St. Stephen's Day --Prayer to a Guardian Angel

I had to share this for St. Stephen's Day (December 26, the second day of Christmas) when we remember the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, people living in the terror of war, disease and famine, people who are dealing with foreclosure, bankruptcy and unemployment. St. Stephen was the first Christian martyr. It is where we get "boxing Day" from in British commnwealth nations and "Good King Wenceslas" who reached out to the disenfranchised. Particularly, I think of my own tribe of Lavander People, GLBT folks who are walking into a new year. With the recent spate of violence in Memphis toward the trans-community I call upon this angel. An Orthodox friend sent this to me and I found the iconography and prayer beautiful from the blogsite: http://jn1034.blogspot.com/2008/12/prayer-to-guardian-angel-of-human-life.html

Prayer to the Guardian Angel of Human Life

for protection from homophobes.

lHoly guardian angel, interceding for our souls and our passionate lives, neither forsake us nor leave us for our intemperance of mind, flesh, and heart. Give no place for the subtle demons of homophobia to harm us through the violence of their evils of thoughts, words, and deeds. Strengthen our poor and fragile hearts, and guide us in the ways of our Holy Tradition and the love of the Gospel. Holy angel of God, guardian and protector of our tender bodies and souls, protect us during the present evening and day, and guard us from every evil of those ensnared by the demons of homophobia. Release homophobes from their darkness of self-hate and misanthropy, and lead them to the glorious light of God's way, truth, and life. Pray for us that we're made worthy by the grace and mercy of the All-Holy Trinity.
+ Through the prayers of our holy mothers and fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

Annunciation (Ευαγγελισμός της Θεοτόκου, Evangelismós tēs Theotókou)

But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God."

St. Luke 1



I love the greek use of "theotokou" in this story about the Annunciation. The news to troubled Mary was "you will be the God-bearer." Wow! How terrifying, overwhelming and seemingly so impossible.



Since such a recent Sunday I have been preoccupied with the Annunciation. Yes, annunciations! The Virgin Mary isn't the only one who gets messages out of nowhere. For those who are thrown by the terribly proper english, annunciation is not referring to , as my mother would say, "quit mubbling and speak up!" The meaning this time has more to do with an announcement or a critical message "you need to know about." Sort of like when the televison goes dead and makes this god-awful screeching sound and a voice out of a blue zone says, "this is a test of the emergency broadcasting system in your area." I wonder if that screech would come on the TV if a tornado actually touched down in our town. The screeching TV and apocalyptic messages seem to go hand-in-hand. I think if the angel Gabriel showed up anywhere in front of me, I would consider it an apocalyptic emergency. The TV may not screech, but I sure would scream. Poor Mary, you know that she was wetting her pants, let alone the fact that the news was not really that good for her. You think getting preganant out of wedlock was bad in the 1950's , well let me tell you about the sixth month, year zero!



As much fun as I would have in telling you about the life of a young peasant woman in first century Palestine, my blog tonight has to do with my recent preoccupation on the issue of announcements or "the annunciation." I remember the night that George Bush announced that he had launched a new war with an attack on Iraq named "shock and awe" in 2003. The President assured us that it was an altrusitic endeavor to bring democracy to Iraq all in the name of "freedom." Yep, the angel Gabriel said to Mary, not to be afraid...good one Gabriel. As we sat back in our arm chairs and reassured ourselves there was a just cause for this assault, I know that it must have been petrifying for Iraqis. The news wasn't good for everybody back in March 2003 as modern weapons went hurling everywhere over Baghdad.



How many people do we know who have received the very truthful announcement "you have a serious disease?" The doctor goes on to say, "I hate to tell you this." Or, "we are going to move you to east bum-f---- and this will be a good move for you?" I would tend to think, "are you nuts, what planet do you live on?" Another message that I have seen delivered this Christmas to some folks in our congregation, " In 10 days from today you will be evicted from this dwelling...this is a foreclosure." With such news, angels calmly say, with best intentions, "it will be OK, it will all workout."



