they do not obscure or dilute that coming of age), we are allowed to elect sixteen and seventeen-year-olds to sit and vote and shape our future and our present as equals alongside their sixty and seventy-year-old peers. Do we tell them that, when they turn sixteen? Should we consider having a “coming of age” celebration to let them know and to remind ourselves that they are not future or potential adult members, church leaders – they are now?

Should we let the children lead us in a merry dance as we do so?

 

 

 

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Does size matter?

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Last week, the elders of Israel were quite rude and unmannerly to Samuel, declaring him “old,” and demanding a king. Samuel was justifiably offended, but God told him to go ahead and give them a king (1 Samuel 8). God even gave them a king who would look the part, Saul being a head taller than the people around him (1 Samuel 9:2).

An American Psychological Association report from 2004 tells us that tall people are more successful than their shorter counterparts, earn more money, and are “looked up to” in societal and figurative as well as literal ways:

When it comes to height, every inch counts–in fact, in the workplace, each inch above average may be worth $789 more per year, according to a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Vol. 89, No. 3).
The findings suggest that someone who is 6 feet tall earns, on average, nearly $166,000 more during a 30-year career than someone who is 5 feet 5 inches–even when controlling for gender, age and weight.
The height-salary link was found by psychologist Timothy A. Judge, PhD, of the University of Florida, and researcher Daniel M. Cable, PhD, of the University of North Carolina. They analyzed data from four American and British longitudinal studies that followed about 8,500 participants from adolescence to adulthood and recorded personal characteristics, salaries and occupations. Judge and Cable also performed a meta-analysis of 45 previous studies on the relationship between height and workplace success.
Judge offers a possible explanation for the height bias: Tall people may have greater self-esteem and social confidence than shorter people. In turn, others may view tall people as more leader-like and authoritative.
“The process of literally ‘looking down on others’ may cause one to be more confident,” Judge says. “Similarly, having others ‘looking up to us’ may instill in tall people more self-confidence.”*

Unfortunately, in the case of Saul, the height bias thing didn’t work out too well. This week’s reading begins with God regretting making Saul king, and deciding to replace him with David, the youngest child of the family chosen to bear the Lord’s anointed, and presumably the smallest (1 Samuel 15:34-16:13).

Before anointing David, Samuel sees the stature of his eldest brother and is about to make the same mistakes all over again, but God explains that divine sight is not the same as human judgment, and directs him to look again. (It is a little ironic, then, that the description of David is so aesthetically pleasing in a very human way.) As in a folk tale or even a fairy tale, every eligible son has to pass by until only the youngest, the smallest, the overlooked (by human sight) is left to be presented.

David’s diminutive size and its usefulness and ability to contain the will of God will be further emphasized next week, when he faces Goliath of the Philistines (1 Samuel 17) .

All of which might be simply a funny story, an amusing item for musing upon, were it not for the end of the second lesson, from Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church (2 Corinthians 5: 14-17).

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

The American Psychological Association suggests that we find it difficult to break out of a human regard. And what does it even mean to regard no one from a human point of view? More wrestling, it seems, needs to be done before we can give the little boy David his full due as the anointed one appointed by God to be the king of Israel, the ancestor of the Messiah, beloved of his people and his own King. And more wrestling needs to be done before these texts are ready to preach on Sunday …

* http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing.aspx

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2 Corinthians and the naive faith of Henry Vaughn

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

When I was twelve, my English teacher told my parents that I was quite naive in my reading of the class poetry assignments. I knew why she said that. We had been reading Henry Vaughn, who seemed almost jealous of his dead friends because they were closer to knowing God than was he; because for them the veil was lifted, and they saw no longer as through a glass darkly, but had met God face to face.

My English teacher thought this was bunk. I asked (naively), “But what if he’s right?”

The stage was set for a term of relentless but polite antagonism between the secular and sophisticated understanding which my teacher brought to the metaphysical poetry we studied, and the obstinately religious pre-teen sympathies with which this student read the work.

I remembered all this when I began reading for this Sunday’s lessons. Paul says,

So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord – for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord … (2 Corinthians 5: 6-8)

Yes, yes, says Paul, the ideal is to be with Jesus, unconstrained, ascended as he is, seeing God face to face from our place at the foot of the heavenly throne. But, he goes on to say, “whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.”

