Easter Sunday afternoon, I watched a movie I'd been dying to watch for ages: Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey. It was even better than I had hoped.
A documentary about Kevin Clash, the man behind Elmo, Being Elmo is also a story about how mentors make a difference even to those with the strongest of natural talents.
There's no doubt Clash was a natural. He started making puppets as a kid in Baltimore where you can bet that wasn't the cool thing to do. He watched Sesame Street and the Muppet Show obsessively, as much to find out how they made the muppets without visible seams as to see the shows. Whatever it was that drove him, clearly puppets were his medium from his earliest days.
What was wonderful (and made me cry) was how many generous mentors Clash received over the years, and how he clearly understood what he had been given and will pass it along himself. This is no self-made man and he knows it. Special credit goes to Kermit Love, an esteemed muppet and puppet builder, who made a point of taking Clash under his wing--and made his first meeting with Jim Henson a successful one.
Being Elmo is a beautiful movie that embodies generosity of spirit. It made me happy because I got to see someone's dream come true. Watch and enjoy.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Monday Morning Preacher: Easter redux
At 10:48 pm on Saturday night, I posted on my Facebook page: "Guess it's time to get started on the Easter sermon." I wasn't kidding. Well, I was and I wasn't. I'd been pondering for ages, but writing? Not so much. Boy, was I glad not to have a Vigil to do as well. Whew! Good Friday and Easter Sunday were plenty for me.
This is only the second time I've preached on Easter Sunday. The other time was my very first year out of seminary; I was still a transitional deacon at that point. The rector offered me the gig and I fell all over myself thanking him. He told me, "I'm not doing you any favors." He was so right. Easter is a tough, tough gig. Can I get an amen?
For all that I was putting it together until 7 AM Sunday morning, I thought the sermon turned out well. It helped a lot that I did indeed have a clear idea of what I wanted to say long before I started writing things down. The other thing that helped immensely was a book called Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus , much of which I could read on Google Books. For me, at least, it helped to picture what it was the women were expecting to see. I hope it helped the congregation as well.
The congregation, by the way, was wonderful. If you have a congregation that laughs at your jokes and responds when you ask questions, it makes preaching so much easier and more fun. And I have found that almost every congregation is willing to do that, willing to be with you in the midst of the preaching, so I do try to invite them in to participate--mostly for my sake. It just feels so much better preaching when you don't feel like you're talking to yourself. So, thank you, St. Giles!
And Happy Easter, everyone! How did it go for you?
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| Sermon writing outfit |
For all that I was putting it together until 7 AM Sunday morning, I thought the sermon turned out well. It helped a lot that I did indeed have a clear idea of what I wanted to say long before I started writing things down. The other thing that helped immensely was a book called Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus , much of which I could read on Google Books. For me, at least, it helped to picture what it was the women were expecting to see. I hope it helped the congregation as well.
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| Sermon preaching outfit |
And Happy Easter, everyone! How did it go for you?
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Easter Sunday Funnies
Well, more like an hour fifteen.
h/t Scott Gunn who posted about this grand collection of honest church signs.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
The battle for the Golden Halo!
If you haven't been following, now is the time to hie yourself over to Lent Madness to vote for who will win the Golden Halo. If you have been following, you will know that it's been a wild bracket! Mary Magdalene coasted on in to the finals with ease, but on the other side of the bracket, big name after big name was bounced by Emma of Hawaii! Paul, Cranmer, and Bonhoeffer all bowed down before the Queen. Was it the forces of Big Pineapple, as the smear ads below suggest? Or was it the spirit of aloha carrying her like a wave?
In any event, either of these worthy and faithful women have earned the Golden Halo, but only one will win 2012 Lent Madness. VOTE (once!) for your choice! Polls close at 5 am PST tomorrow.
Great job, Supreme Executive Committee on a very fun Lenten project! (Won't you be glad when the intertubes aren't cluttered with all these partisan attack ads?)
In any event, either of these worthy and faithful women have earned the Golden Halo, but only one will win 2012 Lent Madness. VOTE (once!) for your choice! Polls close at 5 am PST tomorrow.
Great job, Supreme Executive Committee on a very fun Lenten project! (Won't you be glad when the intertubes aren't cluttered with all these partisan attack ads?)
Monday, April 2, 2012
Monday Morning Preacher: Palm Sunday redux
The keeper is the line from the ever-wonderful Interpreter's Bible (1952) (bolded in the text of the sermon below). Here's a fuller version:
The unmeasured generosity of her giving moved him. It was a glorious maximum of sacrifice which never stopped to calculate what might have been a passable minimum--the kind of mathematical computation that so easily besets us...She did not pour out a few drops and say, "Well, I guess that ought to be enough for this occasion."... She was lifted clear out of arithmetic into love--one of the greatest leaps which a life can take.The paragraph about how Palm Sunday and the palm fronds we use symbolize the glorious maximum and the passable minimum was a last-second addition, added in the moment and not in the text I had written. I just thought, standing there, watching each person carefully take one single frond and no more, that this was just the kind of "passable minimum" I was talking about. But that does mean that it is pretty clunky and disjointed at the end.
