The Cathedral Church of the Nativity ~ April 27, 2008
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
Acts 17:22-31 + 1 Peter 3:13-22 + John 14:15-21
Last Saturday the Diocese of Bethlehem celebrated the memorial Eucharist for Henry Pease, a priest of the church, and a very good man. His family members were there, his parishioners, his colleagues and his friends. I said in the funeral homily, “His death is akin to the passing of a tribal elder, the passing of the leader of his clan, the passing of a wise teacher, the passing of a beloved priest. It is the passing of a son – a child of God – who returns to the Father.”
The feelings at a time such as that are well known to everyone who has experienced the loss of someone loved and valued. Get in touch with those feelings within yourself. If you have known death, if you have known loss, if you have known a sense of abandonment, if you have ever been bereft… Remember what that was like.
It’s important because that is what is going on in John’s Gospel today. We continue to hear what is called the Last Discourse of Jesus – his farewell address to those with whom he has lived for all these months who have left everything for him. They have left their families, their work, and their homes. They have bet their all on him and he is going to leave them. You know what they are feeling. You know what they are thinking… and so does Jesus.
And he gives them a reason to hope. He tells them, “I will not leave you orphaned… I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.”
He tells them the truth and he gives them a word of hope. The truth is a word of hope. How important it is that people hear the truth that is a word of hope. How important it is that the world hears the truth that is a word of hope.
Writing in a time of danger and despair for the early church, Peter counsels, “…be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.”
I don’t think he is offering that counsel solely as a defense strategy. He is offering it because it is the truth that the world, the powers of the world need to hear, what people need to hear – the truth that is a word of hope.
In Ephesians 1:17-18, the apostle Paul writes:
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints…
What we have here in these verses is the prayer that believers will know what their hope is and how powerful God can be in their lives. Whatever it may take, to ensure we have a foundation of hope.
Hope occupies the God-spot in our lives, just as God occupies the hope-spot. Hope gives us a sense that life is worth going on. It is not a hope we control by having knowledge about it. It either is or it is not.
Probably the greatest Oral Historian of our time is Studs Terkel. For 60 years he has listen to, annecdoted, recorded, reported and found meaning in the stories of people lives: work life, family life, love life, life-changing life, cataclysmic life, war-torn life, and life of epic and historic proportions.
His last book was intended to be Will the Circle Be Unbroken? – his oral history on death (and life). He finished this last book when he was 90. But he didn’t die right away (he’s not dead yet at the age of 96) and he found that after death in the list of human subjects comes the greatest subject of them all – and one well-timed to every moment – Hope. He had one more book to write.
Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times. It is a reminder that in good times, you can do nothing and still have hope, but in bad times, you have to act, take that first small step, in order to hope.
Hope is God-given. It is created in the human DNA, it is part of our being, as is, for instance, the ability to word things, to use language. But we know that language must be nurtured and taught, and used, and if those things don’t happen the language ability goes away, it dies. I have studied Latin, Greek, French, and a little German, along with English. Except for English, now they are all gone for me. I have no ability to use these languages, it is as if that ability was dead to me.
Hope may die last, but it can die, and it is a living death. You may have experienced a time when you were without hope, and how terrible that is. I know.
As disciples of this Jesus who lived and died and has risen, whose Ascension we remember in the week ahead, this Jesus who would not leaves his disciples or the world orphaned – this Jesus calls us to a Ministry of Hope to a world bereft of it, to people who have lost or are in danger of losing it, and for the salvation of our own souls.
As a safe example, let me mention Kajo Keji. After 50 years of war, exile, displacement, and loss you would think that the people there would have felt abandoned and been bereft in hopelessness. You would have thought that hope would have died. Certainly there was some flirting with hopelessness. But when we first went there found a people not without hope, but a people whose lives were based on hope that was founded in their faith in Jesus Christ.
And then a cathedral congregation in the US raised a few thousand dollars and sent it to them to build a well. That well bought in not only refreshing, life-giving water; it also brought refreshing life-giving hope. Hope that there can be a future there. Hope. How important is that? Priceless.
Bring-ers of hope. That is the ministry to which we have been called as the community of Jesus; that is the ministry to which each of us is called as a disciple – to be signs of hope for one another and for those we meet.
There can be for us nothing other than this faith and this hope; nothing other than to be ready to make our defense to anyone who demands from us, who needs from us, an accounting for the hope that is in us.
People need the eyes of their heart enlightened, so that they may know what is the hope to which Jesus has called them…” They need to know that that Jesus would not leave them orphaned. We cannot leave them orphaned. They must know the truth that is a word of hope, a word that can sustain, and be life-giving – even in the midst all the tough realities of life.
