The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Some months ago I referenced a Church sign in a sermon that read, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Today we begin our Lenten journey. This ritual season of 40 days and 40 nights is often characterized by self-examination, prayer, repentance, and discipline. I submit to you that our Lenten journey in essence is an exploration of what it means to be truly ourselves. I do not suggest this exploration as an exercise of narcissism as our culture might encourage, but rather to explore your lives through a lens of belief that we are created by a God whose power is love. So powerful is this love that it dares to take the very dust of the ground and call us into being so that we might be delighted in, find delight, create, and experience the depth of love, in essence, come to know ourselves as the once who created us knows us, discover who we are!
The exploration of who we truly are must lead us into the knowledge and truth that this gift of life in love is not just for us as individuals but belongs to everyone. All of us are created out of love and dust. We are inextricably bound together and made to be in relationship with the one who loved us into being and with one another. These relationships call us to live with authenticity, faithfulness, and integrity!
Our experience has taught us, however, that there are times and moments when we are not aligned with life in such a way. Just as remembering that we are dust reminds us of God’s creative moment and our interconnection with our brothers and sisters of dust, we also are reminded that on our own our struggle to live that life is often colored with limitation. “And to Dust you shall return.” Our lives are finite, the dust of which we are made does sometimes grow tired and weary, and sometimes it is filled with dis-ease. With an eye only to the dust and not on the creative love that called it into being, we sometimes forget our interconnection and interdependence. We sometimes are fooled into placing our value in a narcissistic adventure of who we are that leads us to selfishness, hatred, disregard and offense. We know this about the dust, we have experienced it, and we are it. With an eye leaning back toward the love that calls the dust into being we know deep in our hearts that we cannot hate, disregard, offend, do harm to another being of the ash without in essence hating, disregarding, offending, and doing harm to ourselves. We know this in our minds and in our hearts, and we know too often it is a script we find ourselves participating in; it is a script of sin.
Today, should you choose, you will wear the mark of dust on your forehead and you will be reminded of the depth of opportunity and challenge that comes with our call into being. We are given the opportunity to embrace the depth of what it is to live a life that aligns itself with the intentions of what is was created for. The journey to come into the fullness of who we truly are is the opportunity to discover through experience the depth of what it is to love. This exploration will place before the God who created us and our brothers and sisters created of the very same love and dust our failures, disappointments, and disillusionments. Discovering and naming the limitations that impede our faithfulness and integrity to our relationships, we rend our hearts wide open. We invite the creative love to fill the gap and to move us to make right what needs to be made right, and restore us to union with God and our neighbors. In essence, coming into our own, discovering who we are. Blessed journey.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Only Jesus
February 22,2009
Scripture Lesson: Mark 9:2-9
Text: Matthew 9:8
When Jesus led three friends to a place on “on a high mountain,” “he was transfigured before them” until they heard a voice instructing them to “Listen” to their teacher. “Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.” It can sound like a big let-down: after a moment of vision, after a great spiritual experience, there is only Jesus, the traveling preacher, teacher, healer from Nazareth. After all is said and done, for us also, there is only Jesus.
Dean Pompa asked me to talk about how world and local mission work has impacted me. Mission: responding to a call, to an invitation to move beyond your usual place, comfort zone, to serve and witness to Christ. Missions is the outcome of the Transfiguration story, the real importance of which is not so much on what happened to, or in Jesus, but in the response to it. One way is illustrated in the first response of those disciples: because “they were terrified,” they wanted to memorialize it; build a worship center; protect what they had built up; and so on. The second way is illustrated in Julia Ward Howe’s famous hymn: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me?” Are you allowing that glory to transfigure you, and your life, and this church, and the corporate life of this church? Are you allowing it to free you from your fears? Missions, involvement in and commitment to missions, is the key. Because it is through mission that you will either find that transfiguration experience, or that you can appropriately respond to it.
Let me tell you a mission story. In the mid 90’s I organized a group of people from several churches in the suburbs just north of Chicago for a mission trip to Haiti both to be part of international security for a national election at a time when elections there were marked by violence and murder, and to work at a children’s hospital. Haiti is one of the poorest places in the world. You can see that as soon as you fly over it: the country has been denuded of trees for fuel, so the topsoil has all washed into the ocean inlets where it becomes a mucky mix with sewage and garbage. Other than the fortified complexes where the rich and powerful hide, there is almost no sanitation, no utilities, no medical care. During the day you see children searching through the huge piles of garbage and human waste in the main intersections that gets doused with gasoline and burned at night.
