Christmas Day 2008
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”
If you have been fortunate enough in your life to have made the trek to London, you of course will have had the experience of making use of London’s fine public transportation subway system affectionately known as “The tube”. You’ll remember riding the tube that as trains begin to make their way into a tube station and you are invited to embark or disembark from a train you’ll hear a lovely accented voice telling you to “mind the gap please”. The voice is there of course as a voice of safety and hospitality bringing you into an awareness of the gap that exists between the train itself and the platform of the station. “Mind the Gap” means, pay attention to it, become aware of it and in this case, try to avoid it!
Christmas day, this day, we celebrate the feast of the Incarnation! And on this day as we greet the words of John’s Gospel, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth”. On this day I suggest that we might “mind the gap”, become aware of it, pay attention to it, and unlike the intent for which is repeated on the tube in London, I suggest that instead of avoiding it we are to open our eyes to living in it and discovering there a companion whose name is Jesus. I believe John’s poetic summary of God’s action in the birth, life, and death of Jesus of Nazareth, is precisely God jumping into the gap with us! The Gap of course is life, its struggles and its possibilities, real life, real lives. For Christian folk, this intersection of God’s presence in our lives is where the rubber hits the road, for we believe, in fact we stake our belief on the truth that God is present with us in our daily lives and that God’s presence took on flesh in the person of Jesus, in a time in history, who acted in salvivic ways and gave birth to a community of faith that celebrates this presence even now in our own day!
Parker Palmer in his recently updated introduction to his original work of thirty years ago entitled “The promise of Paradox” suggests that it is exactly in the Gap that we come to know the fullness of God’s promise for us and to the possibility of that promise taking flesh. To stand in the gap he suggests challenges us to avoid the alternatives of standing too firmly on one side or the other of life. On one side of life we may be too rooted in the harsh and hard realities of it, overwhelmed by its struggles and given to the darkness of cynicism. On the other side of life we may be seduced by the thought of too much possibility defined by irrelevant and unrealistic idealisms more accurately described as utopianism.
Dr. Palmer writes, ““The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” I believe this poetry describing God’s action in Jesus names what we are called to do, that is wrapping our whole selves around the truth given to us and live it out in our embodied lives.” The first century reader of John’s gospel understood the challenges of life on either side of the Gap. The hearers of this word would easily have been challenged by the dim and corrosive realities of life. Certainly not all, but many of the hearer’s of John’s word knew disease and famine, unemployment and disempowerment, sickness and death, poverty and injustice, not for all of course but for many. Equally available would be the false promise of sanctuary and safety, security offered in a Roman occupier whose image depicted on coinage suggested that all that was needed would suffice in the person and protection of Caesar, “Son of God”. Still other factions promised restoration of majesty and dominion, independence, and self-rule by the promised restoration of a monarchy in Israel. Still other communities of faith promised fullness of life by living apart in the dessert, removed from the challenges of everyday living in first century Palestine, and praying for a new day of Yahweh’s reign.
Overwhelmed by life or hoping for an idealized promised society, into this Gap the word becomes flesh, born of an unassuming virgin peasant girl. Into this Gap the embodiment of God’s word in the person of Jesus, a Nazarene, and he would live, breathe, love, bleed, cry, laugh, celebrate, proclaim, preach, heal, march in civil disobedience, and give his life in pain and sacrifice so that those residing in the Gap with him might do the same and bring new life in real people’s lives, living in real communities as a people of faith! This “word becoming flesh” would physically tap those who would listen and invite them to follow and him and become a new community that would stand for love, forgiveness, justice and compassion! This new community would bear witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and their witness would spread throughout the world! Here we are today as a result, real people, living into the Gap with real struggles, real hopes, and living real lives dwelling in God’s presence.
Dr. Palmer asks of us, Can we wrap ourselves, our whole selves around the truth given to us and live it out in our embodied lives? Can we stand in the Gap with the Word that dwells with us choosing not to let darkness and cynicism have its way, and not getting lost in a utopian ideal that robs us from investing our selves, our souls, and our bodies in action to God’s hope for the world?
If one is fighting for their life with cancer, Mind the Gap. Know that God dwells with you and with every tear, every struggle, every pain, every treatment, every fear, God is fighting with you!
If one is fighting for life afflicted with an addiction, Mind the Gap. Know that God dwells with you, with every craving, cramping, impulse and compulsion, God knows and is in your struggle and dares to birth with you something new.
If you are fighting for the justice of individuals or group in our communities, our country and this world, mind the Gap. We must know that God dwells there with you, knows the fears that might hold one back from marching or speaking up, knows the pain of being judged or rejected by the standards of others,
If one’s gifts and abilities are called to build, to feed, or to show compassion to the “least of these”, Mind the Gap. We must know that God dwells with us as our hands put flesh on God’s grace for those as nails are driven to build shelter, meals are prepared for hungry stomachs and hearts, and the lonely are lifted by a smile, a word, and dignity respected.
Finally, if we find our own lives lost too far on one side of the Gap or the other, overcome by the difficulties of life, or removed and lost in a false sense of utopia, MIND the GAP! We have to believe that God knows the pain of despair, and the distance created by promises of magic that cost us nothing. God joins us in the Gap and knows the way bring life out of the darkness and distance.
Bill Llewellis, the diocesan communications officer recently shared a parable told on an episode of the popular television program “West Wing” a few years ago. The program entitled Noel depicts a member of the president's staff who is told he has post traumatic stress disorder. He worries that he will lose his job. Leo, the chief of staff, an alcoholic in recovery, tells Josh this story.
This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.
A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey you. Can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it in the hole and moves on.
Then a priest comes along. "Father, I'm down in this hole. Can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it in the hole and moves on.
Then a friend walks by. "Hey, Joe. It's me. Can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down her."
The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."
Such is the gift and scandal of the Word becoming Flesh! Mind the Gap!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas Eve 2008
Sermon, Bishop Paul Marshall
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Merry Christmas to each of you. Some years it is easier to say that than others. This year we are in an anxious time. We are deeply aware of the instability the economy in general. Beyond that, everyone now knows the words “Ponzi scheme,” a knowledge that brings another level of anxiety and even mistrust to some minds. Each of us in this room knows somebody who has lost a job, some of us are that person, and many of us who have been patiently growing retirement funds over the years know we are going to have to work a good deal longer than we anticipated, and that brings a sense of weariness, even betrayal.
What does faith say in times like this? Oddly enough, we say that Christians and Christianity are at their very best when they move heroically and confidently through difficult times. We say that this feast called Christmas celebrates the generosity of God, and entering that generosity is the key to keeping our spirits up when times are down.
Think about it. Why did Christianity grow so fast in its early years? It wasn’t because the emperor Constantine semi-converted in the year 313—Christian numerical growth had already happened and he merely bowed to that fact. It wasn’t because Christians all had one set of clear doctrines—they were centuries away from agreeing about to talk about God [Chalcedon], and centuries away from deciding what books were in their scriptures. Yet in the midst of its religious imprecision, the Church grew. How come?
