We begin with confession

In 2015, the current occupant of the White House was asked whether he had ever asked God for forgiveness. He answered: “I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don’t think so, I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

Truth be told, I sometimes feel the same way. When it comes time for confession in the liturgy, in moments of honesty, I can say to myself that I’m a pretty good guy and I don’t have anything right now, thank you very much. It has even occurred to me that God is lucky to have me on the team. How’s that for confession?

These thoughts were triggered by the psalm we heard in church yesterday (reprinted above). It talks a lot about the need for forgiveness, specifically, the need for God to forgive us. For instance, note verses 5 and 6: “I acknowledged my sin to you, and did not conceal my guilt. I said," I will confess my transgressions to the Lord." Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin.”

That need for forgiveness is addressed in confession as we take stock, as we take our own spiritual inventory, a spiritual practice calling to each one of us. I’ve been mulling over some wisdom from Anne Lamott. She said that the earth is forgiveness school. That certainly includes our capacity to forgive those who might have done us wrong. We all know those folks. But before we get there, it’s about recognizing our own need for forgiveness, and trusting that God offers forgiveness to us with exorbitant generosity.

I’m struck with the fact that in the journey of faith, confession is often the starting point. The daily office (morning and evening prayer) begin with a confession that we have not loved God with our whole heart, mind and strength. We have not loved neighbor as ourselves. There is never a day in my life when that is not my truth. When we gather for eucharist, we do not exchange the peace or move to reception of bread and wine until we have made confession. In the church calendar, we don’t get to Easter without going through the penitential season of Lent with its persistent call to repentance, an admission that we’re going in the wrong direction, that we have missed the mark. It’s the wisdom of the Twelve Steps which begin with confession that our lives have become unmanageable and goes on to call for an admission of ways we had gone wrong.

So what is so important about confession? First of all, it’s getting to the truth about ourselves. If you heard the Parable of the Prodigal Son in church yesterday, it's that moment with the inheritance-wasting, pig-feeding screw up of a son "came to himself and said...I will get up and go to my father and say to him, "I have sinned against heaven and before you." (Luke 15:17,18)

While I have already confessed to readers that I’m fully able to gloss over the truth of my own transgressions, I have been helped in Lent by reflecting each morning on the Litany of Penitence, from the Ash Wednesday liturgy (p. 267 in the Book of Common Prayer). It’s an expanded confession and it’s got something for everyone. Have a look and see if there isn’t some way that it shines a mirror on who you are and how you are in the world. The phrase that has hit me this season is “I have not been true to the mind of Christ.” That’s undoubtedly true for me, as it invites me to explore the mystery of that holy mind.

Second, confession allows us to experience the forgiveness of the Holy One. A smart friend of mine converted to Christianity after years as committed atheism. He came to me one day and said: “I think I get the gospel: I’m not okay. You’re not okay. And that’s okay.” He had grasped the freedom that comes in believing that God’s intention is to offer us forgiveness. “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” I John 1:8,9) 

Third, it motivates us to offer forgiveness to those around us. If we’re honest about the ways we have fallen short, and if we have some sense that God knows us and still loves us, the door is open for us to extend forgiveness to those who may have done us wrong. We all have those people in our lives. We have all been those people in the lives of others. But that does not need to be the final word. There is indeed a way to move forward, as Desmond Tutu notably noted: There is no future without forgiveness.

So as we have a few more days in Lent, think about why confession matters in your life, and how it can be a threshold to a life marked by renewal.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the September 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Lifted hands

Some years ago, at the weekly liturgy critique that took place with my family around Sunday lunch, my adolescent daughter made this observation. She noted that the liturgy that day was fine, music was good, sermon was passable. But she had noticed the following. She said that when I stood behind the altar for the eucharistic prayer, with my arms lifted in what we call the orans position, it looked like I was shrugging my shoulders and saying: “I don’t know.”

I took it as a bit of a prophetic word, out of the mouths of babes. You see, the longer I’m at this spiritual journey, the more I realize how much I don’t know, how much mystery surrounds us. That realization may have been unwittingly reflected in lifted arms.