At the church I where I was the pastor, [there] was a man named Dan: an active churchman, but a guy who never related to the missions, not even to our men’s group service at a soup kitchen in Chicago. Somehow the Lord put it upon my heart to invite him to Haiti. One day when I was getting ready to go to the hardware store to get some supplies, Dan showed up at my office, and I asked him to go along. It is kind of a guy thing, hardware stores. There surrounded by the tools, I asked him to join us on the mission to Haiti, and he astonished me by saying yes. He just needed to hear a call, personally, in the right context at the right time. Later I was astonished by the transformation that occurred in Dan as during that mission experience. It might have happened the time that we went up to a small mountain village. I hiked with others, but Dan isn’t the hiking sort, and I have a picture of this overweight American on a small donkey traveling up a mountain path surrounded by smiling children. It might have happened the night before the election when I convinced him to ignore the Marines warnings and walk around Pour-au-Prince [sic], during which we saw hundreds of children sitting around the only gas station is the area doing homework because there are no lights in homes. Maybe it was when we delivered our suitcases full of medications to the joyful nun who runs the most primitive clinic I have ever seen in the poorest slum. Maybe it happened when we were on the roof of the children’s hospital pounding nails. I just know that the experience transformed him. And in almost every Christmas letter he mentions his most recent mission trip to Haiti.
For others mission is the way to respond to having glimpsed the glory. At New Bethany Ministries missionaries from this congregation and a hundred others do birthday parties for our resident homeless children, help homeless moms with school work or driving lessons, become pen pals with our mentally disabled residents, do filing in our financial case management program for the mentally disabled, help me raise the money to pay for our good work, or cook and serve meals to the hungry. For example, three days a month mission teams from this church cook and serve meals, which you could occasionally join for a hands-on mission experience. And thousands of people like you participate by sacrificially donating so support our local mission work. Occasionally I bring a television crew into New Bethany for action shots and interviews for my weekly television show. Recently, I walked up with the camera man and asked the missionaries from St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church why they seemed so happy. One woman looked right into the camera and said, “we are always happy when we are here.” Another looked up from the salad preparation counter and said, “it’s because when we are here we are doing exactly what Jesus wants us to do.”
Don’t you want to be happy? Then allow the frequency and degree of intensity of times when you are doing exactly what Jesus wants you to do to increase. Those three disciples not only had a vision, they also heard a voice explaining the meaning: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” That is when “they looked around, [and] … saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.”
I am quite aware of the fact that many criticize people of a liberal theological bent of being more focused on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth which so center on being a good neighbor, on serving and giving for others, than on the significance of salvation through Christ Jesus Our Lord. This gospel lesson, however, clearly reveals that you can’t have one without the other: Christ who saves us, is Jesus to whom we are to listen, and whose way of being in the world we are to follow.
Many of you have had a mountain top moment in which you glimpsed the dazzling beauty of the transfigured Christ, an experience that convicted you of the truth of the doctrine of the Incarnation: perhaps during a sermon, or a sacramental occasion, or while pray-fully pondering scripture. If not, participating in missions can be your path toward that experience. But as a mountain hiker, who always feels compelled to get to the top of the highest mountain within reach, I can tell you that you cannot stay long at the peak: you have to come back down to where the air is thicker, the elements less serve, water is available, and … where the poor and those who serve them can be found. But that is ok with me, because every day down here in the valley there is only Jesus.
Listen to him, and through the eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in the hungry, the homeless, the poor, not because of their virtue, or behavior, but because that is what he taught. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith, you will see only Jesus in happy people who sell some of what they have to give to the poor, even during frightening economic times. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in those good Samaritans who happily work together to serve needy and poor neighbors. And, if as a congregation you listen to him, and make, above and beyond ordinary denominational requirements, missions and the participation of every member in missions through some appropriate way, your top priority, this church, like others that make that commitment will thrive in faith, in hope, in joy, in active participation, and others will see in your life together, only Jesus.
So, Brother Tony: the impact of missions in the lives of individuals like me and congregations like Nativity who respond to the call: a fuller, more meaningful, more holy, happier life of hope and faith. Plus the possibility of singing: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me!”
Missions is the route toward transfiguration. Missions is the way to respond to transfiguration, because, in the end, there is only Jesus. Listen to him.
Scripture Lesson: Mark 9:2-9
Text: Matthew 9:8
When Jesus led three friends to a place on “on a high mountain,” “he was transfigured before them” until they heard a voice instructing them to “Listen” to their teacher. “Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.” It can sound like a big let-down: after a moment of vision, after a great spiritual experience, there is only Jesus, the traveling preacher, teacher, healer from Nazareth. After all is said and done, for us also, there is only Jesus.
Dean Pompa asked me to talk about how world and local mission work has impacted me. Mission: responding to a call, to an invitation to move beyond your usual place, comfort zone, to serve and witness to Christ. Missions is the outcome of the Transfiguration story, the real importance of which is not so much on what happened to, or in Jesus, but in the response to it. One way is illustrated in the first response of those disciples: because “they were terrified,” they wanted to memorialize it; build a worship center; protect what they had built up; and so on. The second way is illustrated in Julia Ward Howe’s famous hymn: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me?” Are you allowing that glory to transfigure you, and your life, and this church, and the corporate life of this church? Are you allowing it to free you from your fears? Missions, involvement in and commitment to missions, is the key. Because it is through mission that you will either find that transfiguration experience, or that you can appropriately respond to it.
