work | Michael Valliant

Are You the One Who Is to Come?

Lead in: I am in my second year in seminary through the Iona Eastern Shore program, which allows our cohort to continue working while we are in seminary. December 10-11 was a preaching weekend for me at Christ Church Easton. This is the text of the sermon I gave.

Churches/denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary have prescribed readings for each day and Gospel readings for each Sunday. So we don’t get to pick what Gospel we preach on.

The Gospel reading for December 11 was Matthew 11:2-11, where John the Baptist sends followers to ask Jesus if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another? And Jesus’s answer.

“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

That’s the question we’re going to kick around, the one John has his disciples ask Jesus.

John the Baptist didn’t care what other people thought. He wore strange clothes, ate strange food, blasted the religious people, and attended to business in the wilderness. And he was faithful—he did what he was called to do and he had crowds following him.

And as he was called to do, he pointed to Jesus as the one who was to come—the one he wasn’t fit to carry the sandals of.

John is in the New Testament Hall of Fame—each of the four Gospels has him playing a pivotal role in helping Jesus launch his ministry. And it was John the Baptist’s death that marked the beginning of Jesus’s time teaching and healing and moving toward his death and resurrection.

And this same John, while in prison, sends a question to Jesus: are you the guy or are we supposed to wait for someone else?

Brutal, right? Disheartening. Not exactly a vote of confidence from your friend and mentor.

Let’s think about it from John’s perspective: he’s in prison. He will end up beheaded. The Jewish people’s position hasn’t been improved.

The Jewish people had this idea that the Messiah—the anointed one—will arrive on the scene, hand out justice, military-style, free Israel, put them back on top in power, and they will all be vindicated with a great, big victory to show the world they were right.

That’s what they’re waiting for. Hey Jesus, are you this guy? Or are we waiting for someone else?

Notice how Jesus answers him: he doesn’t say, “Yes, I’m the guy.”

He tells John’s disciples to “Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus points to his actions as his answer.

Is Jesus the one who was and is to come? Yes. He was showing it then and we’ve seen the movement that has swept around the world in the 2,000-plus years since. But he wasn’t doing what John, or what the Jewish people, or what the world expected.

I wonder if that is still the case. If we are still largely missing what Jesus was doing and what he came to do.

How many people have heard some form of the expression, “Wait til your father gets home…” Or, “when your father gets home…” That’s not really meant as a good thing, right? It’s more along the lines of—here come the consequences of your actions.

Think about that over the course of Biblical history, especially for those who have been singled out, chosen as examples, held up by God as those to look to. We see a lot of, “Wait til the Messiah gets here. Then you’re gonna get it. Then you’ll be sorry.”

Today it isn’t hard to look around and see people doing a lot of the same posturing: look at how you’re acting; look at what a terrible place the world is becoming. Wait til God gets here. Wait til Jesus comes back. Then you’re going to get it.

Don’t make God angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

God is not the Incredible Hulk. He didn’t give us free will and the capacity to love—he didn’t fill us with wonder and awe and compassion, just to smash us when we mess up or get things wrong.

God wants us to change. He wants to help us. He has bigger and better ideas in mind.

If God is Love, what does a big military victory and putting those who were oppressed on top of their oppressors—what does that do to further love in the world? What does that do to further the work that we know Jesus came to do? How does that put things back right?

We have this idea of righteousness, on our terms, not on God’s terms.

Jesus was working out righteousness and salvation in accordance with the will of his Father. Before he gets to his death and resurrection, he is giving us a model for how we can do the same.

ARE YOU THE ONE OR ARE WE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE ELSE?

“Go and tell John what you hear and see:

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
Those with a skin disease are cleansed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them”

We are not Jesus. We can’t perform the miracles that we read about him doing throughout the Gospels. But those are things that God is calling righteous, that God is saying are in synch with His will.

If we want to know who God is and how he wants us to act, we need to look at Jesus.