I recalled my daughter’s insight when I read the psalm heard in church yesterday (which is reprinted above). The psalmist speaks of lifted hands, and it got me thinking about what it means to lift our hands in worship.

These days, I start my days with a yoga class. Gets the old body moving. While much of the spirituality of that practice comes from sources outside the Christian tradition, I’m mindful how much scriptural emphasis there is on open hands and lifted arms, a path to the opening of the heart, a universal spiritual need.

I served in a parish a number of years ago where an elderly couple were pillars of the parish. The husband was quite a conservative, quite a successful businessman, stern and proper, and quite reserved. But in a conversation after he died, his wife told me of his daily practice of quiet time, prayer, and reflection on scripture. She spilled the beans that one morning, she walked in on his time of devotion in his study. She described him sitting in his chair, in low light, with eyes closed. His arms were lifted in a posture of absolute adoration. He seemed totally lost in wonder, love, and praise. All that took place before he went out into the world of commerce to contend with the rat race.

What does it mean, literally and figuratively, to worship God with lifted hands? For starters, it is the admission of vulnerability, a confession that there’s so much we don’t know. From that place, we lift hands in worship, opening our hearts to recognize that our lives unfold in God’s presence. Gratitude is implicit in that posture. And as we do all that, we find ourselves prepared to go out into the world to contend with our version of the rat race. It is what we do as Jesus followers.

I recently visited another church and noticed the reredos (the relief sculpture over the altar). There was a beautiful wooden carving of Jesus on the cross. Except, as I looked closely, Jesus' arms were lifted extended. His hands seemed to be free floating, not nailed to the cross. I took that to represent the way that Jesus’ arms lifted on the hardwood of the cross were intended to draw all people to himself. The nails did not have the final say. The sculpture recognized the experience of the cross, but it moved beyond that suffering, that offering to say that the lifted arms of Jesus had a universal power (regardless of efforts to erase diversity, equity and inclusion).

So that when we’re invited to lift our hands in worship, we do so first to admit our vulnerability, the recognition of what we don’t know. Then we do so in worship, to open ourselves to the power. And with arms lifted, as Jesus’ followers, we are open to neighbors, freed up to be of service.

I know that this Episcopalian, along with others (We are sometimes referred to as the frozen chosen) may be reluctant to raise hands publicly in worship. Way too exuberant. But we can take this invitation to lift hands as a call this week to open our hearts, to open ourselves to God’s grace and truth, a way of saying: “Here I am, Lord.”

Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Who's searching for whom?

The psalm we heard in church yesterday (reprinted above) includes this verse: “You speak in my heart and say seek my face. Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” In many ways, that search sums up the spiritual journey. But I am mindful that scripture speaks about the search in various ways, some of which may seem contradictory. Apparently, we are not the only ones doing the seeking.

According to scripture, God is searching. The first pages of the Bible have God walking in the garden, looking for Adam and Eve, who were hiding because they are buck naked. The Lord asks: Where are you? And that's just the beginning. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, we read that God holds out hands all day long to a rebellious people (Isaiah 65:2)

In his book, God in Search of Man, Abraham Joseph Heschel writes: “The mysterious paradox of Biblical faith: God is pursuing man. It is as if God were unwilling to be alone, and He had chosen man to serve Him. Our seeking Him is not only man’s, but also His concern, and must not be considered an exclusively human affair. His will is involved in all our yearnings. All of human history is described in the phrase: God in search of man.”

A seminary professor described our relationship with God as synergy, literally working together. Paul captured this in his loving letter to the Philippians: “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who is at work in you.” Karl Barth captured the synergy, noting the link between God’s grace and our response. He wrote:

“Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning…We are speaking of the grace of the God who is God for man, and of the gratitude of man as his response to this grace…Radically and basically all sin is simply ingratitude—man’s refusal of the one but necessary thing which is proper to and is required of him with whom God has graciously entered into covenant. As far as man is concerned, there can be no question of anything but gratitude; but gratitude is the complement which man must necessarily fulfill.”