Let me tell you a mission story. In the mid 90’s I organized a group of people from several churches in the suburbs just north of Chicago for a mission trip to Haiti both to be part of international security for a national election at a time when elections there were marked by violence and murder, and to work at a children’s hospital. Haiti is one of the poorest places in the world. You can see that as soon as you fly over it: the country has been denuded of trees for fuel, so the topsoil has all washed into the ocean inlets where it becomes a mucky mix with sewage and garbage. Other than the fortified complexes where the rich and powerful hide, there is almost no sanitation, no utilities, no medical care. During the day you see children searching through the huge piles of garbage and human waste in the main intersections that gets doused with gasoline and burned at night.
At the church I where I was the pastor, [there] was a man named Dan: an active churchman, but a guy who never related to the missions, not even to our men’s group service at a soup kitchen in Chicago. Somehow the Lord put it upon my heart to invite him to Haiti. One day when I was getting ready to go to the hardware store to get some supplies, Dan showed up at my office, and I asked him to go along. It is kind of a guy thing, hardware stores. There surrounded by the tools, I asked him to join us on the mission to Haiti, and he astonished me by saying yes. He just needed to hear a call, personally, in the right context at the right time. Later I was astonished by the transformation that occurred in Dan as during that mission experience. It might have happened the time that we went up to a small mountain village. I hiked with others, but Dan isn’t the hiking sort, and I have a picture of this overweight American on a small donkey traveling up a mountain path surrounded by smiling children. It might have happened the night before the election when I convinced him to ignore the Marines warnings and walk around Pour-au-Prince [sic], during which we saw hundreds of children sitting around the only gas station is the area doing homework because there are no lights in homes. Maybe it was when we delivered our suitcases full of medications to the joyful nun who runs the most primitive clinic I have ever seen in the poorest slum. Maybe it happened when we were on the roof of the children’s hospital pounding nails. I just know that the experience transformed him. And in almost every Christmas letter he mentions his most recent mission trip to Haiti.
For others mission is the way to respond to having glimpsed the glory. At New Bethany Ministries missionaries from this congregation and a hundred others do birthday parties for our resident homeless children, help homeless moms with school work or driving lessons, become pen pals with our mentally disabled residents, do filing in our financial case management program for the mentally disabled, help me raise the money to pay for our good work, or cook and serve meals to the hungry. For example, three days a month mission teams from this church cook and serve meals, which you could occasionally join for a hands-on mission experience. And thousands of people like you participate by sacrificially donating so support our local mission work. Occasionally I bring a television crew into New Bethany for action shots and interviews for my weekly television show. Recently, I walked up with the camera man and asked the missionaries from St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church why they seemed so happy. One woman looked right into the camera and said, “we are always happy when we are here.” Another looked up from the salad preparation counter and said, “it’s because when we are here we are doing exactly what Jesus wants us to do.”
Don’t you want to be happy? Then allow the frequency and degree of intensity of times when you are doing exactly what Jesus wants you to do to increase. Those three disciples not only had a vision, they also heard a voice explaining the meaning: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” That is when “they looked around, [and] … saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.”
I am quite aware of the fact that many criticize people of a liberal theological bent of being more focused on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth which so center on being a good neighbor, on serving and giving for others, than on the significance of salvation through Christ Jesus Our Lord. This gospel lesson, however, clearly reveals that you can’t have one without the other: Christ who saves us, is Jesus to whom we are to listen, and whose way of being in the world we are to follow.
Many of you have had a mountain top moment in which you glimpsed the dazzling beauty of the transfigured Christ, an experience that convicted you of the truth of the doctrine of the Incarnation: perhaps during a sermon, or a sacramental occasion, or while pray-fully pondering scripture. If not, participating in missions can be your path toward that experience. But as a mountain hiker, who always feels compelled to get to the top of the highest mountain within reach, I can tell you that you cannot stay long at the peak: you have to come back down to where the air is thicker, the elements less serve, water is available, and … where the poor and those who serve them can be found. But that is ok with me, because every day down here in the valley there is only Jesus.
Listen to him, and through the eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in the hungry, the homeless, the poor, not because of their virtue, or behavior, but because that is what he taught. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith, you will see only Jesus in happy people who sell some of what they have to give to the poor, even during frightening economic times. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in those good Samaritans who happily work together to serve needy and poor neighbors. And, if as a congregation you listen to him, and make, above and beyond ordinary denominational requirements, missions and the participation of every member in missions through some appropriate way, your top priority, this church, like others that make that commitment will thrive in faith, in hope, in joy, in active participation, and others will see in your life together, only Jesus.
So, Brother Tony: the impact of missions in the lives of individuals like me and congregations like Nativity who respond to the call: a fuller, more meaningful, more holy, happier life of hope and faith. Plus the possibility of singing: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me!”