Soon we will celebrate Pentecost, remembering that God has sent the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Counselor. One translation of the Greek word for the Holy Spirit, Paraclete, also means the Encourager. Jesus would send us to be encouragers of one another. When we obey him, we know that he lives in us, and we in him.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of Jesus, to a ministry of encouragement, to a life of bringing life-giving hope wherever you go.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Annual Meeting 2008 - The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Barbara Crafton, well-known author of spiritual things and personally known to some of you, writes:
The Bible is full of people setting out into the unknown, and only with their faith in the goodness of the God who led them there. Here is Noah, getting started on the ark while the sun is still shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky. There is Abel offering a sacrifice of grain instead of meat without quite knowing why, foreshadowing a people that would leave hunting and gathering and become farmers. And there are Abram and Sarah, old and childless, absurdly promised an inheritance of children more numerous than the stars, and believing it.
Today going somewhere where you have not gone before – that is a scary thing to do. To do something new, something you have not done before – it takes guts.
Parents know about doing something new. They were once carefree people. They were once the masters of themselves, without someone depending on them for life itself. They were not born knowing how to be the awesome people parents must become, and I don't imagine they learned much about it before it came upon them. Unless they went to schools that were a lot more thorough than the ones most of us went to.
Do you remember, as I do, the strangeness of parenting at first? Did you count the baby's toes, just to be sure there were ten? Did you awake in fear at a cough that was new, call your mother at the appearance of a strange rash, worry excessively about the relative merits of different brands of strained carrots? Did you feel sometimes, as I did, late one night, before becoming a mother for the first time, that you just were not ready for this? "I can't do this," I sobbed in sheer panic, and a stern voice within me said, "But you're going to."
The church knows about this too. We all do. To all of us there come these moments in life: moments when it is clear that we must move forward in something quite new about which we know very little.
One of our great sources of pain and fear is this: Most of the important things about which we must decide in life are things about which we know next to nothing.
It must have been something for the disciples, whose lives we get glimpses of, to once again be in a place of trying to figure out what it is that Jesus is revealing to them again. It must have been something for them to have been so compelled by Jesus’ teaching to leave behind job and family and venture into a daily expedition into unknown places of geography, spirituality, and even political movement. There had to have been days when they wondered if they had chosen wisely to set out on their journey. They had to wonder if they were equipped not only for the job that Jesus seemed to be telling them was theirs (i.e. today’s Gospel “greater works than they had seen Jesus himself do,” yeah right!) but I assume they had to wonder even if they were equipped with tools to survive daily with no employment to provide shelter or food.
Day by day you realize a choice was made as the disciples awoke! Do I stay or do I go? One more day to decide to follow and in today’s story, yet one more puzzle to figure out? What do you mean there is a “place” prepared for me? A place that we will dwell with you always? Another “place” we must go? Thomas doesn’t know how to get there and I imagine they are tired of asking “where now Lord?” Phillip wants Jesus to put his cards on table, enough already! Show us where God’s heart is! This, after all, I believe is what compelled them to take the journey, thirsting after God’s heart! This, I pray, is why you and I take the journey as well, but can you imagine the disciples’ daily dilemma, “I don’t know exactly where this is going, how and where I shall choose to step?" We know something of these choices of life and the tension of faith at this Cathedral. We know as individuals who have made decisions in life. I’ve been with you as you’ve struggled and made choices. How should we best take care of our elderly parents? What is the best course of treatment for me as I face a newly diagnosed illness and will God be my companion on this journey? What job might we settle into that would best support me as a parent trying to raise my children? What gifts do I have to offer as part of this church’s mission and how am I going to make time for that? What if I’m not the right person or what if I don’t have the right gifts to teach Sunday School this year, or be part of the pastoral care team, or be a j2a leader, or …
What if we cannot figure an effective way to reach out to a dynamically-transitioning south side of Bethlehem? What if we cannot staff adequately to meet the mission needs ahead? What if we never have adequate parking? What if we can’t keep up with deferred maintenance projects in our lovely but aging properties? What if we run out of money? What if it all just doesn’t work out?? What if it does?
Barbara Crafton continues:
There is no way to know the outcome to any dilemma without going through it. But you have to decide yes or no before you have the benefit of this knowledge.
So we take a deep breath and choose, and then we live with the choice. No wonder we are nervous.
You can't wait until all the data is in before deciding on something new in your life. All the data cannot be in until you've gone ahead and done it. Then you know, and not until then.
