Gathering, welcoming, greeting, bringing food, sharing, eating, laughing, cleaning -- simple as it is, it can shine with the goodness that God is bringing into the world. And you never thought wolfing down biscuits and gravy could be a profound religious act!!

Last week I got word from the comedy club - Stand Up NY - that they will eventually begin hosting comedy classes on Sundays and so cannot rent to us long term. So there is no reason for us to worship there on March 14 as we had planned. In the coming weeks, we will continue to meet regularly on Sunday mornings for brunch and we will incorporate services of singing, praying, and reading Scripture. So if you have friends who might be interested in joining a community like ours, go ahead and invite them to jump in right now. It might be cozy, but God is doing some really interesting things among us.

We continue to search for a gathering space that will allow us to be in the same place week to week and to have enough room to grow. But I am also convinced that God is asking us to learn something very important during this period. God is leading us to be a community where all participate in leadership and no one is allowed to be a spectator. God is leading us to share our lives together in conversation, study, prayer and service. And God has empowered us to be a vibrant community of faith that is passionately committed to embodying God’s grace and mercy in our part of the city. To be blunt, we should move forward in ministry and be the people God has called us to be.

Here is what I want us to focus on right now during Lent -- How is Luke’s gospel shaping our hearts as we listen together to this challenging story? And what kinds of ministries, projects, and partnerships is God leading us into as we perform God’s good news together? Yes, we’re in a transition period. But no, we’re not “waiting” around.

First, we want to find the best facility space we can so we can gather on Sunday mornings. Second, we want to increase the number of leaders we have, so that ministry at Incarnation can be shared and collaborative. Third, we need each of you to continue reaching out to those you know and inviting them to join us. I can’t wait to begin meeting weekly for worship together -- the stability and rhythm of that will be good for all of us. Please pray that God will guide us and provide for us in this way.

At the gym this week, I told a friend of mine that we’re serving lunch this Sunday for homeless persons in our neighborhood. And I invited him to join us. He responded enthusiastically. This particular friend is not someone who would be interested in going to church. But he is a little bored with his life, and wants to find interesting stuff to do with new friends. Of course my friendship with him has nothing to do with whether he ever “comes to church.” But if he serves others with us several times, he might well become interested in why we’re deliberately choosing to live this way.

At Incarnation we want to foster a community of friends who are finding new ways to live together in light of God’s grace shown to us in Jesus Christ. We want to learn to forgive ourselves like God forgives us and live in the freedom that brings. We want to learn to be generous in a city that is sometimes selfish. We want to live in deep friendships in a city so ambitious it can be lonely. We want to live with hospitable hearts and lives in a city where it’s difficult to make space for others. And we want to live our lives open to the mystery of God’s love in a city that can often traffic in the petty and trivial.

What we’re really after is a growing Christian community passionate about making a meaningful contribution to this amazing city. The proposed Trump Soho “condo hotel” limits residents to spending 120 nights a year. Writer Daniel Brook sees the Trump Soho as “a monument to disengagement, built for people who flock to New York to possess it, not participate in it; to own a part of it, not ‘be a part of it’.” This is depressing. But I am inspired to be a part of a community that is fully engaged in the city, participating in its life and rhythms in the newness of God’s grace.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season that leads us toward Easter and a celebration of the raising of the crucified Jesus. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” is spoken as we are marked with ashes. The ritual is to remind us that life is finite, fragile, and glorious. To live as those who know they will die is a way of receiving ourselves as God’s beloved creatures who cannot keep themselves alive forever. It is a way of giving up the illusion that we are immortal. The truth of our mortality could be disorienting and disappointing. Yet when it is heard within the good news story of the Christian faith, it can infuse life with energy and joy. We can receive our limited, returning-to-dust lives as a gift. And we can live free from the anxiety of trying to manufacture meaning for ourselves.

The season of Lent is an invitation to change your basic life story line from one of “worry” to one of “joy” and “gratitude.” This is the new way of life that God makes available to all of us in Jesus Christ. This divine offer of newness is the driving passion behind Church of the Incarnation. We’re experimenting with a new story line and a new set of practices that enable us to live in the fullness of our humanity. And we want to invite others into that shared joy.

