December 25, 2006
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Isaiah 52:7-10 + Hebrews 1:1-12 + John 1:1-14
In the name of God, Immanuel. Merry Christmas.
Immanuel. God with us. Thanks be to God, that is what we celebrate this day. At the darkest time of the year, at a time of darkness in the world and for our own country, at a period of darkness in the lives of too many people, we pause to remember, we pause to celebrate that God is with us. One of the names for God is Immanuel.
There was an eon – an age – when God was thought of in another way. God was believed to be kind of a Deus ex Machina. That is a dramatic term for a play’s plot twists and improbable endings. A god who acts, willy-nilly, in improbable ways. A capricious god. A god removed from his creation and the lives of his people. An absentee god. An uncaring god. A god at whose mercy is all of creation. An unfeeling god. A god who was not a caring father. A god who was not a loving mother.
God was believed to be complete, omni-sufficient, no needs of any kind, omni-everything. It was thought that if God has needs, if God has feelings, if God is not “the un-moved mover”, then God would be as vulnerable as any human being – and that is not good.
But if that is the nature of God, then why did God utter that Word, the Word, the word that creates… that creates everything? "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be…' And the Word became flesh and lived among us." (Genesis 1:1-3)
Our God, the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of David, the God of Mary and Joseph, our God is a God who creates so that there will be an other to love, who seeks to be in relationship. A God who yearns that God’s love will be answered with a love of another. The beloved.
Stephen Bayne, a wise bishop and saint of this church believed in this God. He wrote: God put freedom into his created universe in order that the universe could respond to his love with an answering love of its own...He put into the created universe a principle of choice; and He paid a two-fold price for that. First, He limited his own freedom to have things his own way. Second, he committed himself to having to win out of freedom what he could easily have commanded as a right (– the right to be loved). Why did he do this? He did it because God is love and because love needs an answering love of its own.
The Beloved Apostle, John, wrote in a dark time from his refuge on Patmos long, long ago, Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God… God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.
The extent to which God will go to seek the beloved is what we celebrate today. Becoming flesh of the Virgin Mary. Coming in the vulnerable guise of a baby, named Jesus, completely at the mercy of others. Willing to live and die at the mercy of the powers of the world. It is because of the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus born of Mary in Bethlehem that we know the true name of God, Immanuel, God with us.
The highest and best of our humanity is when we are with one another, when we love one another, when we care for one another, when we respect the inherent dignity and worth of one another. This is the true image in which we have been created.
We are most like God when we love. We, too, are created for relationship.
So this morning, what answer do we make to this God who loves so much? What is my answer to God’s love of me? Where is God calling me to love, to care, to work, to bless, and to pray? What is the Word of Love God speaks? In whom will that Word be enfleshed today, embodied today, incarnated today?
God seeks an answering love to the love that comes in the birth of Jesus we celebrate this Christmas Day. What will we answer?
In the name of Immanuel, amen and Merry Christmas.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Advent 4C: Fill the Hungry with Good Things
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Micah 5:2-5 Canticle 15 (Luke 1:46-55) Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45
Fill the hungry with good things. My nephew Owen, who is six, recently asked his dad, “Daddy, how are you doing?”
“I’m good, buddy.”
“What do you mean? Happy healthy good, or humanality good?”
“What does humanality mean?”
“You know, like when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.”
Fill the hungry with good things. When I became a mother there were many surprises. I swear, no one told me how awe-inspiring, sleep-depriving, life-overwhelming it was going to be. It seems there was so much more to it than I could ever have anticipated. For instance, I would never have predicted my fear of newspapers. Actually, my downright manic aversion to news. It seemed I could not pick up the paper that arrived on my doorstep each morning without being confronted by headlines or pictures of children in danger. Children in need. Children dismissed and abused by hunger, war, racism and poverty. It overwhelmed me. It was as if in becoming a mother I had a new umbilical chord that connected me to all mothers. As those children suffered I felt for those mothers, those parents, who suffered with them. Do any of those parents love their child any less than I love mine? As I felt overwhelmed and exhausted trying to care for my infant in my comfortable warm home supported by my incredibly loving husband and provided with excellent medical care, I wondered about all those other mothers who has less--much less. I cried for them. It was months before I could face the news.
But I emerged from that time with a certainty that I could not act for my child alone. I knew I needed to car for and act for but for other children as well. Fill the hungry with good things Mary, the mother of Jesus, responds to the announcement of her upcoming motherhood by seeking out others. Perhaps she was much less burdened by the cares of the world as a teenager than I was as an older adult. Perhaps the angel brought her wisdom along with the astounding announcement. She is not paralyzed by fear but able to reach out to others immediately. When the angel Gabriel disrupts Mary’s entire world with the news that she will bear God’s son, he also tells her of another wonderful pregnancy, that of her cousin Elizabeth.
Now Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah were childless and really too old to be having children. Nevertheless, an angel had visited them and promised them a son who would be John the Baptist. So, having received her great news, Mary leaves immediately and sets out to visit Elizabeth who is now six months pregnant. Mary, so young to be pregnant, and Elizabeth, too old, meet. When they do, Elizabeth feels the child bounce within her and knows in her heart before Mary tells her that Mary also caries new life within her and this life is for the life of the world. Elizabeth praises and blesses Mary. Mary responds with a glorious hymn we know as the Magnificat the one we just prayed together:
My soul proclaims the greatness the Lord,
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant…
These are the first words Mary utters to another about God’s revelation to her. It is a hymn of praise and it is a song that glorifies a God who cares about those in need. She sings of a God who is merciful and strong, one who lifts up the downtrodden, fills the hungry with good things.
Fill the hungry with good things. There is much waiting to be filled with good things this day: stockings carefully hung, plates beautifully set, hearts and homes open for friends and family. But what kind of good things are we waiting for? With what good things will we fill ourselves this day? The happy, healthy kind? Will we also fill them with humanality goodness? You know, the kind when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.
Fill the hungry with good things. As we turn the corner from Advent to Christmas (and a very sharp corner it is this year), I offer a meditation from the Loma Tribesmen of Liberia which a friend here at the Cathedral shared with me:
Christmas Promise
Whoever on the night of the
Celebration of the Birth of Christ
Carries warm water and a sleeping mat
To a weary stranger,
Provides wood from his own fire
For a helpless neighbor,
Takes medicine to one
Sick with malaria,
Gives food to children
Who are thin and hungry,
Provides a torch for a traveler
In the dark forest,
Visits a timid friend
Who would like to know about Christ,
Whoever does these things
Will receive gifts of happiness
Greater than that of welcoming a son
Returning after a long absence,
And through he live to be so old
That he must be helped into his hammock,
And though his family and friends all die
So that he stands as a trunk stripped of branches,
Yet life will be sweet for him,
And he will have great peace,
As one whose rice harvest is great,
And who hears his neighbors
Praise the exploits of is youth.
So will you receive happiness
If you do these acts of love and service
On the night of the celebration of Christmas,
The Birth of Christ.
Amen.
Anne E. Kitch © 2006
Micah 5:2-5 Canticle 15 (Luke 1:46-55) Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45
Fill the hungry with good things. My nephew Owen, who is six, recently asked his dad, “Daddy, how are you doing?”
“I’m good, buddy.”
“What do you mean? Happy healthy good, or humanality good?”
“What does humanality mean?”
“You know, like when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.”
Fill the hungry with good things. When I became a mother there were many surprises. I swear, no one told me how awe-inspiring, sleep-depriving, life-overwhelming it was going to be. It seems there was so much more to it than I could ever have anticipated. For instance, I would never have predicted my fear of newspapers. Actually, my downright manic aversion to news. It seemed I could not pick up the paper that arrived on my doorstep each morning without being confronted by headlines or pictures of children in danger. Children in need. Children dismissed and abused by hunger, war, racism and poverty. It overwhelmed me. It was as if in becoming a mother I had a new umbilical chord that connected me to all mothers. As those children suffered I felt for those mothers, those parents, who suffered with them. Do any of those parents love their child any less than I love mine? As I felt overwhelmed and exhausted trying to care for my infant in my comfortable warm home supported by my incredibly loving husband and provided with excellent medical care, I wondered about all those other mothers who has less--much less. I cried for them. It was months before I could face the news.
But I emerged from that time with a certainty that I could not act for my child alone. I knew I needed to car for and act for but for other children as well. Fill the hungry with good things Mary, the mother of Jesus, responds to the announcement of her upcoming motherhood by seeking out others. Perhaps she was much less burdened by the cares of the world as a teenager than I was as an older adult. Perhaps the angel brought her wisdom along with the astounding announcement. She is not paralyzed by fear but able to reach out to others immediately. When the angel Gabriel disrupts Mary’s entire world with the news that she will bear God’s son, he also tells her of another wonderful pregnancy, that of her cousin Elizabeth.
Now Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah were childless and really too old to be having children. Nevertheless, an angel had visited them and promised them a son who would be John the Baptist. So, having received her great news, Mary leaves immediately and sets out to visit Elizabeth who is now six months pregnant. Mary, so young to be pregnant, and Elizabeth, too old, meet. When they do, Elizabeth feels the child bounce within her and knows in her heart before Mary tells her that Mary also caries new life within her and this life is for the life of the world. Elizabeth praises and blesses Mary. Mary responds with a glorious hymn we know as the Magnificat the one we just prayed together:
My soul proclaims the greatness the Lord,
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant…
These are the first words Mary utters to another about God’s revelation to her. It is a hymn of praise and it is a song that glorifies a God who cares about those in need. She sings of a God who is merciful and strong, one who lifts up the downtrodden, fills the hungry with good things.
Fill the hungry with good things. There is much waiting to be filled with good things this day: stockings carefully hung, plates beautifully set, hearts and homes open for friends and family. But what kind of good things are we waiting for? With what good things will we fill ourselves this day? The happy, healthy kind? Will we also fill them with humanality goodness? You know, the kind when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.
Fill the hungry with good things. As we turn the corner from Advent to Christmas (and a very sharp corner it is this year), I offer a meditation from the Loma Tribesmen of Liberia which a friend here at the Cathedral shared with me:
Christmas Promise
Whoever on the night of the
Celebration of the Birth of Christ
Carries warm water and a sleeping mat
To a weary stranger,
Provides wood from his own fire
For a helpless neighbor,
Takes medicine to one
Sick with malaria,
Gives food to children
Who are thin and hungry,
Provides a torch for a traveler
In the dark forest,
Visits a timid friend
Who would like to know about Christ,
Whoever does these things
Will receive gifts of happiness
Greater than that of welcoming a son
Returning after a long absence,
And through he live to be so old
That he must be helped into his hammock,
And though his family and friends all die
So that he stands as a trunk stripped of branches,
Yet life will be sweet for him,
And he will have great peace,
As one whose rice harvest is great,
And who hears his neighbors
Praise the exploits of is youth.
So will you receive happiness
If you do these acts of love and service
On the night of the celebration of Christmas,
The Birth of Christ.
Amen.
Anne E. Kitch © 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Advent 3: What then should we do?
December 17, 2006
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Zephaniah 3:14-20 + Philippians 4:4-7 + Luke 3:7-18
“You brood of vipers!
Boy, is John cranky?! Perhaps one too many days on locusts and wild honey, you think? Perhaps John had never heard that proverb, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Did those opening lines make them eager to hear what he had to say that day? I doubt it, but I think he got their attention, and he got ours as well.
But when you do that homiletically, prophetically, or even conversationally, you run the risk of so disorienting or alienating your hearers that they may miss the word that you, and – one hopes, humbly – God, have in store for them.
That could also be said for the gospel from Luke this morning. The gospel isn’t about some cranky oddball down by some riverside on the edge of some wilderness who could so easily claim our attention and distract us from what is truly important. It is not about John. It is not about indictment. It is about what God is about to do, and indeed has started doing.
It is about God’s intention for humankind and all creation, and it’s about what God is doing through Jesus Christ. It is about Good News. It is about the opportunity for Repentance, Renewal and Restoration.
Repentance, Renewal and Restoration. In other words, it is about how to get in on what God is doing, not what or who will keep you out of it.
For Luke, the One John is pointing to, the one who is coming into the world, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire, that’s Jesus, that’s the Good in the News. Jesus is the point, or as we say these days, Jesus is the reason for the season.
And lest you be concerned about that baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire, it has already happened. It is not what is to come for you and me. It’s already happened. We call it Pentecost. And the baptism by which we baptize is a hearkening back not only to the baptism of John with water in the River Jordan, but also to the baptism he prophesied and which came to pass on Pentecost when all the believers were baptized in the Holy Spirit signified by tongues of fire.
You see? It’s all connected. It’s all part of the plan. And it is all Good News because it is about how much God wants us to know how beloved we are of God and to know that there is a way to live more and more deeply in that love, in that kingdom, under that reign – the reign of God in our hearts and in our lives and in our world. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the Good News that John has come to point to. The new opportunity for repentance renewal, and restoration – of you, me, them, the whole megillah.
John is clear. We need to be clear.
Would that we all could be as self-aware and self-defined as John; knowing precisely what our place in the scheme of thing is; knowing precisely who we are created and called to be; knowing precisely what we are to do and what we are not to do. I think that most of us most of the time don’t live there; don’t have that much certitude about ourselves or much else.
And so the crowds ask John, “What then should we do?” And the sinful tax collectors ask him, “Teacher, what should we do?” And the soldiers ask him, “And we, what should we do?”
Repentance is more than being sorry, it is a call to action, to do something. And we ask, “What are we to do?”
What are we to do as a sign that we have turned our lives in a God-ward direction? What are we to do to find a renewed spirit, to find a renewed meaning in our lives? What are we to do to help in our own restoration, the restoration of others, and the restoration of the world? “What are we to do?
And how does John answer? "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
Know what you have. Be satisfied with what you have. Share what you have. The necessities of life are to be apportioned to all, to each and everyone, do your part in that distribution.
“Do not let your hands grow weak.” “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name; Make his deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember that his Name is exalted.” “Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone… Do not worry about anything… in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Repentance, renewal, and restoration. The incarnational enterprise. The divine initiative.
And eventually in God’s time, each one, one-by-one, will be renewed and restored – one-by-one, until in God’s time the prophecies of Zephaniah and Isaiah and John the Baptizer shall come to pass for all people, for the whole of God’s creation.
All will be renewed in God’s love,
Disaster will be removed
There will be no reproach
No one will bear the weight of oppression
The lame will be saved,
The outcast will be gathered,
Shame will be turned into praise,
And we will all be brought safely home.
Thanks be to God.
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Zephaniah 3:14-20 + Philippians 4:4-7 + Luke 3:7-18
“You brood of vipers!
Boy, is John cranky?! Perhaps one too many days on locusts and wild honey, you think? Perhaps John had never heard that proverb, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Did those opening lines make them eager to hear what he had to say that day? I doubt it, but I think he got their attention, and he got ours as well.
But when you do that homiletically, prophetically, or even conversationally, you run the risk of so disorienting or alienating your hearers that they may miss the word that you, and – one hopes, humbly – God, have in store for them.
That could also be said for the gospel from Luke this morning. The gospel isn’t about some cranky oddball down by some riverside on the edge of some wilderness who could so easily claim our attention and distract us from what is truly important. It is not about John. It is not about indictment. It is about what God is about to do, and indeed has started doing.
It is about God’s intention for humankind and all creation, and it’s about what God is doing through Jesus Christ. It is about Good News. It is about the opportunity for Repentance, Renewal and Restoration.
Repentance, Renewal and Restoration. In other words, it is about how to get in on what God is doing, not what or who will keep you out of it.
For Luke, the One John is pointing to, the one who is coming into the world, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire, that’s Jesus, that’s the Good in the News. Jesus is the point, or as we say these days, Jesus is the reason for the season.
And lest you be concerned about that baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire, it has already happened. It is not what is to come for you and me. It’s already happened. We call it Pentecost. And the baptism by which we baptize is a hearkening back not only to the baptism of John with water in the River Jordan, but also to the baptism he prophesied and which came to pass on Pentecost when all the believers were baptized in the Holy Spirit signified by tongues of fire.
You see? It’s all connected. It’s all part of the plan. And it is all Good News because it is about how much God wants us to know how beloved we are of God and to know that there is a way to live more and more deeply in that love, in that kingdom, under that reign – the reign of God in our hearts and in our lives and in our world. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the Good News that John has come to point to. The new opportunity for repentance renewal, and restoration – of you, me, them, the whole megillah.
John is clear. We need to be clear.