In other words, we have a part to play in this. Can we embrace the image of God which Jesus shared in the parable of the lost sheep? In that story, the Holy One is like unto a shepherd leaving 99 sheep in the fold, looking for one lost sheep, a quite irrational thing to do? And where does that leave us? How do we search for God?

A favorite canticle (Canticle 10, The Second Song of Isaiah) begins with the word: Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Paul in the letter to the Romans quotes from the Hebrew Scriptures: The word is very near you. And when Paul preaches to Athenians, in a pagan setting surrounded by statues to all kinds of gods, he notes God’s presence there. He says to that secular crowd: In God we live and move and have our being.

Yet so many times in the psalms, we read the question addressed to the Holy One: Where have you gone? Are you asleep?

Have you ever posed those questions? Maybe an answer comes as we realize we don’t have to search for a God who is far off. We simply have to recognize holy presence all around us. Nicolas Malebranche, 16^th century priest and philosopher said it this way: “Attentiveness is the prayer of the soul.” Again, from Abraham Heschel: “God is less rare than we think; when we long for Him, His distance crumbles away”

The question for us then becomes: How are we being attentive, mindful of God’s presence? Are we too distracted to notice? Are our schedules too full to sense God’s presence? Do we fear we’ve messed up too badly? And is gratitude part of our spiritual practice?

One of my spiritual guides, the Rev. Dr. Dwight Zscheile says that our mission in the world as disciples of Jesus is to see what God is already up to in the neighborhood. That’s a profound theological point, i.e., that God is active and present in all things. We are not the ones who import God’s presence, despite what some missionaries and colonialists might say. All we need? Eyes opened to see God in all things. Gratitude. And in this Lenten season, we might want to explore obstacles to our search. As one preacher put it: If God seems far away, you might want to ask: “Who moved?”

So on this Monday morning, give thanks for a God who seeks us out, like that good shepherd. Amazing grace. And imagine how you might seek God with open heart, mind and strength, growing into greater attentiveness, in so doing enjoying the grace and love at the heart of all things.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Dwelling

I was in New York for Ash Wednesday. That morning, I walked by an Episcopal church where they were imposing ashes in front of the church, clergy standing on the sidewalk. I stopped to receive them and carried on with my trek downtown. It was rush hour so streets were packed. At one intersection, I dashed to cross the street before the light changed. A young buck was doing the same in another direction. He almost knocked me over. Didn’t even say sorry. My initial reaction was to let an expletive fly.

Then I remembered ashes on my forehead and thought that any expression of my enraged response would reveal my well-hidden hypocrisy. So I kept quiet and went on my way.

But I got to thinking, maybe I should have an ashen sign of the cross on my forehead all the time, a constant reminder of who I am trying to follow, what he would call me to do, how I’m meant to relate to those around me, and how I don’t always get it right. Maybe those perpetual ashes would serve as a course correction when road rage (or other kinds of rage) surfaced.

I thought about the rite of baptism, during which the candidate for baptism receives the sign of the cross in oil on the forehead. The oil is not visible, but it is there all the time. We are sealed as Christ’s own forever. So when we’re crossing intersections or navigating heavy traffic or waiting on long lines or dealing with difficult relatives or doing business or watching the news, we are called to recall that the sign of the cross is there, shaping the way we respond amid the vicissitudes of life.

I believe that this all relates to the psalm we heard yesterday in church (reprinted in this email.) Notice in the psalm how it speaks about where we dwell. We abide under the shadow of the almighty. God becomes our refuge and stronghold. We make the Most High our habitation. It’s so much more than simply embracing theological precepts or ethical code. It’s about where we live. About how we live.

How do we come to see that all of our lives unfold in God’s presence, that we make the Holy One our habitation? One of my spiritual guides, the Rev. Dr. Dwight Zscheile, speaks about a method of bible study called Dwelling in the Word. It’s a process of letting scripture become part of us, as the word “dwell” or “abide,’ used often in Scripture and hymnody, means to live or remain somewhere or with someone for a time. The practice of Dwelling in the Word invites communities to live together with a text for a period so that the reflections, wonderings, and promptings of God’s Word form and shape faith and living. (If you want to know more about this process, google will help.)

