Sermon: Hagar in the Wilderness

Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Hagar in the Wilderness,” on her blog, Sit and Eat.  It’s the third sermon in our series on Hagar.

Translations

by Adrienne Rich

Translations

by Adrienne Rich
December 25, 1972

You show me the poems of some woman
my age, or younger
translated from your language

Certain words occur: enemy, oven, sorrow
enough to let me know
she’s a woman of my time

obsessed

with Love, our subject:
we’ve trained it like ivy to our walls
baked it like bread in our ovens
worn it like lead on our ankles
watched it through binoculars as if
it were a helicopter
bringing food to our famine
or the satellite
of a hostile power

I begin to see that woman
doing things: stirring rice
ironing a skirt
typing a manuscript till dawn

trying to make a call
from a phonebooth

The phone rings endlessly
in a man’s bedroom
she hears him telling someone else
Never mind. She’ll get tired.
hears him telling her story to her sister

who becomes her enemy
and will in her own way
light her own way to sorrow

ignorant of the fact this way of grief
is shared, unnecessary
and political

-Read at St. Lydia’s on September 13, 2013

Song

by Adrienne Rich

Song

by Adrienne Rich

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns’ first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

–Read at St. Lydia’s on September 5th and 6th, 2013

Zach’s Sermon on Psalm 137

Zachary Walters, a Master of Divinity student at Union Seminary and an intern this year at St. Lydia’s, preached this sermon on Psalm 137 at Dinner Church on September 22.

That “Going-Back-Home” Feeling

We all know what it feels like to go back home.
To let out a deep breath,
and feel your whole brain relax.
After a long day of subways and sidewalks and carrying things and bumping people,
the air just feels a little better, a little calmer, when you get back home.
I feel it when I set foot into my parent’s house,
where I grew up,
and now, after seven years,
If I was out of town,
I start to feel it when I get closer to that
familiar New York skyline.

Nowadays, I feel it on Sunday evenings
when I first step into the Zen center.
I felt it as a child
in my grandmother’s house especially.

That’s where we spent most holidays, my family.
When we all got together we numbered more than twenty,
and every time, at least once, we would gather around the piano,
and my grandmother would plink out a couple of chords everyone knew.
“The Waters of Babylon” was one of them, a song based on this psalm.
Pretty soon she got everyone singing,
whether they knew the words or not.
My grandmother is just that kind of woman.

You can read the full text of Zach’s sermon here. 

Stephanie’s Sermon on Psalm 13

Stephanie Gannon, a Master of Divinity student at Union Seminary and a congregant at St. Lydia’s, delivered this sermon at St. Lydia’s on September 29 and 30, 2013. You can read the full text of her sermon on her blog, onefierceheart.

A few weeks ago, in the first session of a class I’m taking at Union on Aggression, the professor, Dr. Ann Ulanov, posed the questions, “Where is anger in your prayer life? What form does aggression take in your church’s liturgy?”  My response was, “Huh??  Like nowhere.  Aggression doesn’t (and shouldn’t!) exist in those places. My spiritual life is calm, gentle, and peaceful (just like me!).”  Raised Irish Catholic , I wasn’t taught to talk back to God. I was an obedient, good girl who didn’t even know that was possible.

*

Psalm 13 is a dialogue with God that’s direct and confrontational. When I chose this psalm, I was struck by the emphatic nature of the refrain, “How long?”   With every new repetition on those words in the opening lines of the psalmist’s lament, we hear and feel increasing urgency. Hey God, have you forgotten me? Why do you keep ignoring me?  How much longer must I endure this pain that seems to have no end? Yoohoo!! Are you listening??  The second verse—How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?— really sounds like the blues.

Psalm 13 is typical of the lament psalms in its form and tone. It taps deep into the currents of the Israelites’ suffering in the hands of their oppressors.  What’s it like to call out in pain but not feel heard, let alone responded to??  We might think of Job, who faces just this dilemma, this aggressive silence on God’s part. Of course God does reply to him, but refuses to answer his questions…

*

In the late spring and early summer of 1999, we learned that my dad was very sick. I rushed home to Maryland in late June from Heidelberg, Germany, where I was visiting my boyfriend and good friends.

I spent the next three weeks–his last–nursing him every day and helping my mother navigate the many phone calls and visitors. Taking care of him was hard work, and his situation was quickly deteriorating. Still we held out hope that the chemo would work. I did everything I could to make him comfortable—brought him his favorite donuts and crabcakes (none of which he could eat), set up the VCR with his favorite Westerns and Laurel & Hardy movies, rolled him over on his side to rub his back to help ease the pain his bed sores caused. He told me some stories about growing up on the Eastern Shore, and we laughed like old times whenever we could. Sadly I didn’t have the final heart-to-heart talk I’d wanted us to have. As I retell this, so many memories flood back…

You can read the full text of Stephanie’s sermon on her blog, onefierceheart.

Sermon: The Rape of Hagar

Read Emily’s first sermon, “The Rape of Hagar” in a four part series about Hagar on her blog, Sit and Eat.  “No one is an empty container.”

Joel’s Sermon on Psalm 22

Joel Avery, one of St. Lydia’s two interns this year, has just finished his first year in the M.Div. program at Yale Divinity School, and is in the ordination process in the United Church of Christ. He preached at St. Lydia’s on September 23, 2013; you can read the text of his sermon on his blog, A Burning Boat.

Sermon: On Longing

Read Emily’s latest sermon, “On Longing,” on her blog, Sit and Eat.  The text is Psalm 42.

Sermon: In the Presence of My Enemies

Emily’s latest sermon, In the Presence of My Enemies, is up on her blog.  The text is the much loved, much recited Psalm 23.

Dough for Dinner Church!

During the month of September, St. Lydia’s is inviting each and every one of you to help build St. Lydia’s.  Give a donation, and help us keep Dinner Churching every Sunday and Monday night.
This Fall, our goal is to raise $17,707.  That’s right, $17,707.  And every little bit helps.  The money you contribute, whether it’s $10 or $60 or $150 will keep bread on our table, juice in our glasses, and, oh yeah, pay our rent!  It takes a lotta dough to run a Dinner Church, and we need our donors to help make it possible.

If the vision of St. Lydia’s has captured you heart, stirred your imagination, or if you’ve found welcome and hospitality at our tables, please give.  We depend on the generosity of donors across the country and around the world to keep us doing what we do.

You can give easily by hitting the yellow “donate” button on the right side of your screen.  Or, if you’d like to set up an recurring donation, you can easily do so by contacting Rachel Pollak at rachel@stlydias.org