Would that we all could be as self-aware and self-defined as John; knowing precisely what our place in the scheme of thing is; knowing precisely who we are created and called to be; knowing precisely what we are to do and what we are not to do. I think that most of us most of the time don’t live there; don’t have that much certitude about ourselves or much else.
And so the crowds ask John, “What then should we do?” And the sinful tax collectors ask him, “Teacher, what should we do?” And the soldiers ask him, “And we, what should we do?”
Repentance is more than being sorry, it is a call to action, to do something. And we ask, “What are we to do?”
What are we to do as a sign that we have turned our lives in a God-ward direction? What are we to do to find a renewed spirit, to find a renewed meaning in our lives? What are we to do to help in our own restoration, the restoration of others, and the restoration of the world? “What are we to do?
And how does John answer? "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
Know what you have. Be satisfied with what you have. Share what you have. The necessities of life are to be apportioned to all, to each and everyone, do your part in that distribution.
“Do not let your hands grow weak.” “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name; Make his deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember that his Name is exalted.” “Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone… Do not worry about anything… in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Repentance, renewal, and restoration. The incarnational enterprise. The divine initiative.
And eventually in God’s time, each one, one-by-one, will be renewed and restored – one-by-one, until in God’s time the prophecies of Zephaniah and Isaiah and John the Baptizer shall come to pass for all people, for the whole of God’s creation.
All will be renewed in God’s love,
Disaster will be removed
There will be no reproach
No one will bear the weight of oppression
The lame will be saved,
The outcast will be gathered,
Shame will be turned into praise,
And we will all be brought safely home.
Thanks be to God.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Advent 2: Repentance, what is it?
December 10, 2006 at 10:30
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I am delighted to be with you once again. And on Friday I received the ultimate compliment: Rick asked for another date for me to visit you in the winter. If that isn’t the triumph of hope over experience, I don’t know what is. I am glad to be with you, to be part of your fellowship, whenever it is possible.
Two weeks ago, on the Feast of Christ the King, when Pilate questioned Jesus, I thought about the coming of Christ bringing with it light, perfect, flawless light; and how anyone unable or unwilling to face or to meet that light will instinctively put himself or herself in opposition to it. Opposition to that light, opposition to Christ, cries for repentance.
And last week, when the Gospel spoke of Christ’s return, in power and great glory, I thought about repentance now rather than later, now before Christ returns to be our Judge. I thought about it in terms like these: you and I can face divine judgment now, today: confessing to God our sins, repenting of those sins, and having those sins wiped away by divine forgiveness. If all our wrongs have been removed by daily repentance and forgiveness, there will be nothing left to judge on Judgment Day.
And today, John the Baptist strides across the stage “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” From Pilate’s encounter with Jesus, to the second coming, to John’s preaching, the Gospel cries for our repentance, repentance which is necessary to stand before him when he comes again.
Repentance, what is it? What is it to us? In St. Luke’s Gospel, the word for repentance is used more than in any other Gospel. For St. Luke, perhaps, the foremost characteristic of Christians is repentance, a word whose Greek root means after-thought, or change, or change in one’s mind or thinking.
What is it about our thinking that needs changing? Simply stated, I think it is our idea that we can do it by ourselves. We are justified before God by our good lives and our good works. We, after all, are ruggedly independent and self-reliant Americans. Our lack of needing help lies deep in our national consciousness. We think we know what we and the world need to do. We are pretty good people because we obey the commandments. We aren’t as bad as those sinners who stand somewhere beyond the tip of my pointing finger. And, if we should find we are coming up short in some of areas, we might reflect on our misdeeds only to discover ways that we can stop doing the bad things and start doing good things. We ourselves can change ourselves through self-help, self-actualization, and self-direction.
The problem with this type of repentance is that it doesn’t seek outside help. The Savior has no part in it. The mind still thinks, “I can do it by myself.” The mind hasn’t been changed; it hasn’t repented. It has not turned.
I think the reason Jesus had so much trouble with the scribes and the Pharisees was that they were doing pretty well by themselves, or so they thought. They were living, as we are, good, moral, obedient lives before God and neighbor. By contrast, the sinners and tax collectors were quite aware that they didn’t measure up to God’s or even society’s demands. They knew they couldn’t do it by themselves. They needed help. Repentance certainly involves declaring to yourself and to God, “I can’t do it alone.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but along with the scribes and Pharisees’ self-righteousness went the idea that a little, I mean a very little, generosity goes a long way. I don’t think they were big givers. From their questions to Jesus, I’d guess they were minimal givers, the least the law requires. A change of heart, a change of mind, might be just what they need. This is the season, the time, for it.
Your generosity, your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program, and the substantial benefits are becoming legendary through the Diocese. I know this is so, because I have begun to mention both of them every time I visit a parish. You know first hand what it is to make a significant turning, and you are leading the way. But each of us, deep inside, needs to make a turn or two. In fact, I’d say, the road to Bethlehem and the road to Christmas Eve has at least a couple of turns we each need to make in order to celebrate with fullness the Nativity of the Lord, to greet our new-born Savior with humility and with a purity of heart guilelessly to adore him.
Before we let the whirl of the season spin us around and around and around, let us turn to greet him, let us turn our heads to face him, who came once and will come again just to claim us.
As the prophet Baruch wrote, put off sorrow and affliction, and put on the robe of God’s righteousness. We have been called to a new way of living. We have been called to be born again, and again, in ever closer approximation to the Lord. Put off sorrow. Put on the robe of righteousness and obedience. With Baruch, Isaiah, and John encouraging us, why not follow their lead in the way prepared, in the way that leads to life everlasting?
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I am delighted to be with you once again. And on Friday I received the ultimate compliment: Rick asked for another date for me to visit you in the winter. If that isn’t the triumph of hope over experience, I don’t know what is. I am glad to be with you, to be part of your fellowship, whenever it is possible.
Two weeks ago, on the Feast of Christ the King, when Pilate questioned Jesus, I thought about the coming of Christ bringing with it light, perfect, flawless light; and how anyone unable or unwilling to face or to meet that light will instinctively put himself or herself in opposition to it. Opposition to that light, opposition to Christ, cries for repentance.
And last week, when the Gospel spoke of Christ’s return, in power and great glory, I thought about repentance now rather than later, now before Christ returns to be our Judge. I thought about it in terms like these: you and I can face divine judgment now, today: confessing to God our sins, repenting of those sins, and having those sins wiped away by divine forgiveness. If all our wrongs have been removed by daily repentance and forgiveness, there will be nothing left to judge on Judgment Day.
And today, John the Baptist strides across the stage “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” From Pilate’s encounter with Jesus, to the second coming, to John’s preaching, the Gospel cries for our repentance, repentance which is necessary to stand before him when he comes again.
Repentance, what is it? What is it to us? In St. Luke’s Gospel, the word for repentance is used more than in any other Gospel. For St. Luke, perhaps, the foremost characteristic of Christians is repentance, a word whose Greek root means after-thought, or change, or change in one’s mind or thinking.
What is it about our thinking that needs changing? Simply stated, I think it is our idea that we can do it by ourselves. We are justified before God by our good lives and our good works. We, after all, are ruggedly independent and self-reliant Americans. Our lack of needing help lies deep in our national consciousness. We think we know what we and the world need to do. We are pretty good people because we obey the commandments. We aren’t as bad as those sinners who stand somewhere beyond the tip of my pointing finger. And, if we should find we are coming up short in some of areas, we might reflect on our misdeeds only to discover ways that we can stop doing the bad things and start doing good things. We ourselves can change ourselves through self-help, self-actualization, and self-direction.
The problem with this type of repentance is that it doesn’t seek outside help. The Savior has no part in it. The mind still thinks, “I can do it by myself.” The mind hasn’t been changed; it hasn’t repented. It has not turned.
I think the reason Jesus had so much trouble with the scribes and the Pharisees was that they were doing pretty well by themselves, or so they thought. They were living, as we are, good, moral, obedient lives before God and neighbor. By contrast, the sinners and tax collectors were quite aware that they didn’t measure up to God’s or even society’s demands. They knew they couldn’t do it by themselves. They needed help. Repentance certainly involves declaring to yourself and to God, “I can’t do it alone.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but along with the scribes and Pharisees’ self-righteousness went the idea that a little, I mean a very little, generosity goes a long way. I don’t think they were big givers. From their questions to Jesus, I’d guess they were minimal givers, the least the law requires. A change of heart, a change of mind, might be just what they need. This is the season, the time, for it.
Your generosity, your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program, and the substantial benefits are becoming legendary through the Diocese. I know this is so, because I have begun to mention both of them every time I visit a parish. You know first hand what it is to make a significant turning, and you are leading the way. But each of us, deep inside, needs to make a turn or two. In fact, I’d say, the road to Bethlehem and the road to Christmas Eve has at least a couple of turns we each need to make in order to celebrate with fullness the Nativity of the Lord, to greet our new-born Savior with humility and with a purity of heart guilelessly to adore him.
Before we let the whirl of the season spin us around and around and around, let us turn to greet him, let us turn our heads to face him, who came once and will come again just to claim us.
As the prophet Baruch wrote, put off sorrow and affliction, and put on the robe of God’s righteousness. We have been called to a new way of living. We have been called to be born again, and again, in ever closer approximation to the Lord. Put off sorrow. Put on the robe of righteousness and obedience. With Baruch, Isaiah, and John encouraging us, why not follow their lead in the way prepared, in the way that leads to life everlasting?
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
Advent 2: Picture This
December 10, 2006 at 8 o'clock
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Once again, I am delighted to be with you. You should know that as I visit parishes around the Diocese, I have started mentioning the Cathedral very often. Your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program and your faith have yielded a harvest of many good results. So many increases in tangible signs of your commitment and stewardship, are blessings that other parishes cannot pretend do not result from the right approach. You are an example to us all.
Picture this. Someone wearing very strange clothes approaches you on a street corner, perhaps on West Fourth Street, and yells at you that your life is a mess and that your only hope is to put it in order. Picture that happening.
In a way, it just has happened. Through the Gospel, John the Baptist, with his strange clothes of camel’s hair, has yelled at you and me today. He’s told us that our sins weigh us down and that repentance is necessary for us to prepare the way of the Lord. Repentance is necessary for you and for me to celebrate Christmas with the fullness the Nativity of the Lord calls from each of us.
You can see why John wasn’t all that popular. You can see why he was living on the fringe. The message is so radical, so demanding, that the fringe was probably the only place he could plant his feet. But was he speaking for God? Was he telling us what we need to hear, as opposed to what we just do not want to hear? I believe he is. He is reminding us that our relationship with God depends largely on us. We have to make the move. God already has made the move to us in sending the prophets and John himself, and, most especially in sending Jesus to us. We may need what John has to say. We may need what we today jokingly call a “wake-up call.” This is a season for us to be awakened, perhaps even shaken, out of our complacency and out of our usual, everyday conversation with God. We need to put aside some of our behavior and some of our thoughts to serve God more nearly.
You and you alone best know what you need to do. No one knows better than you what you need to do. I heard it said the other day that everyone knows what he or she needs to do to be more faithful to God’s will and call for us. What we don’t know, often, is how to do it. I can suggest that you begin with a small thing. If the thing is noticeable, like drinking less or praying more or giving away more of your money, your friends and your family will notice, and they will resist. You have to be prepared for that. You have to put the will and call of God in the mix of your choices and make the choice which leads to your greater freedom and your greater spiritual health.
Listen to John, and take his words to heart. They speak to your deepest need and your deepest desire. He prophesies for God who knows you better than anyone else. As radical as he is, he is part of God’s redeeming love for you and your salvation. Listen to him.
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Once again, I am delighted to be with you. You should know that as I visit parishes around the Diocese, I have started mentioning the Cathedral very often. Your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program and your faith have yielded a harvest of many good results. So many increases in tangible signs of your commitment and stewardship, are blessings that other parishes cannot pretend do not result from the right approach. You are an example to us all.
Picture this. Someone wearing very strange clothes approaches you on a street corner, perhaps on West Fourth Street, and yells at you that your life is a mess and that your only hope is to put it in order. Picture that happening.
In a way, it just has happened. Through the Gospel, John the Baptist, with his strange clothes of camel’s hair, has yelled at you and me today. He’s told us that our sins weigh us down and that repentance is necessary for us to prepare the way of the Lord. Repentance is necessary for you and for me to celebrate Christmas with the fullness the Nativity of the Lord calls from each of us.
You can see why John wasn’t all that popular. You can see why he was living on the fringe. The message is so radical, so demanding, that the fringe was probably the only place he could plant his feet. But was he speaking for God? Was he telling us what we need to hear, as opposed to what we just do not want to hear? I believe he is. He is reminding us that our relationship with God depends largely on us. We have to make the move. God already has made the move to us in sending the prophets and John himself, and, most especially in sending Jesus to us. We may need what John has to say. We may need what we today jokingly call a “wake-up call.” This is a season for us to be awakened, perhaps even shaken, out of our complacency and out of our usual, everyday conversation with God. We need to put aside some of our behavior and some of our thoughts to serve God more nearly.
You and you alone best know what you need to do. No one knows better than you what you need to do. I heard it said the other day that everyone knows what he or she needs to do to be more faithful to God’s will and call for us. What we don’t know, often, is how to do it. I can suggest that you begin with a small thing. If the thing is noticeable, like drinking less or praying more or giving away more of your money, your friends and your family will notice, and they will resist. You have to be prepared for that. You have to put the will and call of God in the mix of your choices and make the choice which leads to your greater freedom and your greater spiritual health.
Listen to John, and take his words to heart. They speak to your deepest need and your deepest desire. He prophesies for God who knows you better than anyone else. As radical as he is, he is part of God’s redeeming love for you and your salvation. Listen to him.
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Advent 1: The Power of One
December 3, 2006
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Jeremiah 33:14-16 + 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 + Luke 21:25-36
I was struck last Sunday by the phrase, “The Power of One”. Canon Kitch ended her wonderful reflection last week by reminding us about the difference ONE can make; be it one person, one family, one household, one clan, one tribe, one nation, one congregation, one denomination, one faith tradition, one God. The difference ONE can make, the Power of One.
We continue this week with that very important point, that very important theme, that very important truth. There is Power in One. There is power in each and every one. Power to be used in the work of creation, power to be used in the reweaving of the fabric of the world, power to be used in seeing to the well-being of the anawim, the poor of the land – this land, and the land across the seas. The Power of One. The power in one.
One person pushed back the veil that seems to separate the holy and mundane. One person repaired the breach that had existed between the Creator and the creation. One person began the process of redemption that continues through this very day and will never end until redemption is complete. One person began the work of reconciliation of one to another. One person inaugurated the reign of God. One person makes it possible to live in this world, to live through this life, with purpose, with integrity, with compassion, with love. One person, the Power of One.
Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Savior of the world, Jesus the Savior of each one of us, Jesus who was and is and is to come. Jesus who is One and equal in the Trinity we call God. Jesus, the Power of One.
We most often think of Jesus, I think, as the One who was and the One who is to come. Neglecting a very important truth, a very important Jesus, the One who is.
Theologian N. T. Wright suggests that the "reappearing" of Jesus might be a better phrase than “the second coming” -- and one that was used by some early Christians. Wright says "(Jesus) is, at the moment, present with us, but hidden behind that invisible veil which keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments, such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scriptures, and our work with the poor, when the veil seems particularly thin.
But one day the veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one: Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God's new world will at last be (fully) in place, full of new prospects and possibilities." (Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense p. 219)
Celtic spirituality speaks of the “thin places”, holy places like Iona and Lindesfarne and Clonmacnoise and Glendolaugh where our J2A pilgrims went last summer. Places where when you step onto the ground you know you should take off your shoes. Places where the veil between this world, our life, and its Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer is very thin indeed.
What does it take? Do we need to rehearse again the litany of work waiting to be done, waiting to be begun, waiting for some-One to begin? Do we need to reread, rename the accounts of the evil in the world that leads to suffering, conflict, violence, and death, such things as the holocausts of our time, the AIDS epidemic in Africa and now in India and China, nine-eleven and the constant threat of attack we know in this country as well as it is known around the world, or the untimely death of a friend or loved one by accident or disease.
The monthly news magazine from Trinity Church, Wall Street has on its cover the word, eschatology noun.
1. The theological study of end times.
2. A difficult word to pronounce.
3. Hope that really matters.
If the Eschaton looks to, promises an end to all, evil, what would living in such a world be like? How do we capture glimpses of that world today? What does Kingdom life look like? How do we relate to one another -- not just fellow cathedral members, but yes, fellow members of this cathedral household, how do we relate to one another? How do we relate to the children of God around the world?