Lent is a season when we’re invited to focus on spiritual practices, a growth opportunity for many Episcopalians. Those practices have to do with the way we spend our time, the way we live our lives, where we dwell. Practices might be including a rhythm of prayer in a daily calendar or putting a time of prayer on your to-do list, keeping a prayer list of concerns close to your heart, making a list of ten things for which you are grateful each day, reading spiritual books or signing up for a daily devotional, committing to a ministry of service, looking for daily opportunities to offer encouragement and affirmation.

And as much as we might need to adopt practices, we may need a change of heart. During Lent, we'll hear several times this verse from Psalm 51: Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me. Perhaps a prayer for a clean heart, a right spirit can be our constant Lenten appeal to God.

If we’re feeling like dwelling is too hard or mysterious or confusing, remember that grace always precedes. John’s gospel kicks off by reminding us that Jesus was the word made flesh who dwelt among us. Literally pitched a tent in our midst. Our tradition tells us that there is Christ in each person. As we remember that the Holy One dwells in us, we can find strength and guidance to make the Holy One our habitation.

So ask yourself this Lent: Where are you dwelling? Are you dwelling on negativity? Do you live in your head where resentments have taken up residence? Or can you take some step in these coming days to make the Holy One your habitation?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Earth-shaking news

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. 

-Annie Dillard

Yesterday in church, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we heard the story of the Transfiguration. It’s an important story, heard a couple of times throughout the year. It’s an other-worldly story about mountaintop revelation. Let your imagination picture Stephen Spielberg special effects. It describes the transcendence of the Holy One made present on earth. As such, it provides a fitting conclusion to the season of Epiphany, a season of divine manifestations.

The experience caused the few disciples who joined Jesus in that thin place to be terrified. I suspect rightly so. That is in keeping with other encounters in the scripture where people experience some kind of epiphany and need to be told: Fear not. The theme is echoed in the psalm you may have heard in church yesterday, Psalm 99 (reprinted above). That psalm echoes the biblical theme that when God’s presence is revealed, it can make the earth shake.

As I reflect on years in parish ministry, one of the things I regret, one of the things in which I participated, was in domesticating the gospel. Making it safe. Making it comfortable. Even making it boring. I did that even though my gifted sister rendered in calligraphy, as a gift at my ordination, the quote from Annie Dillard that began this morning’s email.

In our research with RenewalWorks, we found that about 25% of Episcopalians can be described as complacent, not expecting or wanting any transformation to happen to them as a result of their church engagement. It may be why the number of Nones and Dones increases. (Nones are those with no religious affiliation. Dones are those who have given up on theirs.) When it comes to church these days, people may rightly ask: “Why bother?” It seems to me that there is a need to recover a sense of amazement and the possibility of transformation, maybe even transfiguration. It seems to me that too often we envision the universe as centered around ourselves. We need to recover a sense of worship and the true meaning of the word "awesome."

I think that our liturgies are meant to help us in that recovery process. As a forgetful people, we need to do it week after week, maybe daily, maybe many times in a day. That’s why grace at meals matters, as we recall that we are sustained because of all good gifts around us.

The good news is that as we recognize that our lives unfold in the presence of a higher power, we come to know that the character of that power is love. The season of Epiphany began with Jesus’ baptism, as a voice from heaven speaks of his belovedness. The season ends on the mountaintop, with a voice from heaven speaking again of Jesus’ belovedness.

In his beautiful book, Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen says that we can hear that voice speaking to each one of us as well. The God of creation regards us with that beloved perspective. That seems to me to be earth-shaking news. It calls for our response of thanksgiving, praise and worship. It calls for a sense of awe, and a holy fear. To have that kind of response, it seems to me, reflects the way we were designed. It’s the way we were meant to be. On that note, let me close with this insight, really a prayer from Richard Rohr:

I do not want to belong to a religion that cannot kneel. I do not want to live in a world where there is no one to adore. It is a lonely and labored world if I am its only center.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Outrageous.

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. Or so the saying goes. In a season in which our country, our churches, even family gatherings are marked by division, a common experience binds us together. Outrage.

