5 Pentecost ~ Proper 6 : Time and Again

June 15, 2008

The Ven. Richard I Cluett

Genesis 18:1-15 + Matthew 9:35-10:8

“History is not a straight line going from the beginning to the end, it loops and swirls eventually finding its way back to places it’s been before.” So it has been thought, written, and spoken aloud.

The proof is in today’s gospel reading. Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Tell me that is not a description of the crowds in our own day and time. Can you tell me that people are not harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd? Tell me that we are not, as a people, milling around, going to and fro, seeking here and seeking there for someone who will show us the way out of this difficult time we are in, someone who will provide answers to ALL the problems of the day. Tell me people are not weighted down by the cares and demands of daily life. Tell me job loss and a shrinking job market, decline in housing value, increase in food prices and decrease in food safety, rising gasoline and all energy prices do not rule the daily concerns of the people, to say nothing of ruling of the news media.

Can you tell me people are not harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd? I don’t think so, unless you point to the few who are privileged in the security of their wealth and position.

But I don’t think people are seeking a shepherd. I think people are seeking here, there, and everywhere for a Savior, for someone who will say, “it ain’t so.” Someone who will make it all right. Some-one who will take care of it for us and in the doing will take care of us as well. Think back over the comments and the discussions and the hopes that have surfaced during this political primary season. Who will save us? Do we really expect anyone to save us?

I have learned in my years – all my years – that when stress gets high enough, when the demands of living get hard enough, when the details of life become just tough enough, the ability to see options shrinks dramatically and exponentially.

So we feel distressed in ill-defined ways. We are besieged by anxiety, stress, and fatigue. Our relationships suffer. We have unexplained aches and pains. The flood of daily events seems beyond our control.

Our increasing inability to manage, much less control our lives causes a resulting decrease in our ability to cope, our ability to see options, our ability to plan a future, our ability to see possibilities, our ability to expect something other or better – in other words a decrease in our ability to hope, whether we be a person, a nation or an entire world.

A hard life will do that to you; limit possibilities, vision, and hope for a better future. That sounds like what was going on, too, for Abraham and Sarah. Life’s been hard, that original promise from God to be the beginning of a limitless future for them and their offspring.

“… the word of the Lord came to Abram, He brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness… On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…” Genesis 15

But that was a long time ago and now here they sit, in a tent, in the desert, old and childless. Seemingly out of time, out of possibilities, out of hope – just sitting, surviving, waiting to see what will happen to them next – and they know it won’t be good.

Three travelers come, in need of hospitality and refreshment, which they provide. “Then one says, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. So Sarah laughed…”

Sarah laughed.

Apparently she laughed loudly enough and long enough to be heard. Maybe it was like that Hillary Clinton laugh that the media has enjoyed hearing and lampooning. A loud, hearty, even harsh laugh. In Sarah’s case, at least, she laughed out of disbelief that some-thing so preposterous, so outrageous, so good could finally be hers, could finally be theirs. “Yeah, Right!”

The very idea that God could, that God would… Ridiculous! Unbelievable!

And even here in the gospel, Jesus telling his disciples, “Proclaim the good news… cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”

The very idea! Is that your experience of your discipleship? Is that your expectation – that God could, God would? Is that what you expect from a disciple?

When I was your interim dean, I would get home at the end of a day and Patricia would ask, “How was your day, honey?” And I would say, “Oh, you know, the usual: Proclaimed the good news, cured the sick, raised the dead, cast our two demons. How about you?” And then we would laugh.

Have we so limited our vision; have we so diminished the possibility of the presence and the power of God in life, and in our own lives? Have we have so circumscribed God with the limitations of our own view of what is possible and probable in this world, in this life? I wonder if it is possible at all for us to see God’s hand at work in the world about us, or in ourselves, or even through us on behalf of others.

The Word, with a capital W, which scripture has for us today is that there is reason to hope and reason to expect.

Even if we “see through a glass darkly” at St. Paul puts it, God is God. God reigns. The kingdom is being built. Goodness abounds. Look for it. People are being healed. See it. We are being saved in all kinds of ways in all kinds of situations and problems. See it. Demons and powers are being thrown down – daily. Know it. God reigns.

No matter what it looks like. God reigns. No matter how it feels. God reigns. Should we fail or feel inadequate. God reigns. In our darkest hours. God reigns.

Even if the worst of the worst happens and someone we love dies. God reigns. How? Suffering is ended. Love has been known. We are surrounded by others who love us and are there for us. Even then. God reigns.