I have read that it is highly unlikely that any individual or congregation will change the world. I don’t buy that. I don’t believe that. It is a crock and it is a copout.
There was a time during my tenure as the Archdeacon of Bethlehem when there was no mission outside of this diocese, No care expressed for the evangelization of the world or the living conditions of people in the slums of the world. There was nothing.
Then one day my telephone rang and on the other end was a woman by the name of Connie Fegley, who said, “Rick, do you know what’s going on in Sudan? We have to do something!” And My God, what has been done since surpasses one’s imagination.
One can make a difference in the lives of one or two or, perhaps, a dozen people, or perhaps a village, or perhaps a congregation of people, or perhaps a family of people, or perhaps a diocese of people. We can relieve some suffering. We can offer glimpses of the coming Kingdom.
Some examples right here and right now? The Thanksgiving baskets provided families by families of the cathedral and delivered by our teenagers; the Christmas presents being sought, assembled, and delivered by our teenagers; the ministry of one Joel Atkinson who simply be his presence on the street declares the presence and the compassion of the one named Jesus.
What we are to be about in this time, in our time, before the end-time, is making every place we touch a “thin place”, demonstrating to every person we encounter that the Reign of God is begun. We have been given the power to do that. Empowered by the One who was and is and is to come to exercise the Power of One. To bring Hope that really matters.
It is time to be about that business.
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Jeremiah 33:14-16 + 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 + Luke 21:25-36
I was struck last Sunday by the phrase, “The Power of One”. Canon Kitch ended her wonderful reflection last week by reminding us about the difference ONE can make; be it one person, one family, one household, one clan, one tribe, one nation, one congregation, one denomination, one faith tradition, one God. The difference ONE can make, the Power of One.
We continue this week with that very important point, that very important theme, that very important truth. There is Power in One. There is power in each and every one. Power to be used in the work of creation, power to be used in the reweaving of the fabric of the world, power to be used in seeing to the well-being of the anawim, the poor of the land – this land, and the land across the seas. The Power of One. The power in one.
One person pushed back the veil that seems to separate the holy and mundane. One person repaired the breach that had existed between the Creator and the creation. One person began the process of redemption that continues through this very day and will never end until redemption is complete. One person began the work of reconciliation of one to another. One person inaugurated the reign of God. One person makes it possible to live in this world, to live through this life, with purpose, with integrity, with compassion, with love. One person, the Power of One.
Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Savior of the world, Jesus the Savior of each one of us, Jesus who was and is and is to come. Jesus who is One and equal in the Trinity we call God. Jesus, the Power of One.
We most often think of Jesus, I think, as the One who was and the One who is to come. Neglecting a very important truth, a very important Jesus, the One who is.
Theologian N. T. Wright suggests that the "reappearing" of Jesus might be a better phrase than “the second coming” -- and one that was used by some early Christians. Wright says "(Jesus) is, at the moment, present with us, but hidden behind that invisible veil which keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments, such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scriptures, and our work with the poor, when the veil seems particularly thin.
But one day the veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one: Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God's new world will at last be (fully) in place, full of new prospects and possibilities." (Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense p. 219)
Celtic spirituality speaks of the “thin places”, holy places like Iona and Lindesfarne and Clonmacnoise and Glendolaugh where our J2A pilgrims went last summer. Places where when you step onto the ground you know you should take off your shoes. Places where the veil between this world, our life, and its Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer is very thin indeed.
What does it take? Do we need to rehearse again the litany of work waiting to be done, waiting to be begun, waiting for some-One to begin? Do we need to reread, rename the accounts of the evil in the world that leads to suffering, conflict, violence, and death, such things as the holocausts of our time, the AIDS epidemic in Africa and now in India and China, nine-eleven and the constant threat of attack we know in this country as well as it is known around the world, or the untimely death of a friend or loved one by accident or disease.
The monthly news magazine from Trinity Church, Wall Street has on its cover the word, eschatology noun.
1. The theological study of end times.
2. A difficult word to pronounce.
3. Hope that really matters.
If the Eschaton looks to, promises an end to all, evil, what would living in such a world be like? How do we capture glimpses of that world today? What does Kingdom life look like? How do we relate to one another -- not just fellow cathedral members, but yes, fellow members of this cathedral household, how do we relate to one another? How do we relate to the children of God around the world?
I have read that it is highly unlikely that any individual or congregation will change the world. I don’t buy that. I don’t believe that. It is a crock and it is a copout.
There was a time during my tenure as the Archdeacon of Bethlehem when there was no mission outside of this diocese, No care expressed for the evangelization of the world or the living conditions of people in the slums of the world. There was nothing.
Then one day my telephone rang and on the other end was a woman by the name of Connie Fegley, who said, “Rick, do you know what’s going on in Sudan? We have to do something!” And My God, what has been done since surpasses one’s imagination.
One can make a difference in the lives of one or two or, perhaps, a dozen people, or perhaps a village, or perhaps a congregation of people, or perhaps a family of people, or perhaps a diocese of people. We can relieve some suffering. We can offer glimpses of the coming Kingdom.
Some examples right here and right now? The Thanksgiving baskets provided families by families of the cathedral and delivered by our teenagers; the Christmas presents being sought, assembled, and delivered by our teenagers; the ministry of one Joel Atkinson who simply be his presence on the street declares the presence and the compassion of the one named Jesus.
What we are to be about in this time, in our time, before the end-time, is making every place we touch a “thin place”, demonstrating to every person we encounter that the Reign of God is begun. We have been given the power to do that. Empowered by the One who was and is and is to come to exercise the Power of One. To bring Hope that really matters.
It is time to be about that business.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Christ the King: Bringing in the Kingdom
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37
It’s almost the season. Recently, I asked my daughter Sophie (who is nine) what she wanted for Christmas.
“I don’t really want anything for myself mommy. I have so many things. I just want-- world peace.”
“Well, world peace isn’t something I can give you.”
“I just want to help others,” she persisted.
So, I reminded her that last year we had given donations as presents to her teachers. Through Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), we had given mosquito netting for children in Malaria plagued countries. We gave cards to her teachers telling them that we honored them with this gift. They were thrilled. I told Sophie we could again choose gifts that helped other people. It seems to me that the very next day the ERD catalogue arrived in the mail (some say luck, I say the Holy Spirit). She poured through it deciding that this year she wants to give clean water.
Neither of us came to this point on our own. Her answer was influenced by her Sunday school class. They had discussed Christmas wish lists and Mrs. Berkenstock had asked them three questions. What do I have? What do I want? What do I need? All of us might benefit from such an exercise. Thus came Sophie’s desire for world peace. I had learned about the importance of Mosquito Netting through the Clergy Leadership Project, a program I attended for the past four years. Last year one of our faculty was Dr. Josh Ruxin, from the Earth Institute at
Every minute, three children die from malaria contracted from mosquitoes. This is a disease which is entirely preventable. Malaria could become a non-issue if every child had mosquito netting to sleep under. At a cost of about $5 per kid. Thus my excitement about mosquito netting.
There are other factors at work here as well. Alternative giving, giving a donation in someone’s name as a way to honor them, is important to our family in a large part due to the Living Gifts Fair which this congregation hosted for several years. An event that came to be through the vision of Dolores Schiesser, and the many others she recruited.
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the end of the season after Pentecost (which the children here know as the growing season). It is the last Sunday before Advent begins. Advent is the beginning of the Church year and is the season of waiting and expectation. One of the things we wait for in Advent is the second coming of Christ-- a glorious day in our understanding. A day when all the world will be made whole and creation will be complete. So, on this last Sunday of the Christian year we remember that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus the King may not be the most accessible image for us. After all, these days most kings are found in fantasy stories or Disney movies. Any modern day kings that we do see from countries that have one look like any other top notch executive as far as I can tell. But the kind of King Jesus is-- is glorious! Like Daniel’s vision of the messiah coming on the clouds of heaven and ushering in an everlasting kingdom. Or the fantastic vision in John’s Revelation. Just what kind of king Jesus could claim to be was in fact something that Pilot wanted to know as Jesus stood before him on trial. Jesus answers Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.” No kidding. Does the world around us look like the kingdom of heaven? What would the world look like if it were the
Once, when Jesus was the lector for the day at his home synagogue, he read from the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
(from Luke 4:16-30)
Then he had the audacity to claim that this was no longer prophecy but reality-- Jesus’ reality. And it can be our reality too. The
Our new presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, has asked the Church to set aside this Sunday as a day of "prayer, fasting, education and advocacy for the Millennium Development Goals." Perhaps you have heard something about the MDGs recently. Here’s why.
One billion people live on less than $1.00 a day – approximately one sixth of the people on the planet. Every day 30,000 children die from preventable consequences of extreme poverty; that's one every three seconds. Every year 500,000 women die from complications of pregnancy – most of them exacerbated by poverty. "One dollar a day" does not mean the equivalent of what a U.S. dollar would buy in an impoverished country. It refers to what it would buy here at home. That's like a family of four living on less than $1,460 a year of combined private and public resources (schools, roads and fire trucks are public resources). One dollar a day is the threshold below which there are insufficient calories to keep the body alive. This is not about being poor. This is about living a slow death; this is about the poverty that kills.
[quoted from the Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation website www.e4gr.org/]
In 2000, leaders from 189 Nations, including the
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger .
2. Achieve universal primary education.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women.
4. Reduce child mortality.
5. Improve maternal health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability.
8. Create a global partnership for development with targets for aid, trade and debt relief.
Our General Convention has promised to support the MDGs. Episcopal parishes and dioceses have been urged to designate 0.7% of their income to eradicate extreme poverty. Our own Diocesan Convention resolved to support the MDGs as well. That’s where I got my white wrist band that say’s ONE. It stands for the ONE campaign. What can One do? What can one person do? One congregation? One diocese? One church? One Body of Christ?
When Sophie asked for world peace, I could have had a better answer, “Well, let’s see what we can do about it.” What can one do? Thanks to Dolores Schiesser this congregation began the Living Gifts Fair which influenced at least our family. Thanks to Becky Berkenstock my daughter and a class full of other youth have something to think about. What can one parish do? Thanks to the vision of the leadership of this congregation, this Cathedral gives away not .7% but close to 10% for people in need in this community, this nation and other countries. What can one diocese do? Duncan Grey, the Bishop of Mississippi, when asked if his diocese would continue to offer their .7% after Hurricane Katrina hit did not hesitate to say, “yes!” After so many people had reached beyond themselves to help them, how could they not continue to help others in need, especially now that they had a taste of the devastation that people in developing countries live with every day.
What would the reign of Christ look like?
Let’s see what we can do about it
Copyright ©Anne E. Kitch 2006
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Thanksgiving Day: Do not be Anxious
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Matthew 6:25-33
If only it were that simple. “Do not worry,” Jesus says. 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. As if!
I have to say my own experience tells me 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. And believe me, I wouldn’t want to return to a more anxious age. But is that all there is? Is knowing that I will survive the only rope to grasp when worries about “what next” overwhelm me?
How does Jesus move us away from worry? 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.
Now before we decide this gospel message is take time to stop and smell the roses, let’s consider it further. Jesus is calling our attention to some things that are accessible to us, things that are all around us, things that are simply there: birds and wildflowers. To quell our anxiety, Jesus calls our attention to, connects us to creation. He calls us to really see, observe, and contemplate the world around us and in doing so to notice God’s care for the world. In God’s economy, the birds are fed. In God’s amazing creation simple flowers not only display a complex biology that gathers sunlight converts it into food and energy and releases life-giving oxygen into the air, they are adorned with beauty as well.
Stop and notice God. “Be still then, and know that I am God” quotes the psalmist (psalm 46). Sometimes we need to be still in order to notice God… and to know God. We need to be still to notice and know that God cares for us. After all, knowing God is what it is all about for us. Otherwise, why would we be in church on Thanksgiving morning.
Anxiety distracts us from God. It distorts our relationships with others. It divorces us from who we really are. Anxiety gnaws at us, pulling us down into despair, mocking our desire to trust, teaching us rather to fear.
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. This teaching of Jesus’ is a profound comment on the danger of sin and temptation: that we would be pulled away from God. The cure for worry is right relationship with God. Strive first for the kingdom of God. When we put God first, when we take time to consider God’s great loving work of creation and remember that we are part of it, then we also are recalled to who we are. We are God’s beloved and as such we can put love in place of anxiety.
There are troubles. We are not without troubles. 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 and older translation, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” But no evil overcomes God’s love.
One of my favorite prayers for anxious times is by contemporary writer Joyce Rupp. It goes in part:
Like the ebbing tide of the ageless sea,
I yearn to be calm, be still,
no fretting and intense beating
against the shore of myself.
But the seagulls of anxiety screech
and the wild waves press upon my life.
…I do believe in your nearness,
yet I get too caught up
in my series, pressures, and needs.
Once again I open my being to you.
Come, Peaceful One, come!
Fill me with surrender and quiet.
Draw me into the stillness of your heart.
Together we will walk the seashore of my life.
(from Prayers to Sophia)
In anxious times, in pleasant times we do not walk alone. It is easy to give in to anxiety on Thanksgiving. There are so many expectations, so many temptations that draw us away from our center. The gift is, there will be many things for us to “consider” this Thanksgiving Day. The day itself calls us to consider our blessings, particularly the blessings of the earth. As we offer our thanks to God for the abundance of the earth, we are also called to consider our relationship to creation, to ordinary birds and wildflowers and to one another. And we are called to recall God’s presence in our lives, to recall God’s great care for all of creation-- for each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings, each relationship that is loving or difficult.
God knows us. God knows what we need. Consider, take a closer look at, and contemplate God’s love for you.
Draw me into the stillness of your heart, [O God.]
Together we will walk the seashore of my life.
Amen
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
Matthew 6:25-33
If only it were that simple. “Do not worry,” Jesus says. 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. As if!
I have to say my own experience tells me 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. And believe me, I wouldn’t want to return to a more anxious age. But is that all there is? Is knowing that I will survive the only rope to grasp when worries about “what next” overwhelm me?
How does Jesus move us away from worry? 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.
Now before we decide this gospel message is take time to stop and smell the roses, let’s consider it further. Jesus is calling our attention to some things that are accessible to us, things that are all around us, things that are simply there: birds and wildflowers. To quell our anxiety, Jesus calls our attention to, connects us to creation. He calls us to really see, observe, and contemplate the world around us and in doing so to notice God’s care for the world. In God’s economy, the birds are fed. In God’s amazing creation simple flowers not only display a complex biology that gathers sunlight converts it into food and energy and releases life-giving oxygen into the air, they are adorned with beauty as well.
Stop and notice God. “Be still then, and know that I am God” quotes the psalmist (psalm 46). Sometimes we need to be still in order to notice God… and to know God. We need to be still to notice and know that God cares for us. After all, knowing God is what it is all about for us. Otherwise, why would we be in church on Thanksgiving morning.
Anxiety distracts us from God. It distorts our relationships with others. It divorces us from who we really are. Anxiety gnaws at us, pulling us down into despair, mocking our desire to trust, teaching us rather to fear.
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. This teaching of Jesus’ is a profound comment on the danger of sin and temptation: that we would be pulled away from God. The cure for worry is right relationship with God. Strive first for the kingdom of God. When we put God first, when we take time to consider God’s great loving work of creation and remember that we are part of it, then we also are recalled to who we are. We are God’s beloved and as such we can put love in place of anxiety.
There are troubles. We are not without troubles. 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 and older translation, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” But no evil overcomes God’s love.
One of my favorite prayers for anxious times is by contemporary writer Joyce Rupp. It goes in part:
Like the ebbing tide of the ageless sea,
I yearn to be calm, be still,
no fretting and intense beating
against the shore of myself.
But the seagulls of anxiety screech
and the wild waves press upon my life.
…I do believe in your nearness,
yet I get too caught up
in my series, pressures, and needs.
Once again I open my being to you.
Come, Peaceful One, come!
Fill me with surrender and quiet.
Draw me into the stillness of your heart.
Together we will walk the seashore of my life.
(from Prayers to Sophia)
In anxious times, in pleasant times we do not walk alone. It is easy to give in to anxiety on Thanksgiving. There are so many expectations, so many temptations that draw us away from our center. The gift is, there will be many things for us to “consider” this Thanksgiving Day. The day itself calls us to consider our blessings, particularly the blessings of the earth. As we offer our thanks to God for the abundance of the earth, we are also called to consider our relationship to creation, to ordinary birds and wildflowers and to one another. And we are called to recall God’s presence in our lives, to recall God’s great care for all of creation-- for each little flower that opens, each little bird that sings, each relationship that is loving or difficult.