As most of you know, we are in a transition period. We left our Sunday evening worship space to find space to meet on Sunday mornings. Thank you for your patience, your trust, and your help during this time. Our goal in everything we do is to energize a growing congregation of curious, passionate, generous, creative people performing the good news in surprising ways here in the city. Whether we’re celebrating art, reading Luke, eating brunch, reading fiction, brewing beer or serving the homeless, we’re always looking to connect with others and invite them to join us in loving God for the good of the city. May there be more laughter and love in all we do.

Those of us alive in this particular cultural moment don’t have the luxury of a parochial vision. We know that we live in a globalized, connected world. It may have once been possible to imagine that Chinese factories had nothing to do with me. Or that my coffee drinking is divorced from those who grew and harvested the coffee beans. Or that my eating habits had little to do with fish populations and far away agricultural patterns. Or that my local bank had nothing to do with banks in Europe, Russia, and Dubai. But no longer. In terms of climate, commerce, agriculture, trade, transportation, and technology, we’re more connected to our fellow human beings than we ever have been.

Which could, I suppose, prompt us to think a little harder about all the ways that we the dying are connected to the already dead. Our faces, gestures, metabolisms, psychic health, and disease vulnerabilities are all ways in which our ancestors’ DNA are still with us. To broaden that picture a bit, the branching of the evolutionary tree connects us to yet more distant relatives. The recently dead are among us in memory of course (perhaps fewer than we think, and for a shorter time than we imagine). The longer gone are remembered only if their lives were remarkable, or recorded. Or if they left something that endures. The dead are among us in language, in poems and novels. Or visually, in sculpture or paintings. The dead are present to us in the architecture we inhabit. And in the layouts of our villages, towns, and cities. The traditions we live by, of course, are given us by the longer dead.

Oh yes, and the dead are with us in our cemeteries. Our dead are among us as those buried in the earth in the places where we live. Cemeteries have long been a public acknowledgment that whatever commonwealth we enjoy has come to us from those who lived, labored, and loved in this particular place. But this cemetery thing may be a trend nearing its end. Fewer people are being buried (the terrible expense, the burden on loved ones who have moved away to keep up the grave, the awkwardness of committing to one place, when one has been traveling around all one’s life, it just doesn’t make sense anymore). People in their twenties see cemeteries as “creepy” places. They probably don’t live anywhere near where their relatives are buried. If they do, they probably don’t “visit” the grave site like their parents, or at least their grandparents, used to do. What’s the point? Or, if they’re in business school, they may also see cemeteries in economic terms: a bad return on investment when you think about other ways this land could be developed.

We live in culture which encourages us to part with our dead. To tell them goodbye and to mean it. We consign the dead to oblivion, as those already on the way to being forgotten. Yet we’re troubled by this abandonment, this forgetting. Maybe that’s why so much of our film and literature gets its spark by portraying us as those haunted and hunted by the dead. Those ever popular zombie films are, one one level, our way of worrying about the continuing presence of the dead. The refusal of the dead to go away. The possibility that the “dead and gone” aren’t “gone” at all. The ghosts of the departed pick at this same sore of ours. Shakespeare’s use of King Hamlet’s ghost to get that story going and the continuing ghostly appearance of the father on HBO’s “Six Feet Under” can serve as examples here.

In the biblical tradition, those “saints” who have died in the Lord have not died in vain. They probably are forgotten. Yet they are not lost. They are not gone. They are among us, held in whatever “reality” they inhabit by the God who is among us. Could we the dying be among the dead, not reluctantly and with a cold shudder - but with gladness? Could we imagine the emergence of alternative practices - promoting remembering and honoring the dead? Can we imagine moving from the metaphor of haunting to that of hospitality?

