Category Archives: From the Rector

Weekly articles from our Rector published in the News & Notes newsletter.

Loaves and Fishes

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On Sunday, we packed nearly four dozen grocery bags to deliver to St. Stephen’s Youth Programs in the South End, to be distributed to families whose kids go to the B-SAFE summer camp there. On Tuesday, we made a hundred roast-beef sandwiches to share for the next day’s lunch. And this Sunday, we’ll hear the gospel story of the loaves and fishes, when Jesus takes five loaves of bread and two fish and somehow feeds a crowd of five thousand, with twelve baskets of leftovers to boot. What good timing! 

We sometimes take this “loaves and fishes” story as an example of charitable generosity. (I couldn’t tell you how many church food pantries are named “Loaves and Fishes,” but there are hundreds of them around) But that’s not quite the point. It’s not a food pantry story; it’s not about the disciples distributing life’s necessities to the hungry and poor. Jesus has no food. The disciples have no food. And the large crowd who’ve gathered aren’t poor or hungry or downtrodden. They’re just a crowd who are so excited to be following Jesus that they, too, have forgotten to bring any food.

Except for one young boy with “five barley loaves and two fish.” (John 6:9)

This is the key detail that’s often overlooked. The food isn’t handed out from above. It’s not trucked in by do-gooders from a far-off, better-off place. It’s shared by a child in the crowd. There’s no institution behind it, no program, not even any foresight. There’s just the exuberant, generous chaos that begins when someone is willing to share what they have with their neighbors, as equals, when they need it. This act of generosity doesn’t create divisions between the haves and the haven-nots; it creates community instead.

There’s been a live conversation in the last few years about whether “charity” is helpful or harmful, compassionate or condescending. (You can read books like Toxic Charity or When Helping Hurts if you want to find out more.) But at its best, this work can be more like the young boy’s gift: an open act of sharing to a neighbor in a time of need, as part of a longer-term relationship.

So thank you, all of you who gave or shopped or worked this week! Thank you for being partners with Episcopal churches in Boston and beyond, and for being neighbors to your fellow Bostonians. Thank you for your generosity; but thank you, more than anything, for recognizing that what we have is not ours to hold onto when others are in need, but only ours to share.

“Come Away and Rest”

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“The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’” (Mark 6:30)

How many parents among us have locked ourselves in the bathroom just to have a quiet moment? How many of us who live with another person have wished, this year, that we could have just a little more space for ourselves? How many of us have ever left a quick message with the boss to say that we need to take a personal day—and left off the crucial but rude, “and the person I need a day away from is you!”

It’s often the case, of course, that the moment we most badly need to get away is the one when it’s impossible. The kids soon start banging on the door. The stressful week at work is exactly the reason you can’t play hookie for a day. In this strange and isolating year, at times the only person you’ve been able to see is precisely the one you can’t stand listening to any more.

Jesus knew exactly how we feel. “Come away,” Jesus says to his disciples in this Sunday’s gospel, “and rest a while.” But the people won’t let them rest. “Many saw them going and recognized them,” Mark continues, “and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them,” so that by the time that Jesus steps foot off the boat, a great crowd has already assembled.

And so he cares for them and tries again.

Time and again, Jesus goes away by himself to pray, or think, or rest. Time and again, he’s interrupted. And time and again, he patiently and graciously returns, in the hope that one day, it just might work out.

It’s this pattern that defines our relationship to rest. The big vacation, the long-awaited retreat, the much-anticipated retirement are not the point so much as the morning walk, the quiet moment waiting in the car, the Saturday morning spent with coffee cup in hand. It’s not that these bigger breaks are bad; it’s that they’re brittle, so easy to miss if one thing goes awry. But if I miss a single morning walk, or if I take a phone call in the car, I’ll simply try to rest again the next day.

Summer is a time of rest for many of us. (For others, of course, it’s busier than ever!) Some of us feel they’ve been resting for a year and a half. (And others, have course, have never felt less rested!) But wherever this summer finds you, I pray you might find little ways to rest throughout the changing times—whatever interruptions life may bring.

Dancing with Joy

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If you’ve never seen Stephen Colbert do a liturgical dance to “Who is this King of Glory?” then, well…

I think of this video every single time we sing or read Psalm 24 in church, as we will this Sunday: “‘Who is this King of glory?’ ‘The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle.’” (Psalm 24:8) As you may know, Colbert is a faithful Catholic; while his politics don’t always align with his church hierarchy’s, he’s become more comfortable over time speaking openly about his faith. His song and dance, as silly as they are, aren’t a sacrilege, a mockery of Christian faith: they’re a delightful expression of the joy he finds in it.

King David, too, is a joyful dancer. In this Sunday’s first lesson we’ll hear the story of David escorting the Ark of the Covenant toward Jerusalem, accompanied by 30,000 of his nation’s “chosen men.” (2 Samuel 6:1) You could imagine a solemn procession, the sort of thing Anglicans excel at: an array of mitred bishops and coped clergymen led by a cross and torches as the choir sings a stiff-upper-lip kind of hymn to the accompaniment of a well-tuned organ. We often quote another psalm to express our reverential worship, saying that we “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” (Psalm 96:9) And this holy beauty can indeed be, well… beautiful!