God knows us. God knows what we need. Consider, take a closer look at, and contemplate God’s love for you.
Draw me into the stillness of your heart, [O God.]
Together we will walk the seashore of my life.
Amen
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Pentecost 24: In For The Long Haul
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
November 19, 2006
Daniel 12:1-3 + Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 + Mark 13:1-8
“Famine, social unrest, institutional deterioration, bitter internal conflicts, class warfare, banditry, insurrections, intrigues, betrayals, bloodshed, and the scattering of people throughout the country...”
Sounds like the evening news, but it’s not. Sounds like the world today, but it’s not. It is how the historian Josephus described the scene in Israel & Palestine about the time when the Evangelist Mark was putting the Gospel to pen and paper.
Jesus spoke of wars and rumors of wars. He predicted the destruction of the temple that had been built by Solomon in Jerusalem. And when Mark put pen to paper it had come to pass or was about to. About the year 70 in the Christian Era.
Rome had been laying siege to Jerusalem for years, there were popular messiahs, prophets crying out woes on the city and temple, mock trials, and crowds creating tumults. There were wars and rumors of wars for the better part of ten years and Josephus reports portents, including a brilliant daylight in the middle of the night...
I have a photograph in my office that I took from the Mount of Olives at a place that had to be near where Jesus spoke to his disciples. There is now a chapel on that spot. You sit down and look out over the Kidron Valley, across to the Old City of Jerusalem and you see the lower walls that had held up the Temple. They are all that’s left of the Temple of Solomon. The wall is called the Wailing Wall.
The place is called the Temple Mount by Jews. It is called the Dome of the Rock by Muslims and contains Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is the site where many people believe Jesus will return to when he comes again to complete the work of creation.
It is also the site of major conflicts that keep the Middle East full of war and the rumors of war. “Not one stone will be left here upon another.”
Many individuals, many groups eagerly anticipate the Second Coming, eagerly anticipate the completion of this world and the inauguration of the next. Are you ready for the rapture?
Preacher Fred Craddock once said, "Maybe people are obsessed with the second coming because, deep down, they were really disappointed in the first one."
We are now in a period of the Christian year, this end of this aone and the one to come on Advent 1, when scripture focuses on the end time, the second coming, the eschaton, the eternal consequences of the Now.
Millennial thinking or more accurately, millennial guessing, is very popular in our time. Lots of people have a view of how it will go, “The Left Behind Series” being only the latest and most egregious example. I am sure you remember all the hoopla, fear, and prognostication in 1999 and 2000 about what will happen in this new millennium.
The Book of Daniel is an example of apocalyptic writing about the end time that was popular in the century before Jesus. The war then was with Syria. The basic theme is, “The present time is one of suffering because of evil, but those who persist, those who are faithful will be vindicated. God will win; God will deliver, so be faithful.
But what do we do while waiting for the Messiah?
Mark and the early followers of the Way believed that the end was imminent. The prediction of Jesus had already come to pass. But, now, we know more than 2000 years later that it is not imminent, that we are in for the long haul.
There are indeed wars and rumors of wars and false prophets, and portents, and earthquakes… but we know, we think, we believe, , we hope that the end is not today.
But when it comes “it will be all right.”
We have been assured that in the person of Jesus, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us…” Everything will be all right.
Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregren puts it this way. How often do parents say that to their children, "Everything will be all right"? A child falls and leaves some skin on the ground. "Everything will be all right," we say to the sobbing child. We tell the bed-ridden grandparent in the hospital, "Everything will be all right," even when we know that it might not be all right.
Just because we proclaim that everything will be all right, that doesn't mean that we do nothing. When children have fallen down and blood is all over the place, we don't just say, "Everything will be all right." There may be a fast trip to the emergency room. There may be bandages and antibiotics applied from the medicine cabinet. We do all that's in our power to make sure everything will be all right.
"How can I make ends meet, when more bills are coming in than income?" "Everything will be all right"
"I'm having surgery tomorrow and I'm scared." "Everything will be all right."
"The tests for cancer came back positive." "Everything will be all right."
"My brother was just sent to Afghanistan." "Everything will be all right."
"My mother just died." "Everything will be all right."
And then we do everything in our power to try to make things all right and to encourage and support those in troubled times.
What do we do while waiting for the Messiah?
In the book Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten one of the rabbi’s learnings is, “When you go out into the world, watch out, hold hands, and stick together.”
The author of Hebrews tells us this way, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day coming.”
Those who know Jesus know the way through troubled times and the way to wait for the end of time.
Amen
November 19, 2006
Daniel 12:1-3 + Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 + Mark 13:1-8
“Famine, social unrest, institutional deterioration, bitter internal conflicts, class warfare, banditry, insurrections, intrigues, betrayals, bloodshed, and the scattering of people throughout the country...”
Sounds like the evening news, but it’s not. Sounds like the world today, but it’s not. It is how the historian Josephus described the scene in Israel & Palestine about the time when the Evangelist Mark was putting the Gospel to pen and paper.
Jesus spoke of wars and rumors of wars. He predicted the destruction of the temple that had been built by Solomon in Jerusalem. And when Mark put pen to paper it had come to pass or was about to. About the year 70 in the Christian Era.
Rome had been laying siege to Jerusalem for years, there were popular messiahs, prophets crying out woes on the city and temple, mock trials, and crowds creating tumults. There were wars and rumors of wars for the better part of ten years and Josephus reports portents, including a brilliant daylight in the middle of the night...
I have a photograph in my office that I took from the Mount of Olives at a place that had to be near where Jesus spoke to his disciples. There is now a chapel on that spot. You sit down and look out over the Kidron Valley, across to the Old City of Jerusalem and you see the lower walls that had held up the Temple. They are all that’s left of the Temple of Solomon. The wall is called the Wailing Wall.
The place is called the Temple Mount by Jews. It is called the Dome of the Rock by Muslims and contains Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is the site where many people believe Jesus will return to when he comes again to complete the work of creation.
It is also the site of major conflicts that keep the Middle East full of war and the rumors of war. “Not one stone will be left here upon another.”
Many individuals, many groups eagerly anticipate the Second Coming, eagerly anticipate the completion of this world and the inauguration of the next. Are you ready for the rapture?
Preacher Fred Craddock once said, "Maybe people are obsessed with the second coming because, deep down, they were really disappointed in the first one."
We are now in a period of the Christian year, this end of this aone and the one to come on Advent 1, when scripture focuses on the end time, the second coming, the eschaton, the eternal consequences of the Now.
Millennial thinking or more accurately, millennial guessing, is very popular in our time. Lots of people have a view of how it will go, “The Left Behind Series” being only the latest and most egregious example. I am sure you remember all the hoopla, fear, and prognostication in 1999 and 2000 about what will happen in this new millennium.
The Book of Daniel is an example of apocalyptic writing about the end time that was popular in the century before Jesus. The war then was with Syria. The basic theme is, “The present time is one of suffering because of evil, but those who persist, those who are faithful will be vindicated. God will win; God will deliver, so be faithful.
But what do we do while waiting for the Messiah?
Mark and the early followers of the Way believed that the end was imminent. The prediction of Jesus had already come to pass. But, now, we know more than 2000 years later that it is not imminent, that we are in for the long haul.
There are indeed wars and rumors of wars and false prophets, and portents, and earthquakes… but we know, we think, we believe, , we hope that the end is not today.
But when it comes “it will be all right.”
We have been assured that in the person of Jesus, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us…” Everything will be all right.
Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregren puts it this way. How often do parents say that to their children, "Everything will be all right"? A child falls and leaves some skin on the ground. "Everything will be all right," we say to the sobbing child. We tell the bed-ridden grandparent in the hospital, "Everything will be all right," even when we know that it might not be all right.
Just because we proclaim that everything will be all right, that doesn't mean that we do nothing. When children have fallen down and blood is all over the place, we don't just say, "Everything will be all right." There may be a fast trip to the emergency room. There may be bandages and antibiotics applied from the medicine cabinet. We do all that's in our power to make sure everything will be all right.
"How can I make ends meet, when more bills are coming in than income?" "Everything will be all right"
"I'm having surgery tomorrow and I'm scared." "Everything will be all right."
"The tests for cancer came back positive." "Everything will be all right."
"My brother was just sent to Afghanistan." "Everything will be all right."
"My mother just died." "Everything will be all right."
And then we do everything in our power to try to make things all right and to encourage and support those in troubled times.
What do we do while waiting for the Messiah?
In the book Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten one of the rabbi’s learnings is, “When you go out into the world, watch out, hold hands, and stick together.”
The author of Hebrews tells us this way, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day coming.”
Those who know Jesus know the way through troubled times and the way to wait for the end of time.
Amen
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Pentecost 23:Look Again
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Mark 12:38-44
I apologize. Please remember that--it will come up later, because things are not always what they seem.
That is perhaps the message of the Gospel passage we heard today. It is a familiar passage, one we often call the Widow’s Mite. Many of you know this story, right? It is especially popular for preachers this time of year, the liturgical season we call Stewardship. Many preachers look forward to it’s appearance in the lectionary and I have enjoyed preaching on it myself. This passage reminds us that that looks can deceive. Jesus and his disciples are sitting in the temple watching as people come and put money into the temple treasury. Just when it seems that $2000 is more than $2, Jesus points out otherwise. The amounts are not what they seem. If you are rich, to give $2000 is less than to give $2 if you are poor. Thus Jesus’ point.
As he watches many rich people put in large sums, he also sees a widow put in a couple of coins--all that she had to live on. He calls his disciples to notice, “Look, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest.” There are many sermons (and I have preached some of them) that use this story to talk about the importance of giving, or that the size of the gift isn’t as important as the intent, or that percentage giving is better than a fixed amount no matter how large, or that giving out of our need is somewhat more worthy than giving out of our abundance. Now if you love this story, and I do, I apologize--because things are not always what they seem. This is not the story you are familiar with, because Jesus doesn’t teach any such thing as those sermons would suggest.
Let’s look at the text. In fact, let’s look at what is not there. Jesus does not condemn the rich people. Nor does he commend the widow. He doesn’t say that the widow’s gift is better, he only comments that she gave more. Nor is the widow set apart because of her motivation, as if her reason for giving is better. The text does not tell us what is in the Widow’s heart. We simply do not know why she does what she does. Nor does the story suggest that Jesus knew he reason (Jesus didn’t know her heart as he sometimes does). In commenting on this passage biblical scholar Addison Wright remarks, “she could have acted out of despair, out of guilt, out of a desire to be seen contributing for all the story says. ”(The Widow’s Mite: Praise or Lament?—A Matter of Context, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 1982)
You know what else the text doesn’t say? It doesn’t tell us we should all go and be like the widow. Jesus does not tell the disciples to go and imitate her. There is no, “Go and do likewise” or, “Truly I tell you, she is close to the Kingdom of God” or even a note that Jesus looks kindly on her. A few weeks ago we heard the story of the Rich Young Man, you remember, the one Jesus told to go and sell all his possessions. In that story, the text clearly says Jesus looked at him and loved him--and then told him what to do. In this story Jesus doesn’t address the widow at all.
And I’ll tell you what comes next in the biblical text, just in case you think our reading ended before we got to the explanation. In the Bible, the story moves on.
As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
So what are we to make of this? This story that was so familiar but that we now find isn’t at all what it seems? The rich give out of their abundance and are not condemned. The widow gives out of her need but is not commended. If this text is not about how wonderful the widow is, what is it about?
I think perhaps one way to address this is to look where it begins. Jesus has it out for religious leaders who are more concerned about themselves than the love of God. The scribes were the teachers and recorders of Moses’ law. That in and of itself is not the problem. Many scribes were faithful, loving God with all their heart and mind and strength. The scribes that Jesus excoriates are those who allow privilege to blind them to need. Jesus condemns those who devour widow’s houses, who ignore or exploit the poor. So we do know from this passage what Jesus thinks of those who exploit the poor. We don’t know what Jesus thought of the widow, but as far as I know Jesus never told a widow or a poor person to give away everything they had to live on. Perhaps Jesus was scandalized that this poor woman would give away all that she had into the treasury of a temple which would not be left standing. Perhaps here is the widow whose house had been devoured by religious piety. What did Jesus think? We don’t really know.
I knew a widow once. She came to church faithfully and she worried constantly about many things. One of her worries was the appeals that came to her through the mail, especially the ones that told her she needed to give money to save her soul. She would come to the Church office clutching a letter in which some minister begged her through the written word to give more to insure her place in heaven. She worried that she had not given enough and was not good enough in God’s eyes. I had unkind thoughts in my heart about the people behind those appeals, who preyed on her, who devoured her. It appalled me. Perhaps Jesus was appalled by the sight of an old woman giving away to a religious institution all that she had to live on.
So what are we to make of this text if it is not the beloved story about sacrificial giving that we thought is was? What do we do with scripture when it doesn’t say what we think it does, or should? Please remember that I apologized up front, because I am not going to solve this one for us today. But we might ask ourselves what the gospel is for. What these lessons are for? What our scripture is for? I can get us out of this one by referring to the catechesis on p. 853 of the Book of Common Prayer. “Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God? …because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.”
These scriptures are for us the Word of God because God still speaks to us through them. I know that in times of joy, and in times of confusion and in times of need I have read the same scriptures and heard different things. Things are not always what they seem. I need to remember that maybe I don’t know so much about this scripture passage. Maybe I don’t know the mind of Christ. Maybe God’s word has more to tell me. So I am sorry I have no words of wisdom for you this morning; only a suggestion. Let this be your mantra this week: things are not always what they seem. What might we see, learn, wrestle with if we look at things with new eyes, hear with open ears? What might God be calling us to ponder?
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Mark 12:38-44
I apologize. Please remember that--it will come up later, because things are not always what they seem.
That is perhaps the message of the Gospel passage we heard today. It is a familiar passage, one we often call the Widow’s Mite. Many of you know this story, right? It is especially popular for preachers this time of year, the liturgical season we call Stewardship. Many preachers look forward to it’s appearance in the lectionary and I have enjoyed preaching on it myself. This passage reminds us that that looks can deceive. Jesus and his disciples are sitting in the temple watching as people come and put money into the temple treasury. Just when it seems that $2000 is more than $2, Jesus points out otherwise. The amounts are not what they seem. If you are rich, to give $2000 is less than to give $2 if you are poor. Thus Jesus’ point.
As he watches many rich people put in large sums, he also sees a widow put in a couple of coins--all that she had to live on. He calls his disciples to notice, “Look, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest.” There are many sermons (and I have preached some of them) that use this story to talk about the importance of giving, or that the size of the gift isn’t as important as the intent, or that percentage giving is better than a fixed amount no matter how large, or that giving out of our need is somewhat more worthy than giving out of our abundance. Now if you love this story, and I do, I apologize--because things are not always what they seem. This is not the story you are familiar with, because Jesus doesn’t teach any such thing as those sermons would suggest.
Let’s look at the text. In fact, let’s look at what is not there. Jesus does not condemn the rich people. Nor does he commend the widow. He doesn’t say that the widow’s gift is better, he only comments that she gave more. Nor is the widow set apart because of her motivation, as if her reason for giving is better. The text does not tell us what is in the Widow’s heart. We simply do not know why she does what she does. Nor does the story suggest that Jesus knew he reason (Jesus didn’t know her heart as he sometimes does). In commenting on this passage biblical scholar Addison Wright remarks, “she could have acted out of despair, out of guilt, out of a desire to be seen contributing for all the story says. ”(The Widow’s Mite: Praise or Lament?—A Matter of Context, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 1982)
You know what else the text doesn’t say? It doesn’t tell us we should all go and be like the widow. Jesus does not tell the disciples to go and imitate her. There is no, “Go and do likewise” or, “Truly I tell you, she is close to the Kingdom of God” or even a note that Jesus looks kindly on her. A few weeks ago we heard the story of the Rich Young Man, you remember, the one Jesus told to go and sell all his possessions. In that story, the text clearly says Jesus looked at him and loved him--and then told him what to do. In this story Jesus doesn’t address the widow at all.
And I’ll tell you what comes next in the biblical text, just in case you think our reading ended before we got to the explanation. In the Bible, the story moves on.