Paul did not mean for us to long for death. He meant us to long for heaven – to be with God – wherever we found ourselves. Henry Vaughn did not long to die: he longed to see God more clearly, more closely, more completely, and he took comfort amid the loss of his friends in believing that they knew joys that he still longed for.

Naive? Perhaps. But Paul goes on to say, “if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.” A little bit of poetic flight of fancy, a little naive bliss, a little romantic longing might have its place in our devotions after all. If we are beside ourselves, it is for God. And few are wholly in their right mind when writing poetry!

Beyond the Veil

They are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit ling’ring here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beam in which this hill is drest
After the sun’s remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days:
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmering and decays.

O holy Hope! and high Humility,
High as the heavens above!
These are your walks, and you have show’d them me,
To kindle my cold love.

Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the Just,
Shining nowhere, but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!

He that hath found some fledg’d bird’s nest may know,
At first sight, if the bird be flown;
But what fair well or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.

And yet as Angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul, when man doth sleep:
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.

If a star were confin’d into a tomb,
Her captive flames must needs burn there;
But when the hand that lock’d her up gives room,
She’ll shine through all the sphere.

O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under Thee!
Resume Thy spirit from this world of thrall
Into true liberty.

Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill
My perspective still as they pass:
Or remove me hence unto that hill,
Where I shall need no glass.

Henry Vaughn, via PoemHunter.com

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Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Earlier this week I posted “Unforgivable,” a meditation on how we read and receive the threat of unforgivable sin as presented in this week’s gospel. I shied away from defining the unpardonable; blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I maintain that the attempt to describe it is mostly unhelpful in pastoral care. Too many people already consider themselves beyond redemption, and the burden of pastoral and theological reflection is to bring grace to bear upon the burdens of the world.

I also offered the opinion that this saying could be hyperbolic, rather than being intended as realistic. The context of the saying as it stands in this week’s Gospel lectionary selection lends itself to that kind of a reading. The immediate and preceding context is the argument about whose authority Jesus borrows or uses to carry out his ministry. But it leads into the difficult and dangerous territory of family relationships and affectionate bonds.

Immediately after the exchange about Satanic power, divine intervention and the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit comes the famous story of Jesus’ mother and brothers arriving, and their announcement to Jesus.

Jesus’ response is generally interpreted as a rejection. But is it? Jesus says nothing against his birth family, but seeks to include within it all who are seated around him and all who follow God’s will, whatever that may be. In Mark’s story, Jesus does not disown his family, but he also suggests that he is as connected to every other of God’s children as to his blood brothers.

In the gospel of Luke, this little story of family is set by itself in the midst of many other sayings, and completely disconnected from the blasphemy pronouncement. In Matthew, it is separated by a building up of rhetoric – the sign of Jonah, the faithless generation – and the arrival of Jesus’ family comes just when he is on a roll; you can hear him breaking out and saying, “You’re not hearing me! These are my brothers and sisters! These are your brothers and sisters! God’s kingdom means we live together within God’s will for each of us and all of us together!”

Back to Mark. If we choose, then, to read forward as well as backward in this gospel

(and since we’ve been given the gift of juxtaposition by the coming together of the gospel in that order, and the division in that way by the lectioneers, all, we hope, guided by the Holy Spirit, then why not?),

then we may find that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is nothing else than to deny our family, our siblings, our fellow children of God, our neighbours, who contain the same spark and spirit of the divine, who are made in the same image as we are. It is to restrict our love to those who look like us, who grew up with us, who share our name, our “values,” our culture, our home.

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is to say that I am made in the image of God, and you (or more often “they”) are not. It is to say that this group of people is “unnatural;” not part of God’s design for creation. It is to call this person “inhuman,” that person “beyond redemption.” It is to live with and to live out all of the actions, policies, prejudices that flow from such blasphemies against that Holy Spirit who breathes life into us all.

Yes, that makes us all guilty (unforgivable? Let’s hope for hyperbole). Yes, it also fits well with Jesus’ insistence on the love of God spilling over into the love of neighbour.