No matter what. God could. God would. God will. God reigns.

God reigns. Yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever. Amen.

Consider What Is Important

The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch

Isaiah 49:8-16a, Matthew 6:24-34

As if! As if it were possible. As if it were possible simply not to worry about your life. But we have it straight from Jesus himself, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, what you will wear.” So now we all know. We have all heard it from the top. So that’s it then…no more worries. Right? As if!

Actually I prefer the translation, “Do not be anxious,” which is closer to the Greek text. Anxiety is more powerful than worry. Anxiety is what can knock us down flat, take over our lives, keep us up at night, or send us cowering in a corner. “Do not be anxious about your life,” Jesus says.

You know, yesterday was the perfect day for our youth car wash. You may remember that the first Nativity Youth Camp car wash was rained out. I was relieved, because it rescued me from a dilemma. The first date our car wash was scheduled, my daughters needed to be three places at the same time: here for the car wash and on two different softball fields at two different times for two different games. In addition, I had unwisely agreed to a sleepover the night before over in Allentown, which would make it a feat to get them here by the 8:30 am start time. That Saturday was also the day before the Bishop’s visit, so I had scheduled a baptism class and confirmation rehearsal here at the same time. After all, we were all going to be here anyway. It wasn’t doable. I was in a quandary. We had made a commitment to the car wash when we signed our kids up for camp--and we love the car wash. We had also made a commitment to playing softball. Yet, when we signed the girls up we did not know when the games would be scheduled. If we had never missed a softball game this season, it would not have been such an issue. But conflicts had come up more than once. I was anxious.

Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, a rabbi and fabulous children’s author, said in a recent interview that “society does a very good job teaching us how to be consumers and society does a very good job teaching us how to be competitors.” But she goes on to say that most parents also want to know how do we teach our children’s souls? Parents want their children to be “gracious and grateful, to have courage in difficult times, to have a sense of joy and purpose.” I think it is not only parents that want this for their children. I think it is what we all want: to be gracious and generous, to have courage in difficult times, to have a sense of joy and purpose. But we are so skilled at being consumers and competitors that we neglect to nurture our souls. One of the things we consume in our society is activity. As a parent I know the trap of getting involved in too many activities (all of them good ones mind you) and the stress of trying to get it all done. But it is not only parents who are caught in this trap. Society affords each of us with so many opportunities--wonderful opportunities. But we think we can and should have them all. We have little trouble choosing between a good thing and a not so good thing. If I had had to choose between the car wash and cleaning out the basement, it would have been a no-brainer! But when two opportunities we desire pull at us, the temptation is to try to do it all. But we cannot serve two masters and we soon find ourselves on the slippery slope of shifting priorities. How can I choose between the camp carwash and not one but two little league softball games? I can’t. So I try to figure out how to do both. Thus I am relieved when they are all rained out!

I’m sure I am not the only one who lives in this world. We can be so busy getting it all done, that we miss what is important. A wise mentor once told me about sorting out what is urgent and important. Envision a square graph with one axis labeled “important” and the other labeled “urgent.” Most of our activities fall into one of four quadrants. There are those things that are important and urgent, like applying first aid to a bleeding injury. We usually pay attention to these things and get them done. Then there are those things that are unimportant and not urgent, like cleaning all the dust bunnies out from under the chairs in the attic. We are generally good at not giving too much of our time and talent to these things. But it is the other two categories that are misleading. Some things are urgent, but not important. Like those advertisements that I get over the email that offer free shipping if I order now and I feel I have to act even though I hadn’t been planning to buy anything. Or a cell phone that rings in the middle of…(you fill in the blank) and must be answered even though it could wait. Things in this category seduce us into giving them much more of our time and energy than is really needed.

Then there is the final category: those things that are important, but not urgent. Things we back-burner, like finding time to have coffee with a friend, or visiting someone who never gets out, or spending time with God. These things are very important, but because they do not seem urgent, they are easy for us to neglect. As the list of undone things gets longer and our in-boxes more full, our worries increase. A rainy day doesn’t always solve the dilemma.