Annunciations usually are earth shattering news. Whether they come across the world wide web or they come to us in a doctor's phone call, we know the information is going to change us. More assuredly, the others who live close to us will be changed by the news too and that can be a worrisome thought. The Christmas story gets romanticized and dolled up to accompany a winter holiday ideal. The fact is, annunciations are made of scary stuff, like the truth. Another adage that I love, "there is nothing stranger than the truth" comes to mind. In such revelations, I hear comments like, "you have got to be kidding?" or "my worst fears have been confirmed," or "what am I going to tell my family?" So that I am not a totally depressant Christmas goat, since there are such things as good annunciations. Well, a few like, "you have just given birth to..." or another one I like, " you have just won..." I can say on a brighter, more cheery note, comments like, "you shouldn't have!" or " you know that I will always love you," or "you were right all along."



Whatever annunciations that you have reckoned with these days, remember the final words of the angel Gabriel to the troubled Mary, "For with God nothing will be impossible."

Emergence

Ok, so this past weekend I attended The Great Emergence conference held at St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis. I got there and it was like somebody turned a San Francisco coffee shop loose in a revival Anglo-gothic nave. I love St. Mary's architecture, yet it has an accessable and quaint sense like a doll house cathedral. The windows were glowing with heavy blue and red tones, people lounging in pews, sipping hot tea, munching on sweet rolls, noisy, messy, unfettered like cathedrals used to be. As Phyllis Tickle pointed out, who was the main attraction for the event, " In the day, cathedrals had no pews and did not have a seating arrangement. People were strewn everywhere like a town market awaiting the signal to pray."



This weekend did not fail to deliver. I was totally enamoured and challenged by newly ordained, "sarcastic Lutheran" Nadia Bolz Weber. Her gift of prose and uncanny ability to see the holy in our gritty culture drew me into the profanity of divine light. God, I have got to figure out how to get her to Holy Trinity. The talented and organizationally gifted Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt from Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis were conveners and emcees. The music was brought to us by the beautiful Celtic sounds of Stefan Walligur's works. There were angli-emergents, metho-emergents, plain emergents, and various curious denominational stripes represented. Clearly the conference convincingly identified that we are in the midst of another Reformation. It was weird that we were so self-aware of our time and movement. What seemed unclear was what exactly is "emergent"? From my view, I felt as if we were going through a convergence. Creeds, denominational peculiarities, recent cultural battles were melting away into a new consensus toward a new authority in the Church. From the middle ages we moved from sola ecclesia (church alone) to sola scriptura (scripture alone) and now we're headed for sola Deus (God alone) . "God alone" type of authority rests with a discerning community, much like the early church, pre-Constantine all over again. It made me think of the adolescence of our own Holy Trinity Church, how we moved from the gay bar to the storefront to the meeting house in sight of 15 years. I thought, in as much as Christendom seems to have a giant rummage sale every 500 years, I can see how Holy Trinity has shifted every 5 years. Our recent past five years of assimilation and validation seeking are coming to a close. The gifts of an emergent, queer affirming, warmly hospitable, musically eclectic, liturgically driven, diverse community based in the eucharist is already our past and is our future. We are a church from the get-go that is welcome to all, thoroughly messy and wildly unpredictable. Every Sunday we gather with words garnered from our experience, words given by our tradition and words broken over a table. We are an oddity in the United Church of Christ and a bastard to the Episcopal Church. The journey of Holy Trinity roams further into the great "rummage sale" of the church. Like we began back in 1990, we know that denominations will continue to submerge while the affinity in practice and belief will emerge. Once again, on a simply practical level, I see that the pews need to go and the coffee house needs to come back in. Liturgy matters. Beauty, metaphor, and fairy tales have their place in a binary world of ins and outs.



Gathered in the cathedral there we all were. When it came time for the body of Christ to divide up into it's distinctive parts like all conference meetings seem to do. There were no UCC emergents except us. And what exactly is an UCC emergent? More than likely the UCC would fall into a social justice category. Holy Trinity has some of that social justice stuff but that does not seem to be our center. Metho-emergents broke out in song singing, "blessed be the tie that binds." Presby-emergents planned for opportunities to influence their sessions. Emergents went and got another cup of coffee. Then, off we we went to join hands with the Angli-emergents and an affinity was confirmed. In unison, as we broke, we exclaimed, "Thanks be to God!"