The top social historians of our day agree that Christianity grew so fast mostly because Christians were known for their unusual compassion for those around them, especially toward those who were not members of their faith. From the Book of Acts on, they raised money on one continent to aid those on another continent, never for a moment presuming to think that mean little thought, that charity begins at home. They knew that charity does not begin at home. It begins with helping the people you don’t know and might not care for, just as the Good Samaritan did, just as Jesus did by leaving his heavenly home for our sake.
The first Christians let the gospel train them, as St. Paul says in our epistle tonight, to be a people who were zealous for good deeds. That’s a religious way of saying that they were really and truly into serving the world, the whole world. They knew that God’s taking flesh in Jesus for the sake of the whole world wasn’t an event in the past. It was the pattern for their own lives every day. What did that look like?
In about the year 250 a plague struck Alexandria, Egypt, and actually killed more than half of the population. People with resources got as far away from town as they could—except the Christians. In a time of panic and danger, they stayed in town and cared for the sick and dying, and some of them paid for that generosity with their lives. People joined the church.
Throughout the empire, Christians were known to patrol the garbage dumps, but they weren’t looking for antiques. Those dumps were where people placed infants they didn’t want, and the church got a reputation for saving lives that others had put in the trash. People joined the church.
Again, in the Alexandrian community, those who lived on the church’s dole would often go entirely without food one day a week so that they, too, would have something to give others. People joined the church. That is why I decided to give the children money instead of chocolate—so they would be able to have the corporate experience of giving to those in need out of what they have been given. It is a way to know the heart of the incarnation.
Let’s leave ancient history. I have seen many, many lives change because of participation in our New Hope project. From the little girl who ran a yard sale of toys she was done with to the retired lady who went back to work so she could make a major contribution, I have shed tears to see love expressed so unselfishly. A fourth-grader recently handed this [a teddy bear] to a friend of mine asking that it go to a child in Sudan.
And let’s come right to your doorstep. I often comment on Nativity’s practice of giving away its Christmas and Easter offerings to care for those in need. Those are the two largest offerings of the year. Many churches count on those offerings to survive, but your vestry puts mission concerns before survival concerns. At this time in history, when financial concerns are acute even for churches, your continuing to send money away from home is a bold statement that you accept Christianity’s mission of being to people what Jesus was when he walked this planet.
In doing so you follow the rich tradition that gave Christianity its growing potential. People in an age of anxiety were attracted to a religion whose adherents could dare not to follow the culture, but to transform it.
The epistle also says that in being zealous for good works we are training ourselves to renounce some things that stunt our souls. When times are difficult, we can overdo our natural inclination to self-protection. What happens then, as Ebenezer Scrooge reminds us, is that we shrivel inside. But when we reach out to others in the midst of our own worrying, we change, we are liberated for the subtle joy of knowing ourselves to be united with Christ. Science tells us we are hard-wired for that selfless giving we call altruism; Jesus shows us how to achieve it, and in achieving it, have life in abundance.
So the opportunity each of us has when anxiety enters our lives on any level is to grow our souls by doing what Jesus did, caring harder for those around us. The opportunity that we have corporately is the same, with the added possibility that what happened in the ancient world will happen again: people around us can be attracted to a community that continuously gives as Jesus gave, sacrificially and out of love.
I think the best Christmas gift we could give ourselves is to double the amount we were going to put in the plate tonight. It won’t go to me, it won’t go to the parish; it won’t even necessarily go to Christians. It will tell some people that the Cathedral Church of the Nativity loves them, that God loves them. And that may be the biggest thrill, the major moment of liberation from anxiety and spiritual uplift for us on this holy night. After all, it worked for three wise men.
Sermon, Bishop Paul Marshall
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Merry Christmas to each of you. Some years it is easier to say that than others. This year we are in an anxious time. We are deeply aware of the instability the economy in general. Beyond that, everyone now knows the words “Ponzi scheme,” a knowledge that brings another level of anxiety and even mistrust to some minds. Each of us in this room knows somebody who has lost a job, some of us are that person, and many of us who have been patiently growing retirement funds over the years know we are going to have to work a good deal longer than we anticipated, and that brings a sense of weariness, even betrayal.
What does faith say in times like this? Oddly enough, we say that Christians and Christianity are at their very best when they move heroically and confidently through difficult times. We say that this feast called Christmas celebrates the generosity of God, and entering that generosity is the key to keeping our spirits up when times are down.
Think about it. Why did Christianity grow so fast in its early years? It wasn’t because the emperor Constantine semi-converted in the year 313—Christian numerical growth had already happened and he merely bowed to that fact. It wasn’t because Christians all had one set of clear doctrines—they were centuries away from agreeing about to talk about God [Chalcedon], and centuries away from deciding what books were in their scriptures. Yet in the midst of its religious imprecision, the Church grew. How come?
The top social historians of our day agree that Christianity grew so fast mostly because Christians were known for their unusual compassion for those around them, especially toward those who were not members of their faith. From the Book of Acts on, they raised money on one continent to aid those on another continent, never for a moment presuming to think that mean little thought, that charity begins at home. They knew that charity does not begin at home. It begins with helping the people you don’t know and might not care for, just as the Good Samaritan did, just as Jesus did by leaving his heavenly home for our sake.
The first Christians let the gospel train them, as St. Paul says in our epistle tonight, to be a people who were zealous for good deeds. That’s a religious way of saying that they were really and truly into serving the world, the whole world. They knew that God’s taking flesh in Jesus for the sake of the whole world wasn’t an event in the past. It was the pattern for their own lives every day. What did that look like?
In about the year 250 a plague struck Alexandria, Egypt, and actually killed more than half of the population. People with resources got as far away from town as they could—except the Christians. In a time of panic and danger, they stayed in town and cared for the sick and dying, and some of them paid for that generosity with their lives. People joined the church.
Throughout the empire, Christians were known to patrol the garbage dumps, but they weren’t looking for antiques. Those dumps were where people placed infants they didn’t want, and the church got a reputation for saving lives that others had put in the trash. People joined the church.
Again, in the Alexandrian community, those who lived on the church’s dole would often go entirely without food one day a week so that they, too, would have something to give others. People joined the church. That is why I decided to give the children money instead of chocolate—so they would be able to have the corporate experience of giving to those in need out of what they have been given. It is a way to know the heart of the incarnation.
Let’s leave ancient history. I have seen many, many lives change because of participation in our New Hope project. From the little girl who ran a yard sale of toys she was done with to the retired lady who went back to work so she could make a major contribution, I have shed tears to see love expressed so unselfishly. A fourth-grader recently handed this [a teddy bear] to a friend of mine asking that it go to a child in Sudan.
And let’s come right to your doorstep. I often comment on Nativity’s practice of giving away its Christmas and Easter offerings to care for those in need. Those are the two largest offerings of the year. Many churches count on those offerings to survive, but your vestry puts mission concerns before survival concerns. At this time in history, when financial concerns are acute even for churches, your continuing to send money away from home is a bold statement that you accept Christianity’s mission of being to people what Jesus was when he walked this planet.
