The FINGER METHOD OF PRAYER

        On this first Sunday in Lent, instead of preaching about temptation, I want to talk about the bedrock of our relationship with the Holy, because I believe that is what got Jesus through all his temptations. I want to be as concrete and helpful as I can as I talk about a life of prayer that will sustain you and enrich you in as little as thirty seconds .. or five minutes a day. 

    I shared the heart of this with some of you ten or twelve years ago. But if your memory is like my own,it’s probably worth a second run. Here we go. 

    There are several ways we pray, mostly arrow prayers and those we’ve learned. Arrow prayers are those we shoot into the sky, such as "God help me get out of this traffic jam.” or “Please keep this guy from preaching as long as he did last time.” There are also the set prayers, such as those we find in the Book of Common Prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer of St. Francis, the Serenity prayer, and various collections of prayers. Here are three of my favorite prayers: 

        "Dear God, make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am." 

        "Lord, so far it’s been a good day. I haven’t been critical of anyone in my family                                        or anybody at work. I haven’t gotten angry at anyone. But I’m going to need                                               your  help, Lord, because it’s time to get out of bed." 

 My favorite Prayer is for Use by a Sick Person:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              “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.”                                                                                                         (BCP, page 461)                                                                 The basics: No matter how good you are at something, it is always a good thing to go back to the basics. Concert pianists, even when playing Rachmaninoff or Chopin, still go back to their Hanon scales. Jugglers go back to the motions of one club, one ball, back and forth. Saints, who seem so close to God – most got there because of the basics.  

      So, today, a structure for a complete life of prayer that you can use effectively with 30 seconds a day -- not two hours a day, not one hour a day, but as little as 30 seconds a day. It’s called the FIVE FINGER METHOD OF PRAYER.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              First, I LOVE TOU. For most of us, this is the hardest part: it is easier being thankful, sorry, needy or generous. For me, the best place to start is just to say the words, “Dear God, I love you” and then be quiet. Later you might use a favorite Psalm. There are lots of ways to serve God. We love God with our lives: working for justice, caring for one another or others – but that is another dimension of prayer. Here we are taking time just to offer our love or even our desire to love God. Even the desire counts. To get started, just say the words – followed by silence of seconds and later .. minutes, maybe with words or sounds of love.                                                                                                                                                                              I LOVE YOU and second, THANK YOU. Again, a good place to start: just say the words. Then either make a list or go with what occurs to you. “Dear God, I thank you for x, y, z, . . .” One thing is important to know: the more for which I am intentionally thankful, the more personal the universe becomes. Usually when I have preached a wedding sermon, I said that among all the wedding gifts the couple will receive, there is one that stands out. This is it: They are quite literally God’s gift to one another. So, (and you can still use this) in waking up, from time to time look at that scraggly, dragon-breathed person next to you and say to yourself, “This is my gift from God.” And you will be right. In good times and in bad.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          The heart of many funeral sermons is this: what is it that God has been giving us in this life? How has God been incarnate in this person's life? The answer comes as thanksgiving.