Stories and Transformation

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL, Year B, Proper 19)
Christian Education Sunday
September 13, 2009

Heather Powers & Don Lipscomb

Heather Powers

“May I know how to sustain the weary with a word.” These are the words that spoke to me from Isaiah as I prepared to give this sermon on Christian Education Sunday. Today I offer you meditations of my heart on today’s readings, our Christian education focus for the year, and on how I use my story as a lens through which to see, receive, and, God willing, live out some small part of the Christian Story. As I see it this is a story of sustaining love and engagement with others.

I’ve spoken several times in sermon seminar over the past few years about my current work in the field of intimate partner violence, more commonly known as domestic or dating violence. I counsel survivors. “May I know how to sustain the weary with a word,” this line from Isaiah, is a hope I hold every day in my work, “may I know how to sustain the weary with a word.”

I believe in words. I believe in their power to transform and sustain, as well as to wound and to harm. In the book of James, we hear more about words, “from the same mouth comes blessing and cursing!” However we choose to use words, they have POWER, blessing and cursing. I have had words used towards me in both blessing and cursing. I have used them in both ways as well. Yet, in my work I strive to use them to sustain the weary.

My clients have so often dealt so long with the fiery lash of cursing. I hope that together we can use words as a blessing for them, use words to express their stories, and thus seek new life for them.

Our Christian Education focus has been for the past year and remains to be this year, “Seeking new life through our stories- transforming our relationships within the world.”

I have had the blessing of being with many people who have sought new life through their stories and have sought to transform their relationships within the world. I have also sought new life through my own story, both in my own counseling and here in my faith community.

Here in this church, in this Christian Education program, I have been with others- children, teens and adults- as we have shared our stories with each other. Sharing in these stories has been transformative for me and I have seen it be transformative for others- children, teens, and adults.

Our stories, plural, are ours individually, we have shared these and this has brought new life for many. For me, Our story, singular, as a community, the story we share, is the Christian story-that which is written in the bible and written in the ways of our tradition.

An example of one of my stories is from when I took the Brothers and Sisters class; in that class I saw the healing power that the relationship with my brother, David, had been having for me in a time of deep depression when shamefully I could barely keep my clothes clean, sometimes not even that. David, my brother, stood with me in my despair, despite my nearly inconsolable year long despondence. I imagine it is hard to see and stay with someone you love as they believe that any strength that they might have had has disintegrated in their implosion.

In that class David Evelyn offered an art exercise wherein we could creatively express a version of a sibling relationship. For my expression I chose two toy people and some clay. One was immobilized, encased in clay; you could barely see the figure at all. That was me. But that immobile toy was being held up in the arms of the second toy figure. That was my brother, and I love him for that... that and many other things.

Being able to express something like that among members of my faith community, something that so precisely described how I felt when I couldn’t feel, showed a sign of life to me and the possibility of its renewal. Though I couldn’t know it at the time, that exercise, telling that story has transformed my relationships within the world; relationships with some of those in that class, with my brother, and between me and my clients. I pray that in some small way during our work together I might be some semblance of that second toy for them.

Now today we come together and read pieces of our communal story. In those pieces today, I hear and draw upon Isaiah, “May I know how to sustain the weary with a word,” and the psalm, “For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I walk before the LORD in the land of the living,” and James, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so,” and then Mark has Jesus asking us, “Who do you say that I am?” This is what I say.

Don Lipscomb

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

“Not many of you should be become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know you will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.”

“The tongue is a fire-from the same mouth come blessing and cursing!”

“Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on Divine things, but on human things.”

Those words, brought to you by James and Mark, may not be the most uplifting ones to begin our Christian Education Season, or this Sermon. However, as Co Directors, even though we may indeed make many mistakes…we continue to serve in a long line of transitory shepherds of a Christian Education legacy that spans five decades and serves as an umbrella for a rich and varied collection of offerings-from Children and Youth programs to Adult courses-Gateway classes, Life Community and Faith, Baptism, What’s an Episcopalian? ; Education for Ministry, Beyond the Frame workshops which incorporate the arts, a women’s class for the new millennium-spirituality “on line”! and three, make that four Bible Study classes. That alone illustrates Our hope that these offerings represent a moment in time and do not limit us as we strive to address our future changing needs.

Dr. Charles Penniman, as a consultant to St Marks, helped to shape an approach to Christian Education that broke from traditional methods which prevailed through the post WWII era. This discipline was not didactic or “top down,” but experiential…based on what happens during the life of the class. He was concerned that the members of the class comprehend the meaning of their lives and to comprehend this meaning with a Christian Comprehension. Any course would be based on the business of belonging.

Belonging with commitment.

Over the years we have come to refer to this approach as Functional Education. That’s Right! I said it…yes I did! Those two words alone seem to have the power to divide a room here in a New York minute! Central to communal life, a Life giving, essential journey, a necessary step towards belonging for some; opaque/inaccessible/jargon laden/reinvent the wheel/navel-gazing hooey for others and everything in between! This chasm has probably existed from the beginning, and seems to be joined by other voices–what are you talking about, and why should I care? Why does this even matter? As a Co-Director maybe I am afflicted with “rabbit ears” since these rumblings seem intensified in tone, lately. Well, we have an Open Society, we celebrate an Open Communion, why not a more Open Dialogue about this in a way that enables us to hold each other up? It is after all, your program. Let’s see where open discussion can take us as we strive to address our future changing needs. Full disclosure-I admit that my tongue has given voice to many of the places on this spectrum.