Missions is the route toward transfiguration. Missions is the way to respond to transfiguration, because, in the end, there is only Jesus. Listen to him.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Rev. Demery Bader-Saye
Sermon ~ February 15th, 2009
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
Mark 1:40-45
The Lonely Leper
I was the second tallest girl in my sixth grade class. Annie was the first. She towered over all of the girls and all but one of the boys. As you may imagine, that grade being what it is, and kids being who they are at that age, she was sometimes the target of teasing words. She was somewhat of a leper, an untouchable, a misfit. But then most kids are at some moment in their lifetime ~ too short, too tall, too skinny, too fat ~ I was teased for my buck teeth and bony hips... “hippy,” I was branded that year. Which is why Annie and I got along OK. That, and we had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Osborne ~ a big, tall, beautiful black woman with big hips and big lips... “all the better to kiss you with,” she responded when Emily Hubbel asked her about them one day. Mrs. Osborne would circulate about the room with smiles and squeezes and little hugs and winks for all of the outcasts in the sixth grade. She was a healing hand when we needed it, which guided us through a rocky time. She never talked about it to us, but I just know she was a Christian. She had that Church Potluck veteran look to her ~ that gospel-singing, amen-saying kind of spirit. And she just radiated with the love of Christ.
It was the healing hand of Christ which reached out and touched the leper that day in Galilee. An outcast, he came to Jesus, begging, and said, “If you choose, you can make me clean,” for it was thought that people with the contagious disease were not clean. And Jesus was moved, and tenderly, he first reached out and touched the man. And then, Jesus healed him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” And, unable to contain his elation, his joy, the man showed himself to the temple priests as Jesus had commanded him, and went about the countryside telling everyone about the loving touch and healing hand of Jesus of Nazareth.
You see, the leper was healed in two ways that day ~ emotionally and physically. Because he was a leper we can be sure that no one had touched him for as long as he had the disease. Can you imagine? Not being touched, not even by accident ~ for surely people would go far out of their way to avoid even coming near a person with leprosy, which is defined as a “contagious disease marked by ulcers on the skin and bone and can lead to paralysis, gangrene and deformation.” The man had probably not been touched for years. And who knows what he looked like, or smelled like. And yet there he stood, desperate and bold, before a man he believed might bring healing to his lonely life. And the man, Jesus, reached out and touched the leper ~ before healing him ~ a touch without condition, a touch without hesitation, a touch without judgment. A touch that said, sick or not sick, you are worthy of love and acceptance.... and it is yours in the name my Father, God, the creator. Before Jesus healed the leper’s sores, Jesus touched him, and then, only then, did Jesus command his illness to be gone. The healing hand of Christ.
When in your life have you felt untouchable, unloveable, undesirable? .....
Have you ever been the outcast? ..... If, when you think about it you feel that loneliness again, or pain, or isolation, or sorrow, I invite you to imagine yourself coming before Jesus, asking to be made well and whole again, to feel his warm gaze upon you.... See the gentle smile on his lips, feel the warmth of his hand. Spend a moment in the circle of his grace... Know that sick or not sick, clean or not clean, all together or falling apart, you are worthy of emotional healing – of his love and acceptance right now today. And know that his intention, his choice, is to heal you completely ~ and if it cannot be today, then one day.... and forever.
Until that day, when every leper is healed, every blind eye given sight, every lame limb enlivened, the healing hand of Christ is at work in the world to touch the untouchables, give love to the unloveable, to recover the outcast as one who belongs. How, how can it be that his hand at work when he sits in heaven at the right hand of God and so many are lost and suffering, alone and in need of acceptance and kindness ~ where is the healing hand of Christ?
Take a moment, won’t you, and lower your eyes a bit and look at your hands... Be they older or younger, or somewhere in between, be they gently spotted with age and bent with a touch of arthritis, soft and firm, or weather beaten and dry ~ your hands, each of our hands, have the power to heal. We remember today that we, the church, are the body of Christ ~ imperfect but utterly loved and undoubtedly called to bring hope and healing to this broken world.
Who are the lepers in your own life? Who comes to you desperate and bold in your week, or hovers on the fringes of your life, quiet and afraid, in need of acceptance and kindness?
And, thinking of the broader community around us, which of society’s lepers will we (or could we if we chose to) come in contact with during the week? ~ the homeless? the poor? those with HIV or AIDS? prisoners? people with different skin color? people with different ways of thinking? people who are emotionally or mentally ill?
If we choose, others may experience the healing hand of Christ in our warm touch, in our kind smile or gracious words. Clean or unclean, sick or well, they deserve his love ~ and if his love is good enough for them, without a doubt ours is, too.