And Jesus doesn’t want us to throw up our hands and say we’re not you, we can’t do it. He makes it clear that he gives us the Holy Spirit so we can continue the work that he began.

How much of our energy, how much of our attention, how much of our creativity, how much of our resources are being put towards this kind of work?

Who are we waiting for? Who will we follow?

I wonder how we would feel if we reframed John’s question for Jesus and pointed the finger at ourselves:

Are WE the ones Jesus has asked to continue his work or is He to wait for someone else?

That question should make us look in the mirror.

Here’s the thing about John: this isn’t a knock on him at all. He did his job well. He lived his life the right way and he spread the message he was given.

When Jesus starts to speak to the crowds he says John is a prophet and more than a prophet.

“To those born of women, no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist… He is the one about whom it is written:

‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
Who will prepare the way before you.’

What was John’s message? REPENT. TURN AROUND.

Don’t get caught up in all the things the world is throwing at us and telling us are important. Playing it forward: don’t make violence the answer. Don’t make hate the way we live.

To a people who have lost their way, to a people who are in a spiritual wilderness, John is saying to stop. Don’t keep doing the same things. Turn around. Be different. The kingdom of heaven is near.

It’s not too late to change.

Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 4, after Jesus is baptized by John and then tested/formed in his own wilderness experience, Jesus hears that John was arrested. And as he begins his ministry, the message that Jesus proclaims is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

They were both telling the people, and us, the same thing. The difference is that Jesus was bringing the kingdom with him. He knew the work he needed to do to help bring it about. And he showed us the work we need to do to keep it going.

John was TELLING us to live differently, Jesus was SHOWING us how to live.

Think about the list of things that Jesus wanted John to know about. What do they all have in common?

Jesus cared for others. He healed, he fed, he taught, he brought good news. That was how he was working to bring the kingdom of heaven near.

When we care for others, we are continuing Jesus’s work.

Marsha Allen, whose been a part of our Tuesday Bible study for years always asks one of the best questions: What am I supposed to do with all this? How am I supposed to live?

So let’s ask ourselves that question: what would that look like to continue Jesus’s work here in our community?

In 2009, what we now know as the Talbot Interfaith Shelter began as a temporary shelter in our Parish Hall. It would be at Christ Church for a period of time and then it would move to another location and this continued until 2014 when they opened their first and current location at Easton’s Promise. Today they have two facilities, and their program for helping their residents’ get back on their feet is called the S4 Program—shelter, stability, support, success. They don’t just give people shelter, they help them get back their lives back—they give them hope.

A number of years ago, volunteering at the shelter one evening at just this time of year, I met a father and son there—the son was in elementary school. Their wife/mother died from cancer, but not before medical expenses they couldn’t keep up with left them homeless.

I can remember everyone had gone upstairs to bed and a few minutes later the boy came back down the stairs and was standing in the living room staring at the Christmas Tree. When we asked if we was okay, if he needed anything, he said, “No, I just like looking at the tree.”

His dad gave an incredible testimonial about how the shelter helped them, how much being there meant to them. Executive Director Julie Lowe and her team BRING GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.

CarePacks of Talbot County began when Emily Moody, who was a social worker at Easton Elementary, noticed how many kids were going home on the weekends without healthy food to eat. She and Megan Cook began an effort that is now at place in every school in Talbot County, where packages of food are sent home every weekend to make sure the kids who depend on free breakfast and lunch at school can eat on the weekends. And once a month on the fourth Friday, people can go to CarePacks to pick up food for whole families. This kind of program is also in place in Caroline County and it being put in place throughout the Eastern Shore. THE HUNGRY ARE BEING FED.

Global Vision 2020 is an international non-profit organization, founded here in Easton by Kevin White. They go around the world, diagnose sight problems, and are able give glasses, on the spot, to people in the poorest countries. There are people who literally can’t see and that’s how they experience life. And with inexpensive glasses given to them then and there, their lives are changed.