As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
So what are we to make of this? This story that was so familiar but that we now find isn’t at all what it seems? The rich give out of their abundance and are not condemned. The widow gives out of her need but is not commended. If this text is not about how wonderful the widow is, what is it about?
I think perhaps one way to address this is to look where it begins. Jesus has it out for religious leaders who are more concerned about themselves than the love of God. The scribes were the teachers and recorders of Moses’ law. That in and of itself is not the problem. Many scribes were faithful, loving God with all their heart and mind and strength. The scribes that Jesus excoriates are those who allow privilege to blind them to need. Jesus condemns those who devour widow’s houses, who ignore or exploit the poor. So we do know from this passage what Jesus thinks of those who exploit the poor. We don’t know what Jesus thought of the widow, but as far as I know Jesus never told a widow or a poor person to give away everything they had to live on. Perhaps Jesus was scandalized that this poor woman would give away all that she had into the treasury of a temple which would not be left standing. Perhaps here is the widow whose house had been devoured by religious piety. What did Jesus think? We don’t really know.
I knew a widow once. She came to church faithfully and she worried constantly about many things. One of her worries was the appeals that came to her through the mail, especially the ones that told her she needed to give money to save her soul. She would come to the Church office clutching a letter in which some minister begged her through the written word to give more to insure her place in heaven. She worried that she had not given enough and was not good enough in God’s eyes. I had unkind thoughts in my heart about the people behind those appeals, who preyed on her, who devoured her. It appalled me. Perhaps Jesus was appalled by the sight of an old woman giving away to a religious institution all that she had to live on.
So what are we to make of this text if it is not the beloved story about sacrificial giving that we thought is was? What do we do with scripture when it doesn’t say what we think it does, or should? Please remember that I apologized up front, because I am not going to solve this one for us today. But we might ask ourselves what the gospel is for. What these lessons are for? What our scripture is for? I can get us out of this one by referring to the catechesis on p. 853 of the Book of Common Prayer. “Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God? …because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.”
These scriptures are for us the Word of God because God still speaks to us through them. I know that in times of joy, and in times of confusion and in times of need I have read the same scriptures and heard different things. Things are not always what they seem. I need to remember that maybe I don’t know so much about this scripture passage. Maybe I don’t know the mind of Christ. Maybe God’s word has more to tell me. So I am sorry I have no words of wisdom for you this morning; only a suggestion. Let this be your mantra this week: things are not always what they seem. What might we see, learn, wrestle with if we look at things with new eyes, hear with open ears? What might God be calling us to ponder?
Monday, October 30, 2006
Requiem Eucharist
The Rev. Laura Howell
October 29, 2006
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Collect for the Dead + Wisdom 3:1-9 + Revelation 7:9-17 + John 11:21-27
In the name of the Father (+) and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
From the most ancient times, the church has honored those who have died in faith. As a matter of fact, early Eucharists were celebrated on the flat, table-like tops of the tombs of the martyrs. Around 200 AD—1900 years ago!—Tertullian wrote that Christians offered prayers for the dead as part of the Eucharist. And St. Augustine in the 4th century wrote: “The souls of the pious dead are not separated from the Church, which even now is the Kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.”
At Trinity Bethlehem, we offer a Requiem quarterly. Sometimes folks who have come to us from other denominations ask why we pray for those who have died. They say, “If people are dead, our prayers for them don’t mean anything, do they?” I have several answers. First of all, praying for those who have gone before, helps ME—it’s kind of selfish, actually. It helps me remember them, it helps me to maintain spiritual contact with them, and there is comfort in that. When I am troubled, prayer helps anchor me. How much more do I need the balm of prayer when I am grieving?
But more importantly, I wonder what those questioners mean by the word “dead”? Do they mean that the physical body is now gone from my sight? That the person’s being is extinguished? That they are no longer in existence? St. Paul writes to the Romans with some incredulity in chapter 6 (3-4): “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” You can hardly put it any clearer than Jesus does: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” For us, as Christians, it’s a perfectly acceptable human thing to grieve greatly when someone we love dies—even Jesus grieved for his friend Lazarus. But we also recognize that grief is not the end of the story, because the person who is gone has been made anew in Christ.
Let me remind you about the collect we have chosen for this service: “Eternal Lord God, you hold all souls in life: Give to your whole Church in paradise and on earth your light and your peace; and grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served you here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into your unending joy.”
This collect harkens back to Augustine’s reflection. The church does not function just on this earth. Nor is it just in heaven. The church exists in that mysterious perpetual NOW which is God’s time. It straddles both time and eternity. It exists in that LIFE in which God holds all souls. I would hazard a guess that most of you are part of the church. Who else would come out to pray both in words and music at 5:00 on a blustery Sunday evening? As we enter into this Eucharist, without even realizing it, we step into eternity. It’s nice to have our bodies along, and to sit in the pew with our friends and family, who have also brought their bodies along. What is most important, however, is that your eternal souls are here inside those bodies. And at this Eucharist, all the rest of the church is present, too, with their eternal souls. It is in worship, in prayer, that we all gather, even if we can’t all see and hear each other with our physical eyes and ears.
There was a lady who was at Morning Prayer every morning for years and years. She had a particularly wonderful intonation when she said Canticle 1: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. Praise him and magnify him forever.” Every Monday morning I hear her saying with me, “Praise him and magnify him forever.” I pray for her and give thanks for her whenever I hear her voice. She has been living in God’s larger world for several years now. My mother is ill in another part of the country. I pray for her health and happiness several times a day. I can still travel to see her a couple of times a year, but she is as close in moments of prayer as my Canticle 1 lady. If we are all eternally present in God’s church now, wouldn’t it be a little silly of me to think that I could pray for one of them, but not for the other?
In part, prayer is a conversation between our spirits and God. In this requiem, we pray for those who have died. In other words, we talk with God about them. We express to God our hopes that they are well and filled with joy at being in God’s presence. We remember their lives and give thanks for what they have meant to us. We receive the comfort of knowing that the One who created the universe, and who cared so much that he would die for us, is looking after them. And maybe, if we are very blessed, we receive back a whisper of the peace that they are enjoying, and a reflection of the pure love in which they are now immersed.
I suppose that this could sound like sentimentalism. Or even some kind of emotional wish-fulfillment. But for 2,000 years, the church has recommended that we turn our minds to eternity and pray for and with those who have died. As we prepare to enter the 8-day celebration of All Saints and All Souls, I invite you to remember those who have gone ahead of us, who live in Christ, and with whom we, too, will live in eternal joy. AMEN.
October 29, 2006
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Collect for the Dead + Wisdom 3:1-9 + Revelation 7:9-17 + John 11:21-27
In the name of the Father (+) and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
From the most ancient times, the church has honored those who have died in faith. As a matter of fact, early Eucharists were celebrated on the flat, table-like tops of the tombs of the martyrs. Around 200 AD—1900 years ago!—Tertullian wrote that Christians offered prayers for the dead as part of the Eucharist. And St. Augustine in the 4th century wrote: “The souls of the pious dead are not separated from the Church, which even now is the Kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.”
At Trinity Bethlehem, we offer a Requiem quarterly. Sometimes folks who have come to us from other denominations ask why we pray for those who have died. They say, “If people are dead, our prayers for them don’t mean anything, do they?” I have several answers. First of all, praying for those who have gone before, helps ME—it’s kind of selfish, actually. It helps me remember them, it helps me to maintain spiritual contact with them, and there is comfort in that. When I am troubled, prayer helps anchor me. How much more do I need the balm of prayer when I am grieving?
But more importantly, I wonder what those questioners mean by the word “dead”? Do they mean that the physical body is now gone from my sight? That the person’s being is extinguished? That they are no longer in existence? St. Paul writes to the Romans with some incredulity in chapter 6 (3-4): “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” You can hardly put it any clearer than Jesus does: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” For us, as Christians, it’s a perfectly acceptable human thing to grieve greatly when someone we love dies—even Jesus grieved for his friend Lazarus. But we also recognize that grief is not the end of the story, because the person who is gone has been made anew in Christ.
Let me remind you about the collect we have chosen for this service: “Eternal Lord God, you hold all souls in life: Give to your whole Church in paradise and on earth your light and your peace; and grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served you here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into your unending joy.”
This collect harkens back to Augustine’s reflection. The church does not function just on this earth. Nor is it just in heaven. The church exists in that mysterious perpetual NOW which is God’s time. It straddles both time and eternity. It exists in that LIFE in which God holds all souls. I would hazard a guess that most of you are part of the church. Who else would come out to pray both in words and music at 5:00 on a blustery Sunday evening? As we enter into this Eucharist, without even realizing it, we step into eternity. It’s nice to have our bodies along, and to sit in the pew with our friends and family, who have also brought their bodies along. What is most important, however, is that your eternal souls are here inside those bodies. And at this Eucharist, all the rest of the church is present, too, with their eternal souls. It is in worship, in prayer, that we all gather, even if we can’t all see and hear each other with our physical eyes and ears.
There was a lady who was at Morning Prayer every morning for years and years. She had a particularly wonderful intonation when she said Canticle 1: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. Praise him and magnify him forever.” Every Monday morning I hear her saying with me, “Praise him and magnify him forever.” I pray for her and give thanks for her whenever I hear her voice. She has been living in God’s larger world for several years now. My mother is ill in another part of the country. I pray for her health and happiness several times a day. I can still travel to see her a couple of times a year, but she is as close in moments of prayer as my Canticle 1 lady. If we are all eternally present in God’s church now, wouldn’t it be a little silly of me to think that I could pray for one of them, but not for the other?
In part, prayer is a conversation between our spirits and God. In this requiem, we pray for those who have died. In other words, we talk with God about them. We express to God our hopes that they are well and filled with joy at being in God’s presence. We remember their lives and give thanks for what they have meant to us. We receive the comfort of knowing that the One who created the universe, and who cared so much that he would die for us, is looking after them. And maybe, if we are very blessed, we receive back a whisper of the peace that they are enjoying, and a reflection of the pure love in which they are now immersed.
I suppose that this could sound like sentimentalism. Or even some kind of emotional wish-fulfillment. But for 2,000 years, the church has recommended that we turn our minds to eternity and pray for and with those who have died. As we prepare to enter the 8-day celebration of All Saints and All Souls, I invite you to remember those who have gone ahead of us, who live in Christ, and with whom we, too, will live in eternal joy. AMEN.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Pentecost 21 ~ Making it through
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
October 29, 2006
Job 42:1-6, 10-17 + Mark 10:46-52
How are you going to get through this life? How are you going to make it? What will it take for you to make it through this life with your self intact; with your integrity, with self-respect, with honor?
What will be your legacy for those you love, those closest to you, your associates, your neighbors, your small part of the world? What will be known of your beliefs, your values, your worldview, and your faith?
What will your children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews know about you? About what’s important to you? How you view the world? What will they know and how will they know it?
Bishop Mark Dyer used to say that a person’s legacy could be seen in their calendar and in their checkbook. How we spend our time and our money are the best clues to what we value.
Are you a glass half-full person or a glass half-empty person? Are you a person who lives out of poverty – a sense that there never is enough; never enough time, enough money, enough resources, enough love, enough good will? Or are you a person who lives out of a sense of abundance; there’s enough to go around, there’s enough to do the job, there’s enough?
These are discipleship questions and these are stewardship questions. They are some of the questions raised by Job, both the man and the book.
This morning we hear Job acknowledge before God that God is God, and before God he is, and we are, but dust and ashes. Without God’s enlivening, creative, empowering spirit, the world is but dust and ashes.
But because God is God, Job is willing to risk it all again as he enters life anew, as he rebuilds his life again, knowing that it all could be lost again.
God's reasons for giving things to Job are as unexplained as the reasons they were taken away. God does not explain suffering, but God does not explain beatitude either. They are twin mysteries. The sources of each are hidden from our view, beyond our understanding.
But Job is willing to try again, risk again, and live again. Job has learned that chaos is inherently part of life. And that God provides the resources to make our way through the chaos and the ambiguity of life.
The chaos of the world is not the end or the answer. The answer is found in how we make our way through this life. Are we willing to risk with Job that God’s creation is inherently good? Are we willing to trust, to bet our lives that the God shown in Jesus Christ is the ONE who creates, who saves, who sustains, who will empower our ability to make our way through this life knowing grace and mercy?
What changed for Job was his perspective. The way we see, know, understand, and believe will determine whether the chaos of the world will reign in our lives, whether the circumstances of life will beat us down, whether we sink or whether we soar as if on the wings of eagles.
Many of you know that I was away last week to lead a conference for clergy; a wellness conference called CREDO. We have all learned that CREDO is the Latin word for “I believe”. But CREDO does not mean, “I believe” in the sense of intellectual assent to this or that proposition. (I agree with Dr. Einstein that e=mc2.) It means, “I give my heart to this.” It is an expression of my heart’s commitment and heart’s orientation. In the creed saying, I believe/I give my heart to the Father…
To what do you give your heart? To whom do you give your heart? That is a discipleship question. The stewardship question is what you do after you say, I believe, I give my heart to…?
Has Jesus opened your eyes to see the hand of God at work in the world around us? Or are you afflicted with the metaphorical blindness of Bartimaeus? The healing of Bartimaeus by Jesus gave Bartimaeus a new perspective, a new life.
Jesus was not only the sign of God’s kingdom; he was also the agent of God’s kingdom. Where he went he brought a new perspective; he brought the chance of new life for those who would believe. He brings to each of us a new way of seeing the world, a new perspective on how life is to be lived, and a new responsibility to join him in being agents of the Kingdom of God.
Where we go we are to bring life and healing, we are to help people know that God’s reign has begun and it includes them. We do that individually, but probably we do it most powerfully when we join together in the mission and ministry of this cathedral church. When we together witness to the world, to our neighborhood, and to one another that God’s hand is powerfully and importantly at work reweaving the torn fabric of creation, restoring to health and wholeness those whom the world has beaten down, those who have succumbed to the chaos in their lives, those who have been oppressed by evil powers of this world; bringing new life to lives that had appeared as though dead.
That’s what we are about here. That’s why God has placed us here. The Cathedral Church of the Nativity. And if we fail or fall short because of fear or timidity or lack of resources, we will have succumbed to chaos ourselves.
So what we do here and how we live here have both immediate and eternal consequences. The immediate consequences have to do with the well-being of God’s people; the eternal consequences have to do with how we will stand before the judgment seat of God. What will be the evidence, the testimony of our life? What will be our legacy as a community, as a person?
Next week when each of us is asked to make a financial commitment to Nativity, this is what we are being asked. Will we be faithful in our mission and our ministry; will we have the resources necessary to do the work we have been given to do?
I want you to think about these things as you make your pledge next Sunday. I don’t want you to think about paying your dues to pay the church bills. I want you to think about your soul’s health and your soul-legacy. I want you to think about this mission God has given this cathedral church.
Will you decide to stretch yourself in response to God’s abundant presence and power in your life? Will you decide to stretch yourself to bring new life and the light of Christ to those in need of God’s abundant presence and power in their lives? I pray each of us will.
According to Job and to Jesus, it is never too late to gain a new perspective. It is never to late start – again.
October 29, 2006
Job 42:1-6, 10-17 + Mark 10:46-52
How are you going to get through this life? How are you going to make it? What will it take for you to make it through this life with your self intact; with your integrity, with self-respect, with honor?
What will be your legacy for those you love, those closest to you, your associates, your neighbors, your small part of the world? What will be known of your beliefs, your values, your worldview, and your faith?
What will your children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews know about you? About what’s important to you? How you view the world? What will they know and how will they know it?
Bishop Mark Dyer used to say that a person’s legacy could be seen in their calendar and in their checkbook. How we spend our time and our money are the best clues to what we value.
Are you a glass half-full person or a glass half-empty person? Are you a person who lives out of poverty – a sense that there never is enough; never enough time, enough money, enough resources, enough love, enough good will? Or are you a person who lives out of a sense of abundance; there’s enough to go around, there’s enough to do the job, there’s enough?
These are discipleship questions and these are stewardship questions. They are some of the questions raised by Job, both the man and the book.
This morning we hear Job acknowledge before God that God is God, and before God he is, and we are, but dust and ashes. Without God’s enlivening, creative, empowering spirit, the world is but dust and ashes.
But because God is God, Job is willing to risk it all again as he enters life anew, as he rebuilds his life again, knowing that it all could be lost again.
God's reasons for giving things to Job are as unexplained as the reasons they were taken away. God does not explain suffering, but God does not explain beatitude either. They are twin mysteries. The sources of each are hidden from our view, beyond our understanding.