Sermon ~ February 15th, 2009
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
Mark 1:40-45
The Lonely Leper
I was the second tallest girl in my sixth grade class. Annie was the first. She towered over all of the girls and all but one of the boys. As you may imagine, that grade being what it is, and kids being who they are at that age, she was sometimes the target of teasing words. She was somewhat of a leper, an untouchable, a misfit. But then most kids are at some moment in their lifetime ~ too short, too tall, too skinny, too fat ~ I was teased for my buck teeth and bony hips... “hippy,” I was branded that year. Which is why Annie and I got along OK. That, and we had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Osborne ~ a big, tall, beautiful black woman with big hips and big lips... “all the better to kiss you with,” she responded when Emily Hubbel asked her about them one day. Mrs. Osborne would circulate about the room with smiles and squeezes and little hugs and winks for all of the outcasts in the sixth grade. She was a healing hand when we needed it, which guided us through a rocky time. She never talked about it to us, but I just know she was a Christian. She had that Church Potluck veteran look to her ~ that gospel-singing, amen-saying kind of spirit. And she just radiated with the love of Christ.
It was the healing hand of Christ which reached out and touched the leper that day in Galilee. An outcast, he came to Jesus, begging, and said, “If you choose, you can make me clean,” for it was thought that people with the contagious disease were not clean. And Jesus was moved, and tenderly, he first reached out and touched the man. And then, Jesus healed him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” And, unable to contain his elation, his joy, the man showed himself to the temple priests as Jesus had commanded him, and went about the countryside telling everyone about the loving touch and healing hand of Jesus of Nazareth.
You see, the leper was healed in two ways that day ~ emotionally and physically. Because he was a leper we can be sure that no one had touched him for as long as he had the disease. Can you imagine? Not being touched, not even by accident ~ for surely people would go far out of their way to avoid even coming near a person with leprosy, which is defined as a “contagious disease marked by ulcers on the skin and bone and can lead to paralysis, gangrene and deformation.” The man had probably not been touched for years. And who knows what he looked like, or smelled like. And yet there he stood, desperate and bold, before a man he believed might bring healing to his lonely life. And the man, Jesus, reached out and touched the leper ~ before healing him ~ a touch without condition, a touch without hesitation, a touch without judgment. A touch that said, sick or not sick, you are worthy of love and acceptance.... and it is yours in the name my Father, God, the creator. Before Jesus healed the leper’s sores, Jesus touched him, and then, only then, did Jesus command his illness to be gone. The healing hand of Christ.
When in your life have you felt untouchable, unloveable, undesirable? .....
Have you ever been the outcast? ..... If, when you think about it you feel that loneliness again, or pain, or isolation, or sorrow, I invite you to imagine yourself coming before Jesus, asking to be made well and whole again, to feel his warm gaze upon you.... See the gentle smile on his lips, feel the warmth of his hand. Spend a moment in the circle of his grace... Know that sick or not sick, clean or not clean, all together or falling apart, you are worthy of emotional healing – of his love and acceptance right now today. And know that his intention, his choice, is to heal you completely ~ and if it cannot be today, then one day.... and forever.
Until that day, when every leper is healed, every blind eye given sight, every lame limb enlivened, the healing hand of Christ is at work in the world to touch the untouchables, give love to the unloveable, to recover the outcast as one who belongs. How, how can it be that his hand at work when he sits in heaven at the right hand of God and so many are lost and suffering, alone and in need of acceptance and kindness ~ where is the healing hand of Christ?
Take a moment, won’t you, and lower your eyes a bit and look at your hands... Be they older or younger, or somewhere in between, be they gently spotted with age and bent with a touch of arthritis, soft and firm, or weather beaten and dry ~ your hands, each of our hands, have the power to heal. We remember today that we, the church, are the body of Christ ~ imperfect but utterly loved and undoubtedly called to bring hope and healing to this broken world.
Who are the lepers in your own life? Who comes to you desperate and bold in your week, or hovers on the fringes of your life, quiet and afraid, in need of acceptance and kindness?
And, thinking of the broader community around us, which of society’s lepers will we (or could we if we chose to) come in contact with during the week? ~ the homeless? the poor? those with HIV or AIDS? prisoners? people with different skin color? people with different ways of thinking? people who are emotionally or mentally ill?
If we choose, others may experience the healing hand of Christ in our warm touch, in our kind smile or gracious words. Clean or unclean, sick or well, they deserve his love ~ and if his love is good enough for them, without a doubt ours is, too.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Sermon
V Epiphany-I Mark 29-39
February 8, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
“Wait a minute, it can’t be over, Where is the Redemption!” These are the words that were lifted up behind me and into my ears from a dark movie theatre at the conclusion of a recent film Felicia and I viewed. A complex drama of struggle; personal struggle, power struggle, struggle with integrity, compassion, sexuality, concludes in such a way that leaves the audience, well disturbed, wandering how it all works out, what the truth of the matter is. Unsettling at best, the words waft from a dark theatre amply for sure vocalizing my own unspoken and unresolved sentiment: “Wait a minute, it can’t be over, where’s the Redemption?”
I believe that we, the people of God, created in God’s image, have a story that lives in us that we take to every moment of our lives! When the story in us is challenged we cry out! I believe that message living in us is a story of redemption! A story where the things in our personal lives, the things in our common life, the things in our country, our world, and yes even in the cosmos are whole, free, in union.