About the only thing that seems to make me less anxious is age. Some things just don’t worry me as much as they used to because I have lived through them. But is that all there is? Is knowing that I will survive the only rope to grasp when worries about “what next” overwhelm me? Not according to Jesus. He asks us to look around us. Look at the birds of the air. No, really look at them--see them--think about them. What can we learn? This is the power behind his words. Consider the lilies of the fields (and the word here is really wildflowers). Consider-- observe well-- learn something—stop—look—contemplate. This is not about taking time to stop and smell the roses. It’s not about noticing beauty that we may otherwise miss. It is much more profound. Jesus calls our attention to things that are accessible to us, things that are all around us, things that are simply there, like wildflowers. What can wildflowers teach us? Probably much more than we can imagine. In God’s amazing creation, simple flowers display a complex biology that gathers sunlight, converts it into food and energy, and releases life-giving oxygen into the air. And they look pretty nice too. So when we stop and notice wildflowers, we stop and notice God. When we notice God, become aware of God, we know God just a little bit more. After all, knowing God is what it is all about for us.

Jesus reminds us of this ultimate priority, this most important opportunity of all. Do not worry, saying what will we eat, what will we drink, what will we wear. Indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the Kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you as well. God is our best opportunity, our first priority, the source of our life. Worry distracts us from God. Anxiety distorts our relationships with others. It divorces us from who we really are. Anxiety gnaws at us, pulls us down into despair, mocks our desire to trust, and teaches us to fear as if fear is what is at the bottom of all life. But we do not profess a life based on fear. We profess a life based on the awesome love of God.

What does life look like when we remember that first and foremost we are loved? As long as we are noticing things, take note that Jesus did not say, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Combating anxiety is not that easy. After all, we are not promised that our days will be trouble free. Jesus doesn’t say, “Your troubles are over.” Rather he says there will be plenty of trouble, “Tomorrow will bring worries of its own, today’s trouble is enough for today.” Or there is the older translation, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” But no evil overcomes God’s love. If we want to be gracious and grateful, to have courage in difficult times, to have a sense of joy and purpose in life, God is a good place to start. God who does not forget us. God who knows that relationship with us is important. God who promises, “See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands.” In anxious times, in pleasant times, we do not walk alone. God knows us. God knows what we need. Consider not what is urgent, but what is important. Consider the wildflowers. Take time to contemplate God’s love for you.

Trinity Sunday

May 18, 2008
A Jazz Eucharist
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Genesis 1:1-2:4a + 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 + Matthew 28:16-20

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
That could be the Sermon for Trinity Sunday right there. But, lest you get your hopes up… there is more.

As we were having coffee earlier this week, I said to the dean, “I think I will preach on the ineffable mystery of the One we worship as the Triune God.” The was an extended silence into which finally I said, “At least the congregation will awake refreshed and ready for the lively music of the Jazz Band.” At which point he let out his breath and relaxed. But the question for the preacher remained, “What do you say about the Trinity?”

Saint Augustine, one of the greatest minds of the Western World, put his head to thinking about the Trinity. Augustine, a master of words, took fifteen volumes to write his treatise “On the Trinity”, fifteen books that took him over a decade to write.

So what do WE say about these things in just a few homiletical minutes? I want to tell you what I think is the single most important learning about God – and ourselves – that comes from the Trinity. And I will do it this way:

First, a question and a clue: What was the first thing Jesus did when he came out of the desert wilderness after his 40 days learning his identity – that is, besides getting a bath and something to eat?

He called disciples and gathered a community around himself, and except for his final act of sacrifice, he lived in that community and counted on that community his entire ministry. We know that to get the best insight into the nature of God we look at Jesus, so what do we learn about God here, with Jesus in community?

Many years ago, Bishop Mark Dyer and I went one noonday to a regional clergy gathering for bible study. One of the clergy was waiting for him to tell him that he could not stay that day. He had to meet his wife and daughter at the doctor's to hear the results of some tests his daughter had undergone. If he could come later he would. He went off, the clergy gathered, Bishop Mark told them about the reasons for the absence, and the first thing we did was to hold that family in prayer - for quite some time. We then went on with lunch and bible study and sharing.

The priest came back 2-3 hours later, looking totally drained. The diagnosis was leukemia, in ad¬vanced stage, in his 22-year-old daughter. Devastating news. It is worthy of noting that after being with his wife and daughter in their shock and alarm he came back to his clergy community to share the news. There was shock, there were tears, there was prayer, there were hugs, there was advice from experience offered by a priest who had been an oncology nurse, there were stories of healing from two others whose fam¬ily members had leukemia. There was hope. There was even some healing from the shock for him, there was strengthening for the family; there was God there in that community. 

The God who creates us, and loves us, and strengthens us for the journey is found in community.

And every person who was there left that gathering thanking God for the gift of relationships and community.