It’s all the rage, reaching from our most powerful politicians to daily interactions at a traffic stop. I’m wrestling with my own delight in righteous indignation, feeling somewhat powerless over my reactions when I read the news or hear what other folks have to say or see offending bumper stickers. Are others having the same struggle?

I find myself wondering what kind of outrage the author of Psalm 37 was feeling. We heard a portion of that psalm yesterday in church (reprinted above). As preachers often preach to themselves, I find myself thinking about what made the psalmist warn against fretting over evildoers. What led him to say: Leave rage alone. It leads only to evil?

As violence begets violence, the human condition is such that outrage often begets outrage. How do we break that cycle? It’s what Dr. Martin Luther King learned from Mahatma Gandhi about the power of non-violence. Neither of them retreated from the pursuit of justice. But when faced with outrageous acts of violence, they did not respond in kind. They found another way.

A favorite read is The Book of Joy, which describes a week long visit between Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. Both men knew the cruelty of political systems. They each had plenty of reason for outrage. But that did not stop them from living life with irrepressible joy. John Lewis, who had his skull bashed in during the Civil Rights Movement, spent his whole life pursuing those rights. But those efforts never seemed hateful. He said: “Never give up. Never give in. Never get hostile. Hate is too big a burden to bear.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, well within his rights to be outraged, said that discipleship is joy. He said: “The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross. That is why it is invincible and irrefutable.” As Jesus said to his disciples in an extensive teaching on the night before his torture and execution: ^“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”(John 15.11)

No doubt about it. Righteous outrage, righteous indignation is delicious. It can be addictive. But as the psalmist notes, we are called in the mystery of our faith to leave rage alone. To be still and trust God. To do good. To commit our way to God, who promises to give the desires of our hearts.

That does not mean that we approach injustices of our world with indifference or complacency. There is good work to be done, good trouble to get into. The folks I’ve cited this morning showed us how to respond for the good of neighbors. They showed us how to make a difference. But they never gave up on love in their hearts. That is a particular challenge for the Christian community, for those who seek to be Jesus followers. Rowan Williams said it this way: “The one thing you know for certain about your tiresome, annoying, disobedient, disedifying fellow Christians is that God has welcomed them. That becomes your challenge.”

I’m pretty certain that if I’d been asked to write Psalm 37, it would have come out differently. I probably would have given sanction to lots of outrage, as long as it aligned with my opinions. Thanks be to God, I never got that request. Instead, I join anyone who reads this psalm in the challenge of breaking the cycle of outrage, which may mean breaking the cycle of violence. Jesus helps us do that. Jesus showed us the way to do that. It is the way of love. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 7)

So if you’re feeling outrage this week (and there’s all kinds of reasons to feel that way), hear, read, learn, and inwardly digest Psalm 37. See what it has to say to you.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Verbs

What are the verbs that characterize your spiritual life? I find that if I want to be reminded of what a service is all about, whether it’s a baptism or eucharist, a wedding or a funeral, I can look at the verbs in the liturgy, especially the verbs in the prayers. With that in mind, this Monday morning I’d like to reflect on the first verse of the first psalm, reprinted above. It’s a psalm, heard in church yesterday, that provides an introduction, maybe an overture, to the 149 psalms that follow, which makes it worth our attention.

Psalm 1 presents two ways of living. I’m particularly interested in the progression described in the verbs of that first verse. It speaks of those who walk, who linger, who sit. It goes from movement to stasis. I wonder if that’s how our lives unfold. We begin by walking in an environment that may or may not bring health. Pretty soon we’re slowing down and loitering. Kind of hanging around. Finally, we plunk our selves down and sit in the mess we’ve chosen. Maybe that’s what people mean when they describe themselves as being stuck.

Because I’ve come to believe that spiritual growth is the priority in the life of faith, I’m interested in the way this growth happens, how it progresses. I often ask people to think about when they experienced spiritual growth and what caused that to happen. I follow up and ask if they’ve experienced a time when they were spiritually stuck or stalled. What made that happen?