Our Gospel story today invites us into this story of the acting upon a message of wholeness, freedom, and union. We learn from the story that there is a miracle, a healing, and that this action is part of the deliverance of a message. What is the miracle? Simon’s mother-in law is ill, in bed with fever. Jesus goes to her at once and lifts her up, the fever leaves her. She is healed. Now, what is the miracle? A colleague at clergy bible study suggested the miracle was that Simon wanted his mother in law healed at all, (not so nice). But, she is healed, restored, and set back into motion in her life of service. The story goes on to tell us then, that all who were sick or possessed with demons gathered around the door of that house, and Jesus cured many and cast our demons of many.
Mark’s telling the story, from chapter one announces to us that in the person of Jesus, our deepest yearnings are met with God’s deepest desire! The miracle is for the first century experience, that those things which held power over people in such a way that distorted and disrupted their participation in wholeness, freedom, and in life, are removed! Simon’s mother in law is healed, and is restored, she is set right, brought back into the fullness of her life, as are those who come to Jesus, crowded at the doorway.
If we now have answered the question, whats the miracle, the more important question to be explored is what the story reveals to us in the next paragraph, Jesus got up, went off to pray (good modeling by the way), they hunted for him (also known as they disturbed his prayertime), and he responded, now we must go on to proclaim the message to the next town! So, we move from miracle to message! Whats the message!
The message I submit to you is found somewhere in the articulation of the young woman’s cry at the end of a challenging life story in that movie theatre! You remember, Where’s the redemption! The message as it were is in the Kingdom principles revealed in the actions of Jesus of Nazareth! It is that story the begs to be lived in each of us! It is redemption-Salvation itself!
Now these are words, words we throw about you and me. They are churchy words, theological words. I submit to you that these words have power and meaning for you and for me. The deepest meaning of these words are already planted in a story that begs to be lived in us through God’s grace! We want the order of things set right don’t we! We want for those things that block, inhibit, imperil, distort the fullness of who God created us to be, to be removed, set right, redeemed is the theological word. We want to be set free from those things that hold us in bondage from knowing the fullness of our potential as creatures of God. We want to be set free form our addictions, our worries and anxieties, our greed. We literally want these obstacles removed so that we might taste freedom- Salvation is the theological word.
There is a story that is implanted in each of us. The story is a story of redemption and salvation. It’s the kind of story that begs to be lived and told, and when it is not, when it is not told, lived, experienced our very soul cried out for it. The messiness of life, of our world, yes even of our cosmos! When out of kilter, we know deep inside ourselves that something is out of order! It is then that our soul sends the cry for redemption and a message if you will meets us where we are-God’s Kingdom desire is that things be set right, set free!
Sermon
V Epiphany-I Mark 29-39
February 8, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
“Wait a minute, it can’t be over, Where is the Redemption!” These are the words that were lifted up behind me and into my ears from a dark movie theatre at the conclusion of a recent film Felicia and I viewed. A complex drama of struggle; personal struggle, power struggle, struggle with integrity, compassion, sexuality, concludes in such a way that leaves the audience, well disturbed, wandering how it all works out, what the truth of the matter is. Unsettling at best, the words waft from a dark theatre amply for sure vocalizing my own unspoken and unresolved sentiment: “Wait a minute, it can’t be over, where’s the Redemption?”
I believe that we, the people of God, created in God’s image, have a story that lives in us that we take to every moment of our lives! When the story in us is challenged we cry out! I believe that message living in us is a story of redemption! A story where the things in our personal lives, the things in our common life, the things in our country, our world, and yes even in the cosmos are whole, free, in union.
Our Gospel story today invites us into this story of the acting upon a message of wholeness, freedom, and union. We learn from the story that there is a miracle, a healing, and that this action is part of the deliverance of a message. What is the miracle? Simon’s mother-in law is ill, in bed with fever. Jesus goes to her at once and lifts her up, the fever leaves her. She is healed. Now, what is the miracle? A colleague at clergy bible study suggested the miracle was that Simon wanted his mother in law healed at all, (not so nice). But, she is healed, restored, and set back into motion in her life of service. The story goes on to tell us then, that all who were sick or possessed with demons gathered around the door of that house, and Jesus cured many and cast our demons of many.
Mark’s telling the story, from chapter one announces to us that in the person of Jesus, our deepest yearnings are met with God’s deepest desire! The miracle is for the first century experience, that those things which held power over people in such a way that distorted and disrupted their participation in wholeness, freedom, and in life, are removed! Simon’s mother in law is healed, and is restored, she is set right, brought back into the fullness of her life, as are those who come to Jesus, crowded at the doorway.
If we now have answered the question, whats the miracle, the more important question to be explored is what the story reveals to us in the next paragraph, Jesus got up, went off to pray (good modeling by the way), they hunted for him (also known as they disturbed his prayertime), and he responded, now we must go on to proclaim the message to the next town! So, we move from miracle to message! Whats the message!