Although there may be good reasons for deciding not to take a new path in life, the fact that you have never done such and such a thing before is not one of them. All of the things we do now were once new to us.
We are not impelled into new actions solely by the force of logic and experience. We are, finally, impelled into them by faith.
Today is our annual gathering and meeting, my first with you as Dean and Rector. We check in with one another formally, to review our journey in faith. We come together as individuals challenged with life decisions and as a community of faith faced with corporate decisions for the welfare of our mission as a congregation of Jesus Christ! Like in all life, we struggle with the “facts,” the data, the challenges and the opportunities. In our case we are bolstered by nearly 150 years of experience to learn from, build upon, and hopefully use as launching pad to boldly proclaim the Gospel well into the 21st century. Like the disciples encountering Jesus in John’s Gospel, we too are challenged with the opportunity to find in Jesus the truth about God’s saving action for our own lives and for the world. We are challenged with the opportunity to put our trust in a belief that Jesus is “pitching tent,” (abode), preparing room, creating a space for us so we may dwell together and know the power of God in our lives. I pray that knowing it as a community of faith here at the Cathedral those around us might know that power as well! In all of who we are and all of what we do, let us remember that we are HIS CHURCH and our greatest challenge is to daily claim the opportunity to surrender our lives to God’s power by meeting Jesus Christ who desires to dwell with us. This is always the place we start, from knowing and dwelling with Christ, and from this place we are impelled to move as Barbara Crafton reminds us in FAITH.
We move forward with our challenges and our opportunities, which I pray we all agree are great. But life and death they are not, life-giving I pray they may be. This, after all, seems to be what Jesus is getting at. Choices will be made. And like all life, some of these choices may turn out to be the right ones, and some may not in the end turn out to be so. But such is the life of faith, which is to choose first just simply to follow. May we do so, please, first believing Jesus has “pitched tent” with us, dwells with us, emboldens and empowers us. And may we live gently with one another stepping into the shadows of God’s grace.
One more time, Barbara Crafton:
While we may not know the outcome of a course upon which we embark, we know this: God accompanies us. God does not leave us to figure it out alone. God is prepared to bless and guide the courses we choose. God longs to pour peace and serenity over our anxious souls when we must choose.
Does this mean, then, that our choices will always be the right ones? No, we're not that good at it.
But with God's help and God's truth, there is a way to see the truth about where we are and where we're heading, and if we can see the truth we can speak it.
And if we can speak the truth to God and to those who love us, we can find within ourselves the courage to do the truth, however new and unfamiliar that truth may be.
The Bible is full of people setting out into the unknown, and only with their faith in the goodness of the God who led them there. Here is Noah, getting started on the ark while the sun is still shining and there isn't a cloud in the sky. There is Abel offering a sacrifice of grain instead of meat without quite knowing why, foreshadowing a people that would leave hunting and gathering and become farmers. And there are Abram and Sarah, old and childless, absurdly promised an inheritance of children more numerous than the stars, and believing it.
Today going somewhere where you have not gone before – that is a scary thing to do. To do something new, something you have not done before – it takes guts.
Parents know about doing something new. They were once carefree people. They were once the masters of themselves, without someone depending on them for life itself. They were not born knowing how to be the awesome people parents must become, and I don't imagine they learned much about it before it came upon them. Unless they went to schools that were a lot more thorough than the ones most of us went to.
Do you remember, as I do, the strangeness of parenting at first? Did you count the baby's toes, just to be sure there were ten? Did you awake in fear at a cough that was new, call your mother at the appearance of a strange rash, worry excessively about the relative merits of different brands of strained carrots? Did you feel sometimes, as I did, late one night, before becoming a mother for the first time, that you just were not ready for this? "I can't do this," I sobbed in sheer panic, and a stern voice within me said, "But you're going to."
The church knows about this too. We all do. To all of us there come these moments in life: moments when it is clear that we must move forward in something quite new about which we know very little.
One of our great sources of pain and fear is this: Most of the important things about which we must decide in life are things about which we know next to nothing.
It must have been something for the disciples, whose lives we get glimpses of, to once again be in a place of trying to figure out what it is that Jesus is revealing to them again. It must have been something for them to have been so compelled by Jesus’ teaching to leave behind job and family and venture into a daily expedition into unknown places of geography, spirituality, and even political movement. There had to have been days when they wondered if they had chosen wisely to set out on their journey. They had to wonder if they were equipped not only for the job that Jesus seemed to be telling them was theirs (i.e. today’s Gospel “greater works than they had seen Jesus himself do,” yeah right!) but I assume they had to wonder even if they were equipped with tools to survive daily with no employment to provide shelter or food.
