Rumi

Pastoral leadership for the 21st century: break the rules

A sermon exploring the kind of pastoral leadership the church needs for the 21st century. Risky. Daring. Egalitarian. And able to help disentangle us from the patriarchy that's held us captive for too long.

This was preaching on a live Zoom service upon the ordination of the Rev. Sara Tillema, Minister of Word and Sacrament.

1.

Sara, today we’re celebrating your tenacity and the patience that have helped bring your journey to his moment. Today, we’re ritualizing the beginning of a new journey as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, serving not only the part of the Christian tribe we call the Presbyterians, but also the much larger “holy catholic church.”

When I say we’re ordaining you as Minister of Word and Sacrament for the “holy catholic church,” I mean catholic, small “c”—the universal or cosmic church, not identified one with a particular religious brand or sect or communion. God’s church is bigger than that. For the whole world, the universe itself, is God’s cathedral, and every star and every sea anemone, every bee and every butte, every river and every redwood, every poem and every person is part of this grand mystery called the church. What we do religiously is just a way to awaken us as human beings to the truth that God is in fact in everything and is contained by no one thing, denomination, or religious tradition. . . .

The texts were John 2.1-11 and "Summer's Day" by Mary Oliver. And a performance of The New Rule by the 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi.

How to break free from the madness

My wife, Patty, and I are just back from a week along California's Big Sur coastline, one of the most astonishingly beautiful places on earth.  Just type Big Sur images into your web browser and see what I mean.  

Nature is God's art and it nourishes something deep within us.

Today I stumbled on a piece by Daniel Ladinsky who's spent his life writing contemporary renderings of the ancient mystic poets.  Here's what Ladinsky says about nature; his description gets at what I feel when I am drawn into the vast, Divine canvas: 

"Nature and art are sacred breasts we can feed on to grow. They are vital to our evolution. They offer a jailbreak or leave from the madness and demands we can get caught in. Of course love does that, too. Love dissolves boundaries and ultimately removes any contour that is not luminous." 

For more on the nature of nature and art and love, and especially poetry, see Ladinsky's full blog post on Huffpost here. 

Go there, because if you can't get to the Big Sur coastline or any other place of extreme beauty, you can pick up a poem and it might carry you into ecstasy.  (And Ladinsky's got a couple great poems in his essay, especially the spiritually flirtatious poem by Rumi, The Body is Like Mary).