Yes, it is a cautionary tale against prejudice, unkindness, bigotry, exclusion and hatred.

It is also a lesson in love.

Because the greatest commandments are not “do not” or “beware of.” They are “love.”

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(no) Walking on the water

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

We are frequently offered an image of a Jesus who flouted lesser regulations; a transgressor of boundaries; a rebel. Is the story of the walk across the water an example of this?

20120608-092827.jpg

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Babies, breasts and baptism

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

When our babies were new, a friend told the story of her daughter’s baptism. Another child in the congregation was being baptized alongside her, and this baby was hungry. Very hungry. The baby would not be put off or consoled without being fed; so his mother fed him. The baby did not want to be put off in the middle of feeding, so to save the people from his screams, the mother held him close and kept him comforted and let him know that she was always there for him, her and her breasts, right up to the very last second.

“The priest almost baptized her boob along with the baby!” laughed my friend.

Was your reaction to that story to giggle, grimace, or whip out your special green “Angry of Essex” letter-to-the-editor pen?

On a different side of the pond (a detail which I think is not unimportant to the way in which this story is being received), mischief is being made over a photo of two women breastfeeding three children between them. Often, photos of women breastfeeding are presented as controversial here, which is pretty sigh-worthy in itself. The photographer in this instance might have been trying to capitalize on the scandal that Time magazine was trying recently to provoke with its “mom enough” breastfeeding cover ( http://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/2012/1101120521_600.jpg ).

But really, the controversy is not about the photo but about our attitudes to breastfeeding, motherhood and parenting in general. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing, scandalous, notorious or titillating about women feeding their babies.

Detail via npr.org: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/06/05/terrenphoto_sq.jpg?t=1338928165&s=11

The women in this latest photograph are wearing military uniforms. This has got some people in a stew. Some people seem to think that nurturing children in front of other people is incompatible with military service. They call it dishonorable, undignified – what?!

In the week following Memorial Day, when we honoured veterans and their families for their service, for their selfless giving, for their self-giving, we found ourselves surrounded by arguments about whether this self-giving love was compatible with that self-giving love. Whether this form of service denigrated that kind of service. The irony is miserable; this thing has got me up in arms.

I posted a link on facebook to npr’s coverage of the story: http://www.npr.org/2012/06/05/154344798/breastfeeding-in-uniform-brave-or-brazen – where you can see the full photo and commentary – with a comment about our support of women, parents and babies. Being a church person, I noted that it’s a good idea to take Communion to a mother in the pews who normally comes forward to receive but is clearly otherwise engaged at the time breastfeeding her baby. You don’t even have to baptize the boob, and eye contact is in this case recommended.

I’m not giggling any more.

But I can’t help smiling every time I look at the happy, self-giving, dream-fulfilling, nurturing, strong, loving women that this picture portrays. They have my full support.

Update: What would be the public reaction to a photograph of a woman breastfeeding her baby wearing clericals? What would be your response?

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Boniface, Missionary and Martyr

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

I read and hear often that the most effective way of introducing new people to the church (or vice versa) is by personal invitation to a friend, neighbour, or grocery checkout assistant. (Let’s leave aside for now the question of why you’re asking them and assume it’s for the purposes of the gospel, love of God and love of neighbour, and not because you want another pledging unit for your parish. We can talk more about that another time.)

I also read and hear that most people are most unlikely to invite their friends, neighbours, community members and even family to church for fear of negative reactions, offending, off-putting, or losing the friendship of those they invite (that last seems a bit extreme. If someone invited me to a church – or a movie, play, bungee-jumping expedition or barbecue – that I didn’t want to go to, I could always say no. I don’t have to burn their bridges).

At first glance, citing the example of a martyred missionary may not be the best way to persuade reluctant evangelists to greater confidence and enthusiasm. But here’s what Holy Women, Holy Men* has to say about him:

Boniface is justly called one of the “Makers of Europe.” He was born at Crediton in Devonshire, England, about 675, and received the English name of Winfred. … he was professed a monk and ordained to the presbyterate. … Winfred decided to become a missionary, and made his first Journey to Frisia in 716 – a venture with little success. In 719 he started out again; but this time he first went to Rome to seek papal approval. Pope Gregory … gave him the name Boniface.