When our Mission Trip goes to Peru next summer, helping give people sight through Global Vision will be among the work that Kelsey Spiker and the team will be doing. THE BLIND ARE RECEIVING SIGHT.

None of these things are miracles in the sense that we see in Scripture. But each of these organizations are very clearly continuing the work that Jesus started and gave us as a model of working toward the kingdom of heaven.

The reason I mention these particular groups is: not only are they all local, they were all begun by people who were parishioners here at Christ Church. And they have all received either outreach funding and/or volunteer support from the church over the years.

There are so many more examples in our community, all around us, which many of you support and volunteer for, and that need your help.

This is a time of year when people get stressed. Heating and electric bills go up, it’s colder outside for those without a place to stay; in many cases, parents just want to give their kids a good Christmas, but they are stretched too far. The Advent Angel gifts around the altar are another example of ways to help people in the community who are in need.

Here’s the thing though. In just the last 20 years at Christ Church, many new ministries have been started and borne fruit, and they have made a difference in people’s lives.

We don’t know what the next ministries are going to be looking out five, 10, 20 years. But recent history says that they will come from YOU—the vision, the work, the love, the hope will be raised up from people sitting right here who are open to the work of the Holy Spirit and who seek to follow and continue the work that Jesus began.

Advent is a season where we wait with hope. Where we listen for how we can help. Where we see and tell people about the work Jesus was doing, the work he gave as an answer to John.

The blind receive their sight
The lame walk
The sick are healed
The deaf hear
The dead are raised
The poor have good news brought to them

Think about those things. Think about caring for others. And at the end of the service when we say together “and now send us out to do the work you have given us to do,” let these words sink in and mean something.

This is the season where we say,

with our hearts
and our minds
and our actions

that Jesus was and is the one to come, and the one we give our lives to follow.

AMEN.

What we do with our lives

Let’s begin with intention. This is a blessing/prayer shared by Rev. Susie Leight:

Been praying this on repeat for the last few weeks…trying to utter it before my feet hit the floor (if I’m awake enough) …thought it would be a good one to share again…

May I…may you…may we…

May I live this day
Compassionate of heart,
Clear in word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love.

–from Matins, by John O’Donohue

What we do with our time, how we spend our days, months, years, lives is who we are to those we encounter. Our inward lives of thoughts, dreams, desires, may be infinite, but our worldly lives are the result of our time and actions.

Part Four of John O’Donohue’s book “Anam Cara,” looks at “Work as a Poetics of Growth.” The work that we do in the world helps shape us, helps us grow.

Thinking about this chapter, two quotes that come up a lot for me came to mind. The first is by writer Annie Dillard, who said:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

And the second is by poet Mary Oliver, who wrote:

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one precious life?”

How we use our time matters. It is so easy to let one day run into the next without thinking about it, but when these days string together, they can become large stretches of our lives if we don’t pay attention.

O’Donohue writes:

“Everything alive is in movement. This movement we call growth. The most exciting form of growth is not mere physical growth but the inner growth of one’s soul and life. It is here that the holy longing within the heart brings one’s life into motion. The deepest wish of the heart is that this motion does not remain broken or jagged but develops sufficient fluency to become the rhythm of one’s life.”

In the preceding chapters, he has taken us through our senses, our interior lives, our solitude, and now he is pointing out that these interior lives, our thoughts, dreams, and gifts, want to be brought into motion in our outward lives. It’s not enough to have them swirling around within us, we have to find a way to give them expression.

This is our work.

But in our society, there is a bit of a rub. Let’s think about what happens when we meet someone. We say ‘Hello, how are you?’, we make some small talk, and often the next question is ‘What do you do?’ Generally speaking we mean, what do you do for a living, what is your job?

If you feel like your job is a good reflection of your life, or points in the direction of who you are, then that is great. But if you don’t, how much better do we know someone, or do they know us by knowing what job we do?

