Thirsty, and You Gave Me Drink

One of the two sermons I wrote for Thirsty, and You Gave Me Drink: Homilies and Reflections for Cycle C is bookended by homilies written by Jesuit superstars James Martin and Greg Boyle. The other is right next to one from Richard Rohr. This is pretty rarified spiritual air and it was an honor to be invited to contribute to this collection.

Even better, is that all the proceeds from this book go to support ministries that promote access to clean drinking water. I love this project, part of an ongoing series from Clear Faith Publishing called Homilists for the Homeless. All of the participants donate their submissions so that book sales help feed and support those in need here at home and around the world.

So...buy a copy or five! They make great Christmas gifts and provide inspiration throughout the coming year to complement the cycle of Sunday lectionary readings.

I'm grateful to Fran Szpylczyn for asking me to participate in this project. How do I know Fran? From Twitter, of course. See? Good things can come from the morass of social media!

Here are the four charities your purchase of Thirsty will support:

Thirst Project
Thirst Project is a non-profit organization that exists to end the global water crisis and the fact that over 785 million people on the planet do not have access to safe, clean water. They travel across the world to educate individuals about the global water crisis and challenge them to fundraise to build freshwater wells in developing nations and impoverished communities. They guarantee that 100% of all public donations go directly toward their well projects. Over the last decade, Thirst Project has raised more than $11 million, which has given over 500,000 people in thirteen countries safe, clean water for life. 

Water For People
Water For People envisions a world where every person has access to reliable and safe water and sanitation services. Water For People exists to promote the development of high-quality drinking water and sanitation services, accessible to all, and sustained by strong communities, businesses, and governments. They have impacted 1.54 million people with their sanitation services and created 2,436 permanent jobs through their work. 

charity: water
charity: water believes that sustainable work is locally led. Along with implementing community-owned water projects, their local partners help facilitate comprehensive water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programming to protect everyone’s long-term health. During the past fifteen years, they have funded over 79,000 water projects in 29 countries. 

Clean Water Fund
Clean Water Fund's mission is to develop strong grassroots environmental leadership and to bring together diverse constituencies to work cooperatively for changes that improve their lives, focused on health, consumer, environmental and community problems. Based in Washington, DC, Clean Water Fund operates locally staffed environmental and health protection programs serving communities in more than fifteen US states.

Pilgrimage to Robben Island

On the afternoon of our first full day in Capetown, we took a ferry out to Robben Island. If you're not familiar with the iconic South African prison, it's where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner for 18 of the 27 years he was behind bars during the Apartheid era.

When you're traveling with a group of 27 adults and teenagers, silence is rare. And so the hush that came over our group as we docked and approached the front gate on foot, was noticeable. It did feel like we were walking on holy ground as we reverently entered the prison yard. The island itself, a place that should have been overrun with the natural beauty of a coastal South African shangri la, felt somehow desolate; every pebble and blade of grass crying out with the voice of struggle.

Our tour guide was himself a living martyr, a man who had been imprisoned on the island for five years, between 1977 and 1982. His crime? Working for justice amid a reign of terror as a member of the African National Congress (ANC). His life and his story served as a flesh and bones monument to grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope -- rare commodities in any age and certainly our own current political climate. And we were privileged to be in his presence and hear first-hand the tactics Mandela and his fellow prisoners used to maintain their dignity, humanity, and wholeness when they were being beaten down -- literally and emotionally -- on a daily basis.

In the accompanying photo (taken by John Hussey), our guide was explaining how the white warders (prison guards) tried numerous ways to divide the prison population against one another. One method was to give different meals to different "classes" of prisoners. The Indian and "colored" prisoners received better and more food than the Black Africans. This tactic also included prison clothes -- blacks were not given shoes; others were not.

Nelson Mandela's cell at Robben Island.

Rather than foster jealousy and division among the prisoners, these methods simply strengthened their resolve. Food and clothing was shared regardless of status, thus subverting the very division the Apartheid government sought to sow among the prison population.

The most moving experience for me was simply walking in Mandela's shoes as we crossed the ground upon which he himself trod. Yes, this was a pilgrimage as we saw relics of his stay including the quarry where the political prisoners were forced to break up rocks and the cell in which the famous freedom fighter was held. A saintly aura filled the place even in its desolation and desperation.

Stones of Remembrance.

As we continued our tour of the prison grounds, our guide told us a story out at the quarry of a visit Mandela and other survivors made back to Robben Island a number of years after the end of Apartheid. Following a ceremony commemorating their time in prison and the subsequent outcome of their victorious struggle, Mandela spontaneously took a stone from the quarry and laid it down on his way out of the quarry. The other prisoners followed suit and soon there was a pile of rocks that remains to this day. These Stones of Remembrance stand as a reminder that, while we can forgive, we can never forget.