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             So, I LOVE YOU and THANK YOU  -- and on the third finger: I’m Sorry. I LOVE YOU, I THANK YOU, and I'M SORRY. The Episcopal Church is a full service church: we confess sins of Commission and Omission. Commission is what we have done to hurt others or to hurt ourselves. Omission is what we have neglected to do.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         When I was younger, I had a pamphlet with a list of sins. It was 18 pages long! If you have ever wanted a recipe for deep, down depression, that was it. But if you need help, there is an easier way to get it. There is the Ash Wednesday litany in the Prayer Book – or even easier, just ask your spouse or partner They would be more than happy to give you a list of your sins. (that is mostly a joke).                                                                                                                                                                                                                  The Greek word used for sin in Christian Scriptures is hamartia. it is a term used in archery for “missing the mark.” It is missing “all that we can be” or "all that God wants us to be/ created us to be.” Temptation. We confess our sins (plural) and our sin -- our missing the mark in our vocation in the world.                                                                                                                                                                                     Dear God, I LOVE YOU, I THANK YOU, I'M SORRY, and HELP OTHERS. I believe God uses our prayers in much the same way God uses what we do. God uses different ways to get something changed in the community: letters, speeches, raising money, telephone calls, demonstrating in the streets. The smartest priest I have ever known says this: It may be that God uses our prayers in the same way. The power, the energy, the karma, whatever it is in our prayers: they are among the tools God uses in healing, forgiving, strengthening us.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Others know and feel your prayers – I know that from hospital calls. And I have felt the power of others’ prayers for me. There is something almost palpable about them. Some find it helpful to keep a list of people to pray for: if you do, you need to know that it is OK to cross names off. (that doesn’t mean they will die).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I had a parishioner in California who had had a serious stroke, Mary Ella Sevier. She could speak with difficulty, but not much more. Depressed that she couldn't do for others in ways she had done before the stroke, we thought and we prayed. Then I gave her a copy of our Parish Directory and said, "One of the things we really need is someone to pray for each of us, maybe five or six of us a day - maybe more, maybe less. And that became her ministry – as fulfilling as her earlier service in the Altar Guild, as teacher, evangelist, as support person, or on the Vestry.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             HELP OTHERS . . HELP ME. This fifth finger is both the easiest and the hardest of the Five Fingers. It is easiest because we usually ask for little things (arrow prayers). And hardest, because in asking we entrust ourselves to God’s care and to God’s will. Someone said that most of us want a relationship with God in which God serves us as consultant. There is a truth in that: we do want help in knowing God’s will for us and the world and we do want a consultant as we figure out what we want, what we need to do. But, ask for what you want and what you need. Sometimes in asking, we discover we don’t want or need it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 More Important: whenever we pray for ourselves, we are entrusting ourselves to God – and just as important, when we ask, we are asking as beloved children of God. We ask within that relationship. And we can even ask in our anger. If you are angry with God, share that with God with all the power of what you are feeling. In a serious relationship, our anger is a sign that we care.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        A colleague of mine once said that so often in our relationship with God we act as though we are on a first date, acting as nice as nice can be. But it may be time that we get past that dating stage and move on to a serious relationship -- in loving, in gratitude, in sorrow, in helping others and ourselves The Five Fingers. 