Maybe you work construction, but your passion is being on the water fishing. Maybe you work an office job, but the thing you most look forward to is tutoring or coaching kids. Maybe you are a server, but you get home and paint or write or garden or have some way to express your creativity.

Our work is bigger than our day or night jobs. O’Donohue writes about a gravestone in London:

“Here lies Jeremy Brown born a man and died a grocer.” Often people’s identities, that wild inner complexity of soul and color of spirit, become shrunken to their work identities.”

This takes nothing away from our work identities, which can be life affirming. If people think of your kindness, your smile, your creativity and talent and know you as a teacher, a landscaper, a bartender, a boat builder, a painter, then that is a wonderful thing. But we are more than our professions–we are also sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends, partners, etc.

Part of the problem, O’Donohue poses, is that we get stuck looking at life, jobs, the world around us in one particular way and that can become limiting. He suggests that we visualize the mind as a tower of windows that we are looking out.

“Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn, and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that greet your gaze. Through these different windows, you see new vistas of possibility, presence, and creativity.”

In the last chapter we discussed that how we look at things determines what we see, what we find. In that same way, looking at things, including our work and our lives, in different ways can be so important.

Each day brings us new opportunities.

I recently got to be the grunt labor, branch-hauler for a tree expert friend who helped me cut up a downed branch that reached over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Listening to him talk about his love for trees and hearing his knowledge, then watching him work chainsaws and pole-saws like an artist, I knew I was watching someone do the thing they were created to do. It was a joyful and awe-inspiring experience. I’ve felt the same thing when I was a line cook watching an incredible chef do what they do. I’ve seen it in gardeners, teachers, preachers, and watermen. I’ve experienced it being around parents and grandparents, around birdwatchers, and skateboarders. I’ve seen it in a friend listening intently to someone sharing something that was big for them.

When we witness or experience those moments of calling, meaning, and connection, time moves differently.

Do we make time to do the things we love? Do we find ways to express our inner-longings in our daily lives? If we don’t, what will our lives become?

“In order to feel real. we need to bring that inner invisible world to expression.”

We want to seen, known, valued for who we are. In order for people to know us in that way, we have to find a way to express who we are in our lives. If we aren’t doing that, people can’t know us and we can feel frustrated that we aren’t finding a way to express ourselves. It can’t stay inside us. O’Donohue points out that if we want to change our lives, until it enters the practices of our days, it is all talk.

Work is maybe a misleading word here. O’Donohue also talks about the danger of productivity becoming God, which reduces each individual to a function. He talks about needing to think less about competition and more about working together. And he talks about the danger of reducing time to an achievement, when time should also be for wonder and creativity.

On Monday (August 15), the same day our class met, Frederick Buechner died at 96 years old. Buechner has been one of the most influential writers, thinkers, and theologians in my own spiritual growth. And he has written a lot about vocation. Vocation might be a more complete word to use here instead of work. Buechner has called vocation, “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

That says so much, but Buechner explained a bit more. He points out that vocation as a word comes from:

“Vocare, to call, of course, and a person’s vocation is a person’s calling. It is the work that they are called to in this world, the thing they are summoned to spend their life doing. We can speak of a person choosing their vocation, but perhaps it is at least as accurate to speak of a vocation’s choosing a person, of a call’s being given and a person hearing it, or not hearing it. And maybe that is the place to start: the business of listening and hearing. A person’s life is full of all sorts of voices calling them in all sorts of directions. Some of them are voices from inside and some of them are voices from outside. The more alive and alert we are, the more clamorous our lives are. Which do we listen to? What kind of voice do we listen for?

Vocation. Listening and hearing. Where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.

Our friend and brother Bruce Richards recently died. He spent his professional career as a pilot–in the Air Force during Vietnam, then as a commercial pilot. He was retired when he moved to Easton; he came to Christ Church Easton to buy a crab cake during the Waterfowl Festival and for the next 18 years helped create a new caregiving ministry, took Communion to nursing homes, and was an inspiration and loving friend to everyone he encountered. He was living out a vocation.