But Job is willing to try again, risk again, and live again. Job has learned that chaos is inherently part of life. And that God provides the resources to make our way through the chaos and the ambiguity of life.
The chaos of the world is not the end or the answer. The answer is found in how we make our way through this life. Are we willing to risk with Job that God’s creation is inherently good? Are we willing to trust, to bet our lives that the God shown in Jesus Christ is the ONE who creates, who saves, who sustains, who will empower our ability to make our way through this life knowing grace and mercy?
What changed for Job was his perspective. The way we see, know, understand, and believe will determine whether the chaos of the world will reign in our lives, whether the circumstances of life will beat us down, whether we sink or whether we soar as if on the wings of eagles.
Many of you know that I was away last week to lead a conference for clergy; a wellness conference called CREDO. We have all learned that CREDO is the Latin word for “I believe”. But CREDO does not mean, “I believe” in the sense of intellectual assent to this or that proposition. (I agree with Dr. Einstein that e=mc2.) It means, “I give my heart to this.” It is an expression of my heart’s commitment and heart’s orientation. In the creed saying, I believe/I give my heart to the Father…
To what do you give your heart? To whom do you give your heart? That is a discipleship question. The stewardship question is what you do after you say, I believe, I give my heart to…?
Has Jesus opened your eyes to see the hand of God at work in the world around us? Or are you afflicted with the metaphorical blindness of Bartimaeus? The healing of Bartimaeus by Jesus gave Bartimaeus a new perspective, a new life.
Jesus was not only the sign of God’s kingdom; he was also the agent of God’s kingdom. Where he went he brought a new perspective; he brought the chance of new life for those who would believe. He brings to each of us a new way of seeing the world, a new perspective on how life is to be lived, and a new responsibility to join him in being agents of the Kingdom of God.
Where we go we are to bring life and healing, we are to help people know that God’s reign has begun and it includes them. We do that individually, but probably we do it most powerfully when we join together in the mission and ministry of this cathedral church. When we together witness to the world, to our neighborhood, and to one another that God’s hand is powerfully and importantly at work reweaving the torn fabric of creation, restoring to health and wholeness those whom the world has beaten down, those who have succumbed to the chaos in their lives, those who have been oppressed by evil powers of this world; bringing new life to lives that had appeared as though dead.
That’s what we are about here. That’s why God has placed us here. The Cathedral Church of the Nativity. And if we fail or fall short because of fear or timidity or lack of resources, we will have succumbed to chaos ourselves.
So what we do here and how we live here have both immediate and eternal consequences. The immediate consequences have to do with the well-being of God’s people; the eternal consequences have to do with how we will stand before the judgment seat of God. What will be the evidence, the testimony of our life? What will be our legacy as a community, as a person?
Next week when each of us is asked to make a financial commitment to Nativity, this is what we are being asked. Will we be faithful in our mission and our ministry; will we have the resources necessary to do the work we have been given to do?
I want you to think about these things as you make your pledge next Sunday. I don’t want you to think about paying your dues to pay the church bills. I want you to think about your soul’s health and your soul-legacy. I want you to think about this mission God has given this cathedral church.
Will you decide to stretch yourself in response to God’s abundant presence and power in your life? Will you decide to stretch yourself to bring new life and the light of Christ to those in need of God’s abundant presence and power in their lives? I pray each of us will.
According to Job and to Jesus, it is never too late to gain a new perspective. It is never to late start – again.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Pentecost 19: Making Room for Jesus
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem PA
Mark 10:17-31
If you were here Friday night at the glorious Evensong for our diocesan convention, you would have worshiped with a church full of people, heard our glorious choir and seen a little red wagon here up front. The wagon was there to collect clothing for children at risk that people brought from all over our diocese. People chose to give out of their abundance to the powerless among us, to children for whom even basic things like enough socks and underwear are scarce. But before that wagon could receive those gifts, it had to be emptied. It had been sitting on my back porch full of newspapers waiting to go to the recycling center.
When the rich young man encounters Jesus, he too has to empty in order to receive. Perhaps he had been searching for Jesus, looking for an opportunity to connect with the compelling rabbi. Maybe he had heard of Jesus the teacher, healer, and miracle-worker. At any rate, he runs up, kneels before Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Really his question is, “What can I do to be saved?” Jesus tells him to follow the commandments. The man replies that he has followed them since he was a child. I love what the scripture says next: Jesus looking at him, loved him. Jesus loved him. Jesus gave him that generous love that wants nothing in return--the love which is agape.
Loving him, lovingly Jesus said, “You lack one thing…go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. Go, sell, give...then come, follow. But the man was shocked and grieved. He went away sad, because he had many possessions. He needed to let go of them, in order to receive treasure in heaven.
One pastor in writing about this story calls it a healing story.* After all, healing is what most people ask Jesus for. They run after him, fling themselves at his feet and beg healing. Healing for themselves. Healing for those they love. Why did this man need healing? Because he was possessed--possessed by his possessions. Confronted by what he needs to do in order to be healed, the rich young man goes away sad. The story doesn’t say he was angry, but sad. I think that’s because he got it. He knew Jesus was right. He understood that God was calling him to let go. And he realized just how hard and painful that would be. I wonder we he did next? I wonder if he was able to let go?
Jesus knows what we each long for and what we each lack. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important. In fact it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
Now, if you are reading this sermon, I am sorry to say that you are missing the visual aids that accompany it. This is a case of you-had-to-be-there. If you imagine a couple of cardboard camels and a package of needles and lots of laughter you will get an idea of what happened next.
In fact, it is impossible to get that camel through. “Then who can be saved,” the disciples wonder. Jesus says it is impossible. For you, for mortals, it is impossible. But not for God. For God all things are possible.
What might you need to let go of in order to receive the abundance God has in store for you? Jesus knows what we each lack. Jesus knows what we each long for. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important--in fact, it is impossible. Fortunately, salvation is not up to us. Salvation is God’s work.
I put myself into this story and I wonder. I wonder what the response would be if it was me? This is how it plays out. I see Jesus, and I run up to him, kneel in from of him. And I say, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus: You know the teachings
Anne: Yes, and I truly try to follow them. You know I was brought up in the
church and I know I’m not perfect but I really don’t think I am a bad
person.
Jesus (looking at me and loving me): You lack one thing…
I wonder what one thing I lack? I wonder if you wonder that about yourself.
*Stacey Elizabeth Simpson, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Edison Georgia, from an article in The Christian Century, September 27- October 4, 2000 p. 951
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem PA
Mark 10:17-31
If you were here Friday night at the glorious Evensong for our diocesan convention, you would have worshiped with a church full of people, heard our glorious choir and seen a little red wagon here up front. The wagon was there to collect clothing for children at risk that people brought from all over our diocese. People chose to give out of their abundance to the powerless among us, to children for whom even basic things like enough socks and underwear are scarce. But before that wagon could receive those gifts, it had to be emptied. It had been sitting on my back porch full of newspapers waiting to go to the recycling center.
When the rich young man encounters Jesus, he too has to empty in order to receive. Perhaps he had been searching for Jesus, looking for an opportunity to connect with the compelling rabbi. Maybe he had heard of Jesus the teacher, healer, and miracle-worker. At any rate, he runs up, kneels before Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Really his question is, “What can I do to be saved?” Jesus tells him to follow the commandments. The man replies that he has followed them since he was a child. I love what the scripture says next: Jesus looking at him, loved him. Jesus loved him. Jesus gave him that generous love that wants nothing in return--the love which is agape.
Loving him, lovingly Jesus said, “You lack one thing…go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. Go, sell, give...then come, follow. But the man was shocked and grieved. He went away sad, because he had many possessions. He needed to let go of them, in order to receive treasure in heaven.
One pastor in writing about this story calls it a healing story.* After all, healing is what most people ask Jesus for. They run after him, fling themselves at his feet and beg healing. Healing for themselves. Healing for those they love. Why did this man need healing? Because he was possessed--possessed by his possessions. Confronted by what he needs to do in order to be healed, the rich young man goes away sad. The story doesn’t say he was angry, but sad. I think that’s because he got it. He knew Jesus was right. He understood that God was calling him to let go. And he realized just how hard and painful that would be. I wonder we he did next? I wonder if he was able to let go?
Jesus knows what we each long for and what we each lack. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important. In fact it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
Now, if you are reading this sermon, I am sorry to say that you are missing the visual aids that accompany it. This is a case of you-had-to-be-there. If you imagine a couple of cardboard camels and a package of needles and lots of laughter you will get an idea of what happened next.
In fact, it is impossible to get that camel through. “Then who can be saved,” the disciples wonder. Jesus says it is impossible. For you, for mortals, it is impossible. But not for God. For God all things are possible.
What might you need to let go of in order to receive the abundance God has in store for you? Jesus knows what we each lack. Jesus knows what we each long for. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important--in fact, it is impossible. Fortunately, salvation is not up to us. Salvation is God’s work.
I put myself into this story and I wonder. I wonder what the response would be if it was me? This is how it plays out. I see Jesus, and I run up to him, kneel in from of him. And I say, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus: You know the teachings
Anne: Yes, and I truly try to follow them. You know I was brought up in the
church and I know I’m not perfect but I really don’t think I am a bad
person.
Jesus (looking at me and loving me): You lack one thing…
I wonder what one thing I lack? I wonder if you wonder that about yourself.
*Stacey Elizabeth Simpson, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Edison Georgia, from an article in The Christian Century, September 27- October 4, 2000 p. 951
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Pentecost 17: “Do not stop him…”
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
October 1, 2003
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50
The readings today lay out a whole smorgasbord of possibilities. I can pick any one of Jesus’ sayings and spin those out (in a good kind of spin. I like to think) or I can take some of the injunctions in James, or the experience of Israel in the desert or the problems of leadership exemplified in Moses, or others…
But what intrigues me the most this week is the theme that goes through all the readings – the theme of discipleship. What is a disciple? Who can be a disciple? What does a disciple do? What does being a disciple of (to be specific) Jesus require of us?
For the last couple of weeks we have heard Jesus on the subject of being his follower: “If any would be my disciple, let him deny himself take up his cross and follow me.” And, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Today the disciples closest to him want to make Jesus a legal franchise. In order to be his disciple, you must fulfill certain requirements, pay certain dues, have a personal call or endorsement, be deemed by Jesus to be special and then be set aside for the special ministry and relationship of disciple.
Who can be a disciple, who can claim to be a disciple, who is allowed to serve as a disciple, who is authorized to function as a disciple in the name of the master? These are very old, time-honored, well-worn questions. They are from time immemorial. Whenever more than one has been gathered together these questions of authority and appropriateness of discipleship arise.
In the reading from the Book of Numbers, the question is raised. It is easy to concentrate on and make fun of the weeping of the people over having nothing to eat but manna. Actually, I think my personal translation of the Hebrew is not “weeping”, but “whining”. Or it is easy to identify with the plight of leadership shown by Moses, rather than the abundance that God provides for his people – all of them. The people are starving, God provides Manna. The task of leadership is too great, God provides 70 elders to be specially designated and authorized as helpers.
And not only that, God’s abundance is such that even if others, who have not been officially designated and set aside, feel called to do something on behalf of God’s providence, to care for God’s people, God empowers them, en-spirits them powerfully to do so.
Eldad and Medad are but two guys who feel called to do a good work. Joshua says, “Stop them. They are not authorized and empowered to do work on your behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.” Who do they think they are?! And Moses says in effect, “They’re doing that? Wonderful! It would be wonderful if everyone who believes felt moved to do such, empowered to do such, and then went ahead and did it. Wonderful!”
And then we jump ahead about 1400 years to the time of Jesus and what do we encounter? Exactly the same issue. Who is a disciple, who is authorized? This time it’s not about prophesying, it’s about healing, but the core issue is the same: who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people?
And Jesus says, “"Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”
It is the nature of God, it is in the providence of God, it is the abundance of God that there be no dearth of work being done on behalf of the welfare of the God’s people, no limit on the workers, no arbitrary set of requirements or categories defining who is allowed to do a good work, who is appropriate, who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people. There is no limit, no requirement.
You cannot be too young, too old, too small, too large, too educated, too uneducated. You cannot be too poor or too rich. You cannot speak the wrong language. You cannot be the wrong gender, the wrong color, the wrong ethnicity, or the wrong age. You cannot even be too sinful -- or too pure. You cannot even be in the wrong religion to do a good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.
All God asks, all God seeks is someone, anyone who will care for, work for the well being of God’s people. All God asks, all God seeks is the likes of you and me.
So the question becomes, "Are we who have been called and follow and do name ourselves as a disciple of Jesus: Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Risen Christ, Jesus the friend of the poor, the outcast, the prisoner and the sinner, Jesus the reconciler… Are we who are his disciples doing any good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people? Personally."
Is this community of disciples, the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless? By our work are we proclaiming to the community around us that God’s abundance is for them? Can we look at our neighbors and see how well they are being fed, how comfortably they are being housed, how warmly they are being dressed, how well they are being educated, how often they are being welcomed as a direct result of our good work as disciples of Jesus?
One commentator writes that Jesus gives us a description, an example, of a discipleship that is “inclusive, attentive to the vulnerable, and diligent in recognizing those things that will lead one to stumble or offend…”
I recently heard about a conversation between a Christian and his Jewish friend who was speaking of his experience of Rosh Hashanah. The friend pointed to this reflection:
*Rosh Hashanah: ruminations
The day has come
To take an accounting of my life.
Have I dreamed of late
Of the person I want to be,
Of the changes I would make
In my daily habits,
In the way I am with others,
In the friendship I show companions,
Woman friends, man friends, my partner,
In the regard I show my father and mother,
Who brought me out of childhood?
I have remained enchained too often to less than what I am.
But the day has come to take an accounting of my life.
Have I renewed of late
My vision of the world I want to live in,
Of the changes I would make
In the way my friends are with each other
The way we find out whom we love
The way we grow to educate people
The way in which the many kinds of needy people
Grope their way to justice?
Worthy ruminations for our own discipleship, I think. Am I, are we, signs of God’s abundant care of God’s people?
Blessed is someone, anyone, who comes in the name of the Lord.
*from The Wings of Awe, A Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, Washington, D.C., with thanks to Mark Harris at Preludium
October 1, 2003
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50
The readings today lay out a whole smorgasbord of possibilities. I can pick any one of Jesus’ sayings and spin those out (in a good kind of spin. I like to think) or I can take some of the injunctions in James, or the experience of Israel in the desert or the problems of leadership exemplified in Moses, or others…
But what intrigues me the most this week is the theme that goes through all the readings – the theme of discipleship. What is a disciple? Who can be a disciple? What does a disciple do? What does being a disciple of (to be specific) Jesus require of us?
For the last couple of weeks we have heard Jesus on the subject of being his follower: “If any would be my disciple, let him deny himself take up his cross and follow me.” And, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Today the disciples closest to him want to make Jesus a legal franchise. In order to be his disciple, you must fulfill certain requirements, pay certain dues, have a personal call or endorsement, be deemed by Jesus to be special and then be set aside for the special ministry and relationship of disciple.
Who can be a disciple, who can claim to be a disciple, who is allowed to serve as a disciple, who is authorized to function as a disciple in the name of the master? These are very old, time-honored, well-worn questions. They are from time immemorial. Whenever more than one has been gathered together these questions of authority and appropriateness of discipleship arise.
In the reading from the Book of Numbers, the question is raised. It is easy to concentrate on and make fun of the weeping of the people over having nothing to eat but manna. Actually, I think my personal translation of the Hebrew is not “weeping”, but “whining”. Or it is easy to identify with the plight of leadership shown by Moses, rather than the abundance that God provides for his people – all of them. The people are starving, God provides Manna. The task of leadership is too great, God provides 70 elders to be specially designated and authorized as helpers.
And not only that, God’s abundance is such that even if others, who have not been officially designated and set aside, feel called to do something on behalf of God’s providence, to care for God’s people, God empowers them, en-spirits them powerfully to do so.
Eldad and Medad are but two guys who feel called to do a good work. Joshua says, “Stop them. They are not authorized and empowered to do work on your behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.” Who do they think they are?! And Moses says in effect, “They’re doing that? Wonderful! It would be wonderful if everyone who believes felt moved to do such, empowered to do such, and then went ahead and did it. Wonderful!”
And then we jump ahead about 1400 years to the time of Jesus and what do we encounter? Exactly the same issue. Who is a disciple, who is authorized? This time it’s not about prophesying, it’s about healing, but the core issue is the same: who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people?