1. A question about foundations - who wants to base their life on a story? Aren’t stories flimsy little things, much too fragile to be invested with any real weight? Those among us who are hungry for a life of meaning and purpose might be inclined to ask, “When are we going to quit playing around with ‘stories’ and ‘imagination’ and get down to arguments and evidence and truth and what to believe? Some will be disappointed to hear that there is no such thing as certainty on such matters. But in this disappointment there can be a new, more interesting beginning. I’m afraid “story” is all we have to offer one another - a story about a God who creates, sustains, loves, suffers, and renews. So the problem isn’t really about whether we can sign on to a list of beliefs or expectations about our moral performance. The issue is mystical: we listen to the telling of sacred stories and wait to see whether the secret mystery of love always present to us calls out in recognition and desire - ah, that’s it! That’s who I am. And that’s what I want.

2. A worry about freedom - I’m a unique individual called to live out and express myself in freedom. Won’t inhabiting a story alienate me, burden me with a role not my own, cut me off from my uniqueness? Doesn’t the biblical story promote a kind of conformity that can’t tolerate the radically plural forms in which we express ourselves? It can, and often has, of course. Yet much depends on what is meant by “freedom” and “expression.” If the question is whether self-expression as the ultimate goal of the good life is compatible with the Christian story, then the answer is clearly “no.” The way of life that emerges from the Christian story parts ways with much of what accompanies the current idolization of “expression”: Enlightenment individualism, cultural self-absorption, and the capitalist celebration of consumption as a form of expression. On the other hand, faith is, fundamentally, a freedom story - it invites us into its newly imagined freedom and inspires us to be more ourselves than ever. There are infinitely many ways to inhabit the richness of God’s story. At the same time it also questions our obsession with our own lives, and invites us to work for the freedom of all who are not-free.

3. A question about pluralism - aren’t there other powerful, redeeming, liberating stories? Yes. The point is not that Scripture is the only place to find God. Nor is the point that Christian communities are always in the position of teaching others - we have much to learn from other communities and traditions - both religious and nonreligious. Yet Christians confess that there isn’t any clearer manifestation of who God is than one finds in the gospel stories. These stories - this story - is unsurpassable. Anyone who has taken the time to read the sacred stories of the various religious traditions knows that they are not all “saying the same thing.” But there is no reason for Christians to doubt that much is true in other religions, even about God and God’s relation to us. Moreover, Christians have no reason to doubt that we can find God, goodness, truth, and beauty everywhere in nature and culture. What we need is to learn the skill of discerning when and where God is present. The only way I know of to do that is to join a community whose imagination is shaped by the unsurpassably powerful story of Jesus as told in the gospels.

4. A question about power - isn’t it true that many have made a naive appeal to the Scriptural story as a way of wielding power? Yes. Isn’t it true that these stories have been used to harm, to oppress? Have been misused and misunderstood in a thousand ways? Yes, and yes. What’s to guarantee that we won’t keep doing that to one another? Nothing guarantees it. That’s why we’re called to live together as a community and hold one another accountable for treating our stories as gift and not as weapon. The story of God’s coming among us isn’t magic. It doesn’t interpret itself miraculously so as to prohibit communities from distorting it. Thus, great modesty is called for: to cultivate the habit of listening for the voice of God. At bottom, it’s always dangerous to take an “I’m starting from scratch” approach to interpreting the story. Much better to listen not only to the story but also to the way this story has been told and heard throughout the centuries and around the world.

5. A question from those of us who don’t think of ourselves as “religious”: when we say that the goal of the spiritual life is to find our smaller stories within God’s larger story of grace - this makes all of life appear artificially religious, does it not? It makes it seem like the goal of life is to be religious. To be thinking about God all the time. Can’t we just be the ordinary, practical people we are most of the time? Isn’t it alright just to live each day concentrating on our work, enjoying our friends, pursuing our projects, and spending time with our families? Here we need to make a distinction. The appeal to organize our lives around God at the center is not an appeal to be “thinking” about that orientation all the time. (We love others but we’re not “thinking” about loving them all the time). Traditionally, Christian communities worship together once a week. This worship is an imaginative and embodied enactment of the biblical story. Here we celebrate God’s presence in our lives and focus on it in ways we don’t the rest of the week. The goal of worshiping God is to return us to our daily lives of work and rest, productivity and play, family and friendships, with a sense of joy and delight and gratitude.