There was lots going on behind the sermon that didn't get mentioned: a book I'm reading called Evolving in Monkey Town (more on that soon), memories of Palm Sunday in Kampala, the other readings (which never got mentioned but were in play), thoughts on stewardship and how that plays the "passable minimum" card, other incidents of the passable minimum in church life. It may be that a single story would have been more effective than all this explanation, but I couldn't come up with one that didn't require even further exposition.
It was odd. The sermon came out more...sharp than I had intended it to. And a little muddled. Clearly something I haven't thought through well enough myself so the end got in a bit of a tangle, there, which is a shame because the core idea is an important one.
But it's done, as I said. It's not the worst sermon in the world; just a bit of a clunker, I think, rushed and awkward. On to Good Friday.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Sermon: Palm Sunday
The person putting together the bulletin asked me if I wanted the shorter gospel reading (which still isn’t short) or the long gospel reading. And of course I wanted the long gospel reading, but I promise you that as a trade-off the homily will be short even though there are so many amazing things in this gospel that I could go on for days and days, starting with the very first bit when Mark tells you that Jesus is in the house of Simon the leper. Who is Simon the leper? The official answer from the commentary I used: “Simon the leper is otherwise unknown, but he was probably known to those who handed on the tradition.” So there you go.
It’s the woman with the ointment who interests me: the woman with ointment is the reason you got the long gospel reading today. As far as I’m concerned, the whole Last Supper and Crucifixion parts can wait till later in the week where they belong. For me, Palm Sunday is all about extravagance and the ways we respond to it, the ways we try to keep things under control and make ourselves feel good about ourselves, often at the expense of others, this woman being a case in point.
So here’s Jesus (at the home of Simon the leper) when a woman comes in, unnamed and so most likely unknown (see: Simon the leper), with an alabaster jar filled with a costly perfume. She approaches Jesus, breaks open the jar and pours the contents on his head. As far as I can tell, she reserves nothing, but empties the jar of perfume. The room must have been overwhelmed with the scent of it. And as I imagine the scene, everyone there: Jesus, the disciples, Simon the leper, is taken by surprise by the act. And so it is very telling how people react in that first moment.
First, there are those who were indignant, who said, “This should have been given to the poor.” Their lack of graciousness is astonishing—or would be if it weren’t part of a larger pattern. But if you read through the rest of the gospel of Mark to see how often this concern for the poor appeared among Jesus’ followers, you’ll find the answer is: not so much. The feeding of the 5,000? “Send them away to the villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” People bringing their children to Jesus? “The disciples spoke sternly to them.” You know what Mark reports the disciples were concerned about? Who was the greatest among them, and who was going to sit on Jesus’ right and left hand.
For all that we like to pick on the Pharisees, Jesus’ disciples are cut from the same cloth: doing their darndest to keep their status high and that of others low.
And Jesus calls them on it, as he always does. That whole “the poor you will always have with you” line? What I hear in that today is Jesus telling the disciples, “Why are you so all-fired concerned about the poor right now? Could it be because she’s done something beautiful—and you haven’t. Quit being such jerks.”
But why did they react so strongly and immediately? Here’s why I think that is, and this is something that is true for me as well, and perhaps for you too: it’s because when we see someone being truly extravagant, doing something truly beautiful and noble, it points out how stingy and miserly my own offerings are. So when we see the real deal, such as this woman, some woman who doesn’t even know Jesus, hasn’t been taught properly, hasn’t been part of the gang, pouring out a whole jar of costly perfume, it blows away our shabby little pretenses of our own most noble and gracious self.
We want her to be wrong somehow. And so in a desire not to be reminded of her generosity and my stinginess, it is best to shut down the extravagance, label it completely inappropriate, tell her how she ought to have done it, and keep things tidy and gray.
The commentary I read about the woman with perfume said, “[Her gift] was a glorious maximum of sacrifice which never stopped to calculate what might have been a passable minimum.” That’s the thing that the Pharisees, and the disciples, and many more of us throughout the ages have never been able to quite grasp: that the life that Jesus calls us to is a life of the glorious maximum, not the passable minimum.
I can think of no better symbol of the glorious maximum and passable minimum than Palm Sunday. The story we hear is of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, with crowds of people yelling and cheering, palm branches and cloaks strewn before him--a glorious maximum of welcome...and what we end up with is this single sad frond, the passable minimum of palmness.
The story of the woman with the ointment is the story of Holy Week in miniature: the extravagant entrance, the muttering reaction, the shameful punishment that is overcome for all time by Jesus' redemption. Her gift to us is giving us this sign of how we too might live as Jesus did, called to the glorious maximum of life and faith in whatever we might do.
I'm afraid it's not going to be easy. We talk a good game about abundance and generosity in the church, but I have seen a whole lot of beautiful gifts covered over with shame and scorn. People who are looking for the glorious maximum are told it’s unrealistic or too soon or costs too much or that we need to focus on other things. People who want to do beautiful things are worn down by the pressure of those interested only in the passable minimum.