And Jesus says, “"Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”
It is the nature of God, it is in the providence of God, it is the abundance of God that there be no dearth of work being done on behalf of the welfare of the God’s people, no limit on the workers, no arbitrary set of requirements or categories defining who is allowed to do a good work, who is appropriate, who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people. There is no limit, no requirement.
You cannot be too young, too old, too small, too large, too educated, too uneducated. You cannot be too poor or too rich. You cannot speak the wrong language. You cannot be the wrong gender, the wrong color, the wrong ethnicity, or the wrong age. You cannot even be too sinful -- or too pure. You cannot even be in the wrong religion to do a good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.
All God asks, all God seeks is someone, anyone who will care for, work for the well being of God’s people. All God asks, all God seeks is the likes of you and me.
So the question becomes, "Are we who have been called and follow and do name ourselves as a disciple of Jesus: Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Risen Christ, Jesus the friend of the poor, the outcast, the prisoner and the sinner, Jesus the reconciler… Are we who are his disciples doing any good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people? Personally."
Is this community of disciples, the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless? By our work are we proclaiming to the community around us that God’s abundance is for them? Can we look at our neighbors and see how well they are being fed, how comfortably they are being housed, how warmly they are being dressed, how well they are being educated, how often they are being welcomed as a direct result of our good work as disciples of Jesus?
One commentator writes that Jesus gives us a description, an example, of a discipleship that is “inclusive, attentive to the vulnerable, and diligent in recognizing those things that will lead one to stumble or offend…”
I recently heard about a conversation between a Christian and his Jewish friend who was speaking of his experience of Rosh Hashanah. The friend pointed to this reflection:
*Rosh Hashanah: ruminations
The day has come
To take an accounting of my life.
Have I dreamed of late
Of the person I want to be,
Of the changes I would make
In my daily habits,
In the way I am with others,
In the friendship I show companions,
Woman friends, man friends, my partner,
In the regard I show my father and mother,
Who brought me out of childhood?
I have remained enchained too often to less than what I am.
But the day has come to take an accounting of my life.
Have I renewed of late
My vision of the world I want to live in,
Of the changes I would make
In the way my friends are with each other
The way we find out whom we love
The way we grow to educate people
The way in which the many kinds of needy people
Grope their way to justice?
Worthy ruminations for our own discipleship, I think. Am I, are we, signs of God’s abundant care of God’s people?
Blessed is someone, anyone, who comes in the name of the Lord.
*from The Wings of Awe, A Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, Washington, D.C., with thanks to Mark Harris at Preludium
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Pentecost 16: Welcoming a Child--Receiving Jesus
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a Mark 9:30-37
It has been much noisier outside my office window lately in the late afternoon. I hear cacophony, yelling, and shrieks…of laughter! Ever since the new playground equipment was installed this new symphony accompanies my afternoon work. If the noise is any indication, the neighborhood children who belong to the after-school program known as The Welcome Place are thoroughly enjoying themselves. The Welcome Place is not a program that this cathedral runs. It is a program of the South Bethlehem Neighborhood Center. We provide the space--the hospitality if you will. It is a large room on the basement level of our parish hall building which opens out onto the play area. This space is about to get much better, inside and out, thanks to the scout projects of two of our teenagers: Carl Kolepp’s Eagle Scout project and Betsy Yale’s Girl Scout Gold Award. The children of our parish enjoy the area too on Sundays or other times; but it is the Welcome Place kids that use it five afternoons a week and all summer long during the summer camp. To hear how much those children enjoy the space delights me to no end. I can’t wait for the interior work to be completed so that the welcome this parish provides for the children is all that it can be. Serving children draws us closer to God.
Again and again, Jesus tries to teach his disciples about just who he is, what kind of messiah he is. They may have gotten the Son of God part of it, but it was the suffering and death part--the servant part, the vulnerable giving-in part--that the disciples just couldn’t get. So once again, as they are walking along, Jesus tells his disciples about his necessary betrayal and murder and resurrection. They just didn’t understand; “they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him.” So they travel on, still unclear about how the reign of God will commence and what it will look like. Their conversation turns to other things--well, they talk about greatness. So when they arrive at Capernum Jesus confronts them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” They were silent. But Jesus knows what they were up to. He knows they are confused. Perhaps he sighs at the knowledge that they just don’t get it. So being the good teacher that he is, he tries again. This time with a visual aid.
Imagine the scene. Jesus sat down. He called the twelve. He said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child. He put the child in the midst of them. Then, he took the child in his arms. He said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” Can you see it?
It would be easy for us to dismiss this picture of Jesus with a child in his arms as a sweet gesture. Think about it. Would you ever characterize Jesus or his ministry as sweet? Cute? Isn’t Jesus the one who confronted authorities, hung out with the poor, exorcized demons, and insisted that he was the messiah who would be betrayal and killed. Didn’t he tell his friend and follower Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” So when he takes a child and places it in the midst of the disciples, it wasn’t about being cute. It was nothing less than the whole of the Gospel message. To be great in the reign of God is to be last of all and servant of all. To be great in the kingdom of God is to love and serve children.
Regardless of whether a culture honors children or dismisses them, regardless of whether they are beloved or not, children have the lowest social standing. They are powerless, dependant, and have few rights. They are least, they are last, and in God’s economy they are signs of the kingdom. In very important ways, children are no different than adults. We all bear the image of God. We are all beloved. We are all limited human beings. Just as it would be a mistake to dismiss Jesus’ encounter with this child as “sweet,” it would also be a mistake to romanticize children as somehow more pure than adults. In trying to explain why Jesus would hold up a child as an example of the reign of God, many people focus on what qualities children have that adults lack. Now we might be tempted to think of children as possessing the good kind of wisdom that we heard about today in the reading from the letter of James. James speaks of two kinds of wisdom: an earthly one full of ambition, and one from above which is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full mercy and good fruits without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. So we could say that in arguing about greatness the disciples displayed an earthly wisdom full of ambition while children…but honestly the rest doesn’t follow. I may be the only one, but I have experienced four-year-olds who are not pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits or without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Children are not examples of the kingdom because they are somehow different than adults in nature, but because of their status. They are powerless: easily ignored, mistreated, and overlooked. When Jesus takes that child and places her in the midst of his disciples, he demonstrates that welcoming children is the responsibility of all who would be great in the community. When he picks up that child and holds her, he shows that serving children is part of being kingdom bound. And if his actions are not enough, there are his words, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
The word welcome here means to receive, like to receive guests. It implies offering hospitality-- a hospitality which includes serving those who you welcome into your home. Jesus demonstrates service by taking that child into his arms.
Physician, writer, and child advocate Janusz Korczak was a man before his time. During the early part of the 20th century he dedicated his life to respecting and serving children. Advocating for their rights in his native Poland, he founded orphanages that were models of caring communities. He included the children in decision making. He treated them as full human beings, made in the image of God. When the Nazis invaded Poland during WW II, Korczak and the orphans were forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto: the doctor and the children were Jewish. A renowned physician, Korczak was offered the chance to escape to safety, but he refused to leave the children.
On an August day in 1942, Dr. Koczak and 200 children were marched from the ghetto, through Warsaw, to the train station to be “relocated.” The loving staff of the orphanage organized the children into rows of four and they walked calmly through the streets, singing as they went, Dr. Korczak carrying one child in his arms and holding another by the hand. When they arrived at the deportation point, again the good doctor was recognized and offered a chance to leave. He refused. He and the children boarded the trains that took them to Treblinka: the death camp where everyone was immediately sent to the gas chambers.
Welcoming children, serving children, is the responsibility of all who would be great in the Kingdom of God. But it is even more than that. Welcoming children is a way of receiving and serving Jesus as well. And if Jesus, then God. Whoever welcomes, whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me, but the one who sent me. To welcome is to receive with open arms and hearts. Which of us would not want to open our hearts to God? To draw near to God?
Dr. Korczak wrote, “Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously and to be treated with tenderness and respect. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. The unknown person inside each of them is our hope for the future.” (as quoted in Ten Amazing People by Maura D. Shaw)
The unknown person inside a child is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown person inside the child sitting nearest to you is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown persons inside the children who use our Welcome Place are our hope--what are we going to do about it?
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a Mark 9:30-37
It has been much noisier outside my office window lately in the late afternoon. I hear cacophony, yelling, and shrieks…of laughter! Ever since the new playground equipment was installed this new symphony accompanies my afternoon work. If the noise is any indication, the neighborhood children who belong to the after-school program known as The Welcome Place are thoroughly enjoying themselves. The Welcome Place is not a program that this cathedral runs. It is a program of the South Bethlehem Neighborhood Center. We provide the space--the hospitality if you will. It is a large room on the basement level of our parish hall building which opens out onto the play area. This space is about to get much better, inside and out, thanks to the scout projects of two of our teenagers: Carl Kolepp’s Eagle Scout project and Betsy Yale’s Girl Scout Gold Award. The children of our parish enjoy the area too on Sundays or other times; but it is the Welcome Place kids that use it five afternoons a week and all summer long during the summer camp. To hear how much those children enjoy the space delights me to no end. I can’t wait for the interior work to be completed so that the welcome this parish provides for the children is all that it can be. Serving children draws us closer to God.
Again and again, Jesus tries to teach his disciples about just who he is, what kind of messiah he is. They may have gotten the Son of God part of it, but it was the suffering and death part--the servant part, the vulnerable giving-in part--that the disciples just couldn’t get. So once again, as they are walking along, Jesus tells his disciples about his necessary betrayal and murder and resurrection. They just didn’t understand; “they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him.” So they travel on, still unclear about how the reign of God will commence and what it will look like. Their conversation turns to other things--well, they talk about greatness. So when they arrive at Capernum Jesus confronts them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” They were silent. But Jesus knows what they were up to. He knows they are confused. Perhaps he sighs at the knowledge that they just don’t get it. So being the good teacher that he is, he tries again. This time with a visual aid.
Imagine the scene. Jesus sat down. He called the twelve. He said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child. He put the child in the midst of them. Then, he took the child in his arms. He said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” Can you see it?
It would be easy for us to dismiss this picture of Jesus with a child in his arms as a sweet gesture. Think about it. Would you ever characterize Jesus or his ministry as sweet? Cute? Isn’t Jesus the one who confronted authorities, hung out with the poor, exorcized demons, and insisted that he was the messiah who would be betrayal and killed. Didn’t he tell his friend and follower Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” So when he takes a child and places it in the midst of the disciples, it wasn’t about being cute. It was nothing less than the whole of the Gospel message. To be great in the reign of God is to be last of all and servant of all. To be great in the kingdom of God is to love and serve children.
Regardless of whether a culture honors children or dismisses them, regardless of whether they are beloved or not, children have the lowest social standing. They are powerless, dependant, and have few rights. They are least, they are last, and in God’s economy they are signs of the kingdom. In very important ways, children are no different than adults. We all bear the image of God. We are all beloved. We are all limited human beings. Just as it would be a mistake to dismiss Jesus’ encounter with this child as “sweet,” it would also be a mistake to romanticize children as somehow more pure than adults. In trying to explain why Jesus would hold up a child as an example of the reign of God, many people focus on what qualities children have that adults lack. Now we might be tempted to think of children as possessing the good kind of wisdom that we heard about today in the reading from the letter of James. James speaks of two kinds of wisdom: an earthly one full of ambition, and one from above which is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full mercy and good fruits without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. So we could say that in arguing about greatness the disciples displayed an earthly wisdom full of ambition while children…but honestly the rest doesn’t follow. I may be the only one, but I have experienced four-year-olds who are not pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits or without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Children are not examples of the kingdom because they are somehow different than adults in nature, but because of their status. They are powerless: easily ignored, mistreated, and overlooked. When Jesus takes that child and places her in the midst of his disciples, he demonstrates that welcoming children is the responsibility of all who would be great in the community. When he picks up that child and holds her, he shows that serving children is part of being kingdom bound. And if his actions are not enough, there are his words, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
The word welcome here means to receive, like to receive guests. It implies offering hospitality-- a hospitality which includes serving those who you welcome into your home. Jesus demonstrates service by taking that child into his arms.
Physician, writer, and child advocate Janusz Korczak was a man before his time. During the early part of the 20th century he dedicated his life to respecting and serving children. Advocating for their rights in his native Poland, he founded orphanages that were models of caring communities. He included the children in decision making. He treated them as full human beings, made in the image of God. When the Nazis invaded Poland during WW II, Korczak and the orphans were forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto: the doctor and the children were Jewish. A renowned physician, Korczak was offered the chance to escape to safety, but he refused to leave the children.
On an August day in 1942, Dr. Koczak and 200 children were marched from the ghetto, through Warsaw, to the train station to be “relocated.” The loving staff of the orphanage organized the children into rows of four and they walked calmly through the streets, singing as they went, Dr. Korczak carrying one child in his arms and holding another by the hand. When they arrived at the deportation point, again the good doctor was recognized and offered a chance to leave. He refused. He and the children boarded the trains that took them to Treblinka: the death camp where everyone was immediately sent to the gas chambers.
Welcoming children, serving children, is the responsibility of all who would be great in the Kingdom of God. But it is even more than that. Welcoming children is a way of receiving and serving Jesus as well. And if Jesus, then God. Whoever welcomes, whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me, but the one who sent me. To welcome is to receive with open arms and hearts. Which of us would not want to open our hearts to God? To draw near to God?
Dr. Korczak wrote, “Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously and to be treated with tenderness and respect. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. The unknown person inside each of them is our hope for the future.” (as quoted in Ten Amazing People by Maura D. Shaw)
The unknown person inside a child is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown person inside the child sitting nearest to you is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown persons inside the children who use our Welcome Place are our hope--what are we going to do about it?
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
Monday, September 18, 2006
Pentecost 15: The Way
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
September 17, 2006
Proper 19 ~ Mark 8:27-38
All throughout the land on Monday morning, bells tolled. Slowly, marking each of the four events of September 11th, slowly marking the finality of the deaths that day, slowly marking the reality of that day.
Robert D. McFadden wrote in The New York Times, the next day under the headline "Nation Marks Lives Lost and Signs of Healing":
You can almost hear the bell toll as Jesus spoke his truth, his reality against the messianic hopes and dreams of the people.
This is probably not the last time that a follower of Jesus thinks he has perfect understanding of the life, ministry and way of Jesus. Indeed Christian history and the Christian Church and even this cathedral is peopled with those who have thought we had a clear vision of how God wanted things to be or go.
Bishop Mark Dyer tells the story of his paying for a friend’s dinner. The friend, instead of a simple thank you for the gift, said. “Well I’ll get it next time.” Mark asks, what response can there be to the gift of Jesus on the cross for the redemption of the world? Will it be, “Well Jesus, I’ll get it next time.” The Cost of Messiahship was great. Jesus says the cost of discipleship can be great as well.
It is true that the bell tolls for thee and me. Disciples follow the way of the master. Indeed, since the earliest days of the followers of Jesus following his death and resurrection, we have been called “The Way.”
Peter attempted to pull Jesus away, off the way, out of the way to distract him from the way all in an attempt to save the friend and master he loved so much. But Jesus says to him and to us, “This is the way of the Messiah and this is the way of the disciple, to follow me.”
William Willimon gives this example.*
Do you remember the song from “Paint Your Wagon”, the 1951 musical by Lerner and Loewe?
September 17, 2006
Proper 19 ~ Mark 8:27-38
All throughout the land on Monday morning, bells tolled. Slowly, marking each of the four events of September 11th, slowly marking the finality of the deaths that day, slowly marking the reality of that day.
Robert D. McFadden wrote in The New York Times, the next day under the headline "Nation Marks Lives Lost and Signs of Healing":
Once more the leaden bells tolled in mourning, loved ones recited the names of the dead at ground zero, and a wounded but resilient America paused yesterday to remember the calamitous day when terrorist explosions rumbled like summer thunder and people fell from the sky.There was no escaping the truth, the reality of that day as the bells tolled.
You can almost hear the bell toll as Jesus spoke his truth, his reality against the messianic hopes and dreams of the people.
The Son of Man must suffer. (The bell tolls)Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. But it all goes terribly wrong. Not even Peter, the most devoted disciple can believe it. He pulls Jesus away to tell him it cannot be so. “There is supposed to be a warrior king, a second David, and a mighty revolutionary army, and the world order will be over thrown. It cannot be the way you say.”