I also must confess a certain ambivalence being in this role… When I came here as a Presbyterian, it was for one reason at first: To find a place to get married; then to hear the word; and to go forth into the world to do the work we have been given to do. I had a life-I belonged to many communities on the outside–I did not care or need to take any classes at a Church. And ultimately our kids didn’t want to either!

So why do I bother? After all…

I am not a joiner, I am at my core an introvert, a solitary, private individual, a difficult recruit which makes it difficult for me to recruit you since I usually support all the reasons you tell me no! Maybe not what you want in Co-Director. But I do take risks and I do listen. So what happened? How did we get here? How did transformation come about? How was this business of belonging achieved?

Why do I bother?

From time to time, The reason I agree to lead a functional class, or sit among you as a participant, is to have the opportunity to be in community with you-examining a particular subject and in the process of listening to each others stories and insights-I may be able to learn and understand those insights and tools I will need to make a faith response when life slaps me in the face, when the rug is pulled out from under me, ground shakes beneath me, when the circumstances or the bind appears inextricable. By Saying yes to what is (Faith), By letting go and avoiding the temptation to rebel gainst God (Sin), not be my true self, I can make a response based on Faith and be open to be transformed. In the world. This is life long work for me-as I try to Function in the world, what response can/do I make and is it based in Faith? A Faith Response-this is worth the struggle, the faith journey for me.

I am only one voice among many.

That’s why I do it. That is why I participate in the functional approach from time to time.

I am not a joiner! Been here a quarter of a century-I took the predecessor of LCF-Confirmation Class in the fall of 1991. Yes, it took seven years of invitation to sign me up-I am a difficult recruit! The work-“searching for a folk,” who is my community?

To whom do I belong?

Our First weekend retreat at Claggett in MD, Our first session: Saturday AM.–our small group is outside under a tree-the sun is shining, the birds are singing and one of our teachers joins our group “in role” and delivers a shocking revelation. The tongue burned. A woman I will refer to as our friend bolts the session-role play too close to home! I have a terminal illness! she later explained. No one really knew for sure but… by that evening seven or eight of us are in a room with a DeColores practitioner, of all people, performing an impromptu laying on of hands ceremony/she is speaking in tongues, with the goal of trying to heal our friend. We all had a piece of her and as the perspiration dripped onto arms, I checked a watch-7:25, some things became apparent: we gonna be late for the evening session, we probably in trouble! There may be repercussions. We all can make many mistakes, but this is great-drama, intrigue, disruption, chaos, defiance, going off script-I’m all in! We concluded that this was real life and regardless of “the program,” this would be our response-after all wasn’t this about belonging? Were we sinning? Faith Response?

As the second weekend approached, our friend’s continuance with us was in doubt, she had no money, no scholarship was forthcoming-yet we believed she needed her community, what would be our response? So during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression at that time, this non joinin’ nonrecruitin, non fund raisin’ guy got on the telephone–a land line (remember those?) and got 10 out of 32 classmates to chip in enough to pay for her second weekend, and keep her in community. Belonging with commitment was up to her now. And a few of us continued to stand by her over the ensuing years up until her funeral service in October 1997. The tongue can deliver words of comfort. Faith Response?

Let me leave you with the something more personal.

Fairfax Hospital waiting room-my wife Jan had been in surgery for over an hour and a half and the telephone rings at the desk. It is for me-this cannot be good. Doctor says: I need you to make a choice:

1. The fibroid tumor is very large and is intertwined with the Fallopian tubes. To remove it would render her unable to conceive.
   
   
2. She is under 40, she talked about a third child in the future-I can close her up and reschedule surgery at the appropriate time.
   
   

I was suddenly granted a power that I could not accept or hold or deserve. The bind was instant,-we all make many mistakes-how I wanted to sin so badly!, to dodge this, pass it off, avoid it-get me off the hook. Human things vs divine? I am consumed with the human…I have no idea which is which-the tongue is a fire-I could destroy trust, sow the seeds of the demise of our relationship based on my choice…I wish she were awake-I can not bear making this decision without her, especially about her womanhood. I could consult no one on earth-only with life under pressure-pressure from within, pressure from without–only now does the work begin: what kind of response am I capable of? As much I wanted to embrace my familiar “comfort sins”-control the outcome-do the right thing, I became stuck, I froze, I could not function.

Did I have the capacity or even the courage to make a choice based solely on faith?

In retrospect, even though none of you were there-those small groups on Tuesday or Wednesday night or in Rehoboth over a weekend come to mind where we talk and challenge each other and search for questions over answers. I believe that helped me regain a vocabulary, a language rooted in our faith community to help relieve my temporary paralysis… The words finally came and with them a choice. I made a choice and I held it close (I was still feeling raw and vulnerable) and went to my seat. There I realized that I could begin to let this go since it was already in the world now, and with God’s help-it was now up to the Doctor to do the work He’d been given to do.

Amen