But there is hope, and that’s what this week is about: that the glorious maximum ultimately overcomes the forces of the passable minimum, despite their every effort. And it starts with the glorious maximum of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. That’s where we start. Let’s see what meets us as we walk down this road. And let us go forth extravagantly.
It’s the woman with the ointment who interests me: the woman with ointment is the reason you got the long gospel reading today. As far as I’m concerned, the whole Last Supper and Crucifixion parts can wait till later in the week where they belong. For me, Palm Sunday is all about extravagance and the ways we respond to it, the ways we try to keep things under control and make ourselves feel good about ourselves, often at the expense of others, this woman being a case in point.
So here’s Jesus (at the home of Simon the leper) when a woman comes in, unnamed and so most likely unknown (see: Simon the leper), with an alabaster jar filled with a costly perfume. She approaches Jesus, breaks open the jar and pours the contents on his head. As far as I can tell, she reserves nothing, but empties the jar of perfume. The room must have been overwhelmed with the scent of it. And as I imagine the scene, everyone there: Jesus, the disciples, Simon the leper, is taken by surprise by the act. And so it is very telling how people react in that first moment.
First, there are those who were indignant, who said, “This should have been given to the poor.” Their lack of graciousness is astonishing—or would be if it weren’t part of a larger pattern. But if you read through the rest of the gospel of Mark to see how often this concern for the poor appeared among Jesus’ followers, you’ll find the answer is: not so much. The feeding of the 5,000? “Send them away to the villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” People bringing their children to Jesus? “The disciples spoke sternly to them.” You know what Mark reports the disciples were concerned about? Who was the greatest among them, and who was going to sit on Jesus’ right and left hand.
For all that we like to pick on the Pharisees, Jesus’ disciples are cut from the same cloth: doing their darndest to keep their status high and that of others low.
And Jesus calls them on it, as he always does. That whole “the poor you will always have with you” line? What I hear in that today is Jesus telling the disciples, “Why are you so all-fired concerned about the poor right now? Could it be because she’s done something beautiful—and you haven’t. Quit being such jerks.”
But why did they react so strongly and immediately? Here’s why I think that is, and this is something that is true for me as well, and perhaps for you too: it’s because when we see someone being truly extravagant, doing something truly beautiful and noble, it points out how stingy and miserly my own offerings are. So when we see the real deal, such as this woman, some woman who doesn’t even know Jesus, hasn’t been taught properly, hasn’t been part of the gang, pouring out a whole jar of costly perfume, it blows away our shabby little pretenses of our own most noble and gracious self.
We want her to be wrong somehow. And so in a desire not to be reminded of her generosity and my stinginess, it is best to shut down the extravagance, label it completely inappropriate, tell her how she ought to have done it, and keep things tidy and gray.
The commentary I read about the woman with perfume said, “[Her gift] was a glorious maximum of sacrifice which never stopped to calculate what might have been a passable minimum.” That’s the thing that the Pharisees, and the disciples, and many more of us throughout the ages have never been able to quite grasp: that the life that Jesus calls us to is a life of the glorious maximum, not the passable minimum.
The story of the woman with the ointment is the story of Holy Week in miniature: the extravagant entrance, the muttering reaction, the shameful punishment that is overcome for all time by Jesus' redemption. Her gift to us is giving us this sign of how we too might live as Jesus did, called to the glorious maximum of life and faith in whatever we might do.
I'm afraid it's not going to be easy. We talk a good game about abundance and generosity in the church, but I have seen a whole lot of beautiful gifts covered over with shame and scorn. People who are looking for the glorious maximum are told it’s unrealistic or too soon or costs too much or that we need to focus on other things. People who want to do beautiful things are worn down by the pressure of those interested only in the passable minimum.
But there is hope, and that’s what this week is about: that the glorious maximum ultimately overcomes the forces of the passable minimum, despite their every effort. And it starts with the glorious maximum of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. That’s where we start. Let’s see what meets us as we walk down this road. And let us go forth extravagantly.
Sunday Funnies, April 1
April Fools Day and Palm Sunday? Here are some...appropriate selections from the Twitter hashtag Easter Pro Tips, collected by David Hansen.
- Palm Sunday Tips:
- “On Palm Sunday, use sour wine at Communion, served from a sponge on a stick. Side piercings are optional. #EasterProTip
- “#EasterProTip Enhance your Palm Sunday atmosphere by annointing folks with coconut-scented suntan oil on the way in.
- “Palm Sunday processional: Black Eyed Peas, Let's Get it Started #easterprotip
- “For your children's sermon, make sure you have a Passion Jesus action figure, complete with lash, spear, blood, and water. #EasterProTip
- “For a more exciting Passion gospel, use (@TheAuthorGuy) Christopher. Moore's LAMB, rather than from the bible. #EasterProTip
- “#EasterProTip Do you have a rain date for your Palm Sunday procession? Just fine to have it on the second Sunday of Easter!
- “#EasterProTip Film Sunday morning's video reflection using marshmallow peeps. Consider a Passion Play!
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