What is Your Only Comfort?

Sermon for February 24, 2008

Sermon for February 10, 2008

Having recovered from the flu, I was so excited to be back in action for this sermon.

Sermon for January 27, 2008

Due to a dreadful case of the flu, both Jennifer and I had to miss worship on January 27th. Thankfully, our friend Rev. Roy Lloyd graciously stepped in at the LAST moment. His preaching is great, and I offer my apologies for the difficulty he had getting set-up with the recorder.

Turkey and ziti - a great combination

This afternoon, Jen and I were talking about just how excited we were over the NY Times article about the church's food pantry and dinner program. We couldn't help but talk over every detail of the piece.  I LOVED the way it ended:

The soup kitchen has been a big help on Wednesdays, Mr. Wieruszewski added. But there is one thing he would change: “Twice a week would be great.”

There's something quite sweet that he didn't say he'd want hot meals seven days week, merely twice would be great. Hey, I'll go on record now saying that I wish we'd be able to offer them seven days a week.  But perhaps twice a week would be a good next step.

Jen's primary concern with the article is that Jake listed off each of the items we served on the evening he visited with us.  "Those food items don't really go together, " she noted.  This is coming from a woman who takes great pride in ensuring that meal items balance with one another.  I'm fine with baked ziti and turkey with a side of pea soup.  Jen is a gourmand, who thinks that Christian hospitality should also entail serving foods that complement one another.  I retored that some prefer turkey, others ziti, and that even though they might not be served together at Le Cirque, the folks eating chez nous didn't seem to mind.

Still, I have to agree that faith-filled hospitality mandates that we offer all guests the best that we can give.  And on this point, we do quite well.  I'm quite proud of the food we serve.  It's tasty, healthy, and represents a pretty good selection.  But I like it that Jen wants it all to match, even if I wouldn't know how to make that happen.

Blogging fears

I have a confession to make. Or, perhaps I have multiple confessions. My new year's resolution was to blog more frequently.  Clearly, I failed.  For Lent, one of the spiritual disciplines I attempted to follow was to blog more frequently.  And to think I couldn't even eek out an Ash Wednesday post.

The truth be told, I think somewhere in all the mess with my father and my ordination I lost a bit of my nerve to speak. The attention made me want to disappear in many ways.  And so I focused a lot on our local ministry in Greenpoint.  Things here are going well.  There's even a piece about our new food pantry and dinner program in this Sunday's New York Times. Getting this program off the ground required just about every ounce of energy we had. "We" being both me and Jen, but also the entire congregation. 

Being busy, though, doesn't explain my hesitancy to blog.  It's a far deeper fear - a fear of exposing myself to the rest of the world. It's a fear of proclaiming what I believe, or of sharing who I am, or of displaying my weakness for poor spelling and  messy grammar to the outside world.  And so I haven't blogged.  I'll post the occasional sermon, in part believing that no one listens to them anyway. And I've left it at that for a long time. 

But the only way to face fear, is to do so head-on. To type the words and click the "publish" button, knowing that once a post goes live, I lose control of it. So much of life is that way - out of our control. We wish we could hold on, but in fact we can't.  I couldn't control what happened to my dad, and I can't control what others think of me now.  I can only offer myself as what our communion liturgy refers to as a "living sacrifice."  I have to learn to sacrifice my own vanity (and need for perfect spelling and punctuation), so that others might experience God's grace.  Perhaps it's through the Word I preach, or maybe through the sharing of a meal on Wednesday night. But the fear of exposing one's humanity (even in blog form) is real, and I must find a way to embrace it instead of hiding away fearful of what others say or think.