Today there is a new or renewed awareness of the Trinity - of God as Being in Communion, which is the title of a wonderful book by Anglican Bishop John Zizioulas. He writes of God, the Trinity in whom there is no hierarchy, no subordination, nor use of power to exert control over another.

If God’s self is Being in Communion and we are made in the image of God, then we too are to be in communion with our God, and one another and all creation. Our identity is “to be in communion with…”

The gift we have received is the gift of relationship. We have been given one another.
We are learning that this truth is woven into the very fabric of creation. Ever since the 17th century and people like Isaac Newton, we have understood the nature of creation to be an assembly of parts. We have used machine imagery to try to understand God's creation.

In the machine model, things can be taken apart, dissected literally or figuratively as in compart¬mentalized institutions and corporations and vestries, and then put back together again. The assumption has been that by understanding the parts, the workings of each piece, the whole can be understood. The Newtonian model is characterized by a focus on things rather than relationships.

What the New Science has done in the words of Albert Einstein is to help us "see the world anew”, and I would add, to see God anew. The New Science has discovered that the basic building blocks of creation do not exist except in rela¬tionship to something else. It was from the mind of God, in the creation act of God, that relationships are a fundamental element of all creation. No “Unmoved Mover” here.

Nothing happens without something encountering something else. Nothing is independent of the relationships that occur. It is a world in process. It is a world of relationship. It is not a world of disparate, separate parts. It is a world in communion. It is a world of communities.

Another example: So many people have participated in the creation of this jazz Eucharist today, even more in its presentation and production, and even more than that in the acts of worship it inspires and enables. This Offering today culminates in the experience of being in God’s presence, of living in the midst of the God’s kingdom, of being in the community of the God who is at one and the same time the Lover, and the Beloved, and Love, itself.

As wonderful and Samuel Martin’s trumpet work is, and we heard last week just how wonderfully he plays, it is even more wonderful when it is played with the trumpets of Stephen and Alan and Jamie. And their trumpets are even more wonderful when they are joined by the instruments played by Charles, Emily, and Ed, Josh, Mary, Isaac, Henry, Chris and Jim, and James and Carl all led and blended by Carol and supported by the singing of Jenifer and Eve and Laura and Catherine and this congregation, and the heavenly chorus with whom we join – and then all of a sudden we are in that space where we are one with one another and one with the One who created us and the One who redeemed us and the One who sustains us in this life. In the presence of the One God and we make one wonderful communal Alleluia of Adoration and Offering.

And we will go from here created a new people, each of us chosen and sent and empowered by the Triune God in whose presence we have worshipped. Into a world full of his glory.

It is in community, in relationship, that we are most fundamentally true to our identity as God's creation. And in commu¬nity, in relationships, we share who we are in ways that enrich the Other and thereby we find our own true selves and we are enriched as well..

Thanks be to God the Father, and to God the Son, and to God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sixth Sunday of Easter ~ Called to Hope

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity ~ April 27, 2008
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
Acts 17:22-31 + 1 Peter 3:13-22 + John 14:15-21

Last Saturday the Diocese of Bethlehem celebrated the memorial Eucharist for Henry Pease, a priest of the church, and a very good man. His family members were there, his parishioners, his colleagues and his friends. I said in the funeral homily, “His death is akin to the passing of a tribal elder, the passing of the leader of his clan, the passing of a wise teacher, the passing of a beloved priest. It is the passing of a son – a child of God – who returns to the Father.”

The feelings at a time such as that are well known to everyone who has experienced the loss of someone loved and valued. Get in touch with those feelings within yourself. If you have known death, if you have known loss, if you have known a sense of abandonment, if you have ever been bereft… Remember what that was like.

It’s important because that is what is going on in John’s Gospel today. We continue to hear what is called the Last Discourse of Jesus – his farewell address to those with whom he has lived for all these months who have left everything for him. They have left their families, their work, and their homes. They have bet their all on him and he is going to leave them. You know what they are feeling. You know what they are thinking… and so does Jesus.

And he gives them a reason to hope. He tells them, “I will not leave you orphaned… I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”

He tells them the truth and he gives them a word of hope. The truth is a word of hope. How important it is that people hear the truth that is a word of hope. How important it is that the world hears the truth that is a word of hope.

Writing in a time of danger and despair for the early church, Peter counsels, “…be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.”

I don’t think he is offering that counsel solely as a defense strategy. He is offering it because it is the truth that the world, the powers of the world need to hear, what people need to hear – the truth that is a word of hope.

