Morning Rounds and Evening Musings

The last two weeks have been exhausting in so many ways. It all started with the anxiety attack I described two posts down. From then on, I feel like it's been one thing after another. My first sermon, an application for a summer fellowship, a paper, a Hebrew exam and a history exam--mix into the bunch some houseguests and a new roommate, bills, groceries and all the things normal lives contain, along with discernment today and you get a picture of the hectic nature of the last couple weeks. It has left me feeling down, depressed and just plain tired.

All of this stress has caused considerable reflection on my perfectionism. I've been waking in the early mornings, creating imaginary scenarios for myself in my half-asleep, half-awake state. The other morning I 'dreamed' or 'thought' I had received work back from one of the summer programs I applied for telling me that they were granting me an interview, but that it would be with Carol Newsom. Of course, this makes no sense on a number of levels--my Old Testament prof is not likely to be interviewing for community-partnership fellows. That didn't stop me from an intense feeling of needing to prepare for this imaginary interview right then, and taking the next couple hours of precious sleep time concocting and answering the kind of questions only dreams can write. Or the other time I woke up at 3pm, convinced that it was time to start studying for my exam at 9:30 the next morning. Turns out sleep-studying is about as effective as eating sticks of butter in order to lose weight.

Today was mid-point reflection day in discernment. I presented my reflection, saying essentially that I was feeling more and more convinced that I was not called to the priesthood. I listed reasons like the work schedule, the constant complaints from parishioners, the long hours, not particularly enjoying the administrative aspects, etc. etc. I also said that even the language of 'call' has become problematic for me. What do we imply with the notion of being called to this or that--that God has one, particular, specific calling in mind for me and if I miss it, I'm screwed? In a book I'm reading for preaching class, Barbara Brown Taylor talks about her own discernment for the priesthood. One frustrated night, she commanded God to tell her in plain terms what she should do. The answer she received was "do anything that pleases you, and belong to me." What a liberating version of call! Maybe it's not important what I end up doing between the hours of 9-5. My vocation began at my baptism: to be God's person in the world.

But of course that doesn't answer the question of what I will do to earn money come May 2009. And while the discernment committee reminded me today that I do not have to decide today, I do have to decide. In fact, I'm probably waaaay behind the deciding curve. 26, married, soon to be MDiv with no clue about what comes next. But it seems so simple for most. Wes has always known he wanted to be a doctor. People graduate at 22, get jobs and have good lives all the time. What is my problem?

The discernment committee didn't buy my conclusive, final 'no' to the priesthood today. Whether they're right or wrong I have no idea, but they feel as though much of these vocational issues are getting muddled in what is really a quest to find whatever it is I can do most perfectly. PhD will be grueling and hard and I might get rejected? Oh, I'm not called. The priesthood is difficult, demanding and I will never make anyone happy? Nope, not called there either. They think it's my fear of failure, my fear of not being the best that has given me an easy, but disingenuous 'no.' Maybe they're right, but what really troubles me is how I'm supposed to figure out if they're right. The whole reason I entered discernment in the first place was to distinguish between my fears about being ordained from legitimate reasons for passing it over. Every month, things are brought to my attention that I already knew were there--"you're insecurity is going to be detrimental to parish ministry", "you're need for approval is not going to be fulfilled by whatever church you work in", "your perfectionism is hindering you from answering vocational questions honestly." Well no shit! The real question is what do I do about it?

And if I feel a sense of dread when I imagine myself as a priest, why waste my time pursuing it? If my vocation is to be God's person, why not find an easier road, one where psychological issues are not so directly related to my job, and where there are not a million hoops to jump through? And then I read this, and I think maybe this is just how it goes. Meg feels absolutely confidant about her calling and she is still often frustrated and afraid. I'm complicated. Life is complicated. I'm a perfectionist, so what? I'm also a child of God, a child who is waiting for a word from her Father, clear and plain. And the word I got today was 'grace.' There is grace here, even if I can't see it. God is here, working and moving in ways I don't know yet. I may be a wandering 45 year old still searching for a job she loves, but there is grace in that my vocation is sealed: I am God's.

Ok folks, here it is--my first sermon! And it wasn't as painful as I was expecting. This first sermon is only 5 minutes long, and I wrote it with the Candler community in mind with their (wonderful) social activism and social justice mindset. Perhaps more than anything, I am preaching to myself. I don't know if that is good or bad, but it is what it is. Thoughts welcome!