In doing so you follow the rich tradition that gave Christianity its growing potential. People in an age of anxiety were attracted to a religion whose adherents could dare not to follow the culture, but to transform it.
The epistle also says that in being zealous for good works we are training ourselves to renounce some things that stunt our souls. When times are difficult, we can overdo our natural inclination to self-protection. What happens then, as Ebenezer Scrooge reminds us, is that we shrivel inside. But when we reach out to others in the midst of our own worrying, we change, we are liberated for the subtle joy of knowing ourselves to be united with Christ. Science tells us we are hard-wired for that selfless giving we call altruism; Jesus shows us how to achieve it, and in achieving it, have life in abundance.
So the opportunity each of us has when anxiety enters our lives on any level is to grow our souls by doing what Jesus did, caring harder for those around us. The opportunity that we have corporately is the same, with the added possibility that what happened in the ancient world will happen again: people around us can be attracted to a community that continuously gives as Jesus gave, sacrificially and out of love.
I think the best Christmas gift we could give ourselves is to double the amount we were going to put in the plate tonight. It won’t go to me, it won’t go to the parish; it won’t even necessarily go to Christians. It will tell some people that the Cathedral Church of the Nativity loves them, that God loves them. And that may be the biggest thrill, the major moment of liberation from anxiety and spiritual uplift for us on this holy night. After all, it worked for three wise men.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Advent IV Sunday December 21, 2008
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pa.
Luke
One may recall Andrew Lloyd –Webers musical about an improbable and complicated love story between a young man emerging into adulthood and a young professional starlet, taking place sometime just after the second World War. A young man touched by Love, pursues and entices the woman of his interest, begging her to say Yes, say Yes, to the Love he feels. The headline song of this production speaks something of the improbable, the complicated, the difficult, the irrational, the joyous, the eye and heart opening, the life changing Aspects that saying Yes to love bring…… the truth of the matter stated by the evolving aspect of Love, Love changes everything goes like this, (Maestro, Hit it!)
Love,Love changes everything:Hands and faces,Earth and sky,Love,Love changes everything:How you live andHow you dieLoveCan make the summer fly,Or a nightSeem like a lifetime.Yes, Love,Love changes everything:Now I trembleAt your name.Nothing in the World will ever Be the same.Love,Love changes everything:Days are longer,Words mean more.Love,Love changes everything:Pain is deeperThan before.LoveWill turn your world around,And that worldWill last for ever.
Yes, Love,
Love changes everything,Brings you glory,Brings you shame.Nothing in theWorld will everBe the same.OffInto the world we go,Planning futures,Shaping years.Love,Bursts in, and suddenlyAll our wisdomDisappears.LoveMakes fools of everyone:All the rulesWe make are broken.Yes, Love,Love changes everyone.Live or perishIn its flame.Love will never,Never let youBe the same.
Today we are invited to the miraculous, wondrous, complicated, faithful epic truth of God’s announcing to the world that Love will come into the world anew, and indeed it will change everything!
Similar to the story found just prior in Luke’s Gospel account, the story of God’s announcing through the angels to Elizabeth in the sixth month of her pregnancy that the child she carries will enflesh part of God’s action in the world for salvation by bearing the Son who will prepare the way, John the Baptist, we hear again that the angels are busy at work, doing what angels do. The angel comes bearing a message that God is up to something big and with a pastoral word, “fear not”! This time the angels’ big news is for a young virgin girl. The news is that she will be what she never could have imagined for her own life, a player in God’s saving action for an entire world and its inhabitants. The young girls response would be to become an obedient servant of God trusting in both the big news and the pastoral word, “Fear Not!”. Well, yeah, right, we all know how that goes, God shows up, we take it on faith, trust in the pastoral word to not be afraid, and move on! All of us love when God shows up!
Perhaps you and I know a it better than this cleaned up version of Luke’s presentation of this story that connects God’s plan of of salvation for the world to the human birth through the most innocent and vulnerable! Indeed between the lines you and I know that God’s showing up is often upending, interrupting, and unexpected and can disorient, and even take us off track for a bit. “Fear not” the angel says, “Fear not indeed”!
The scriptures tell us that Mary pondered these things in her heart!
Ponder indeed!
What will she say? How shall she respond? How could this be? How improbable, How complicated, How difficult, How irrational, How eye opening, How inconvenient!
Certainly she must have pondered, What if I say yes? Can I say No? Either way, Life will never be the same! But how will it not be the same?
For Mary, this encounter with Love will change everything. If she says yes, glory will be brought into the world, shame will certainly come to her from those who cannot see God at work, certainly nothing of her life or the life of the world will ever be the same.
For Mary, this encounter with Love will bring her long days and nights, the words of the angel will take on more and more meaning as she parents the one who grows in her womb, she will know the depth of loving, the pain and promise of sacrifice.
Love changes everything,Brings you glory,Brings you shame.Nothing in theWorld will everBe the same.Love changes everything:Days are longer,Words mean more.Love,Love changes everything:Pain is deeperThan before.
God interrupts and Mary ponders the interruption! Love chooses the most interesting people and places to invite a yes from. Disorienting and disruptive as it may be, a yes to God is a yes toward redemption. A young peasant girl, the most powerless of powerless, is invited to say yes! She would ponder these things and she would say yes, and Love would change everything.
Mary’s yes, would bring God’s plan of Salvation into the world! Freedom! Freedom to Say Yes to Love and dare to accept what Love would bring!
What Mary’s yes would bring would be the word made flesh and the name of Mary’s child would be Jesus. In Hebrew, his name is Yeshua, which means, “Yahweh or 'God' liberates.” Mary’s yes would be a yes to God’s promise of freedom! Freedom from all things physical, spiritual, and emotional that hold hostage!
In our journey toward Christmas, today we join Mary and I ask you to ponder, what is God asking us to say yes to that might change everything? What new thing might we experience when we join Mary in a yes to serve?
I submit to you that when we say yes, when we are willing to serve God and do what God asks of us, we will find that yes is freeing. To say yes, means we have navigated our way to our yes, through the very human questions. “What do I get out of this anyway? How does this help me? What is the payoff? ” Finding our way to the yes by daring to fall in love, promises to change everything. A yes, is indeed a yes to freedom.
In the rear of our very Cathedral sits a resource table with the marvelous book written by Madeline L’engle entitled, “The Glorious Impossible”. This book captures Mary’s moment of yes in these words.
Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are those things that bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips
The birth of Jesus was a Glorious Impossible. Like love, it cannot be explained, it can only be rejoiced in
Mary’s Yes changes everything, how bout yours?
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pa.
Luke
One may recall Andrew Lloyd –Webers musical about an improbable and complicated love story between a young man emerging into adulthood and a young professional starlet, taking place sometime just after the second World War. A young man touched by Love, pursues and entices the woman of his interest, begging her to say Yes, say Yes, to the Love he feels. The headline song of this production speaks something of the improbable, the complicated, the difficult, the irrational, the joyous, the eye and heart opening, the life changing Aspects that saying Yes to love bring…… the truth of the matter stated by the evolving aspect of Love, Love changes everything goes like this, (Maestro, Hit it!)