Bruce worked closely with Carol Callaghan, who was a mentor to him and to so many people. Carol was a school teacher who found and felt a calling to ordination later in her life and became the first woman ordained as a Deacon at Christ Church Easton. Carol paved the way for Rev. Barbara Coleman, Rev. Susie Leight, and those of us who are now discerning and following a path that may lead to that same place.

Like Bruce and Carol, may we all find a calling, a vocation that speaks to our inner longing; that connects us to God; and that inspires and encourages others to live lives of love, creativity, and service.

Let’s close with O’Donohue’s blessing at the end of the chapter:

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected.
May your soul calm, console, and renew you.

Amen.

On Vocation Part II: Closer to the Heart

My path seems spiral-shaped sometimes. I come back to a familiar place or thought, but things are different. It’s like further unearthing something, brushing dirt away to reveal more of the picture or map.

When I graduated Washington College in 1998, I was set to go to graduate school with the goal of teaching philosophy and religion. Ultimately graduate school debt didn’t make sense and there was something to staying in this community that stuck. That fall I started working at the Academy Art Museum, overseeing public relations, marketing, and development. Almost 20 years later, my career and spiritual paths combine, right across the street from the Academy: on October 16, I will start working full-time at Christ Church Easton as Assistant for Adult Christian Education & Newcomers Ministry.

I’ve been working at Christ Church part-time since last November, listening to a calling to work with small groups and adult education. I go back to Frederick Buechner’s thought that, “the place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I knew right away that working with the church was the first time that my vocation lined up with the big questions that I’ve always asked, the things I wonder about, and how I want to spend my time.

I am humbled by and grateful for this opportunity. This summer I told friends that if I won the lottery, I’d focus more on working for the church, continuing my own education, and writing. This fall it seems I’ve won the lottery.

Since February 2015, I’ve had the privilege of being the Executive Director of the Oxford Community Center, in the town where I grew up. I don’t have the words to say how much that experience has meant to me and what an incredible time it has been developing programs and events and welcoming and building the community at OCC. It has given me back a town I had lost touch with and one I am excited to call home again.

There have been a few moments in my life where/when things have lined up and I have known in my heart and in my bones what I was supposed to do. To this point in my working life, I’ve had jobs that I’ve enjoyed, but not that called me from the deepest level. I’ve felt this calling time and time again–from studying and wanting to teach philosophy and religion; to wanting to go back to school for Christian theology in 2014; to last year, putting my hopes and intentions out into the world, which led me to the small groups position at Christ Church.

I’ve reached a place and time in life that feels like a new beginning. It’s a beginning that is the culmination of everything that’s happened up to this point: work, fatherhood, friendships, connections, questions, faith, joy, struggle, community, opportunity, study, passion, prayer.

In his book, “Desire,” John Eldredge spells out:

“To live life fully–that is to say, to live life as God meant for us to live–demands a full recovery of our heart. You need that wellspring flowing swift and clear and true… The adventure calls. The future awaits. How you handle your heart’s desire will in great measure determine what becomes of your life.”

To be a part of a community of faith. To help each other in our own walks, with our own questions. To study, to learn, to share, to write. To have the opportunity to follow a calling in vocation. To live life closer to the heart. To listen, to discern God’s will and find deep happiness in His Way and Word.

Those are things that get me out of bed in the morning, things that stir my heart watching the sunrise. They are thoughts and images that dance through my mind when I am running, skateboarding, hiking, reading, or paddleboarding.

It’s a coming together of life and experience to this point, my part and passion in God’s larger work and will. It’s coming to know God’s grace and love as lived out and given to and for us through Jesus Christ.

Here I am. I am grateful, humbled, excited, and so many other things.

Amen.