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Luke 19:1-10

"He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

I want to begin with a story; the story of a blind beggar. The story of a man who forsakes all civility and cries out to Jesus for mercy and healing, ignoring the crowd’s urgent pleas for quiet and their ‘shushes’ betraying their embarrassment at the sight of their prophet stooping to heal a disabled beggar. This is the story of a man whose faith led to not only the restoration of his sight, but to his salvation. This story contains the heart of the truth we know about Jesus: In Christ’s reign the blind beggars are valued and the scoffers are brought low. Jesus makes time for the poor and needy, silencing those who would turn them away. It’s not hard to imagine this man with faith beyond measure sitting at the table in Christ’s upside-down Kingdom. We’re familiar with the way God works through Christ: shaking up societal norms, welcoming strangers and shaming the corrupt systems that stand in opposition to God’s kingdom of sacrificial service and love. The story of the blind beggar is the story we love to hear, it’s a story where the lowly are made high and the scoffers are shamed.

But that’s not our text for today. Our text for today is the story directly after the miraculous, scandalous healing of the poor, blind, beggar. In today’s story, the blind beggar is nowhere to be found. Quite the opposite, in fact. Today’s story revolves around Jesus’ encounter with Zaccheaus, a chief tax collector. And we all know what happens to tax collectors. Because of their corruption and greed, the gospels portray their fate as no different from the Pharisees and sinners accused of missing the mark. Surely the kingdom does not belong to them. Surely this story has the familiar ending of the parable of the rich young ruler who goes away sad, unable to fulfill Jesus’ final commandment for him—“sell all you have and give it to the poor.”

Or maybe the lives of the blind beggar and Zaccheaus are not so different as they seem. Imagine with me for a minute, what it might be like to see one of society’s most respected members—a lawyer or perhaps one of our beloved professors—dashing down the street in their nicest suit and scampering up a tree to catch a glimpse of some famed celebrity. Such desperation might seem silly, or it might be analogous to the embarrassment we feel watching panhandlers ask for money, or thinking about a blind beggar neglecting self-dignity in a cry for healing. Perhaps the crowd’s dismay when Jesus wants to stay with the equivalent of a slimy politician depicts Zacchaeus as more of an outsider than we think. Ridiculed by others, condemned by those who cannot see beyond his association with the epitome of societal corruption, Zacchaeus is not a welcome Jesus-follower. Despite his defense of his innocence (after all his name, translated means ‘innocent’), the crowd is incapable of seeing beyond the categories they know: tax collectors are sinners. Both Zaccheaus and the beggar are outsiders for opposite reasons. And both receive more than just an opportunity to see Jesus--they receive nothing less than salvation.

In the story I want to tell, there is not room enough for both these men in Christ’s kingdom. My version of Christ’s reign elevates the lowly and brings down the powerful and wealthy. And it is that kingdom, my kingdom, in which I am willing to participate. In this version, I can feel good about bringing good news, healing and restoration to those society unjustly condemns. But what about Zacchaeus? How can I tell this story? Wasn’t it just two stories ago when Jesus explained that it would be harder for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle? And then, just like that that, Zaccheaus welcomes Jesus for lunch and so moved by the miniscule encounter, gives away half his possessions to the poor he has wronged and bam, he too is a Son of Abraham? One of us?

But nothing is impossible with God.

Zacchaeus' story collapses my image of Christ and tells me that God is not just on ‘the side’ of the poor, Jesus of the gospel is beyond all sides. If that’s true, Zaccheaus’ salvation is the scandalous one. Through it we learn that Christ’s kingdom is not only upside down in its acceptance of the people society condemns, it defies all boundaries by embracing the condemners themselves, placing Zaccheaus and a blind beggar side by side at Christ’s table. Would that we, the church, the hands and feet of Jesus called to live into this radical, wide reign of God would welcome everyone who is looking for Jesus.

It's hard to believe that with only three weeks of the semester under my belt, I am feeling as stressed as I am. This does not bode well for the weeks to come when midterms, papers and finals take what precious little free time I have now.

But, the stress I feel seems to have less to do with the quantity of work I need to do and more with a frustrating inability to do it. Wednesday night, I budgeted an hour of time to finish my preaching assignment. I had done my biblical exegesis, consulted the commentaries, drawn some conclusions and all I had left was to add footnotes and 'state the claim' of my sermon. This little, one-sentence thesis statement should not have taken me three hours and many, many tears to complete. But it did.

I woke up at 5am the next morning with intense muscle cramps in my legs. I managed to get another hour or so of sleep before attending my 8am class and heading to preaching at 9:30, only to find out, we have two assignments due next week, one of which includes actually preaching the sermon I should be writing at this very moment. I left preaching feeling anxious and before I knew it, my legs were cramping up again, my hands were shaking and as I sat on a couch at school trying to study, I found myself completely unable to focus. I wanted to run away-hide in a cave for a few days and blow off everything that would be required of me in the next week.