            This is important. Choose a time for your five finger method of prayer and stick to it. Begin with something really short, like 30 seconds and then increase the time as you wish. Your perspective on life will change, week by week, and your relationship with God will also deepen. 

As our hymn begins:                                                                                                                                                 “O, for a closer walk with God …’                                                                                                         and ends                                                                                                                                                                     “So shall my walk be close to God, calm and serene my frame.                                                                       So purer light shall light the road, that leads me to the Lamb.”                                                             May we be blessed in all our prayers.                                                                                                                 AMEN..

Sixty Years of Ordination - at St. Bede's Episcopal Church

I am very happy to be here - because earlier this morning when I was changing a light bulb at home, I fell off our ten-foot ladder. (pause) I was lucky I was on the bottom rung. (I’m glad that’s over). For those of you who don’t know me, I am Tom Woodward, a retired priest who has been a member of St. Bede’s for 19 years. This is the 60th anniversary of my ordination, and first I want to thank Fr. Lucas and Jerry Nelson for their support in helping me celebrate this anniversary today. And second, I want to take this occasion to share with you some of my reflections on my life as a priest and what it means to be a priest. For me, it has always been a real privilege to be a priest in The Episcopal Church – and that has been true even when the times have been rough. And those times have been rough at times. It began way back in 1965, when I was Episcopal chaplain at the University of Kansas. It was two years after being ordained as the most conservative and one of the more racist members of my seminary class when several black students came to my office to implore me to attend their civil rights demonstration outside the Chancellor’s office. When I arrived there, reluctantly, I sat down to talk with the students who were protesting - and I quickly discovered that almost all of those students were the first ones in their family to attend college. And the stories of those young students had such power for me -- and in their stories there was so much of the presence of God I had only read about, that I joined them. So, within three hours I was arrested and jailed - . along with 103 Black students. My life changed that day more than on any other. The pain in the arrest came three months later when my bishop, who had urged his clergy to be involved in the civil rights struggle, caved into some very vindictive leaders of the diocese and, in effect, put me on half salary for the next year and a half - just as my wife and I had bought a house and adopted an infant child. I lived through that and more; and more importantly, was able to resist becoming cynical about the church as institution. Angry, yes, but never cynical. Twelve years later much the same thing happened in North Carolina when my support for gay and lesbian students cost me another job. Heartbreaks: one after the other for acting on my deepest beliefs. There have been other kinds of heartbreak, as well. In Madison, Wisconsin it was what seemed like almost weekly AIDS-related funerals at my church So often, the service was for someone who, just weeks or months before, had been in one of our pews mourning the death of one of his friends. There have not been many months in the 60 years of being a deacon and priest - without some kind of heartbreak. My ordained life has been lived on two parallel levels. On one level was the ongoing life of pastoral ministry; but the other level was wild and wooly. As priest I was arrested and jailed twice -- though later I went back to jail to coach an inmates’ chess team which then beat the University of Rochester faculty chess team – five matches to two. In earlier years, I led encounter groups hosted Allen Ginsburg and other major poets at our Coffee House ministry in Kansas, wrote three books, performed as a fire eater and juggler in several States, and in front of the Wisconsin legislature, I stood up to Bart Starr and Randy White of the Green Bay Packers on matters of human sexuality. About the same time, out of a shared conviction about the moral use of money, Tony Earl, the Wisconsin Democrat governor, appointed me to serve as one of eight trustees of the State’s Investment Board, where we oversaw the investment of over 85 billion dollars. There I teamed up with the most conservative trustee to co-author the State’s Active Investor Program. It committed us to use our enormous power to go after corporations on moral and ethical issues. Our first experience was with General Motors and I got to go head to head with their CEO, Roger Smith. We won that negotiation – and many more to follow. Later, I continued my service in the Republican administration of Governor Tommy Thompson and continued serving as liaison between SWIB and the State legislature. During this time I also served as President of Friends Outside, a non-profit organization which worked with incarcerated State and Federal prisoners, providing them with support while incarcerated and assistance as they were released. Later, I was appointed by our Presiding Bishop to serve on the Episcopal Church’s national task force on the Status of Women. As the only male (you can guess it) I was elected Secretary. And I benefitted greatly from my wife Ann’s advice to keep my mouth shut so I could learn something. It was a rare opportunity to learn and to grow. All in all, I could not dream of a more exciting or fulfilling life. But the best, the very best, was always out of the limelight with people like you, week by week, together, building up the life and ministry of our church family. That has been the deep satisfaction. As some of you know, things have changed drastically since I was ordained 60 years ago. When I was