The Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 22, 2009
Numbers 21
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, writing in the June 1867 edition of the periodical The Atlantic monthly shares his observations of the then “negro” people. He reflects particularly on their spirituality as reflected in the songs they would sing. Higginson writing some two years after the Emmancipation, he speaks to a people who have been freed by law but who continue to wait to experience the fullness of freedom.
A long waiting of oppression continues and our writer comments on the power of the songs that carried a people held in captivity to a place of perseverance even while they waited. One such spiritual of waiting goes like this:
Go in de wilderness,
Go in de wilderness, go in de wilderness,
Jesus call you. Go in de wilderness
To wait upon de Lord.
Go wait upon de Lord,
Go wait upon de Lord,
Go wait upon de Lord, my God,
He take away de sins of de world.
"Jesus a-waitin'. Go in de wilderness,
Go, & Go.
All dem chil'en go in de wilderness
To wait upon de Lord."
Waiting upon the Lord is where we find our engagement with the scriptures this day as we turn our sights on the Book of Numbers. The Book of numbers translated from the Vular English is Numeri. The Greek is Arithmeti but the Hebrew title for this book reads B’midhar, which reflects more the reality of the book itself, translating “in the wilderness”.
The Book of Numbers is the fourth of the Pentateuch. It is a compilation of 1,000 years of experience and scholars tell us contains at least three different sources who are reflecting back on the years of the people of Israel’s time of waiting in the dessert for the full promise of God’s salvation after having been liberated from slavery in Egypt. Its characterized by telling the story of God’s salvation with God’s people, and the ordering of those people. It is a wilderness story and it is a story of waiting. It is a story of the struggle that exists to be patient in waiting, to struggle with keeping eyes fixed on a hopeful dream, when the realities of the wilderness of life are chipping away at those dreams.
The scripture speaks of this struggle . Numbers tell us that Moses led the people out of Egypt by way of the Red Sea going around the land of Edom. On the way we are told, “the people grew impatient”. They asked Moses, did you bring us out to this desolate and awful place to die? There is no water and the food is horrible. One can understand Yahweh perhaps responding to this “impatient whining” negatively given all the trouble to free these folks. Moses himself must intercede on behalf of the people when God’s disappointment is manifest through poison serpents biting those who have lost the vision of hope for their lives. Ironically it seems Moses himself is begging God to remind the people of the vision of freedom rather than give in to the limitations of the struggle in the dessert where people will die. Yahweh responds with a symbol of life, a serpent on a stick, those who are bitten by despair and hopelessness may now turn and gaze upon a vision of life. In the wilderness wait upon the Lord. Be Patient and look for life.
The text book definition of patience is,
1. the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.
2. an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay
Let us be honest with one another, it is easy to lose patience when the provocation, annoyances, misfortunes and pain of life is more than we can bear. It is not unnatural to experience restlessness or annoyance when the movement of our hopes and dreams of our lives are delayed.
All of us know misfortune, all of us know pain. All of us know irritation. When all the guarantees of life and the hope of what has been promised is so distant we have lost sight of it, then what? Some of us may know first hand what it is to have our sights set upon a life long dream, even having labored toward that life long dream only to be left in some in-between place waiting and wondering what happened or what is going to happen. I myself was certain at this point of my life I would enjoy my induction into the baseball hall of fame after a successful career at second base with the Philadelphia Phillies. More seriously we have had dreams perhaps for our children, investing time, love, money, hope in the lives of one you love only to see that child run into a difficulty or become involved in choices of life that dash their potential. We have had dreams perhaps of our own lives when health, emotional or physical, present challenges that dash our own potential. We have had dreams perhaps of relationships we imagined with fullness and joy instead stressed and strained dashing our imagination of love. We have had dreams perhaps for our professional lives believing we would arrive at a promised land of accomplishment only to spend time in the wilderness waiting to a point of impatience where we can no longer even imagine a once tangible reality of future.
Indeed wilderness is a time that tests our patience. Like the people of Israel where will we turn? Who will intercede for us? How will we discover again God’s presence and how will God remind us of his dream for our lives? In the wilderness, especially in the wilderness we need to be reminded of God’s dream for our lives. It is especially when the things the world can offer us for our existence seem to be working against our dream that we must pray for intercession to reach for those things that cannot be quantified to lift us to a new place, a new reality.