Now, this is problematic on several levels. First, it is ridiculous for my anxiety levels to manifest themselves in physical ways. I have juggled much more than my workload now in the past without any severe symptoms of abnormal anxiety. Secondly, I felt unsure of what to do to make it better. Should I push through it, steadily marking off my to-do list in hopes that the anxiety decreases as I accomplish more? Or should I forget trying to be productive, and take some time off, neglecting my to-dos for the sake of my health? I think I did a little of both. I went for a walk, I had myself a good cry (about what, who knows?) and then I did a ton of homework.

But the deeper issue remains: what the heck was that about? Are my insecurities about academic performance getting so severe that I can't write a simple focus statement without a mental breakdown? Or is it something about preaching--a very public determination of my abilities--that has me scared? Of course, the irony of all this is that the more anxious I am, the less I am likely to do a good job at anything. The more I can feel aloof and ambivalent about an assignment or class, the better I end up doing on assignments. But where does this pressure to be the best come from? I struggled writing a theme for my sermon because I knew that all the stuff I was coming up with was just not creative enough, not compelling enough, not impressive enough. Mind you, this first sermon isn't even graded!

I feel like I'm broken. I can rationalize away at all the potential reasons for this recurring paralysis; I can rationally say that it really doesn't matter what my sermon is about as long as I write and preach it well! But at the end of the day, whatever I think rationally doesn't transfer to wherever it needs to go to take root. I do know that 1) I don't have time for this and 2) I am ready to move on. But how?

With Lent approaching quickly, I have been doing some thinking about what I'd like to do as part of the season. Doing anything for Lent is a pretty new thing for me, and what I'm realizing is that I'm not sure I understand why it's important to do the things typically done in Lent. Wes and I haven't totally decided what we're doing yet, but we're getting close!

I spent part of the day Saturday at a Pre-Lenten quiet day retreat at my Church. Dr. Westerhoff led the retreat and framed Lent as did the early Church--preparation for baptism. Lent was the final period of catechesis (which literally means 'to echo' as in 'to echo the Word'=Jesus) before they were baptized at the Easter vigil. Therefore, Lent is not only the season leading up to Christ's crucifixion, death and resurrection, it's not just a way to identify with Jesus' sufferings or his 40 days in the desert, it's a time for renewing our own baptismal covenant. It's a season for evaluating how well we are doing at being Christian, not just being a Christian, but being Christian.

In the Episcopal Church, the baptismal covenant is as follows:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

A pretty tall order indeed! Know wonder we need to devote a special season to working on these things! I usually conceive of baptism as a sign or seal of God's promise to us--a promise to bring us into God's fold. But I rarely think of my baptism as an initiation into Christian living. In that mode, baptism is an ongoing process of making people more like Jesus.

We spent a lot of time yesterday meditating on the various spiritual disciplines of Lent, and trying to discern which of them were most appropriate for us this Lent. In other words, which of those promises I made all those years ago (or that my parent's made for me) would I like to focus on and which discipline will help me to do that?

Lent is so often conceived of as a penitential time to give something, anything up--so long as it makes you miserable so you can be more like Jesus. That's why I've never understood fasting. At the end of the day, I feel terrible, I have a headache, and I've come to realize how human I am and how crazy it is that I'm so dependent on food, oh if only I could be that dependent on Jesus. Well, I only need to do that once to learn that lesson, however good and true it might be. And I failed to see how me being cranky and miserable glorifies God.

Westerhoff said that fasting was traditionally done from sundown to sunset, the day before the Sabbath. You would go to church starving, and the Eucharistic meal would take on entirely new significance. Fasting should not deprive us of sugar or chocolate which we have longed to give up anyways because it's generally bad for us--we should give up something that is basic to our nourishment. That way, we can be nourished by that which we need most; in being deprived of what we need, we can receive something we need more. Perhaps that's part of the misunderstanding between me and fasting. I've never seen fasting as integral to what I do at church on Sunday. It might give new meaning to the Eucharistic Invitation: "The Gifts of God for the people of God, take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving."

In reflecting on those promises that are supposed to reflect me as a new creation resulting from my baptism, the one I am choosing to focus on this Lent is, "Will you continue in the apostle's teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?" A few years ago, I decided that doing 'devotions' every day was becoming a destructive legalistic practice that was creating for me an image of a God who was perpetually angry at me for my inconsistent devotional life. I couldn't approach God without guilt and remorse that I had failed to live up to what it meant to be a Christian. Of course, being a Christian means much more than daily bible study and prayer--and I've gotten better at those other things. Meanwhile, prayer has slipped away, and the Bible is more an object to be studied rather than a subject that engages me. I'd like to get back to prayer, back to the bible (hopefully without the same negative experience) and I hope that this Lent will help me to dwell with the 'apostles teaching' and 'the prayers.'

Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart; through Christ our Lord. Amen