ordained, women were not allowed to serve on Vestries, girls were not allowed even to acolyte, there were separate churches for Black and white Episcopalians. When I was ordained, it was like the congregation hired a priest to be the minister. Where the priest was, there was the church: it felt like the task of the lay people was to assist the priest in his (and I mean his) ministry. Things are so much healthier now, where the real purpose of the pastor is to support you in the real ministry of the church – the living out of the Christian faith in our families, among our friends, acquaintances and the community which surrounds us. Our job as clergy is to feed, to nourish, to support, sometimes to inspire -- but then to get out of the way, because you are the ministers. So, what it is like to be a priest or pastor? On the one hand, there is a powerful intimacy with people. It is the intimacy of being privileged with the deepest doubts and the most serious questionings and struggles of so many people. What many of us have . . with two or maybe three people in our lives, a priest or pastor will have with hundreds of people over the years. But over against the intimacy is the isolation. For most of my life, when I would walk into a room with my collar on, a hush would settle over the room -- as though the collar represented Holiness, itself. One of the children in my congregation had it differently. When I asked him what the collar meant - “That’s easy,” he said: “It kills ticks and fleas on contact.” The worst came fifty-seven years ago when I announced to the congregation that my wife,Judy, and I had just adopted a baby boy. One sweet, older member of the congregation, Agnes Hungerford, cornered my wife at the coffee hour and with a loud voice that rang through the hall, announced, "What a wonderful way for a minister to have a baby!" (I won’t share my wife’s response to her). The best things about the work of ordained ministry are the people and the enormous variety of challenges and tasks and demands of the work: teaching, preaching, organizing, nurturing, administration, counseling, studying, working with community organizations. The list is endless. The worst part of all that is that no one can do all those things well. Responding, dealing with the expectations of a congregation and oneself is a life-long endeavor – and should never be done alone. I think the things for which I am most proud are also the things for which I am most grateful. Way back in 1966, a fellow college chaplain, John Simmons, asked me to join him in trying to build bridges between the church and a group the church had only oppressed – the homosexual community. I don’t think I have ever been so frightened in my life as I was with John’s invitation – but somehow, through the grace of God, I said yes. That was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Over the years I have experienced such wonderful lives and I’ve always been grateful to have played a part in the church and elsewhere in facing down the evils of homophobia we all know and remember. It has been a quite different experience with the clowning I’ve done. When I was chaplain at the University of North Carolina, I ran into a young man, Kenny Kaye, who had dropped out of school, giving up two scholarships, simply to juggle. He was so talented and so shy: shy and almost completely broke. So, with Kenny’s skill (he ended our act by juggling 3 ping pong balls out of his mouth) – with Kenny’s skill and my professional training in passing the hat, the two of us, with both of us juggling and me doing simple mime pieces, we formed “Uncle Billy’s Pocket Circus” which we performed all over the South. Kenny kept the money and I used the opportunity to share the vision of the Christian faith. For me, the clowning has always been an expression of my faith and of my ministry. It was through the clowning that I saw, more and more, the parables, the Beatitudes and so much of the life of Jesus as the ministry of the fool, the pied piper, enticing us into a different and more compelling vision of life. It was not much later when a social worker parishioner gave me my second big scare by asking me to teach two of her clients who were confined to wheelchairs with very significant cerebral palsy how to be clowns. That experience soon blossomed into “The Care Fools,” a clown troupe of severely disabled clowns who worked miracles wherever they went – real miracles for the people they encountered. Back in 1983, my church in Madison, Wisconsin along with St. Mark’s, Berkeley, where our Robbin Clark was soon rector, were the first congregations in the Episcopal Church (maybe in the country) to provide public sanctuary for political and religious refugees fleeing for their lives from El Salvador and Guatemala. We did so, knowing that as priests and parishioners we would very likely be arrested and imprisoned for doing so. Our first family, like so many along our border, was so kind and so gentle and so committed to their faith; but their bodies were covered with scars and cigarette burns from being tortured by their own government which our country was supporting. They had earned those scars, as Archbishop Romero had earned his death, by witnessing to their faith. That was a side of church that continues to touch me. And this is so important: in just about everything I’ve talked about, I was first inspired or welcomed by lay people. And I hope my ministry has always been within that context. My father always said that one good lay person equals about two priests -- and I have always benefitted from that observation. After my experience in Lawrence, Kansas I was called to a small congregation in Warrensburg, Missouri. I turned them down. because it seemed like a place where the main entertainment in town was probably going down to the barber shop to watch haircuts. But their bishop later called me into his office and said, “Tom, I am so sorry you turned those people down: the one thing that congregation does better than any other is that they do whatever it takes to make really good priests. And that is what I want that for you.” After he said that, my decision was easy: I said yes. And this is what I want to say more than anything else: may their calling be your calling, as well. Lay people, so valuable. Clergy, with our own value. We are, thank God, in this together. Amen.