But David’s procession was another kind of holy beauty. “David and all the house of Israel,” the story goes, “were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals.” (2 Samuel 6:5) It’s not so much a procession as a Groovy Baby music class crossed with a 30,000-person rave, as the crowd leap and dance and bang on hand percussion instruments with all their might, pouring into their whole bodies the joy they feel at the presence of their God. This is another kind of holy beauty altogether!

The good thing is that we don’t have to choose! Our faith can be solemn, and it can be joyful. It can be serious enough to change the world, and it can be silly enough to make you cry. We can be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” and “fools for the sake of Christ” all at the same time, (Matthew 10:16; 1 Corinthians 4:10) because all our wisdom and all our innocence, all our foolishness and all our joy, flow from the one God who is the source of all the good things in our world.

Banging cymbals and dancing around and shouting for joy are acts of worship, just as much as bowing our heads in reverential, silent, prayer. And thank God for that—or at least thank our kids.

Packing, yet again.

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Murray assists with our most recent move.

In the last twelve years, I’ve lived at nine addresses, not counting stops at my mom’s house in between, and for better or for worse, eight of those nine moves have been in the heart of summer. I remember the year in our first, run-down apartment in Cambridgeport when I finally cracked and bought a window A/C unit the week before we moved, because I was sick of packing boxes in a heat wave. I remember taking breaks from packing up our apartment in New Haven because the sound of the tape gun was too loud for Murray to nap—and Murray was still napping three times a day! But mostly, I remember the feeling of kneeling on the floor yet again to find some lost screw as I spent yet another hot summer day building yet another piece of IKEA’s ingenious furniture.

I hate moving.

The moves have slowed down a bit over time—we’ve spent the last six years in only two apartments!—but this has come with its own problems. Over the years our closets have filled with extraordinary amounts of junk: button-down shirts I haven’t worn in years, broken pieces of long-forgotten toys, an entire storage unit full of boxes we packed last time and never opened again. Packing up and moving has always been the thing that forces me to come to terms with what I’ve stashed away, to take it out from the closets and let it see the light of day. Or, more likely, the inside of a dumpster.

Well, I’m happy (or sorry?) to say that we’ll be moving again this year, from our apartment in Cambridge into a new apartment in Charlestown. And we’re excited to become a part of the community, and nervous about the transition, and completely unenthused about having to pack and move once again.

So, I’m trying to see the gift in the unpleasant packing project ahead. I’m trying to see it as an opportunity to unload the baggage of the last few years, to sort through the clutter that fills my closets (and, too often, coats the floors). And I’m trying to remember that this is as true of spiritual life as it is of anything in daily life: it’s often the most unpleasant processes, the ones that strip away all our defenses and distractions and force us to confront the junk in our mental closets, that are the most rewarding in the end.

Because, hey! however awful hot summer packing up may be, at the end we’ll be in Charlestown!

“Always a Groomsman”

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You’ve probably heard of the phrase “always a bridesmaid, never the bride,” which is the kind of pernicious proverb nobody ever wants to have quoted at them. You’ve probably not heard the phrase “always a groomsman, never the groom,” but if anything it’s the older idea of the two! “Always a bridesmaid,” writes “Bridesmaid for Hire” Jen Glantz (no, I’m not joking) dates to a 1925 print advertisement for none other than Listerine mouthwash. (Yikes.) “Always a groomsman,” on the other hand, is a central part of the message of none other than St. John the Baptist, whose birth the Church celebrates in its calendar today.

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

In today’s second reading for Morning Prayer, John the Baptist’s disciples complain about the growing popularity of a certain young prophet who used to hang around with John. “Rabbi,” they say, “the one who was with you across the Jordan… here he is baptizing, and all are going to him!” (John 3:26) “I am not the Messiah,” John replies, “but I have been sent ahead of him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:28-30)

Always a groomsman, never the groom.

John the Baptist is traditionally depicted in icons and paintings with a finger stretched out, pointing the way to Jesus. Apart from his fiery message of repentance and his gruesome beheading, this is the idea that’s most commonly associated with his brief appearances in the New Testament. He is not the groom, but the groomsman; not the one who will take center stage at the great celebration, but the one who stands with him.

 “He must increase,” John says, “but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) It’s not just a comment about the relative trajectories of their two careers, in which John will soon be arrested and executed while Jesus’ ministry grows. It’s a powerful statement not just about John’s life but about our own spiritual lives.

Whatever is best in me, whatever is most loving and gentle and beautiful in me, is in reality the power of the Holy Spirit working in me. It is still a part of me, but like a pane of stained glass it is nothing but opaque darkness without God’s light shining through it. Whatever is work in me, on the other hand, whatever is rough and harsh and angry, is my own dirt and muck occluding that light, preventing it from shining that the beauty beneath.

And all our spiritual life is the endlessly-iterative process of cleaning that glass, or letting it be cleaned; of allowing Christ to grow in us, and taking away the barriers to the Holy Spirit’s work through us; of our resentment and self-righteousness decreasing, and Christ’s faithful love increasing; of standing at the altars of our own lives, pointing away from our own egos and towards the love of Jesus.