Love,Love changes everything:Hands and faces,Earth and sky,Love,Love changes everything:How you live andHow you dieLoveCan make the summer fly,Or a nightSeem like a lifetime.Yes, Love,Love changes everything:Now I trembleAt your name.Nothing in the World will ever Be the same.Love,Love changes everything:Days are longer,Words mean more.Love,Love changes everything:Pain is deeperThan before.LoveWill turn your world around,And that worldWill last for ever.
Yes, Love,
Love changes everything,Brings you glory,Brings you shame.Nothing in theWorld will everBe the same.OffInto the world we go,Planning futures,Shaping years.Love,Bursts in, and suddenlyAll our wisdomDisappears.LoveMakes fools of everyone:All the rulesWe make are broken.Yes, Love,Love changes everyone.Live or perishIn its flame.Love will never,Never let youBe the same.
Today we are invited to the miraculous, wondrous, complicated, faithful epic truth of God’s announcing to the world that Love will come into the world anew, and indeed it will change everything!
Similar to the story found just prior in Luke’s Gospel account, the story of God’s announcing through the angels to Elizabeth in the sixth month of her pregnancy that the child she carries will enflesh part of God’s action in the world for salvation by bearing the Son who will prepare the way, John the Baptist, we hear again that the angels are busy at work, doing what angels do. The angel comes bearing a message that God is up to something big and with a pastoral word, “fear not”! This time the angels’ big news is for a young virgin girl. The news is that she will be what she never could have imagined for her own life, a player in God’s saving action for an entire world and its inhabitants. The young girls response would be to become an obedient servant of God trusting in both the big news and the pastoral word, “Fear Not!”. Well, yeah, right, we all know how that goes, God shows up, we take it on faith, trust in the pastoral word to not be afraid, and move on! All of us love when God shows up!
Perhaps you and I know a it better than this cleaned up version of Luke’s presentation of this story that connects God’s plan of of salvation for the world to the human birth through the most innocent and vulnerable! Indeed between the lines you and I know that God’s showing up is often upending, interrupting, and unexpected and can disorient, and even take us off track for a bit. “Fear not” the angel says, “Fear not indeed”!
The scriptures tell us that Mary pondered these things in her heart!
Ponder indeed!
What will she say? How shall she respond? How could this be? How improbable, How complicated, How difficult, How irrational, How eye opening, How inconvenient!
Certainly she must have pondered, What if I say yes? Can I say No? Either way, Life will never be the same! But how will it not be the same?
For Mary, this encounter with Love will change everything. If she says yes, glory will be brought into the world, shame will certainly come to her from those who cannot see God at work, certainly nothing of her life or the life of the world will ever be the same.
For Mary, this encounter with Love will bring her long days and nights, the words of the angel will take on more and more meaning as she parents the one who grows in her womb, she will know the depth of loving, the pain and promise of sacrifice.
Love changes everything,Brings you glory,Brings you shame.Nothing in theWorld will everBe the same.Love changes everything:Days are longer,Words mean more.Love,Love changes everything:Pain is deeperThan before.
God interrupts and Mary ponders the interruption! Love chooses the most interesting people and places to invite a yes from. Disorienting and disruptive as it may be, a yes to God is a yes toward redemption. A young peasant girl, the most powerless of powerless, is invited to say yes! She would ponder these things and she would say yes, and Love would change everything.
Mary’s yes, would bring God’s plan of Salvation into the world! Freedom! Freedom to Say Yes to Love and dare to accept what Love would bring!
What Mary’s yes would bring would be the word made flesh and the name of Mary’s child would be Jesus. In Hebrew, his name is Yeshua, which means, “Yahweh or 'God' liberates.” Mary’s yes would be a yes to God’s promise of freedom! Freedom from all things physical, spiritual, and emotional that hold hostage!
In our journey toward Christmas, today we join Mary and I ask you to ponder, what is God asking us to say yes to that might change everything? What new thing might we experience when we join Mary in a yes to serve?
I submit to you that when we say yes, when we are willing to serve God and do what God asks of us, we will find that yes is freeing. To say yes, means we have navigated our way to our yes, through the very human questions. “What do I get out of this anyway? How does this help me? What is the payoff? ” Finding our way to the yes by daring to fall in love, promises to change everything. A yes, is indeed a yes to freedom.
In the rear of our very Cathedral sits a resource table with the marvelous book written by Madeline L’engle entitled, “The Glorious Impossible”. This book captures Mary’s moment of yes in these words.
Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are those things that bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips
The birth of Jesus was a Glorious Impossible. Like love, it cannot be explained, it can only be rejoiced in
Mary’s Yes changes everything, how bout yours?
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Advent III ~ John 1:6-8, 19-28
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
It's dark these days. It's dark when I wake up about 6:00 in the morning, and it is dark on those rare days I get home at 6:00 in the evening. Some days it is even dark all day long. Those are the days with the heavy leaden, gray skies. No rain, no snow...just dark gray days. Advent takes place in a time that is cold and dark.
Not only the meteorological environment is dark, so is the human one, too. The evening news is full of stories about the natural disasters afflicting humanity. The news, too, is full of stories of human disasters political disasters and diplomatic disasters, both potential and actual. Israel, Palestine, Iraq, the Sudan Afghanistan, Mumbai. The horizon dark gray with possibilities for terrorism. People of the world living in cold terror, their futures dark with the potential for destruction.
The City of New York is sheltering on cold nights more than ten thousand homeless souls. Bethlehem and Allentown and Easton are sheltering more than ever. Food kitchens are feeding more people than ever and more families than ever. Volunteer resources seem to be drying up though. Some neighborhoods are tired of having all those depressing people hanging around all the time. It seems to be going on forever and ever.
Many, too many people live in the cold and the dark. The hearts of others are being turned cold and dark because they are tired and the need never seems to diminish, only increase. It’s Advent.
In this litany, let me mention one more condition of our time, which is that so many of us seem to be in a perpetual "long dark night of the soul." People who are questioning the meaning, value, purpose of their lives. Nothing ahead but more of the same. Futures dark because of past expectations unfulfilled. We live in biblical times.
The fear of the dark begins in early childhood. The child who is afraid of the dark used to be you and me. Afraid of the creak in the floor, afraid of the shadow on the wall, afraid of the nameless faceless one who could come through the window, afraid of the shapeless thing that might be looming in the closet.
My son Tyler as a very little boy went to bed with a volleyball. For months. He said it kept the elephants away. And you know, he was right. Not one elephant came by in the night the whole time he slept with that volleyball.
We grow up. We learn not to be afraid of the dark. We learn that fear is seen as a sign of weakness, so we don’t speak out loud of our fears…even to ourselves. Of course, it is an untruth to say that we have no fears.
There is in most of us some darkness that casts a chill, a shadow onto our adult heart. The telephone ringing at 2 a.m. Fear of the day that the body being lowered into the ground belongs to the one we can’t live without.
We fear being old without the strength or the will to protest being left alone all day in front of a flickering television. We fear being at the mercy of medical machines.
We are afraid of loss, of helplessness, of old age, of abandonment, of adult kinds of dark. Advent begins in the dark.
