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"Take a Minute"
The Rev. Jan Kwiatkowski
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I have to tell you that I laughed out loud when I read this Gospel on Monday of this week. I usually read the Gospel for the first time when I am preparing on the Monday of that week. I thought “Wow, just as we officially begin our transition, God has a great sense of humor to put in a reading that says: do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s struggle is enough for today. But that’s what I want to talk a little bit about; in many ways Memorial Day is an official day of transitions. For those of you who are guests here today, this is our first weekend together as a parish. Our rector retired from parish ministry last week and we had a huge celebration. Happy and joyful and lots of tears and we said good-bye. This is our first week in transition together into whatever the next phase of our parish life is going to be. Memorial Day weekend is also the transition into summer and after the long winter we have had a transition into summer, even if it is slightly cloudy, is a good thing. People are transitioning from school, from graduation, from one school to another or perhaps from grad school or college into their work and professional life. A lot of people got married yesterday. Huge transition from one state of life to another. On a very simple note, a lot of people made the transition from non-allergy season to allergy season this week. So this is a time of transition. And all transitions require various amounts of energy, various amounts of planning, in happy times and sad times and times that are unexpected.
Well, Memorial Day in our house can be a time of transition in my fantasy life we get the stuff from the basement out to the garbage and we get all the leaves and everything that has accumulated from the yard to some nice mulch pile. That transition on my part requires a lot of planning and energy. But the execution of that doesn’t always happen so well, so we work through that transition in our house and the reality is that we all go. “Well, it’s a holiday weekend we’re taking the day off and having dinner.”
But as I thought about our own transition and this time of transition generally I thought about the reading and I thought about St. Christopher’s and as I look this week I thought this reading has everything we need for transition right here in these few phrases. There are instructions in this reading and there are admonitions. Admonitions about why are you worrying about what you are going to eat? What it’s going to look like, what you are going to wear, how all of this going to play out. And the instructions basically, seek first the kingdom of God. And I thought, “ well there’s a lot of action words to that. “ If you have your insert handy and you look at the Gospel you should just go down the columns with me. Some of the action words are – serve, love, hate, despise, do not worry, look, reap, gather, feed, add, thrown into the fire, do not worry again, strive, given, bring. Those are all really a lot of action words, this Gospel has a lot of that. But in the middle of it all Jesus slips in another word. It is an action word but a different kind of action word. Jesus slips in the word – Consider. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. We are going to talk about that in a minute. Most of us I think tend to like the sort of action Jesus, you know if there was a Jesus action figure, but the Jesus that does miracles. The Jesus who walks on water. The Jesus who slips in and out of crowds unseen. The Jesus who dies and rises. The action strong, things that attract us. We Westerners, we Americans do thing, who are active and like to do things. We struggle a little bit more with that other side of Jesus. The quieter, deeper, more reflective Jesus. The Jesus who goes away from his disciples to pray. The Jesus who is in the garden of Gethsemane alone. The Jesus who dies on the cross feeling the most abject aloneness that any person could feel. The Jesus who takes time a way to pray and ponder, to consider. And I wonder if that contemplative, that prayerful side of Jesus we don’t always pay attention to so much has something to tell us. And I wonder if the Holy Spirit in her own way has something to tell us. Because this reading happens to be here with us this weekend.
Something in the word consider. I looked up that word consider on dictionary.com and it means: to think carefully, to reflect on, to view attentively, to think behave and wonder, to bear in mind and make allowances, to regard and to contemplate. That’s a lot and as I thought about that that’s exactly where St. Christopher’s is right now. We in some ways have so many lilies of the field to consider and think about and consider and ponder here. We have our building and how it will be used and with whom it will be used. We have this incredible property that we are on. We have a budget, we have committees, we have the nuts and bolts of keeping the place open everyday. We have ministries. All of those are lilies in this field of St. Christopher’s that God has given us to work in. But for all those things, the most important of all the lilies in the field are the people that make up this place. It is the people and where God is calling us to that deserves, that calls forth, that demands the highest consideration. It is the people who are not yet in this place who have not heard of the love of God, who have not experienced the love of God. Who deserve our consideration. It is all our conversations careful in meetings, the one’s that happen in the parking lot, the one’s that happen by email, all those conversations that deserve careful consideration. And that is going to be the immediate task and the ongoing task of this parish as we move through transition.
To think carefully might look like to thinking carefully before we speak. To reflect on might look like what is the thing we most deeply value in this community, the thing we would not let go of for anything. To view attentively might look like examining honestly the values of this parish life. To think, believe and to wonder might cause us to step back and look at the assumptions about each other about how we’ve always done things; about how we might do things differently. To bear in mind and make allowances might look like admitting we make mistakes and seeking reconciliation when we do. To regard might be to look at where we are full of amazing generosity and where at times we were full of generosity and when we were full of generosity. To contemplate might look like sitting and just taking in how much we are loved by God. And then listening for God’s direction in that as to how we make that love known for others in this world.
This family here has a lot to consider and have considered a lot in the last couple of months since Maria came into your life. Everything is up for consideration now once you have a new baby but as I talked to Mike and Natalie, one of the things they have considered most in coming to St. Christopher’s is relationships. And being in a community where relationships and the experience of God’s love and the welcome of being on a spiritual journey wherever you are is the most important thing and it is the most important thing they want for Maria. They have seen our children’s program. They’ve seen the love and the energy that we have here and that’s what they want for their daughter. And even in our own transition here, not knowing where this is all going to lead, Natalie and Mike and Maria have said, “Yes.” They want to be part of this journey with us. We have a sacred trust to this young family here, to be in relationship with them, just as they are a sign of God’s incredible presence to us. That God continues to create in the middle of transition, and God’s love must go forward and that is the most important thing that we are about. So we thank you both for your presence here with us today. And we thank all of you for coming to witness this event today.
I want to ask one very simple thing of the members of this congregation and I’m going to call it the St’ Christopher’s minute and we’ll probably use this a lot as time goes on. Last week when we were at Scott’s good-bye celebrations I heard this comment a lot, “Well Jan, I guess the burden’s on you.” I heard the comment, “Well, I guess the burden’s on Ran and Tom.” Or I heard the comment, “I guess the burden’s on the Vestry.” And my response to that is, “ No, the burden is not on any one or small group of us, the responsibility is shared by all of us. And the thing I believe we need to do most and do every day is pray; prayerfully consider what God is calling us to. Now I know that we are not all going to sit there in Bible study for an hour in our own private lives or meditation or anything like that everyday. But I would like to suggest the St. Christopher’s minute. Every evening at six o’clock no matter where you are or what you are doing, I would like you to stop for a minute and just say a quick prayer, “God, I would like to consider what you want me to do in this transition. Lord help us to be open to what you consider important for St. Christopher’s. Lord be with the Vestry as they consider all the things they need to consider.” However that works. Can you imagine if this entire parish starts praying every day at six for one minute together and what God might consider doing with the power of all that prayer. I wonder…..