The message I submit to you is found somewhere in the articulation of the young woman’s cry at the end of a challenging life story in that movie theatre! You remember, Where’s the redemption! The message as it were is in the Kingdom principles revealed in the actions of Jesus of Nazareth! It is that story the begs to be lived in each of us! It is redemption-Salvation itself!
Now these are words, words we throw about you and me. They are churchy words, theological words. I submit to you that these words have power and meaning for you and for me. The deepest meaning of these words are already planted in a story that begs to be lived in us through God’s grace! We want the order of things set right don’t we! We want for those things that block, inhibit, imperil, distort the fullness of who God created us to be, to be removed, set right, redeemed is the theological word. We want to be set free from those things that hold us in bondage from knowing the fullness of our potential as creatures of God. We want to be set free form our addictions, our worries and anxieties, our greed. We literally want these obstacles removed so that we might taste freedom- Salvation is the theological word.
There is a story that is implanted in each of us. The story is a story of redemption and salvation. It’s the kind of story that begs to be lived and told, and when it is not, when it is not told, lived, experienced our very soul cried out for it. The messiness of life, of our world, yes even of our cosmos! When out of kilter, we know deep inside ourselves that something is out of order! It is then that our soul sends the cry for redemption and a message if you will meets us where we are-God’s Kingdom desire is that things be set right, set free!
Sunday, February 01, 2009
IV Epiphany
February 1, 2009
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
Deuteronomy 18:15-20 + Mark 1:21-28
This morning I want to use a few of my words to talk about the Word of God and I know that is a daunting task I have set for myself, but I am going to step out on the Word of God.
“Words, words, words, I am so sick of words…” were the words of Eliza Doolittle, in the musi-cal, My Fair Lady, and those words are basically what the people of God were saying to God about “the Word of God” in the reading from Deuteronomy. “No more. God’s Word is too pow-erful, too demanding, too real, too personal, to close, too much what God wants and not enough what we want, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
Which is, really, an understandable human response.
God’s word is powerful. God’s word can be overwhelming. God’s word sometimes is too per-sonal. God’s word sometimes is too demanding, and too relentless, too stark, too true. It gets in your head, it gets in your gut, and it gets eventually into your heart. It can be too much. It can be too hard, sometimes, to hear the word of God and then to bear the Word of God, too live with it. That was the experience of God’s people told in the Deuteronomy.
And we know what they knew. You cannot run from, you cannot hide from, you cannot turn off the Word of God. It just keeps on coming. Or do you disagree?
Do you think perhaps the word of God takes a holiday? Leaves the scene from time to time? Or takes a hike when God is fed up with us? No. We have learned that God is faithful. Won’t leave. Won’t give up. Called the “Hound of Heaven,” God is.
God’s word is eternal. It’s there – always there. We may not hear it, but it is there. If the word is rare in these days or on any days, it is because we have blocked it out, sort of like the Voice of America radio station is blocked out of Cuba. But like the VOA, it is possible to shut it out, but you can not shut it off.
So what the people of Israel tried to do was to tone it down. They wanted an intermediary who would stand for them in God’s presence and receive the Word of God, and then who would re-cast it, reframe it, rephrase it, humanize it, tenderize it, downsize it so that it becomes palatable to God’s people in a more comfortable form.
And so God called Moses to be the intermediary, and he became the greatest of all the prophets of Israel. But what people discovered was that the Word of God delivered by Moses was still the Word of God. It still had power – power to create, power to move nature and kings and armies and God’s people; power to reveal God’s will, power to reveal God’s reign in the midst of life.
When Moses spoke as Moses you could tell it was Moses. Like when I speak as Rick, you know it’s only Rick. When Moses spoke God’s Word you could tell it was God’s Word. Theologian Karl Barth said, “There is a yawning gulf with no fellowship or comparison possible between God’s Word and all other words. God’s word works wonders.”
Eventually “the word was made flesh and dealt among us, full of grace and truth.” We learned new things about God, experienced the power of God’s Word in new ways: healing ways, re-demptive ways, life-creating and life-changing ways.
The Word has the power to confront and overcome evil and to restore humankind into a relation-ship with God where each of us can hear the Word of God as Jesus heard it, himself. “You are my child, my beloved.”
Because of Jesus we know that God has said to each of us and continually says to each of us, “You are my child, my beloved.”
And those words have the power to move us deeper in God’s kingdom, deeper in God’s world, deeper into meaningful relationships with those around us and with those who live far, far away from us. Power to move us out from our self-centeredness, self-conceit, self-delusion, and self-gratification.
Some of you know of the marvelous poet Maya Angelou who wrote a memoir titled Wouldn’t Take Nothin’ for My Journey Now.
“One of my earliest memories of Mamma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon colored woman with a deep, soft voice, … each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, ‘I will step out on the word of God.’
“The depression, which was difficult for every one, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and two grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often.
“She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, ‘I will step out on the word of God. I will step out on the word of God.’ … I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.”
“(But) In my twenties … God didn't seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented.