Day by day you realize a choice was made as the disciples awoke! Do I stay or do I go? One more day to decide to follow and in today’s story, yet one more puzzle to figure out? What do you mean there is a “place” prepared for me? A place that we will dwell with you always? Another “place” we must go? Thomas doesn’t know how to get there and I imagine they are tired of asking “where now Lord?” Phillip wants Jesus to put his cards on table, enough already! Show us where God’s heart is! This, after all, I believe is what compelled them to take the journey, thirsting after God’s heart! This, I pray, is why you and I take the journey as well, but can you imagine the disciples’ daily dilemma, “I don’t know exactly where this is going, how and where I shall choose to step?" We know something of these choices of life and the tension of faith at this Cathedral. We know as individuals who have made decisions in life. I’ve been with you as you’ve struggled and made choices. How should we best take care of our elderly parents? What is the best course of treatment for me as I face a newly diagnosed illness and will God be my companion on this journey? What job might we settle into that would best support me as a parent trying to raise my children? What gifts do I have to offer as part of this church’s mission and how am I going to make time for that? What if I’m not the right person or what if I don’t have the right gifts to teach Sunday School this year, or be part of the pastoral care team, or be a j2a leader, or …
What if we cannot figure an effective way to reach out to a dynamically-transitioning south side of Bethlehem? What if we cannot staff adequately to meet the mission needs ahead? What if we never have adequate parking? What if we can’t keep up with deferred maintenance projects in our lovely but aging properties? What if we run out of money? What if it all just doesn’t work out?? What if it does?
Barbara Crafton continues:
There is no way to know the outcome to any dilemma without going through it. But you have to decide yes or no before you have the benefit of this knowledge.
So we take a deep breath and choose, and then we live with the choice. No wonder we are nervous.
You can't wait until all the data is in before deciding on something new in your life. All the data cannot be in until you've gone ahead and done it. Then you know, and not until then.
Although there may be good reasons for deciding not to take a new path in life, the fact that you have never done such and such a thing before is not one of them. All of the things we do now were once new to us.
We are not impelled into new actions solely by the force of logic and experience. We are, finally, impelled into them by faith.
Today is our annual gathering and meeting, my first with you as Dean and Rector. We check in with one another formally, to review our journey in faith. We come together as individuals challenged with life decisions and as a community of faith faced with corporate decisions for the welfare of our mission as a congregation of Jesus Christ! Like in all life, we struggle with the “facts,” the data, the challenges and the opportunities. In our case we are bolstered by nearly 150 years of experience to learn from, build upon, and hopefully use as launching pad to boldly proclaim the Gospel well into the 21st century. Like the disciples encountering Jesus in John’s Gospel, we too are challenged with the opportunity to find in Jesus the truth about God’s saving action for our own lives and for the world. We are challenged with the opportunity to put our trust in a belief that Jesus is “pitching tent,” (abode), preparing room, creating a space for us so we may dwell together and know the power of God in our lives. I pray that knowing it as a community of faith here at the Cathedral those around us might know that power as well! In all of who we are and all of what we do, let us remember that we are HIS CHURCH and our greatest challenge is to daily claim the opportunity to surrender our lives to God’s power by meeting Jesus Christ who desires to dwell with us. This is always the place we start, from knowing and dwelling with Christ, and from this place we are impelled to move as Barbara Crafton reminds us in FAITH.
We move forward with our challenges and our opportunities, which I pray we all agree are great. But life and death they are not, life-giving I pray they may be. This, after all, seems to be what Jesus is getting at. Choices will be made. And like all life, some of these choices may turn out to be the right ones, and some may not in the end turn out to be so. But such is the life of faith, which is to choose first just simply to follow. May we do so, please, first believing Jesus has “pitched tent” with us, dwells with us, emboldens and empowers us. And may we live gently with one another stepping into the shadows of God’s grace.
One more time, Barbara Crafton:
While we may not know the outcome of a course upon which we embark, we know this: God accompanies us. God does not leave us to figure it out alone. God is prepared to bless and guide the courses we choose. God longs to pour peace and serenity over our anxious souls when we must choose.
Does this mean, then, that our choices will always be the right ones? No, we're not that good at it.
But with God's help and God's truth, there is a way to see the truth about where we are and where we're heading, and if we can see the truth we can speak it.
And if we can speak the truth to God and to those who love us, we can find within ourselves the courage to do the truth, however new and unfamiliar that truth may be.
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