For the rest of his days, Boniface devoted himself to reforming, planting, and organizing churches, monasteries and dioceses in Hesse, Thuringia, and Bavaria. Many helpers and supplies came to him from friends in England. In 722 the Pope ordained him a bishop, ten years later made him an archbishop, and in 743 gave him a fixed see at Mainz. …

In 753 Boniface resigned his see, to spend his last years again as a missionary in Frisia. On June 5, 754, while awaiting a group of converts for confirmation, he and his companions were murdered by a band of pagans, near Dokkum. …

Boniface’s story may not end happily, but it is certainly not a cautionary tale contra evangelism. Boniface enjoyed success and reaped rewards from his sowing of gospel seeds. He did not work alone but had the support of friends and folks in high places. He was not murdered by someone he had invited to church, but by a band of pagans …

We have friends and the support of our community. We have gospel to share and to spare. We do not appear to have too much of a problem in this locality with raging mobs of pagans with pitchforks (although we pray for those of any faith who do suffer persecution because of their devotions).

So next time the Holy Spirit is nudging one or the other of us to invited a friend to church, we might remember Boniface, and ask ourselves,

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

*Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (New York, Church Publishing, 2010)

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Unforgivable

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

So you think you’ve committed the unpardonable, unforgivable, permanently staining sin. Welcome.

It is amazing, isn’t it, that with all of the gospel good news telling us how much God loves us, how ready God is to forgive us, how God will never let us go

(think Prodigal, think Comfortable Words, think Psalms, think lost sheep, think crucifixion, resurrection and that whole deal, think Gentiles, tax collectors and sinners, think love, think way, truth, Life …)

that this one verse is enough to make us doubt all over again. Have I done it? Did I, somewhere, somewhen, do the wrong thing, say the one word that locks me away forever from that forever forgiveness, that lively, lovely eternal embrace?

There are opinions as to what the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is or might be, how one might commit it. Reading them, I get the feeling that it’s one of those things, like obscenity, that is impossible to define but recognized in one’s gut when realized – you know, let’s not even go there. The more opinions I describe about what this thing is, the more chances that someone will catch herself on the jagged, broken glass and find her own broken image there, and imagine herself unforgiven all over again. Most people (anecdotally evidenced) do not feel themselves exempt from the threat of unforgiveness. Many people worry that they have sinned beyond pardon.

Let me be frank: I do not claim to know what this saying means. I don’t know if the phrase is hyperbolic or realistic, highly contextual or abstractly absolute.

On the one hand, I find it hard to go with the notion that anything is unforgivable by God, given God’s famous propensities toward mercy. I find it difficult to believe that God would lock me out of love for one misstep, even one taken deliberately, in anger, pain or fury, given how loving God is to me the rest of the time. And I don’t think most of you reading have committed many sins that I haven’t. So if you’re unforgiven, so am I.

But I’m not. I sometimes feel as though I should be, but that’s me fighting the gospel, denying God’s revelation and redemption. Fortunately, I think that gets forgiven, too.

On the other hand, if we must believe that there is an unforgivable sin, here’s an alternative approach: If we must believe that there is an unforgivable sin, does it have to follow that there is an unforgivable sinner? If we must read literally the threat that one sin is unpardonable, then isn’t it still possible that we can commit some one thing that cannot be redeemed, cannot be undone, cannot be washed away, without condemning our whole selves to hell?

I am envisioning an apple with a bruise – imperfect, but edible; even delicious. A favourite mug with a slight chip. Flawlessly freckled skin. A garment with a spot inside the hem – a stain that only the wearer will ever notice or see – everything else washed whiter and brighter than fuller’s bleach can make it.

So you think you’ve committed the unpardonable, unforgivable, permanently staining sin. Welcome. You might want to confess, amend, repent. But please don’t worry about it.

Loving the unlovable; hoping for the hopeless; forgiving the unforgivable. For God all things are possible. Aren’t they?

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Trinity

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A waltz: one, two, three,
one, two, three; or a polka:
one, two, three and ( you?)

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The next verse

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

“not to condemn;” the
part we too often judge to
be forgettable.

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