“One day a teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him. I was twenty-four, very eru-dite, very worldly. He asked that I read from Lessons in Truth, a section which ended with these words: ‘God loves me’ I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, ‘Read it again.’ I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, "God loves me." He said, ‘Again.’
“After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me…”
The power and possibility of the Word of God. Don’t deny it. Don’t close yourself off from it. Seek it, eagerly. Hear it. Crave it. Wait for it. Don’t let it pass you by.
God would speak a Word to each us – maybe it will come in the night hours, or in the reading of scripture, or in the bread broken and the cup shared, or in the voice of another, or in the face of a stranger, or perhaps in the silent spaces when we make ourselves ready to hear the Word that is always there.
Listen for it and “step out on the Word of God”.
February 1, 2009
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
Deuteronomy 18:15-20 + Mark 1:21-28
This morning I want to use a few of my words to talk about the Word of God and I know that is a daunting task I have set for myself, but I am going to step out on the Word of God.
“Words, words, words, I am so sick of words…” were the words of Eliza Doolittle, in the musi-cal, My Fair Lady, and those words are basically what the people of God were saying to God about “the Word of God” in the reading from Deuteronomy. “No more. God’s Word is too pow-erful, too demanding, too real, too personal, to close, too much what God wants and not enough what we want, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
Which is, really, an understandable human response.
God’s word is powerful. God’s word can be overwhelming. God’s word sometimes is too per-sonal. God’s word sometimes is too demanding, and too relentless, too stark, too true. It gets in your head, it gets in your gut, and it gets eventually into your heart. It can be too much. It can be too hard, sometimes, to hear the word of God and then to bear the Word of God, too live with it. That was the experience of God’s people told in the Deuteronomy.
And we know what they knew. You cannot run from, you cannot hide from, you cannot turn off the Word of God. It just keeps on coming. Or do you disagree?
Do you think perhaps the word of God takes a holiday? Leaves the scene from time to time? Or takes a hike when God is fed up with us? No. We have learned that God is faithful. Won’t leave. Won’t give up. Called the “Hound of Heaven,” God is.
God’s word is eternal. It’s there – always there. We may not hear it, but it is there. If the word is rare in these days or on any days, it is because we have blocked it out, sort of like the Voice of America radio station is blocked out of Cuba. But like the VOA, it is possible to shut it out, but you can not shut it off.
So what the people of Israel tried to do was to tone it down. They wanted an intermediary who would stand for them in God’s presence and receive the Word of God, and then who would re-cast it, reframe it, rephrase it, humanize it, tenderize it, downsize it so that it becomes palatable to God’s people in a more comfortable form.
And so God called Moses to be the intermediary, and he became the greatest of all the prophets of Israel. But what people discovered was that the Word of God delivered by Moses was still the Word of God. It still had power – power to create, power to move nature and kings and armies and God’s people; power to reveal God’s will, power to reveal God’s reign in the midst of life.
When Moses spoke as Moses you could tell it was Moses. Like when I speak as Rick, you know it’s only Rick. When Moses spoke God’s Word you could tell it was God’s Word. Theologian Karl Barth said, “There is a yawning gulf with no fellowship or comparison possible between God’s Word and all other words. God’s word works wonders.”
Eventually “the word was made flesh and dealt among us, full of grace and truth.” We learned new things about God, experienced the power of God’s Word in new ways: healing ways, re-demptive ways, life-creating and life-changing ways.
The Word has the power to confront and overcome evil and to restore humankind into a relation-ship with God where each of us can hear the Word of God as Jesus heard it, himself. “You are my child, my beloved.”
Because of Jesus we know that God has said to each of us and continually says to each of us, “You are my child, my beloved.”
And those words have the power to move us deeper in God’s kingdom, deeper in God’s world, deeper into meaningful relationships with those around us and with those who live far, far away from us. Power to move us out from our self-centeredness, self-conceit, self-delusion, and self-gratification.
Some of you know of the marvelous poet Maya Angelou who wrote a memoir titled Wouldn’t Take Nothin’ for My Journey Now.
“One of my earliest memories of Mamma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon colored woman with a deep, soft voice, … each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, ‘I will step out on the word of God.’
“The depression, which was difficult for every one, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and two grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often.
“She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, ‘I will step out on the word of God. I will step out on the word of God.’ … I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.”
“(But) In my twenties … God didn't seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented.
“One day a teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him. I was twenty-four, very eru-dite, very worldly. He asked that I read from Lessons in Truth, a section which ended with these words: ‘God loves me’ I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, ‘Read it again.’ I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, "God loves me." He said, ‘Again.’
“After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?
That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me…”
The power and possibility of the Word of God. Don’t deny it. Don’t close yourself off from it. Seek it, eagerly. Hear it. Crave it. Wait for it. Don’t let it pass you by.
God would speak a Word to each us – maybe it will come in the night hours, or in the reading of scripture, or in the bread broken and the cup shared, or in the voice of another, or in the face of a stranger, or perhaps in the silent spaces when we make ourselves ready to hear the Word that is always there.
Listen for it and “step out on the Word of God”.
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