The prison on Robben Island lives on not as a symbol of destruction but as a beacon of hope amid a dark world. It would be easy to whitewash history and demolish the buildings. But we cannot. For people like us, who understand that out of darkness there is light and out of death there is resurrection, we need tangible reminders, like the cross itself, that hope abides.

As Mandela himself once put it, "The names of those incarcerated on Robben Island is a roll call of resistance fighters and democrats spanning over three centuries. If indeed this is a Cape of Good Hope, that hope owes much to the spirit of that legion of fighters and others of their caliber."

Unassuming Prophet

I rarely put sermons on Clergy Confidential. I do have a sermon blog titled @FatherTIm Sermon Vault where I warehouse them, but I generally only share those links with the parish I'm serving since a) preaching is all about context and b) no one needs more sermons clogging the internet. 

But I did want to share what I said at yesterday's funeral for the Rev. Ed Allen because his was an inspiring life, one that deserves to be shared. Ed was a parishioner at St. John's and a retired Episcopal priest and it was an honor to preach at his service -- I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever preached at the funeral of a fellow priest.

I hope you'll take a moment to read it and recognize that we need Ed's voice now more than ever. 

Funeral for the Rev. Edward P.  Allen

July 19, 2016

What a privilege to stand before you this afternoon and reflect upon the life of a fellow priest. A man I admired and was inspired by, a man known and loved by each one of you. But before I begin, I thought I’d share something Ed wrote 24 years ago; a note Alice gave me one day several years ago that she’d found in a file of his old sermons. 

It was titled, One of the Terrors of Preaching. “More often than not, after a week of meditating on the themes expressed in collect, Old Testament, psalm, epistle, Gospel and the life of the parish and the world — after mulling them over, twisting them this way and that, trying to find some connection between them and what was going on inside myself — and after finally putting something together  that I could pass off as a sermon, I would find myself in church on Sunday morning listening to readings that I would swear I had never heard before. I would ask the ceremonialist, ‘Is she reading the wrong lesson?’ or I would hastily check the lectionary, only to discover that what I was hearing was what I had been reading over and over all week, except that now it was coming to me from an entirely new angle. Then, with my confidence in my insight totally shaken, I would have to get up and preach. Sometimes it was disconcerting; at other times is was, ‘What the hell! Go for it.’ Anyway, it was never dull.”

There was a fullness to the life of Ed Allen that can’t be captured in just a few minutes. But, what the hell, go for it! 

Ed was a husband and father, of course, an Episcopal priest who served parishes in California and as college chaplain at the Interfaith Center at UC Irvine. A man of faith and compassion and humor; a storyteller and a gentle soul. But also a man of passionate conviction who stood up for right in the face of wrong; for love in the face of hate; for justice in the face of discrimination

If Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves, Ed Allen took that commandment and lived it, both in his personal and vocational lives. His words and deeds reminded us all that Jesus’ invitation to love one another was not optional. We can’t love our neighbors as ourselves on our terms or at our convenience. It just doesn’t work that way.

As Alice and her children were gathering stories in the days after Ed died, Norton forwarded me an article that his brother Ted had posted on Facebook. And I was amazed by a 1963 California newspaper clipping. The headline was “Corona del Mar Pastor Jailed in Sit-In” and there was a picture of a 35-year-old Ed Allen in his clerical collar — wearing a very stylish plaid blazer I might add. Ed had been arrested for protesting a new housing development that was discriminating against people of color. As the article reported, Ed was “carried bodily to a police car and spent six hours with 23 other pickets in a cell built for 12 persons before he was bailed out.” Presumably by Alice.

But what really stood out to me were some of Ed’s quotes. After his arrest, Ed was quoted as saying, “Segregation is a black mark against America. However, the challenge of integration is a frightening thing. There are those who are afraid of the changes that equal rights will bring. Through their fear, they either do nothing to ‘rock the boat’ or else they will campaign actively to keep things as they are. Those who want to see American freedom truly practiced are equally afraid. It takes guts to stick your neck out — especially for somebody else.” 

Yes. Yes, it does. And I’m particularly moved by Ed’s witness for two reasons. First, his

passionate stance for standing on the right side of racial justice during a seminal time in our nation’s history and second because, sadly, we still desperately need that voice today, 53 years later. 