On Vocation: Five Golden Things

“It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure,” was an ad slogan the U.S. Navy used in the late 1970s and early 80s. It must be pretty good since it still sticks in my head. What if we could go through life like that? What if we felt that way about our jobs? Our lives?

Not all jobs feel that way. But for the life adventure attitude, we’ve got to dig deeper than just a job and look at vocation.

A man knows he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live, and begins to live. – Thomas Merton

I don’t claim to be in that space Merton describes, but I am getting closer, and I am getting a pretty good lay of the land for what that looks like. For our purposes here, let’s think of vocation as a hand; as the work we do in the world with our lives. Our hand, like most hands, has five fingers. The fingers are all part of the hand, and the hand is made up of the interconnecting fingers. You can’t separate them from each other, they are all part of the same thing/work/life/vocation.

Disclaimer: I am a work in progress and things change and evolve over time. In describing these things, I am putting words towards things I have found in life to this point to be the things that seem to make up aspects of vocation/calling. Check back frequently.

1. Fatherhood. This is the one role in life I am least prepared for, it takes improvisation, winging it, frustration, questions, blood, sweat, and tears. And it’s the role that means the most, rewards the most, defines the most. Nothing else I do, or could ever do, compares to it.

2. Writing/Reading/Learning. This has been a part of me, a defining part for 30 years or more and counting. From the notebook in my back pocket, to grabbing a book with coffee in the morning, it is a part of me that never turns off. For the past six months, Tidewater Times has been a great outlet for me to write about everything from nature to history to incredible people and cool goings-on in our community. I hope to make this more and more a part of my life over time.

3. Being outside. I feel most alive outside, in nature. I can be running (preferably trails), walking the dog, hiking, paddleboarding, kayaking, bird watching, skateboarding, but being outside is where my soul feels both most alive and most at peace. Recognizing that and making sure to recharge that way and make the time for it is a daily practice.

4. Building/connecting community. It’s not a coincidence that when I was at a major crossroads in life and career, it was the Oxford Community Center that needed a director. When I think about my family being in the area since the 1600s; the evolution and changes in the town and the community; the players and personalities that have helped shape this place in the past and during my lifetime, it seems like a place I am supposed to be, involved in work that I am supposed to be a part of. I can look around and see and feel a connection to the town and the Eastern Shore in ways I have never seen or felt anywhere else. I’ll just leave it at that for now.

5. Spirituality. I saved this for last for a reason. This is where the change has been taking place and the reason for my reflection on vocation and for this post. I have been a lifelong spiritual seeker. My path has taken me in wonderful, rich, and unexpected directions at just about every step of the way. Over the past year and a half especially, that direction has revealed itself more through a deepening relationship with God, through Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the love that flows through the Trinity, through our hearts (my heart), and into the world. I’ve never felt anything like it, and how could I have?

It’s when I have let go and allowed God to work that I have felt most free, most driven, and the most connected. On an October Friday, I put a gameplan out into the Universe, which I have no other way to describe then that I just knew those things were what I was supposed to be doing. The three parts of the plan are: 1) writing/sharing, 2) learning and studying, and 3) helping to create a community of Christian small group study. That Sunday, Father Bill Ortt stood in front of the Christ Church Easton congregation and said that they were looking for someone to lead small groups. He said you don’t need any experience, he had more than 30 years worth and that he would look to help train/mentor the right person.

That began a conversation that has helped reveal a calling (of sorts) and that has turned into a part-time job as Assistant for Small Groups and Christian Education with Christ Church Easton.

Vocation is the big picture. It is doing the work that you feel called, charged, fulfilled to do. It isn’t necessarily connected to a job, but it can be, and when it is, then you know you are doing the work you should be doing.

As God has revealed life and vocation to me, and helped me see what those things are that charge me and that I can give back, I have Frederick Buechner’s words in my head a good bit, “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I don’t know about the world, so I’ll start with myself, my family, our community. And we’ll see where it goes.