I once knew a woman who was beautiful, witty, intelligent, with a devoted husband, two fine children and a lovely home, who was so paralyzed by fear that she could not get out of bed in the morning.
I once new a man at the top of his profession – doors were opened for him, drinks poured for him, Wall Street bowed to him, women admired him, men feared him. Yet his life was so stunted that he could count on no one but himself as he was faced with the issues of life and health that come to us all.
In his address accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer said, “No technological achievement can mitigate the disappointments of modern man… his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution and terror.”
Meg Greenfield once wrote in Newsweek magazine, “…The desire to follow a charismatic leader, the blindness to evidence that our heroes may be weak…the fantasy of escape into another place… the contained yet real promptings to violence that we have all felt. These are not the vices of some cult. They are the dark impulses that lurk in every psyche…”
Advent takes place in the dark – darkness without and darkness within; the fear of darkness and the darkness of fear.
It was into a real world that John came testifying to light that he saw coming into this dark world. Jesus. It was into the fullness of human life and experience that God came.
And it is only in the reality that is human experience, our experience that we can hear, appreciate, accept, and respond to this incredible act of God that we prepare to celebrate in the Advent season.
If we confine Jesus to the warm glow of a stable birth surrounded by family, shepherds, wise men, lowing cattle; then we will never know, truly, what this birth means to the world, and can mean to you and me. It is in the shadows and darkness of human experience that God would make his presence known to us.
One of the collects following the Prayers of the People says of God, "Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask..." God knows. AND it is through the Incarnation...the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that we know that God knows. God knows what it’s really like, knows what we really are going through in our lives, knows how much we need to know his presence with us, knows how much we need the assurance of His love and His future.
One of the Eucharistic prayers points out this common bond we have with all humanity when the priest says, “joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to you in hope..."
It is a paradox that the darkness of human experience is penetrated by the tiniest of lights. Night hovers over Advent, as it hovers over human experience. The coming of the light reveals just how dark the night can be, and it also reveals how powerful that light is. It has prevailed against all the powers of darkness. The light continues to shine, and no darkness – no darkness of any kind – shall overcome it.
It's dark these days. It's dark when I wake up about 6:00 in the morning, and it is dark on those rare days I get home at 6:00 in the evening. Some days it is even dark all day long. Those are the days with the heavy leaden, gray skies. No rain, no snow...just dark gray days. Advent takes place in a time that is cold and dark.
Not only the meteorological environment is dark, so is the human one, too. The evening news is full of stories about the natural disasters afflicting humanity. The news, too, is full of stories of human disasters political disasters and diplomatic disasters, both potential and actual. Israel, Palestine, Iraq, the Sudan Afghanistan, Mumbai. The horizon dark gray with possibilities for terrorism. People of the world living in cold terror, their futures dark with the potential for destruction.
The City of New York is sheltering on cold nights more than ten thousand homeless souls. Bethlehem and Allentown and Easton are sheltering more than ever. Food kitchens are feeding more people than ever and more families than ever. Volunteer resources seem to be drying up though. Some neighborhoods are tired of having all those depressing people hanging around all the time. It seems to be going on forever and ever.
Many, too many people live in the cold and the dark. The hearts of others are being turned cold and dark because they are tired and the need never seems to diminish, only increase. It’s Advent.
In this litany, let me mention one more condition of our time, which is that so many of us seem to be in a perpetual "long dark night of the soul." People who are questioning the meaning, value, purpose of their lives. Nothing ahead but more of the same. Futures dark because of past expectations unfulfilled. We live in biblical times.
The fear of the dark begins in early childhood. The child who is afraid of the dark used to be you and me. Afraid of the creak in the floor, afraid of the shadow on the wall, afraid of the nameless faceless one who could come through the window, afraid of the shapeless thing that might be looming in the closet.
My son Tyler as a very little boy went to bed with a volleyball. For months. He said it kept the elephants away. And you know, he was right. Not one elephant came by in the night the whole time he slept with that volleyball.
We grow up. We learn not to be afraid of the dark. We learn that fear is seen as a sign of weakness, so we don’t speak out loud of our fears…even to ourselves. Of course, it is an untruth to say that we have no fears.
There is in most of us some darkness that casts a chill, a shadow onto our adult heart. The telephone ringing at 2 a.m. Fear of the day that the body being lowered into the ground belongs to the one we can’t live without.
We fear being old without the strength or the will to protest being left alone all day in front of a flickering television. We fear being at the mercy of medical machines.
We are afraid of loss, of helplessness, of old age, of abandonment, of adult kinds of dark. Advent begins in the dark.
I once knew a woman who was beautiful, witty, intelligent, with a devoted husband, two fine children and a lovely home, who was so paralyzed by fear that she could not get out of bed in the morning.
I once new a man at the top of his profession – doors were opened for him, drinks poured for him, Wall Street bowed to him, women admired him, men feared him. Yet his life was so stunted that he could count on no one but himself as he was faced with the issues of life and health that come to us all.
In his address accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, Isaac Bashevis Singer said, “No technological achievement can mitigate the disappointments of modern man… his loneliness, his feeling of inferiority, and his fear of war, revolution and terror.”
Meg Greenfield once wrote in Newsweek magazine, “…The desire to follow a charismatic leader, the blindness to evidence that our heroes may be weak…the fantasy of escape into another place… the contained yet real promptings to violence that we have all felt. These are not the vices of some cult. They are the dark impulses that lurk in every psyche…”
Advent takes place in the dark – darkness without and darkness within; the fear of darkness and the darkness of fear.
It was into a real world that John came testifying to light that he saw coming into this dark world. Jesus. It was into the fullness of human life and experience that God came.
And it is only in the reality that is human experience, our experience that we can hear, appreciate, accept, and respond to this incredible act of God that we prepare to celebrate in the Advent season.
If we confine Jesus to the warm glow of a stable birth surrounded by family, shepherds, wise men, lowing cattle; then we will never know, truly, what this birth means to the world, and can mean to you and me. It is in the shadows and darkness of human experience that God would make his presence known to us.
One of the collects following the Prayers of the People says of God, "Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask..." God knows. AND it is through the Incarnation...the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that we know that God knows. God knows what it’s really like, knows what we really are going through in our lives, knows how much we need to know his presence with us, knows how much we need the assurance of His love and His future.
One of the Eucharistic prayers points out this common bond we have with all humanity when the priest says, “joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to you in hope..."
It is a paradox that the darkness of human experience is penetrated by the tiniest of lights. Night hovers over Advent, as it hovers over human experience. The coming of the light reveals just how dark the night can be, and it also reveals how powerful that light is. It has prevailed against all the powers of darkness. The light continues to shine, and no darkness – no darkness of any kind – shall overcome it.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Advent II -- Isaiah 40, Mark 1
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Bethlehem Pennsylvania
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
My father loves a parade. In fact, the love of parades seems to resonate through my entire family. A family tradition of late is to attend the Memorial Day parade in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where my father lives. Careful preparations are made to attend this parade. The necessary comforts of watching a parade are carefully placed into our vehicles, food, a soft chair, cool beverages. We then navigate the small town of Gettysburg working around a carefully prepared parade route which my Father has investigated with care, driving long ways round carefully carved off streets in order for the parade route to be clear and those in the parade ease of movement. We park our cars and with great excitement wait for the parade to begin to journey over hills, and plains, around the town circle and unimpeded down the cleared off parade route in front of the many gathered to receive them!