In Ephesians 1:17-18, the apostle Paul writes:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints…

What we have here in these verses is the prayer that believers will know what their hope is and how powerful God can be in their lives. Whatever it may take, to ensure we have a foundation of hope.

Hope occupies the God-spot in our lives, just as God occupies the hope-spot. Hope gives us a sense that life is worth going on. It is not a hope we control by having knowledge about it. It either is or it is not.

Probably the greatest Oral Historian of our time is Studs Terkel. For 60 years he has listen to, annecdoted, recorded, reported and found meaning in the stories of people lives: work life, family life, love life, life-changing life, cataclysmic life, war-torn life, and life of epic and historic proportions.

His last book was intended to be Will the Circle Be Unbroken? – his oral history on death (and life). He finished this last book when he was 90. But he didn’t die right away (he’s not dead yet at the age of 96) and he found that after death in the list of human subjects comes the greatest subject of them all – and one well-timed to every moment – Hope. He had one more book to write.

Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times. It is a reminder that in good times, you can do nothing and still have hope, but in bad times, you have to act, take that first small step, in order to hope.

Hope is God-given. It is created in the human DNA, it is part of our being, as is, for instance, the ability to word things, to use language. But we know that language must be nurtured and taught, and used, and if those things don’t happen the language ability goes away, it dies. I have studied Latin, Greek, French, and a little German, along with English. Except for English, now they are all gone for me. I have no ability to use these languages, it is as if that ability was dead to me.

Hope may die last, but it can die, and it is a living death. You may have experienced a time when you were without hope, and how terrible that is. I know.

As disciples of this Jesus who lived and died and has risen, whose Ascension we remember in the week ahead, this Jesus who would not leaves his disciples or the world orphaned – this Jesus calls us to a Ministry of Hope to a world bereft of it, to people who have lost or are in danger of losing it, and for the salvation of our own souls.

As a safe example, let me mention Kajo Keji. After 50 years of war, exile, displacement, and loss you would think that the people there would have felt abandoned and been bereft in hopelessness. You would have thought that hope would have died. Certainly there was some flirting with hopelessness. But when we first went there found a people not without hope, but a people whose lives were based on hope that was founded in their faith in Jesus Christ.

And then a cathedral congregation in the US raised a few thousand dollars and sent it to them to build a well. That well bought in not only refreshing, life-giving water; it also brought refreshing life-giving hope. Hope that there can be a future there. Hope. How important is that? Priceless.

Bring-ers of hope. That is the ministry to which we have been called as the community of Jesus; that is the ministry to which each of us is called as a disciple – to be signs of hope for one another and for those we meet.

There can be for us nothing other than this faith and this hope; nothing other than to be ready to make our defense to anyone who demands from us, who needs from us, an accounting for the hope that is in us.

People need the eyes of their heart enlightened, so that they may know what is the hope to which Jesus has called them…” They need to know that that Jesus would not leave them orphaned. We cannot leave them orphaned. They must know the truth that is a word of hope, a word that can sustain, and be life-giving – even in the midst all the tough realities of life.

Soon we will celebrate Pentecost, remembering that God has sent the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Counselor. One translation of the Greek word for the Holy Spirit, Paraclete, also means the Encourager. Jesus would send us to be encouragers of one another. When we obey him, we know that he lives in us, and we in him.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of Jesus, to a ministry of encouragement, to a life of bringing life-giving hope wherever you go.

Annual Meeting 2008 - The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Barbara Crafton, well-known author of spiritual things and personally known to some of you, writes:

The Bible is full of people setting out into the unknown, and only with their faith in the goodness of the God who led them there. Here is Noah, getting started on the ark while the sun is still shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky. There is Abel offering a sacrifice of grain instead of meat without quite knowing why, foreshadowing a people that would leave hunting and gathering and become farmers. And there are Abram and Sarah, old and childless, absurdly promised an inheritance of children more numerous than the stars, and believing it.

Today going somewhere where you have not gone before – that is a scary thing to do. To do something new, something you have not done before – it takes guts.

Parents know about doing something new. They were once carefree people. They were once the masters of themselves, without someone depending on them for life itself. They were not born knowing how to be the awesome people parents must become, and I don't imagine they learned much about it before it came upon them. Unless they went to schools that were a lot more thorough than the ones most of us went to.