Paul's Letter to the Romans

PAULUS

Thomas B. Woodward

July 26, 2020

There were two things I wanted to preach about this morning.

One was the Parable of the Leaven that we heard in Matthew

and the other was to do something like a Bible study

with the Epistle we’ve been hearing this summer, Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Romans it is, mostly because this is the place I go

when I really want to be nourished, spiritually by the Bible.

On the whole, this book of the Bible is really difficult stuff.

When Paul gets into the murky stuff -- it is really murky and confusing;

but the high points of Romans are as good as it gets in the Bible.

And that is what I want to talk about with you.

First, some background:

most of Paul's letters are occasional.

That is, they were written in response to some issue, some occasion (usually big trouble).

But Romans is different:

Romans is where Paul lays out his theological credentials

to pave the way for his coming visit to Rome.

There are times, in Romans, when Paul is really lyrical.

And there are other times when he seems to get so confused

that he argues with himself.

My favorite is when he concludes that it is usually the greatest sinners

who experience the most overwhelming grace and forgiveness.

"Well, then," he asks himself, "shall we sin the more . . . that grace may abound?" (Makes sense).

But then he quickly responds, "Me genoito."

which, loosely translated is "You've got to be out of your gourd."

This happens over and over again: first a question, then me genoito.

It is almost as though Paul had two heads,

constantly arguing with one another.

For me, there are several high points in Romans:

The first is too long to read now, so I'll leave you to it on your own time.

In Romans 9-11 Paul writes about Christianity's relationship to the Jews.

And what he says, with great power and relative clarity

had been ignored by Christians, by the church for almost 2000 years.

Then, an Episcopal theologian, Paul van Buren along with the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth,

wrote, simply: “Read what Paul is saying!"

Christians had always been taught (I was taught in seminary)

that once Jesus Christ had come, the Jewish religion was history.

But Van Buren and nearly every reputable scholar after him tell us this:

“Read what Paul writes."

What Paul says is this:

God made a promise to Abraham

that his descendants would be the people of God forever. Period.

That was a Promise. . . an Unconditional Promise.

That covenant. . . that binding relationship has not been broken,

and it will never be broken by God.”

Paul says, simply: "If God makes promises and then breaks them, God can't be trusted."

"We Christians," says Paul,

"We Christians have been grafted into that holy history."

We are a part (not the whole)

a wonderful, glorious part . . .of the whole people of God."

Our relationship to the Jews is not one of superior to inferior,

but one of gratitude . . . and dependence.

The second high point for me is from chapter 7 (which you heard 2 weeks ago)

This, we know most intimately, as parents...

but also, as church, as nation . . .. (and in all of life)

"The good that I would, I do not. . .

and that which I would not, is precisely what I do. . .”

We get so tied up in knots.

"Who," cries Paul, "who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Who will free me from my conditioning, my prejudice,

my worst impulses, my twisted self-interest, my sin?

And then Paul talks about overcoming our sin and isolation

through the reality of living “in Christ,” who heals and restores.

It’s not a matter of gritting out teeth and trying to measure up.

We get it wrong when we equate faith with belief or a set of doctrines.

Faith has to do with trust and relationships –

and at the heart of it, for Paul, is being “in Christ."

Being in Christ is like “being in the army” or being in the circus.

It is the context for our lives.

Earlier I told you about two short prayers that are at the heart of that:

One is for when you are in your bed and ready to go to sleep:

it is praying “Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit – my self”

and letting your bed be the hands of God enfolding you.

The second is for when your feet hit the floor as you get out of bed.

Feel yourself rooted in the reality of God,

flowing from the center of creation, up through the floor,

up through your feet, into your body.

Those are the bookends of your life that day, every day.