And be rejected. (The bell tolls)
And be killed. (The bell tolls)
And then rise again. (The bell tolls)
It’s not like you think. (The bell tolls)
You don’t understand. (The bell tolls)
This is the way. (The bell tolls)
This is the way that will change the world. (The bell tolls)
This is probably not the last time that a follower of Jesus thinks he has perfect understanding of the life, ministry and way of Jesus. Indeed Christian history and the Christian Church and even this cathedral is peopled with those who have thought we had a clear vision of how God wanted things to be or go.
Bishop Mark Dyer tells the story of his paying for a friend’s dinner. The friend, instead of a simple thank you for the gift, said. “Well I’ll get it next time.” Mark asks, what response can there be to the gift of Jesus on the cross for the redemption of the world? Will it be, “Well Jesus, I’ll get it next time.” The Cost of Messiahship was great. Jesus says the cost of discipleship can be great as well.
It is true that the bell tolls for thee and me. Disciples follow the way of the master. Indeed, since the earliest days of the followers of Jesus following his death and resurrection, we have been called “The Way.”
Peter attempted to pull Jesus away, off the way, out of the way to distract him from the way all in an attempt to save the friend and master he loved so much. But Jesus says to him and to us, “This is the way of the Messiah and this is the way of the disciple, to follow me.”
William Willimon gives this example.*
“The doctor spared few words. "Your baby is afflicted with Down’s Syndrome, mongoloidism. I had expected this, but things were too far along before I could say for sure."Disciples follow the Master.
"Is the baby healthy?" she asked.
"That’s what I wanted to discuss with you," the doctor said. "The baby is healthy -- except for the problem. However, it does have a slight, rather common respiratory ailment. My advice is that you let me take it off the respirator -- that might solve things. At least, it’s a possibility."
"It’s not a possibility for us," they said together.
"I know how you feel," responded the doctor. "But you need to think about what you’re doing. You already have two beautiful kids. Statistics show that people who keep these babies risk a higher incidence of marital stress and family problems. Is it fair to do this to the children you already have? Is it right to bring this suffering into your family?"
At the mention of "suffering" I saw her face brighten, as if the doctor were finally making sense.
"Suffering?" she said quietly. "We appreciate your concern, but we’re Christians. God suffered for us, and we will try to suffer for the baby, if we must."
"Pastor, I hope you can do something with them," the doctor whispered to me outside their door as he continued his rounds.
Two days later, the doctor and I watched the couple leave the hospital. They walked slowly, carrying a small bundle; but it seemed a heavy burden to us, a weight on their shoulders. We felt as if we could hear them dragging, clanking it down the front steps of the hospital, moving slowly but deliberately into a cold, gray March morning.
"It will be too much for them," the doctor said. "You ought to have talked them out of it. You should have helped them to understand."
But as they left, I noticed a curious look on their faces; they looked as if the burden were not too heavy at all, as if it were a privilege and a sign. They seemed borne up, as if on another’s shoulders, being carried toward some high place the doctor and I would not be going, following a way we did not understand.”
Do you remember the song from “Paint Your Wagon”, the 1951 musical by Lerner and Loewe?
Where am I goin'?All we can know is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and Life itself. All we can do is to follow him to have the best chance to save our life, the life of those we love, and maybe even the life of the world.
I don't know.
Where am I headin'?
I ain't certain.
All I know Is
I am on my way.
When will I be there?
I don't know.
When will I get there?
I ain't certain.
All that I know Is
I am on my way.
* William Willimon, The Christian Century, March 2, 1983, pp. 173-174
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Pentecost 14: The Justice of Healing
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 James 2:1-10, 11-17 Mark 7:24-37
Anniversaries. They are a way we mark time. The word itself comes from the Latin words for year and turn: the turning of the years. To honor an anniversary is to return again to a time, a place of remembrance. At the end of August I attended an annual training event to be recertified and an EFM mentor. It was a return for me as I found myself with the same five people who I had been in a small group with the year before. It wasn’t until we sat down together to begin our work that I was suddenly aware that a year had passed--and what a year it had been. The event gave me a chance to review in a very tangible way where I had been in the past year. Specifically, I became aware of where there had been healing in my life. A year before I had arrived at the training exhausted and overwhelmed and in many ways broken. Now I came full of joy and energy and playfulness. How had that happened? How had the healing taken place with me unaware of it?
I was filled with a powerful sense of God’s care for me and a sudden knowledge that God had worked powerfully in my life in ways that I had been unconscious of. This really shouldn’t surprise me. It is often my experience that while God is working in my life, I am sometimes unconscious of it as an ongoing event. But then I have a moment to reflect, to look back, and I can see how God has been there. I realize how God’s good work has been done in me. It seems I sometimes only recognize God’s healing in retrospect. And then there are times that I actively seek it out.
Where does healing come from? How does healing happen? Healing was a huge part of Jesus’ ministry. He healed poor people and rich people, children, adults, soldiers, and homemakers, He healed Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, and Romans. He cured lifelong afflictions and ordinary fevers, chronic conditions and birth defects. mental and psychological anguish. He exorcised demons and raised people from the dead. Where did his healing come from? And what exactly does a healing ministry have to do with being the Son of God and the messiah?
In the two healing stories we heard today, the healing is sought. The woman comes to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. Friends bring the deaf man to Jesus. Jesus didn’t go looking for them. In fact sometimes he seemed to want to hide from all the needs and hurts of others. When he went to the region of Tyre after his confrontation with the Pharisees (some 35 miles North of Galilee, more than a day’s walk from his home territory), “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean sprit immediately heard about him and she came and bowed down at his feet.”
Now this woman lived in Tyre. She was not one of Jesus’ people. She was not the same religion or ethnicity or even from the same country. The text refers to her as Syrophoenician, meaning she was living in Phoenicia but of Syrian descent (like Italtian-American or French-Canadian). She was also a Gentile, or some texts say Greek--clearly not Jewish. When you are exhausted, when you want time to yourself, when you do not want to be found, it is hard enough to have to respond positively to a family member or a friend who seeks you out. You definitely don’t want to have anything to do with an outsider, a stranger who has no claim on you. This woman had no claim on Jesus. He was not her rabbi, not her countryman; he was not her messiah. And when she asks for healing for her daughter, he tells her as much (basically a loose translation of that children and dogs comment would be, “You have no claim on me!”)
Having been put off, she then asks for something else. She asks for justice--and in doing so reminds Jesus, reminds us, who does have a claim on him. See, Jesus is not Israel’s messiah. Jesus is not the savior of the Jews. Jesus is the savior of the world--including the world of a Syrian, non-Jewish woman in Tyre. She demands justice and receives it. And her daughter is healed. What is the relationship between healing and justice?
The region of Tyre is much in the news today. You only have to read the headlines to get a good picture…
Lebanon Prepares Mass Graves in Tyre
Officials say more than 500 Lebanese civilians have been killed since the conflict began, and more mass burials are planned Monday in the southern port city of Tyre
(August 2, 2006, NPR)
Returning Lebanese Rebury the Dead
Lebanese are now back in towns that were the focus of Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, and they're giving proper funerals to loved ones who were buried in mass graves. At the port of Tyre, more than 160 bodies were reburied.
(August 20, 2006, NPR)
Sidon Journal; Wake of War Idles Lebanon's Fleet, and Its Fishermen
Every morning, the fishermen gather at a grimy outdoor cafe overlooking the docks of this ancient port town. It is the height of the fishing season, but their boats sit at the water's edge like abandoned cars, rusting. ''We have been sitting here for 50 days,'' said Muhammad Ibrahim
(August 28, 2006, NYTimes)
Besieged
Things were getting back to normal in Tyre. The bomb craters in the main streets had been filled in with dirt, which slowed traffic but at least made passage possible. Some of the town’s more spectacular ruins were already being shoveled into great heaps of rubble. (September 3, 2006, NYTimes)
And in the midst of that rubble who is in need of justice? Of healing? Of peace? In an online journal reflection on today’s lessons, Jerry Goebel (a minister to at risk youth in WA) writes “In Tyre, this week, a woman still cries out for her daughter. She [is] not part of the hatred and politics that turned southern Lebanon into a disaster zone. Yet, that woman still cannot find a voice in an area torn asunder by religion and politics.” So many Christians in our country are fond of asking WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Do in Tyre? “We already know. The same thing he did 2,000 years ago in that ancient city. He would find the most ignored, most forgotten, most desperate person in the city, and he would heal her daughter.”*
When do we receive healing? Where does healing come from? How is it related to justice? What does a Syrophoenician woman have to do with Jesus? What do people in the Middle East have to do with us?
This week we encounter the anniversary of 9/11. We have marked the time for five years. We return again to a time, a place of remembrance. Consciously or unconsciously we revisit a time of horror and tragedy and terrorism. It is hard to enter those waters again. But as I contemplate this anniversary I find I am compelled to take stock in terms of healing. Where has there been healing over the past five years, and where has there been none? Where has there been justice, and where has there been none? Healing and justice, justice and peace.
What about us? Who has a claim on us? What are we called to do? Where does healing come from? In reflecting on this anniversary, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Director of Worship Resources for the United Methodist Church, writes, “Healing comes as we act in love toward those who harmed us, forgive our enemies, and reach out in love toward those who hurt the most — whoever they are, wherever they are. Healing comes as our souls, which need not be destroyed by outward pains, choose love again — not fear, not pain, not hate.” **
Healing and justice go hand in hand. Scripture is clear. In Proverbs we read, “whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.” And in the letter of James, “What good is it if a brother or sister lacks daily food and you say ‘Go in peace: keep warm and eat your fill,’ but do not supply their bodily needs?” And then there are the actions of Jesus.
On Friday evening my children prayed with friends of theirs before they sat down and ate their pizza. This was their prayer:
Bless our food, Dear God we pray,
And bless us too throughout this day.
Keep us safe and close to You,
Keep us just in all we do.
Keep us just in all we do.
Copyright © 2006 Anne E. Kitch
*Jerry Goebel: 2005 © http://onefamilyoutreach.com.
** Taylor Burton-Edwards, Reflections and a Hymn for the Fifth Anniversary of September 11, 2001 http://www.gbod.org/worship
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 James 2:1-10, 11-17 Mark 7:24-37
Anniversaries. They are a way we mark time. The word itself comes from the Latin words for year and turn: the turning of the years. To honor an anniversary is to return again to a time, a place of remembrance. At the end of August I attended an annual training event to be recertified and an EFM mentor. It was a return for me as I found myself with the same five people who I had been in a small group with the year before. It wasn’t until we sat down together to begin our work that I was suddenly aware that a year had passed--and what a year it had been. The event gave me a chance to review in a very tangible way where I had been in the past year. Specifically, I became aware of where there had been healing in my life. A year before I had arrived at the training exhausted and overwhelmed and in many ways broken. Now I came full of joy and energy and playfulness. How had that happened? How had the healing taken place with me unaware of it?
I was filled with a powerful sense of God’s care for me and a sudden knowledge that God had worked powerfully in my life in ways that I had been unconscious of. This really shouldn’t surprise me. It is often my experience that while God is working in my life, I am sometimes unconscious of it as an ongoing event. But then I have a moment to reflect, to look back, and I can see how God has been there. I realize how God’s good work has been done in me. It seems I sometimes only recognize God’s healing in retrospect. And then there are times that I actively seek it out.
Where does healing come from? How does healing happen? Healing was a huge part of Jesus’ ministry. He healed poor people and rich people, children, adults, soldiers, and homemakers, He healed Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, and Romans. He cured lifelong afflictions and ordinary fevers, chronic conditions and birth defects. mental and psychological anguish. He exorcised demons and raised people from the dead. Where did his healing come from? And what exactly does a healing ministry have to do with being the Son of God and the messiah?
In the two healing stories we heard today, the healing is sought. The woman comes to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. Friends bring the deaf man to Jesus. Jesus didn’t go looking for them. In fact sometimes he seemed to want to hide from all the needs and hurts of others. When he went to the region of Tyre after his confrontation with the Pharisees (some 35 miles North of Galilee, more than a day’s walk from his home territory), “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean sprit immediately heard about him and she came and bowed down at his feet.”
Now this woman lived in Tyre. She was not one of Jesus’ people. She was not the same religion or ethnicity or even from the same country. The text refers to her as Syrophoenician, meaning she was living in Phoenicia but of Syrian descent (like Italtian-American or French-Canadian). She was also a Gentile, or some texts say Greek--clearly not Jewish. When you are exhausted, when you want time to yourself, when you do not want to be found, it is hard enough to have to respond positively to a family member or a friend who seeks you out. You definitely don’t want to have anything to do with an outsider, a stranger who has no claim on you. This woman had no claim on Jesus. He was not her rabbi, not her countryman; he was not her messiah. And when she asks for healing for her daughter, he tells her as much (basically a loose translation of that children and dogs comment would be, “You have no claim on me!”)
Having been put off, she then asks for something else. She asks for justice--and in doing so reminds Jesus, reminds us, who does have a claim on him. See, Jesus is not Israel’s messiah. Jesus is not the savior of the Jews. Jesus is the savior of the world--including the world of a Syrian, non-Jewish woman in Tyre. She demands justice and receives it. And her daughter is healed. What is the relationship between healing and justice?
The region of Tyre is much in the news today. You only have to read the headlines to get a good picture…
Lebanon Prepares Mass Graves in Tyre
Officials say more than 500 Lebanese civilians have been killed since the conflict began, and more mass burials are planned Monday in the southern port city of Tyre
(August 2, 2006, NPR)
Returning Lebanese Rebury the Dead
Lebanese are now back in towns that were the focus of Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, and they're giving proper funerals to loved ones who were buried in mass graves. At the port of Tyre, more than 160 bodies were reburied.
(August 20, 2006, NPR)
Sidon Journal; Wake of War Idles Lebanon's Fleet, and Its Fishermen
Every morning, the fishermen gather at a grimy outdoor cafe overlooking the docks of this ancient port town. It is the height of the fishing season, but their boats sit at the water's edge like abandoned cars, rusting. ''We have been sitting here for 50 days,'' said Muhammad Ibrahim
(August 28, 2006, NYTimes)
Besieged
Things were getting back to normal in Tyre. The bomb craters in the main streets had been filled in with dirt, which slowed traffic but at least made passage possible. Some of the town’s more spectacular ruins were already being shoveled into great heaps of rubble. (September 3, 2006, NYTimes)
And in the midst of that rubble who is in need of justice? Of healing? Of peace? In an online journal reflection on today’s lessons, Jerry Goebel (a minister to at risk youth in WA) writes “In Tyre, this week, a woman still cries out for her daughter. She [is] not part of the hatred and politics that turned southern Lebanon into a disaster zone. Yet, that woman still cannot find a voice in an area torn asunder by religion and politics.” So many Christians in our country are fond of asking WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Do in Tyre? “We already know. The same thing he did 2,000 years ago in that ancient city. He would find the most ignored, most forgotten, most desperate person in the city, and he would heal her daughter.”*
When do we receive healing? Where does healing come from? How is it related to justice? What does a Syrophoenician woman have to do with Jesus? What do people in the Middle East have to do with us?
This week we encounter the anniversary of 9/11. We have marked the time for five years. We return again to a time, a place of remembrance. Consciously or unconsciously we revisit a time of horror and tragedy and terrorism. It is hard to enter those waters again. But as I contemplate this anniversary I find I am compelled to take stock in terms of healing. Where has there been healing over the past five years, and where has there been none? Where has there been justice, and where has there been none? Healing and justice, justice and peace.
What about us? Who has a claim on us? What are we called to do? Where does healing come from? In reflecting on this anniversary, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Director of Worship Resources for the United Methodist Church, writes, “Healing comes as we act in love toward those who harmed us, forgive our enemies, and reach out in love toward those who hurt the most — whoever they are, wherever they are. Healing comes as our souls, which need not be destroyed by outward pains, choose love again — not fear, not pain, not hate.” **
Healing and justice go hand in hand. Scripture is clear. In Proverbs we read, “whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.” And in the letter of James, “What good is it if a brother or sister lacks daily food and you say ‘Go in peace: keep warm and eat your fill,’ but do not supply their bodily needs?” And then there are the actions of Jesus.
On Friday evening my children prayed with friends of theirs before they sat down and ate their pizza. This was their prayer:
Bless our food, Dear God we pray,
And bless us too throughout this day.
Keep us safe and close to You,
Keep us just in all we do.
Keep us just in all we do.
Copyright © 2006 Anne E. Kitch
*Jerry Goebel: 2005 © http://onefamilyoutreach.com.
** Taylor Burton-Edwards, Reflections and a Hymn for the Fifth Anniversary of September 11, 2001 http://www.gbod.org/worship
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