It might have been Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers - a book that pulls the rug out from under the American myth of success. The standard story we tell about success - a level playing field, a democracy of opportunity, the hard work, rags to riches stories - all a finely tuned illusion. I finished the book and expected an Outliers-induced period of national lament. I thought we’d all be staggering to find our bearings.

My wife made me watch the last half of The Devil Wears Prada on cable, the sendup of Anna Wintour, editor at Vogue, written by one of her interns and then turned into a movie with Anne Hathaway as the intern. Meryl Streep, who plays the Wintour-figure to a poisonously villainous sharp point, says at one point, “everybody wants to be like us.” If the movie was meant to put into question that particular kind of ruthless, lonely success - I suppose it succeeded (and entertained me along the way). Apparently, you can’t “have it all.” It also makes me want to see the new documentary of Anna Wintour coming out soon.

And then there was Judd Apatow’s latest movie, Funny People. It’s a story about successful comedian George Simmons. His fame and fortune cuts him off from everything that normally makes life rich and rewarding and meaningful. The final quasi-redemptive scene - which has George caring enough about an up and coming comic to write jokes for him - is a tacked-on feel-good move that is a completely artificial failure of storytelling. Judd, please go back to being funny. The story line of Funny People is that standard Hollywood success is a Faustian bargain - you can have it but only at the price of selling everything else. (I have this weird feeling that Apatow was watching Jon and Kate Plus Eight with his wife, too.)

Which brings me to David Sedaris’ latest piece, “Laugh, Kookaburra,” in the New Yorker (Aug. 24, 2009). Besides being reminded of the strange gusto with which I sang this song in grade school - and then managed to not think about for twenty years - the piece was rewarding on several fronts. On American perceptions of Australia: “For an American, though, Australia seems pretty familiar: same wide streets, same office towers. It’s Canada in a thong . . .” On road kill that turned out to be a wallaby: “ . . . I was surprised by the shoddiness of its coat. It was as if you’d bred a rabbit with a mule.” On the town of Daylesford, a place with a main street that looked like the Old West, but with shops selling handmade soap, fudge, jams, and moisturizer: “If Dodge City had been founded and maintained by homosexuals, this is what it might have looked like.”

OK, I digress. Sedaris introduces us to his Australian friend Pat, and her four-burner success theory. Imagine a four-burner stove. (She’d heard this at a management seminar). “One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health, and the fourth is your work.” Sedaris continues: “The gist, she said, was that in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful you have to cut off two.”

I think we all agree about the real question this raises. Could I cut off all three other burners - my family, my friends, and my health - and be really, super-duper successful? You probably have to pay for the second level management seminar to find out for sure. I’m not sure what success looks like. But it may well involve not going to management seminars.

So for all who wish to cook up a successful life, just decide how many burners to cook with. Pity the fool who tries to keep all four burners going - family, friends, health, and work. You might turn out to be a decent human being that way. But you’ll never be successful.

One of my teachers at Yale, Miroslav Volf, frequently reminded us that the subject matter of faith and theology is “absolutely everything in its relation to God.” Everything. I like that. The scope of interest for the theologian - and for the Christian - is unbounded. The sphere of things about which Christians are curious is unlimited. As a theologian and a pastor - I am charged with paying attention to everything in its God-relatedness.

This is the opposite of viewing theology and faith as concerned with the artificially narrow slice of life thought of as “religious” or “spiritual” by many North Americans. Rather, physics and politics, history and software, education and technology, trends and traditions, literature and language, international trade and parenting, health care, poverty, addiction, urban planning, journalism, financial markets - all the blooming, buzzing aliveness of God’s world is fodder for the theologian. If the theologian also happens to be a pastor - as I am - then paying attention to God in our lives and in our relations to others also makes a claim for significant attention.

If God is actively at work creating, redeeming, and bringing all things to completion as the Christian faith claims, then it should at least be possible to suggest that all things share in mystery. All of reality is a kind of sacrament that participates in grace, even if you have to squint to see it.