Do you remember, as I do, the strangeness of parenting at first? Did you count the baby's toes, just to be sure there were ten? Did you awake in fear at a cough that was new, call your mother at the appearance of a strange rash, worry excessively about the relative merits of different brands of strained carrots? Did you feel sometimes, as I did, late one night, before becoming a mother for the first time, that you just were not ready for this? "I can't do this," I sobbed in sheer panic, and a stern voice within me said, "But you're going to."

The church knows about this too. We all do. To all of us there come these moments in life: moments when it is clear that we must move forward in something quite new about which we know very little.

One of our great sources of pain and fear is this: Most of the important things about which we must decide in life are things about which we know next to nothing.

It must have been something for the disciples, whose lives we get glimpses of, to once again be in a place of trying to figure out what it is that Jesus is revealing to them again. It must have been something for them to have been so compelled by Jesus’ teaching to leave behind job and family and venture into a daily expedition into unknown places of geography, spirituality, and even political movement. There had to have been days when they wondered if they had chosen wisely to set out on their journey. They had to wonder if they were equipped not only for the job that Jesus seemed to be telling them was theirs (i.e. today’s Gospel “greater works than they had seen Jesus himself do,” yeah right!) but I assume they had to wonder even if they were equipped with tools to survive daily with no employment to provide shelter or food.

Day by day you realize a choice was made as the disciples awoke! Do I stay or do I go? One more day to decide to follow and in today’s story, yet one more puzzle to figure out? What do you mean there is a “place” prepared for me? A place that we will dwell with you always? Another “place” we must go? Thomas doesn’t know how to get there and I imagine they are tired of asking “where now Lord?” Phillip wants Jesus to put his cards on table, enough already! Show us where God’s heart is! This, after all, I believe is what compelled them to take the journey, thirsting after God’s heart! This, I pray, is why you and I take the journey as well, but can you imagine the disciples’ daily dilemma, “I don’t know exactly where this is going, how and where I shall choose to step?" We know something of these choices of life and the tension of faith at this Cathedral. We know as individuals who have made decisions in life. I’ve been with you as you’ve struggled and made choices. How should we best take care of our elderly parents? What is the best course of treatment for me as I face a newly diagnosed illness and will God be my companion on this journey? What job might we settle into that would best support me as a parent trying to raise my children? What gifts do I have to offer as part of this church’s mission and how am I going to make time for that? What if I’m not the right person or what if I don’t have the right gifts to teach Sunday School this year, or be part of the pastoral care team, or be a j2a leader, or …

What if we cannot figure an effective way to reach out to a dynamically-transitioning south side of Bethlehem? What if we cannot staff adequately to meet the mission needs ahead? What if we never have adequate parking? What if we can’t keep up with deferred maintenance projects in our lovely but aging properties? What if we run out of money? What if it all just doesn’t work out?? What if it does?

Barbara Crafton continues:

There is no way to know the outcome to any dilemma without going through it. But you have to decide yes or no before you have the benefit of this knowledge.

So we take a deep breath and choose, and then we live with the choice. No wonder we are nervous.

You can't wait until all the data is in before deciding on something new in your life. All the data cannot be in until you've gone ahead and done it. Then you know, and not until then.

Although there may be good reasons for deciding not to take a new path in life, the fact that you have never done such and such a thing before is not one of them. All of the things we do now were once new to us.

We are not impelled into new actions solely by the force of logic and experience. We are, finally, impelled into them by faith.

Today is our annual gathering and meeting, my first with you as Dean and Rector. We check in with one another formally, to review our journey in faith. We come together as individuals challenged with life decisions and as a community of faith faced with corporate decisions for the welfare of our mission as a congregation of Jesus Christ! Like in all life, we struggle with the “facts,” the data, the challenges and the opportunities. In our case we are bolstered by nearly 150 years of experience to learn from, build upon, and hopefully use as launching pad to boldly proclaim the Gospel well into the 21st century. Like the disciples encountering Jesus in John’s Gospel, we too are challenged with the opportunity to find in Jesus the truth about God’s saving action for our own lives and for the world. We are challenged with the opportunity to put our trust in a belief that Jesus is “pitching tent,” (abode), preparing room, creating a space for us so we may dwell together and know the power of God in our lives. I pray that knowing it as a community of faith here at the Cathedral those around us might know that power as well! In all of who we are and all of what we do, let us remember that we are HIS CHURCH and our greatest challenge is to daily claim the opportunity to surrender our lives to God’s power by meeting Jesus Christ who desires to dwell with us. This is always the place we start, from knowing and dwelling with Christ, and from this place we are impelled to move as Barbara Crafton reminds us in FAITH.