When people describe being stalled in the spiritual life, the most common reason I hear is that they experienced crisis or challenge. (Interestingly enough, that’s also the thing that seems to help people grow.) Others say that the busy pace of contemporary life has kept them from growing spiritually. Way too many people have bad experiences with the church. Imagine! People say things like: “The church is just full of hypocrites,” to which I can only reply “Guilty as charged.”

But let's get back to Psalm 1. It suggests that spiritual inertia has something to do with the company we keep/the environment in which we place ourselves. That can be the people we hang out with. It can be the entertainment (movies, music, sports) to which we devote time. A recent Atlantic article on the epidemic of loneliness in our culture noted that young people spend more than 30% of their waking life on screens, increasingly isolated and digesting input that may or may not be spiritually nourishing.

Think on this Monday morning about how you are being shaped by the environment in which you place yourself. What do your calendar and your checkbook/credit card statement indicate about what you value? Annie Dillard noted that the way we spend our days is of course the way we live our lives. Each day offers opportunity to think about these questions: With whom are we walking? Where have we chosen to linger? Where have we popped a squat and settled in? Do those choices, do those experiences help us grow in love of God and neighbor, or do they get in the way? Are we planted by a living stream?

That’s where the life of the church comes in, the church with all its shortcomings. I don’t simply mean the hour or so we might give to worship each week, though regular worship is key to keeping us on track. I mean as well the spiritual practices we make part of our life, maybe how we wake each day and ask God to bless the day and guide us in it, mindful that our lives unfold in God’s presence. I mean as well service. I mean as well work for justice and peace.

Each day presents us with a choice. I love the Prayer for the Day (From the Service for Healing in the Book of Common Prayer). Like the first verse of Psalm 1, note the importance of the verbs. Here’s the prayer, which I invite you to say this morning, and maybe in mornings to come:

This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Our personal pantheon

The ancient Jewish prayer puts it this way: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Our tradition holds that there is one God. But while we declare ourselves to be monotheistic, throughout scripture we get hints that there may be more than one god in the picture.

When Moses gets into his dueling match with Pharaoh, it’s really a battle of Egypt’s gods vs. the God of Israel. It’s clear that the gods of Pharaoh have some power. When St. Paul went to Athens, he wandered around the Areopagus and noted all kinds of different gods. There was even a statue to an unknown God, the Athenians covering their bases. The author of the psalm we heard in church yesterday (reprinted above) says this: Before the gods, I will give you praise.

We may think it quaint, the notion of many gods. We may think we’ve reasoned ourselves out of such primitive mythology. But it may be that we have our own pantheon.

It’s mere hours after the Super Bowl, one of the great religious rituals of our culture. Millions pay attention, offering devotion. What god is worshipped there? What of our fascinations with sports and entertainment, with Travis and Taylor (Sorry for your loss.)?

The ascendancy of the heresy of Christian nationalism makes a god out of country. Folks ascribe messianic qualities to politicians. This veneration happens around the world, as it has throughout history.

We worship technology and pay homage to those who bring it to us. It may well be that AI takes over the place of supreme being in our lives. (Read the book Genesis, by Henry Kissinger, Craig Mundie and Eric Schmidt.) We place high value on access to social media. What if we had to give it up?

We worship gods of affluence, success, education, good parenting, health and fitness. We worship the god of being right or righteous, which can morph into self-righteousness in all its unattractive manifestations. Think Dana Carvey’s church lady. Of course, there is the delicious idol of righteous indignation, and there’s the way we savor resentments.

A cutting edge for me: we can live in a me-centered universe, mindful of course that there’s peril in that. (Did you know that ego stands for edging God out?)

You get the idea. All kinds of things tug at our hearts, vying for attention and affection. There are all kinds of things that we might be inclined to worship. They may be good and noble things. They will always be part of our lives. The challenge is how we order them. How do we avoid giving our hearts to that which will not satisfy our hearts?

A priest I admire talks about the challenge of leading a parish. He repeatedly speaks about keeping the main thing the main thing. In his mind, the main thing is discipleship. It’s following Jesus. Another way to think about it is to make the great commandment (love of God and love of neighbor) our guiding principle. As theologian Andrew Root puts it, it’s about remembering that God is the star of the story. As Evelyn Underhill put it, God is the interesting thing about religion and people are hungry for God.