You should be thinking: “But Jared, you’re not an economist, nor a business person, nor an engineer, nor an artist, nor an urban planner, nor a medical doctor - why would you be weighing in on such diverse matters?” Good question. I’ll only be weighing in on how such spheres of life might be oriented to God. As Nicholas Wolterstorff has argued in a little book called A Passion for God’s Reign, it is actually the economists, business people, engineers, artists, urban planners, and physicians who are called to do the heavy lifting here. The question, for example, of how urban public space might glorify God is not a question for theologians so much as it is for urban planners. So I make no pretension to expertise in any particular field, just a ravenous curiosity about how all of reality in its complex interaction and mysterious depth shines with the goodness of the God who is actively renewing the whole thing.

Another church in the neighborhood was hosting a conversation about “intentional communities” after their morning services. I had it on my calendar for weeks, but when Sunday came, I had a thousand last minute details to cover. So I went back and forth on whether I could “afford” to go. But I had the strange sense come over me that this little decision was significant - that all of life is about whether to nervously constrict our vision and lives, or whether to open ourselves into the mystery of God’s newness.

About twenty of us stopped in a Subway for sandwiches and then gathered on the grass by a rock in Central Park. We listened to the stories of three different groups living in community. One house in central Harlem was home to a group of about sixteen. Another group of four undergraduate women, all students at NYU, live on a gang-controlled block in the South Bronx. Another group of eight young working women live in a house in East (Spanish) Harlem, along with a young woman from the neighborhood who needs a safe place to stay.

All the groups share the tasks and joys of living together. All the groups meet regularly for prayer and study. They all eat common meals together as often as they can. Some of them have a common bank account. Some of them pay rent scaled to their earnings, so that those with high paying jobs pay the bulk of the rent. All of them decided that God’s call on their lives involved moving to an at risk neighborhood and simply being present.

A couple of highlights of the many things said that have stuck with me. One man - a devout Christian - talked about being invited to spend time at a Buddhist monastery. When the Buddhist monks asked him to share his story, he began talking about his Christian faith, and mostly about what he believes. “No, no,” they said. “We’re not interested in what you believe. We want to know how you live. What do you do? How are you different?”

Someone asked about safety. “You all live in really dangerous places. How do you manage the risk and danger of living there?” Their responses were jarringly matter of fact. None tried to act like what they were doing wasn’t dangerous. All simply said Jesus lived this way and calls us to live among the poor. All said the only coping mechanism is to completely trust God. And all admitted that an early death is a real possibility for them.

I left inspired, so incredibly glad I went. I got to our first service on time, but I didn’t get everything done I wanted to get done. But that’s ok. I want to lead a new Christian community where we’re asking more of each other than just “believing” a few things. We hope to find ways to live differently.

There is a wonderful neighborhood center that operates in concert with our friends at Saint Matthew's and Saint Timothy's Church on W. 84th.  Both during the day and after school, the place is abuzz with kids in a wide variety of well run programs.  A group of us asked how we could help - and SMST suggested that it would help if we could clean their kitchen and clean downstairs in the storage and gymnasium area.  We had fun cleaning together and were happy to contribute to the great work done by SMST and the neighborhood center.

Last weekend we had a group of eighteen who volunteered to spend a wet Saturday morning working at Riverside Park.  A big thanks to the City Parks Department for organizing the day.  A bigger thanks to Bonnie Joseph who tends to a two block stretch along Riverside from 89th to 91st Street.  Bonnie works in this little patch of park every weekend.  And she did a great job organizing the rest of us.  

Most there were interested in the project, wanted to know more, and are willing to help.  One friend of mine came who has zero interest in practicing the Christian faith, but likes what we're doing and wants to help however she can.  (I thought that was pretty cool of her).  

We talked a little about Incarnation's vision of helping people live well in the city.  And we talked some about how to start shaping that kind of community as we gather through the summer.  All agreed that informal gatherings on weeknights held both on the UWS and downtown at the Salmagundi Club will be a fun way to get to know one another.  

I listened more than I talked, and was inspired by the kinds of interests that emerged during our conversation.