We move forward with our challenges and our opportunities, which I pray we all agree are great. But life and death they are not, life-giving I pray they may be. This, after all, seems to be what Jesus is getting at. Choices will be made. And like all life, some of these choices may turn out to be the right ones, and some may not in the end turn out to be so. But such is the life of faith, which is to choose first just simply to follow. May we do so, please, first believing Jesus has “pitched tent” with us, dwells with us, emboldens and empowers us. And may we live gently with one another stepping into the shadows of God’s grace.

One more time, Barbara Crafton:

While we may not know the outcome of a course upon which we embark, we know this: God accompanies us. God does not leave us to figure it out alone. God is prepared to bless and guide the courses we choose. God longs to pour peace and serenity over our anxious souls when we must choose.

Does this mean, then, that our choices will always be the right ones? No, we're not that good at it.

But with God's help and God's truth, there is a way to see the truth about where we are and where we're heading, and if we can see the truth we can speak it.

And if we can speak the truth to God and to those who love us, we can find within ourselves the courage to do the truth, however new and unfamiliar that truth may be.

Good Friday Reflection

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book “Overcoming Life’s Disappointments,” describes three types of experiences for human beings regarding dreams for their lives: 1. Those who dream boldly even as they realize their dreams may not come true. 2. Those who dream more modestly and fear that even their modest dreams will not come true. 3. Those who do not dream at all; lest they be disappointed.

A strange day that we Christians dare to call Good, is this day. Strange because today we live with the disciples in the deepest expression of disappointment and disillusionment as we are drawn into the agony and despair of Jesus. How do we affirm our innate nature to dream or how do we participate in God’s dream for humanity and the world when on this day we live a story of an execution of one who dares dream the world through God’s eyes, Jesus of Nazareth? The story is one whose themes we know oh so well. There are betrayal, false accusations, ultimate injustice, torture, and unspeakable acts of violence against another human being. Make no mistake, at the center of the day is an act of corporal punishment carried out by an occupying government, and the policy of this act is to keep an occupied people firmly rooted in a theme of disillusionment and disappointment.

What of us, Jesus’ disciples, on such a day we dare to call Good? What of Jesus’ disciples who have come to a crossroad in their faith and following of Jesus and the dream he boldly proclaims? How do they watch this abuse and what will become of the dream Jesus carefully implants in them? And what of us? Even as we strive to affirm the possibility that Jesus was victorious against death when at the same time we recount how his body was literally broken and crushed. The powers of death and destruction surround us, who would dare dream boldly? There is war, there is terror, and despite the rhetoric of the day where one is implied as an answer to the other, the result it seems is similar, that is despair and destruction. There is betrayal and there is injustice. There is inequality and there are false accusations. There is abuse and there is even torture in the most surprising of circumstances. There is neglect and there is suffering. There is, even in our day, similar governmental policies of execution and corporal punishment. Yes, it seems ironic as we carry all of this with us as it enfolds itself in the story of Jesus that we could call such a day as this good, even as we are tempted then to be among those who dare not dream at all, lest there be pure disappointment and disillusionment.

BUT, there is the dream, one dreamed boldly that comes in the sure and certain knowledge of God’s I AM. Ehyeh, Asher, Ehyeh, God says, I Am who I AM, I will be who I will be. God’s name, Rabbi Kushner suggests in the Hebrew translates, is I will be with You! For Jesus, the Son of God, Who are you who dares to die for the dream you embody? I AM Resurrection and Life, I will be with you in Resurrection and Life!

God’s dream embodied in Jesus takes on the insufferable ways of the world, takes on abuse, injustice, torture, neglect, not because these themes can be avoided in a world whose default setting sometimes seems to be darkness, BUT because and in spite of it. God’s dream of new life can only come into being by participating in our lives, in the brokenness of it, and by being present as the light that shines in the midst of darkness! Where do we find the strength to dare dream boldly a world of compassion and justice? A world where the dark default setting cannot be betrayal, false accusation, war, injustice, discrimination, abuse, torture, and the execution of our dreams for something better? We start by looking for the light of Christ even as it shines through the mysterious darkness of a day we dare call Good. Listen to words of compassion even from the cross: Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Dreams of compassion start with our own lives. Even our own brokenness may not always be entwined in the powers and forces of all the world, but may even be as challenged by forces that break us down personally. Broken relationships, addictions, the breaking down of our bodies, and the unimagined fragility of our very lives! Yet shining, even in the shadow of the cross, is the I AM! I AM with you in Resurrection Jesus will promise! New life even in the midst of darkness! The Goodness of the day begins with a dream that death cannot conquer! Ehyeh, Asher, Ehyeh, I AM with you as light in the darkness and the darkness will never, ever overcome the light! We choose the light and call it Good. We move through the darkness toward the light as the light moves toward us.