Think about the gods in your life, tugging at your heart this week. I’ve suggested a few, which may or may not resonate with you. I’m guessing you could name others. How might you keep all those affections in perspective? Before the many gods in your life, how can you praise the Lord who is one, the one from whom all blessings flow?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!

Calling All Pilgrims

In reading Psalm 84 (heard in church yesterday and printed above) I was struck with the mention of pilgrims (v. 8). As far as I can tell, it’s the only place in scripture where the word is used. It got me thinking about what it means to be a pilgrim. Suspending immediate associations with Thanksgiving plays, perhaps we can hear the word in another way, and see how it applies this Monday morning.

For starters, it suggests movement. If there’s a desire to be a pilgrim, you can’t stay put. In my work with RenewalWorks, it was a bit of a revelation to me how much resistance there can be to movement when it comes to church folk and the spiritual life. I get that. In a world of rapid change, increased anxiety, uncertain future, our souls hanker for something solid and steady, reliable and predictable. Nothing new about that. The Psalms are filled with images of God as a rock, stronghold, and refuge.

In RenewalWorks, part of our work has been to identify archetypes of churches. About 25% of the churches were identified as “Complacent.” There was no expectation or desire for transformation in those communities. One rector whose church was assessed as complacent called me to tell me (tongue in cheek) that in light of the assessment, the church was changing its tagline: St. Swithen’s: We’re spiritually shallow and fine with that. In the spiritual life, it’s tempting to say: “Can’t we just keep it the way it’s always been? We’ve never done it that way. We’ve always done it this way.” (Just so you know, these are some of the words clergy dread most.)

So for starters, we have to ask ourselves, quite honestly, whether we’re interested in movement, in being a pilgrim. For better or for worse, that movement seems to be part of the spiritual experience. Note that Abraham was described as a wandering Aramean. Note the centrality of exodus or return from exile in the Hebrew Scriptures. Note how Jesus told disciples: Follow me. Note how the first Christians were called people of the way, a name which suggests movement, as opposed to the later developing name, Christian, which frankly has an institutional ring, and hints at arrival. Note the more recent wisdom of Pope Francis who said: “There is no such thing as a stationary Christian. A stationary Christian is sick in his (or her) identity. A Christian is meant to walk. To move.”

Given all that, if we decide to go for it, we may need to get clear about what it is to be a pilgrim. It’s different from being a tourist, as wonderful as that can be. They can be awesome experiences of discovery, and tons of fun, but they don't always help us know God better. It’s different from going on a mission trip, as wonderful as that can be. They can be awesome expressions of generosity, but it can also have an air of superiority.

So what’s a pilgrim? Here are insights from an anonymous author on a website called seetheholyland.net: “A pilgrim is not a pious tourist. A pilgrim and a tourist may follow the same itinerary, but the pilgrim is on a sacred journey in which God is encountered through places, people, and situations….The pilgrim travels with the expectation that the one who returns will not be the same person as the one who set out.” The article goes on to detail some markers: A pilgrim will leave behind business concerns. A pilgrim will have an open mind. A pilgrim does not travel alone. A pilgrim respects the host country.

Here’s the deal. Whether we cross oceans or borders, or never cross the street or our home’s threshold, we are pilgrims. We are each and all on journeys to encounter the Holy One. In so doing, there is the prospect of being transformed, wonderfully, amazingly, into the likeness of Christ.

Imagine such a journey! Are you ready for that as you make your pilgrimage through this first week of February?

-Jay Sidebotham

Interested in RenewalWorks for your parish? Learn more about how RenewalWorks works!

RenewalWorks: Helping churches focus on spiritual growth

RenewalWorks is about re-orienting your parish around spiritual growth. And by spiritual growth – we mean growing in love of God and neighbor.

Churches can launch as part of a fall or spring cohort or go on their own schedule. (Now accepting signups for the January 2025 cohort)  Sign up now!