My father loves a parade, and the truth is I think most of us do. We in Bethlehem love a parade. I know more than my share this year that planned carefully to brave the confusion and congestion of New York City to attend the Thanksgiving Day parade. Now that’s some planning! Talk about careful planning to make a path straight in that city, to clear things out in such a way that those parading can parade!
Walter Bruggeman, Old Testament scholar, suggests that in ancient times, parade routes were established to create an ease of passage and opportunity for excited greeting of kings and great warriors. Paths would literally be created in the roughest of places! Hillsides would need to be lowered, crooked paths would need to be straightened out, and rough places on the road would need to be smoothed out, so that the easiest and straightest path could be created for the passage of these important figures!
Such is the imagery the prophet Isaiah uses to offer a word of hope to the people of God in the 5th century living under the occupation of the Babylonian Empire.
Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! Make the paths straight, lower the hills and smooth out the rough places! In essence, let’s have a parade! People get ready for Yahweh has not forgotten you, hope is to be expected.
Living in a time of lost hope and despair, families of Israel have been split apart, many loved ones separated as craftsman and skilled workers are exported to places in the Babylonian empire where their skills could be put to good use. Those who remained home living under the direction and rule of an occupying government would fine a loss of freedoms, and little regard for their religious customs. The people of Israel wait having lost their hope and questioning deep in their being if in their losing their way, they also had led to their losing their God?
Into this reality Isaiah speaks a word, with a preamble that reflects literally the pastoral heart and of God with words of Comfort and promises of Care, Isaiah says, "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! Prepare for the arrival of God’s Hope anew."
Certainly we resonate with this theme of Advent, this theme of preparing for and expectantly waiting for a word of hope to crash in particularly when challenging times seem to cry out for it.
A few centuries from the time Isaiah’s words of expectant hope are delivered, John the Baptist is heard delivering a word again to a people living in desperate times under an occupying force. John, son of Zechariah, a priest of the temple, takes on the family business as it were, and proclaims from the desert Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! One has to wander really how Zechariah may have felt – how he might have envisioned John’s life. If he ever could have imagined John’s ministry would have become what it did, an itinerant preacher with strange mannerisms zealously calling a community of believers into a dramatic relationship with a hopeful God by shedding themselves of hills and valleys, the twists and turns that would interrupt their relationship with their God. One wonders what his Father thought, yet it is John who announces a new word of hope and invites people to take their place on the parade route. He offers a wakeup call for the arrogant, a call for the despairing, and hope for all who would listen.
Well, isn’t this the God you and I rely upon! The God we look to and hope for, the God who bears present in life’s circumstances where redemption can happen at all times and in all circumstances.
The preamble of Isaiah’s message of hope is found is the words of Comfort! Comfort, Comfort Ye my people! Those beautiful words that will come to life this very night in this very place as Handel’s Messiah is offered to us. The beautiful message of hope in the midst of despair, redemption in all things.
Handel himself knew of this hope even as what has now become a valued and assumed treasure of art, it was not always. The beauty of this work came in the midst of one of the darker hours of Handel’s life. What was once a glorified professional life, full of accolades, success, and reasonable financial security, had been challenged by the time Handel was composing this piece of music. Once a prolific composer of opera, the companies Handel was associated with had closed, he himself has suffered a stroke, and in the late 1730’s and early 1740’s he found himself depressed and in debt. Handel found himself holding his breath, wondering if such despair could be transcended, transformed, redeemed, and probably without knowing what was happening to him, the Duke of Devonshire consented to sponsor a new style of music for Handel, and Charles Jennen had written the basis for the story of salvation that Handel would take 24 days held up in Jennen’s cottage to produce what would become what today we hold as the moving musical portrayal of God’s salvation history.
This second Sunday of Advent, we welcome an invitation to prepare the way of the Lord, in our lives, in our community and in the world. We light a second candle this day, a candle of hope, a hope that is powerful enough to smooth out the roughest of life’s circumstances. We set about the business of making room at the table, in our hearts, in our institutions, in our workplaces, and in our families for what God may do with those things that hold us down or hold us back from living into the full joy of knowing God’s presence in our lives. We hope against hope, for God fullness in our lives.
Frederick Beuchner speaks of this hope in this way, he says, “hope is ultimately hope in Christ”. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is- that is the hope that despite the fact that sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquers. The hope that in him and through him all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that in some time unforeseeable and in some way he will return with healing in his wings!
Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! Let’s have a parade!
Bethlehem Pennsylvania
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
My father loves a parade. In fact, the love of parades seems to resonate through my entire family. A family tradition of late is to attend the Memorial Day parade in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where my father lives. Careful preparations are made to attend this parade. The necessary comforts of watching a parade are carefully placed into our vehicles, food, a soft chair, cool beverages. We then navigate the small town of Gettysburg working around a carefully prepared parade route which my Father has investigated with care, driving long ways round carefully carved off streets in order for the parade route to be clear and those in the parade ease of movement. We park our cars and with great excitement wait for the parade to begin to journey over hills, and plains, around the town circle and unimpeded down the cleared off parade route in front of the many gathered to receive them!
My father loves a parade, and the truth is I think most of us do. We in Bethlehem love a parade. I know more than my share this year that planned carefully to brave the confusion and congestion of New York City to attend the Thanksgiving Day parade. Now that’s some planning! Talk about careful planning to make a path straight in that city, to clear things out in such a way that those parading can parade!
Walter Bruggeman, Old Testament scholar, suggests that in ancient times, parade routes were established to create an ease of passage and opportunity for excited greeting of kings and great warriors. Paths would literally be created in the roughest of places! Hillsides would need to be lowered, crooked paths would need to be straightened out, and rough places on the road would need to be smoothed out, so that the easiest and straightest path could be created for the passage of these important figures!
Such is the imagery the prophet Isaiah uses to offer a word of hope to the people of God in the 5th century living under the occupation of the Babylonian Empire.
Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! Make the paths straight, lower the hills and smooth out the rough places! In essence, let’s have a parade! People get ready for Yahweh has not forgotten you, hope is to be expected.
Living in a time of lost hope and despair, families of Israel have been split apart, many loved ones separated as craftsman and skilled workers are exported to places in the Babylonian empire where their skills could be put to good use. Those who remained home living under the direction and rule of an occupying government would fine a loss of freedoms, and little regard for their religious customs. The people of Israel wait having lost their hope and questioning deep in their being if in their losing their way, they also had led to their losing their God?
Into this reality Isaiah speaks a word, with a preamble that reflects literally the pastoral heart and of God with words of Comfort and promises of Care, Isaiah says, "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! Prepare for the arrival of God’s Hope anew."
Certainly we resonate with this theme of Advent, this theme of preparing for and expectantly waiting for a word of hope to crash in particularly when challenging times seem to cry out for it.