1. WILL YOU THINK OF ANOTHER PERSON IN A FORGIVING OR AN ACCUSING WAY?

2. WILL YOU ACCEPT OR REJECT THOSE WHO ARE DIFFERENT THAN YOU ARE?

3. WILL YOU REACH OUT AND EMBRACE OTHERS OR HOLD BACK, PROTECTING YOURSELF AND YOUR EMOTIONS?

4. WILL YOU SHARE WHAT YOU HAVE OR WILL YOU HOARD?

5. WILL YOU, THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS, LIFESTYLES, ATTITUDES, SEEK TO HURT OTHERS OR HEAL THE WORLD?

6. WILL YOU TAKE A STANCE OF LIFE THAT RESENTS OTHERS OR BE GRATEFUL FOR OTHERS?

7. WILL YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE WITH A GENERAL SLANT THAT IS GLAD OR SAD? HOPEFUL OR DOOMFILLED?

Maundy Thursday

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

This night we find ourselves at a place in our Lenten Journey that is for some awkward and unbalancing. It is the night in which we live our liturgical drama in a way that challenges us to visit the story of Jesus and risk a bit of ourselves as Jesus has risked himself with us. Our Lenten journey is one that at its core is an opportunity to reflect on the deepest yearnings within us, that is the yearning to be connected with God intimately! Inviting God into the deepest parts of our beings, the broken parts of our beings, the parts of our beings that desire love and need love the most, for some of us that means dark and ugly parts!

There is no irony, just symbol and metaphor that on this night through our ritual we will expose (if we choose) in a spirit of vulnerability, our feet. Awkward as it may be, to deliver our feet, dirty and rough, or sensitive and smooth, or uneven and imperfect, is to lay symbolically a piece of our being bare! To lay ourselves bare in the end is what God desires of us, to open ourselves fully is to invite God intimately into our lives so that our lives are lived in the world as God would have them!

Intimacy! Intimacy defined means Intrinsic or essential. Belonging to or characterizing one’s deepest nature. Our ritual this night is found in the story of Jesus on the most intimate night of his life on earth. He gathered around him those he loved, among them one who would betray him. Jesus would seize the night before his death to give a sign (as John’s Gospel would have it) of what it would be for those who follow him to live as a community of believers in God’s dream for the world as they knew it. He would, in a moment of intimacy, wash their feet! Dirty and tired, aching and smelling, blistered and swollen, the master would engage in an act of servant hood, cleansing and washing their feet, inviting them once more into the fullness of what it is to be a follower of the dream! If they are to be keepers of the dream, they are to “love one another as Jesus loved them”! A “mandatum” is the Latin that gives us our title of this liturgy “Maundy,” a new commandment; to love one another the way Jesus loved them! How did Jesus love them – “intimately”! How will Jesus love us – “intimately”! The disciples’ “deepest nature” would be loved into being a “new community” that stood by the principles of servant hood and compassion, righteousness, and justice! The “deepest nature” of being loved so intimately would lead them not perfectly as a “new community,” but faithfully even as they would certainly watch the powers of the day execute their master! The “deepest nature” of being loved so intimately would lead them through what they would surely witness in the days ahead, that the dream would die on a cross on a hillside in Jerusalem, but that Christ himself would live with them in love as they loved one another and dared to live into Jesus “value system” of serving the most vulnerable and needy.

Raymond Brown, New Testament scholar wrote, “When we live into Jesus’ value system, we make him alive rather than just memorializing him.”

Tonight, our liturgy is a liturgy of intimacy! Our deepest nature yearns for God to love us “intimately”! We draw near this night to Jesus through the power of signs, feet laid bare to be washed in an act of servant hood and love! Our deepest nature yearning to be loved so intimately that God’s dream for our lives might live new, even in our brokenness and awkwardness. Our “mandatum” or commandment to love one another as Christ loved us perhaps draws us into an opportunity to make Christ alive by living into Jesus “Value system” of servant hood! St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” Come, draw near, and love one another as Christ has loved us.