You all remember the story of Frederick. Leo Leoni’s dreamer field mouse. You remember how Frederick and his friends prepared so very differently for a long and arduous winter.
You remember about the chatty little field mice who began to collect straw and corn for the winter. The staples to keep them warm and fed. They worked hard and long, all except Frederick you remember.
Working hard and growing tired of seeing Frederick seemingly doing “nothing” they asked,
“Why are you not working Frederick?” “ I am”, he said. “I do work. I gather Sun Rays for the cold dark Winter Days.”
Again another day, the field mice worked hard, pulling food closer to the wall that would become their refuge for the winter. In the distance they looked and they saw Frederick staring off into the meadow. Frustrated and with despair they asked, “And now Frederick?”
“I am gathering colors for winter is gray.”
Finally, after a long day of work, the busy mice gazed upon a meadow only to see Frederick standing by himself. In Frustration they proclaimed, “And now Frederick, now what are you doing?”
Frederick proclaimed, “I am gathering words for the long winter days, for surely we will run out of things to say”.
Well you remember the story, the snow came and the mice were prepared. For some time, they nibbled comfortably in the warm wall, feeling good they shared stories of foolish foxes and silly hens.
Slowly their supplies ran out. They winter days grew longer and colder and slowly the supplies so carefully stored began to run out. Finally, their worst fears became a reality and the field mice were left without food. Cold and hungry they realized they had nothing left and turned to Frederick. ‘What about your supplies Frederick?”
“Close your eyes”, said Frederick.
“Now I send you the rays of the sun. Do you feel how their golden glow?” The mice began to grow warmer.
“And how about the colors Frederick?”, the field mice begged.
They closed their eyes and told them of blue periwinkles, red poppies in yellow wheat, and green leaves on a berry bush, they saw colors as clearly as if they has been painted on the sky above them.
“Now the words”, they exclaimed, “Give us the words Frederick!”
Frederick stood among them, cleared his throat and exclaimed,
“Who scatters snowflakes? Who melts the ice?
Who spoils the weather? Who makes it nice?
Who grows the four-leaf clover in June?
Who dimes the daylight? Who lights the moon?
Four little field mice who live in the sky.
Four little field mice….like you and I.
One I the Springmouse who turns on the showers.
Then comes the Summer who paints in the flowers.
The Fallmouse is next with walnuts and wheat.
And Winter is last….with little cold feet.
Arent’ we lucky the seasons are four?
Think of a year with one less…..or one more!”
Like a vision of something more God holds out for us the promise of new life even in the wilderness. A serpent on a stick or a poet’s words painted on our hearts. We hold and wait for God to draw near to us and point us expectantly to a new day.
A people waiting patiently to see the fullness of their freedom sang these words and we join them this day:
THE COMING DAY
"I want to go to Cannan,
I want to go to Cannan,
I want to go to Cannan,
To meet 'em at de comin' day.
O, remember, let me go to Canaan (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
O brudder, let me go to Canaan, (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
My brudder, you -- oh! -- remember (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
To meet 'em at de comin' day."
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Sermon: Lent III
March 15, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Richard Swenson in his book “Overload, Learning to Live with Limits” describes his experience with patients in his medical practice. He describes a time when he recognized he was seeing more and more patients who were younger and younger who did not have easily identified issues for diagnosis but were demonstrating physical difficulties. The more time he spent with patients he recognized what you and I will hear as an obvious conclusion; all of them were living lives where the demand on their lives was more than they could possibly handle.
His experience led him to prescribe for his patients that they be about creating Margin in our lives. He defines the concept of Margin as “The space that once existed between ourselves and our limits.” The equation he created is as follows:
Power-Load = Margin
Power= the things that give us energy, our skills, our time, our training, our emotional and physical strength, our faith, our finances, our social support, our relationship, our creativity.
Load= the things which demand things from us. Our work, problems, obligations, commitments, expectations (internal and external), debt, deadlines, interpersonal conflict, our health issues.