A few centuries from the time Isaiah’s words of expectant hope are delivered, John the Baptist is heard delivering a word again to a people living in desperate times under an occupying force. John, son of Zechariah, a priest of the temple, takes on the family business as it were, and proclaims from the desert Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! One has to wander really how Zechariah may have felt – how he might have envisioned John’s life. If he ever could have imagined John’s ministry would have become what it did, an itinerant preacher with strange mannerisms zealously calling a community of believers into a dramatic relationship with a hopeful God by shedding themselves of hills and valleys, the twists and turns that would interrupt their relationship with their God. One wonders what his Father thought, yet it is John who announces a new word of hope and invites people to take their place on the parade route. He offers a wakeup call for the arrogant, a call for the despairing, and hope for all who would listen.
Well, isn’t this the God you and I rely upon! The God we look to and hope for, the God who bears present in life’s circumstances where redemption can happen at all times and in all circumstances.
The preamble of Isaiah’s message of hope is found is the words of Comfort! Comfort, Comfort Ye my people! Those beautiful words that will come to life this very night in this very place as Handel’s Messiah is offered to us. The beautiful message of hope in the midst of despair, redemption in all things.
Handel himself knew of this hope even as what has now become a valued and assumed treasure of art, it was not always. The beauty of this work came in the midst of one of the darker hours of Handel’s life. What was once a glorified professional life, full of accolades, success, and reasonable financial security, had been challenged by the time Handel was composing this piece of music. Once a prolific composer of opera, the companies Handel was associated with had closed, he himself has suffered a stroke, and in the late 1730’s and early 1740’s he found himself depressed and in debt. Handel found himself holding his breath, wondering if such despair could be transcended, transformed, redeemed, and probably without knowing what was happening to him, the Duke of Devonshire consented to sponsor a new style of music for Handel, and Charles Jennen had written the basis for the story of salvation that Handel would take 24 days held up in Jennen’s cottage to produce what would become what today we hold as the moving musical portrayal of God’s salvation history.
This second Sunday of Advent, we welcome an invitation to prepare the way of the Lord, in our lives, in our community and in the world. We light a second candle this day, a candle of hope, a hope that is powerful enough to smooth out the roughest of life’s circumstances. We set about the business of making room at the table, in our hearts, in our institutions, in our workplaces, and in our families for what God may do with those things that hold us down or hold us back from living into the full joy of knowing God’s presence in our lives. We hope against hope, for God fullness in our lives.
Frederick Beuchner speaks of this hope in this way, he says, “hope is ultimately hope in Christ”. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is- that is the hope that despite the fact that sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquers. The hope that in him and through him all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that in some time unforeseeable and in some way he will return with healing in his wings!
Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord! Let’s have a parade!
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Advent I November 30, 2008
The Very Rev. Anthony Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37
Harry Pritchett, Former Dean of St. John the Divine in New York City, tells a story of his boyhood, growing up in Alabama, discusses a promised dinner guest. Having an ample fascination with early motion picture shows, he tells of going to the local theatre to pay his 5 cents to watch a famous movie actress, filled with glamour and beauty. It seems as if somehow, someway, his Father had come into the company of this famous actress and she was coming through town! It seemed as if she would be coming to dinner. His Father told his family to be on best behavior, she would be coming this very night. Excited and filled with expectation Harry, began to prepare for the arrival of this larger than life figure he had only encountered on the big screen, and he began to imagine what it would be like to meet her.
The day grew late and Harry grew concerned as there was no sign of the promised guest. His mother sent him to bed, promising that if she actually showed she would wake him. He did everything he could to keep himself awake, listening intently for a car, a door to open, a magical voice embedded in his ears he knew so well from the big screen to bellow from the bottom of the stairs. Stay awake, I must stay awake, he thought to himself.
Today once again the church cycle of calendar has brought us to the season of Advent. Advent from the Latin adventus means .The coming of or the arrival of something promised. You know the advent themes that run through our church and spiritual lives! The Scriptures, the music, the sermons, the prayers, the decorations, all of our “wares” will tell the tale of Advent themes, Get ready; anticipate the arrival of something promised! We’re invited in our lives to embrace a message to prepare with excitement for the advent of something incredible. We’re asked to be like a young boy waiting to meet a promised legend. Like that young boy we may find ourselves with a challenge in our waiting. We must be alert, stay awake, so that we might not miss such an opportunity!
I am guessing you are probably like me this time of year. We’ve rummaged through our attics, or our basements, or our crawl spaces, wherever it is we keep our “Advent stuff”. We are busy clearing out the boxes, dragging out our wares, our ritualistic symbols that lest we forget are there to remind and invite us into the Advent of God’s action in the world and in our lives! We’ve done it here at the Cathedral, looking deeply through our inadequate storage spaces and look what we have found! We’ve put up the Crèche, and we’ll fill it week by week with the figurines that will help us be reminded of what God promises in the birth of hope, justice, and love and Mercy enfleshed in the world. We’ve put our candles in the windows and around our wreathe and each week symbolically with light the way put lights light the way, so that we can easily see and prepare for the coming of that which is promised!
We’ve put on our bright colors of blue with cosmic tone and design that most certainly accomplishes its goal, to grab our attention! These wares Beckon us to be awake, alert, and be mindful that our awareness of God’s presence is not captured only in our quaint remembrances of a beautiful babe in arms warmed in straw suckling at his mother’s bosom, or by a warm and gentle light flowing from a neatly arranged greened wreathe that is worthy of the front cover of any greeting card, But that Advent is the Promise of that which is to come in fullness and with great fanfare, annunciation, and even quaking! It is no less than God’s Kingdom, God’s full on reign that we prepare and wait for, and the fullness of it lived on earth! The promise of God’s tearing down structures and Kingdoms designed to oppress and tear down God’s people and the building up and empowerment of the powerless! This Advent theme is one that clearly Jesus bangs home with apocalyptic flare in his Gospel today, and the Prophet Isaiah proclaims in our Old Testament reading today.
The Advent theme of today is more a wake up call, a stirring and quaking of the might of God’s character advocating intensely for the poor, the helpless, the needy and advocating against the greedy, the power abusers, and the careless. Today’s theme is less captured perhaps in a beautiful quaint remembrance of a boy awaiting a promised fantasy, or a Crèche awaiting a suckling babe, or a Christmas card shining light from a picture perfect wreathe. Today’s theme is more like a Wake up Call that is like discovering for the first time after you’ve settled in a new home feeling secure and safe, comfortable that the fire whistle which screams for action of those in dire need jolts you out of bed. Today’s theme screams for you attention like the God awful sound that comes from a warning siren designed to let those within distance of nuclear power plants that they must pay attention to the delicate and powerful forces that exist within their reaches.
The Advent theme today reminds us that when God’s reign comes in full force it is like a power we cannot imagine! An African American spiritual speaks to this time expected to come among us, “My Lord what a morning! My Lord what a morning! My Lord what morning, when the stars begin to fall!” “You’ll hear the trumpet sound, to wake the nations underground, Lookin to my God’s right hand, when the stars begin to fall!”