It is precisely the fear about which Ed spoke that still confounds our efforts to seek reconciliation. It is our fear of change, our fear of those who differ from us, and our fear of giving up control. The gospel of Jesus, as Ed well knew, is all about driving out fear and breaking down barriers between and among people. Not everyone is willing to live that out in such a tangible way and for that we can all be inspired and encouraged to make a difference in our own day, in our own way.

I also love this part of the article: the reporter asked Ed how he felt about the prospect of arrest and “Father Allen admitted he was ‘scared’ to take part in a sit-in demonstration” and his wife, Alice was “‘pretty nervous at first’” (at the time, she did have two young children at home). But “‘She’s proud of me now,’ he added with a grin.’” And I think we can all spot that grin from a mile away. 

On the last day I saw Ed — near the end, I’d gone up to Linden Ponds to pray with him and with Alice — I made a point to wear two of Ed’s stoles Alice had recently given to the church. I wore a red one to do the monthly service at Allerton House, a nearby nursing home, and I wore a white one to do a committal service in the Memorial Garden — the same one I’m wearing right now.

And I intentionally wore them because I’m aware that the current generation of clergy has a mantle to take up. Courageous priests like Ed Allen, even in his gentle and self-effacing way, helped till the soil of racial reconciliation at a time when the harvest was plentiful but the laborers were few. And it is important for us to continue to nurture what was planted in Jesus’ name. Work that needs to continue, work that must continue if we are to be faithful to the ministry of our Lord.

Today as we remember Ed’s life and celebrate Jesus’ victory over death, we are once again reminded that nothing can separate us from the love of God. In his letter to the Romans St. Paul writes that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, 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 in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

For everyone privileged enough to know and love Ed Allen, nothing can separate us from the memory of this unassuming prophet. Nothing can separate us from the influence he had and will continue to have upon us. And this is precisely why, even at the grave, we can make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The Bubble Bursts in Baltimore

There was an adage growing up in white Baltimore that declared, "70% of Baltimore is black; the rest of us all know each other." I recall being vaguely uncomfortable whenever I heard it -- the product of liberal parents -- but also thinking, well, there is some truth to that.

And therein lies the problem. Despite all the rhetoric, Baltimore, like many urban areas, has remained a segregated city -- geographically, socio-economically, religiously, politically. The forces of income inequality and institutional racism, combined with the tragic and preventable death of Freddie Gray, have sparked the inevitable outburst of despair triumphing over hope.

As the Episcopal Bishop of Maryland put it in a sermon he preached on Tuesday afternoon, "We are in an official State of Emergency, but we are also in an unofficial State of Despair."

And we're all responsible. Every time we fail to acknowledge our privilege comes at another's expense; every time we neglect to reach out and embrace the less fortunate; every time we close our hearts to those who don't look or act like us.

Whenever children grow up in privileged communities, you hear parents lament that their kids are "growing up in a bubble." Living in a wealthy community on Boston's South Shore, I've had the same thought. Sometimes when parents say this, it's because their "ungrateful" children don't know how good they really have it. There's also a sense of guilt that they aren't exposing them to the "real world" and helping them develop a healthy empathy for others. Of course, given the choice, parents wouldn't actually leave that bubble. It's not perfect, of course, but it's not as if they're going to uproot their families to leave the bubble that is their perceived birthright.

In Baltimore this week, that bubble burst. And it burst publicly and violently. Stores were looted in my mother's downtown neighborhood; protesters walked the streets; the National Guard was called in; the race riots of 1968 were invoked.

We have several choices here. We can ignore the problem and stay entirely within the bubble -- the odds are that it won't burst where we live. We can engage in suburban "slacktivism" by self righteously posting quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. on Facebook from the safety of the high speed internet connection in our living rooms. Or we can work to proactively burst the bubble by confronting our fears and reaching out to others.

I heard a story this week of a courageous woman named Maggy Brankitse. She is the survivor of the brutal civil war in Burundi where, in 1993, she watched as 72 fellow villagers including her best friend were slaughtered before her eyes. She took her seven adopted children and 25 others and fled to safety, determined to care for them.

With an iron will and a passionate faith, she succeeded in creating an organization called Maison Shalom (House of Peace). Over the past two decades it has grown to include homes, schools, a hospital. In a word, she has built and maintained a thriving community. But one detail of her work and ministry stood out for me. She insisted on building a swimming pool on a former killing field to represent the waters of baptism -- a symbol of new life and hope.

My prayer for Baltimore, and all of us, as the bubble bursts, is that a symbol of our interconnectedness and common life will also emerge out of the pain of the killing field. Because violence -- physical or emotional -- is never the answer and love does indeed conquer all.