And that is at the heart of our Baptism:

Our lives are placed, entrusted into the loving care of the Risen Christ.

The third high point for me is a single sentence

and it is the key to our life in the world.       

        "Do not be conformed to this world,

        but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

That could be the mission statement of any vital Christian congregation. [repeat].

We are in, but not of. .  the world.  

As Paul also writes:  we are here as ambassadors from heaven

That is where our lives are rooted.

The fourth high point is today’s reading from Romans 8.

It’s a passage we use at funerals,

usually when there has been great suffering involved.

Paul, himself, endured awful suffering throughout his life:

first there was his daily suffering from a childhood malady

that he only refers to as his "thorn in the flesh."

And then later the deep, deep emotional and spiritual struggles within himself.

For Paul, suffering is: no one is exempt.

In fact, it may touch those who are more spiritual  . . deeper than anyone else.

But God's love is not bound by temporal limits, by "this age" or "this time."

So, Paul writes,

"I reckon that the sufferings of this time

are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed to us.

The whole creation has been groaning, in anticipation of its birthing

and only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit;

groan inwardly as we await our adoption as children of God.”

There is so much here.

Paul's sense of the creation -- here and in Colossians -- is astounding.

Religion is not just about people or disembodied souls.

It is about all of creation.

And the whole creation groans. . . as it awaits its rebirth, it's restoration.

Sin. . . is not just a bunch of bad choices people make:  it infects everything.

It is in genetic mutations that have gone wild. -. cancer, debilitating disease.

It's weeds and flowers and grasses struggling against one another for sustenance;

it's earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados and drought – menacing the rest of creation.

It's dogs and cats and other animals and humans, dying before their time.

Just as you and I struggle for wholeness and grace

so, in a sense does all of creation.

So, in our prayers, we are to lift up -- not only our personal problems and issues,

but creation, itself, for healing and transformation.

On a more mundane level, what this means, as well,

is that the care we have for our pets and for our gardens is ministry.

It means that the care we take, in this State, for our minerals and for our water

is spiritual work and ministry … as well as good citizenship.

The last high point for me are words that have been, for me, life-saving:

Not physically life-saving, but emotionally and physically life-saving.

When I was working as Episcopal Chaplain at the University of North Carolina

I was working collaboratively with the rector of the large Episcopal Church

which was located, literally, on the campus.

Peter was a very strong, but very jealous man.

And though I worked with him and not for him – he had all the power in the relationship.

I had never done better, more effective work as a priest (and that was the problem for Peter).

My wife and I had bought a house and just had our third child

when Peter came to me after the midweek service on Epiphany.

"I need to tell you,” he said, “that your contract will be renewed  ..  over my dead body."

And I knew he had the power to make that happen.

My wife and I, absolutely devastated. . . went to a movie at the local mall that night.

And at the mall that night was a craft fair. . .

the absolute worst craft fair either of us could have imagined. . .

except for one booth near the entrance to the theater.

It housed a religious calligrapher by the name of Michael Podesta.

He had the most gorgeous work --

and one piece in particular, named "Paul" which read:

          “If God is for us, who can be against us?

           For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,

 nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,

          nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us from the love of God

which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

My wife took my hand and said,  “We must never ever let anything or anyone else

take our church . . . or God . . away from us.”

And that was all I needed to know – then, and so many times later.

And that is Paul's message to each of us:

never let anything -- no priest, no fellow parishioner,

no slight or oversight, no tragedy or disappointment

no cancer or oncoming weakness or dementia

ever. . .separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.

Never, ever give anything in your life that power

which belongs, only, to God

who works in our good times, yes, and in our times of suffering,

who feeds us, whether we know we are hungry or not.

Who calls us by our names. Our Abba, Father, God.

So, as you read through Romans.

When you come to the dense parts, shake your head and move on (quickly)

Until you get to the good stuff.

Mark it with a highlighter if you want, God won’t mind.

And let that sink in . . . over and over and over again.