The theme of this hymn captures the theme of the first Sunday of advent. Jesus promises the stars will fall, the moon be darkened, and the Son of Man will come with great power and glory. The prophet promises the “heavens be torn apart in a way that would cause the mountains to quake”. In this fashion, the way is made for God’s reign on earth!
I.
This God is not docile and not quaint, this God is bold, and on this day we are asked to stay awake to his dreams coming in fullness and our actions in response to this coming should be no less robust.
Advent is hoping for and preparing for the fullness of the vision Jesus embodied and proclaimed to pronounce good news to the poor, glad tidings, sight the blind, healing for the lame. This Vision is what we hope for in its fullness and it is a robust proclamation for “kingdoms” and ways of being that must fall so that the just may rise.
We begin the advent journey together that will surely land us as witnesses to god’s dream enfleshed in the person of Jesus. It will be the vision lived in that flesh that we are to be alert to, awake to, boldly respond to.
Henri Nouen challenges us to live into this vision in the simplest but boldest of ways:
“Everytime we forgive our neighbor, everytime we make a child smile, everytime we show compassion to a suffering person, everytime we arrange a bouquet of flowers, offer care to a tame or wild animal, prevent pollution, create beauty in our homes and gardens, and work for justice and peace among people’s and nations- we are making the vision come true.
By the way, I believe she showed up!
The Very Rev. Anthony Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Isaiah 64:1-9; Mark 13:24-37
Harry Pritchett, Former Dean of St. John the Divine in New York City, tells a story of his boyhood, growing up in Alabama, discusses a promised dinner guest. Having an ample fascination with early motion picture shows, he tells of going to the local theatre to pay his 5 cents to watch a famous movie actress, filled with glamour and beauty. It seems as if somehow, someway, his Father had come into the company of this famous actress and she was coming through town! It seemed as if she would be coming to dinner. His Father told his family to be on best behavior, she would be coming this very night. Excited and filled with expectation Harry, began to prepare for the arrival of this larger than life figure he had only encountered on the big screen, and he began to imagine what it would be like to meet her.
The day grew late and Harry grew concerned as there was no sign of the promised guest. His mother sent him to bed, promising that if she actually showed she would wake him. He did everything he could to keep himself awake, listening intently for a car, a door to open, a magical voice embedded in his ears he knew so well from the big screen to bellow from the bottom of the stairs. Stay awake, I must stay awake, he thought to himself.
Today once again the church cycle of calendar has brought us to the season of Advent. Advent from the Latin adventus means .The coming of or the arrival of something promised. You know the advent themes that run through our church and spiritual lives! The Scriptures, the music, the sermons, the prayers, the decorations, all of our “wares” will tell the tale of Advent themes, Get ready; anticipate the arrival of something promised! We’re invited in our lives to embrace a message to prepare with excitement for the advent of something incredible. We’re asked to be like a young boy waiting to meet a promised legend. Like that young boy we may find ourselves with a challenge in our waiting. We must be alert, stay awake, so that we might not miss such an opportunity!
I am guessing you are probably like me this time of year. We’ve rummaged through our attics, or our basements, or our crawl spaces, wherever it is we keep our “Advent stuff”. We are busy clearing out the boxes, dragging out our wares, our ritualistic symbols that lest we forget are there to remind and invite us into the Advent of God’s action in the world and in our lives! We’ve done it here at the Cathedral, looking deeply through our inadequate storage spaces and look what we have found! We’ve put up the Crèche, and we’ll fill it week by week with the figurines that will help us be reminded of what God promises in the birth of hope, justice, and love and Mercy enfleshed in the world. We’ve put our candles in the windows and around our wreathe and each week symbolically with light the way put lights light the way, so that we can easily see and prepare for the coming of that which is promised!
We’ve put on our bright colors of blue with cosmic tone and design that most certainly accomplishes its goal, to grab our attention! These wares Beckon us to be awake, alert, and be mindful that our awareness of God’s presence is not captured only in our quaint remembrances of a beautiful babe in arms warmed in straw suckling at his mother’s bosom, or by a warm and gentle light flowing from a neatly arranged greened wreathe that is worthy of the front cover of any greeting card, But that Advent is the Promise of that which is to come in fullness and with great fanfare, annunciation, and even quaking! It is no less than God’s Kingdom, God’s full on reign that we prepare and wait for, and the fullness of it lived on earth! The promise of God’s tearing down structures and Kingdoms designed to oppress and tear down God’s people and the building up and empowerment of the powerless! This Advent theme is one that clearly Jesus bangs home with apocalyptic flare in his Gospel today, and the Prophet Isaiah proclaims in our Old Testament reading today.
The Advent theme of today is more a wake up call, a stirring and quaking of the might of God’s character advocating intensely for the poor, the helpless, the needy and advocating against the greedy, the power abusers, and the careless. Today’s theme is less captured perhaps in a beautiful quaint remembrance of a boy awaiting a promised fantasy, or a Crèche awaiting a suckling babe, or a Christmas card shining light from a picture perfect wreathe. Today’s theme is more like a Wake up Call that is like discovering for the first time after you’ve settled in a new home feeling secure and safe, comfortable that the fire whistle which screams for action of those in dire need jolts you out of bed. Today’s theme screams for you attention like the God awful sound that comes from a warning siren designed to let those within distance of nuclear power plants that they must pay attention to the delicate and powerful forces that exist within their reaches.
The Advent theme today reminds us that when God’s reign comes in full force it is like a power we cannot imagine! An African American spiritual speaks to this time expected to come among us, “My Lord what a morning! My Lord what a morning! My Lord what morning, when the stars begin to fall!” “You’ll hear the trumpet sound, to wake the nations underground, Lookin to my God’s right hand, when the stars begin to fall!”
The theme of this hymn captures the theme of the first Sunday of advent. Jesus promises the stars will fall, the moon be darkened, and the Son of Man will come with great power and glory. The prophet promises the “heavens be torn apart in a way that would cause the mountains to quake”. In this fashion, the way is made for God’s reign on earth!
I.
This God is not docile and not quaint, this God is bold, and on this day we are asked to stay awake to his dreams coming in fullness and our actions in response to this coming should be no less robust.
Advent is hoping for and preparing for the fullness of the vision Jesus embodied and proclaimed to pronounce good news to the poor, glad tidings, sight the blind, healing for the lame. This Vision is what we hope for in its fullness and it is a robust proclamation for “kingdoms” and ways of being that must fall so that the just may rise.
We begin the advent journey together that will surely land us as witnesses to god’s dream enfleshed in the person of Jesus. It will be the vision lived in that flesh that we are to be alert to, awake to, boldly respond to.
Henri Nouen challenges us to live into this vision in the simplest but boldest of ways:
“Everytime we forgive our neighbor, everytime we make a child smile, everytime we show compassion to a suffering person, everytime we arrange a bouquet of flowers, offer care to a tame or wild animal, prevent pollution, create beauty in our homes and gardens, and work for justice and peace among people’s and nations- we are making the vision come true.
By the way, I believe she showed up!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)