He suggests that the complex world and culture we live in presents an unprecedented complexity and challenge to the limitations we have as human beings. This complexity and challenge to our limits is what he calls the Sabotaging of Margin.
The Sabotaging of Margin
• 1.Progress differentiates our environment-giving us more and more of everything faster and faster
• 2. Spontaneous flow of progress is toward increasing stress, change, complexity. Speed, intensity and overload.
• 3. All humans have physical, mental, and financial limits that are relatively fixed.
• 4. The profusion of progress is on a collision course with human limits. Once the threshold of these limits is exceeded, overload displaces margin.
• 5. On unsaturated side of their limits, humans can be open and expansive. On the saturated side, however, the rules of life totally change.
One example he states for us to consider how our margin is being sabotaged is the difficulty of living in an age of information Overload. He suggests that there is more information in one edition of the Sunday New York Times than a person living in the 17th century would have encountered in a lifetime. I have not idea how he or anyone would really know that, but that sounded very cool to me.
We need not venture too far into this theory to realize some of the other ways the world we live in challenges our margin. We live in a time of Physical Overload. Technological advancements lead us to vocations and occupations where more and more, less and less is required of us physically.
When our relationships are strained with those we love, or with our colleagues, or even our brothers and sisters at church, the stress of this disruptions erodes our emotional and spiritual energy. Jesus stressing of forgiveness in his ethic clearly speaks to the disruption of what we would call sin. This erosion certainly isn’t unique in our time but is ever-present.
Many of us know that if we are to compete in a global economy the pressure on our time of productivity grows and grows. The work day has expanded with so many of us knowing what it is to rise in the morning in darkness and to return home at night in darkness with a long full day of “work”, only to go to bed and do the same thing the next day. Our time overloaded.
We know all to well these days the ramifications of financial overload. Consumerism is such a key component of our economy and its very premise is built upon creating a system where we need to buy and are tempted to extend. Some years ago I read a statistic that suggested that generation X on average was spending 120% of its annual household income. One need not be a mathematician to know how that equation works out. If you purchased a home in the past ten years it was probably not an uncommon experience to be invited into a “creative conversation” that included mortgage, second mortgage, packaged financing, that seemed more colluded to helping us believe we could buy a home we could not necessarily afford. We see now of course the difficulty in such a course of action and thought and many of us know all too well the stress of financial overload.
All of these things and others Dr. Swenson suggests contribute to the sabotaging of Margin! When Margin is sabotaged, he says, our limits are exceeded and the result is that we experience a decrease in perception. We cannot see the world and the choices we have in the world clearly, AND, because of this we perceive that we have lost options.
The antidote of course for Dr. Swenson, a Christian man, is that we intentionally seek to create margin in our lives. He suggests we pay careful attention to our Power-Load Equation and we seek to look at the areas in our lives where we can create the space for energy.
He suggests:
10% Margin in our Lives!!! (Reserves)
• 1. Margin in Emotional Energy
• 2. Margin in Physical Energy
• 3. Margin in Time
• 4. Margin in Finances
So the question of the day is,
HOW IS YOUR POWER-LOAD EQUATION?
If it is like those of the patients that Dr. Swenson began to encounter in his practice, chances are to begin a conversation when one is living an overloaded life means there may need to be come cleaning up of space on the hard drive. There is not better time for such examination and cleaning up then during Lent. One way to get there is through contraction.
Contraction is the popular word of the day being used currently to describe our economy’s response to our exceeding our limits on the financial side. I’d like to make use of this word today. First by reminding one another that at the root of this word is Contract.
In my wife’s line of work (a mother -baby nurse) contraction means an opportunity has arisen! New life, New Birth is about to take place
The Israelites knew of new life and new birth, being born into a new and unique relationship that would be defined by holy and faithful expectations of living in relationship to their God and to one another! A life-giving relationship would be guided for a nomadic people with new found freedom and promise with a contract that would define their Power-load equation.
This Power-load equation would be defined in covenant or in contract. Perhaps as we seek the 10% of Margin in our lives, and examine our Power-load limit, we can learn something new of the Ten Best Ways to Live as Jerome Berriman expressed them in Young Children and Worship.
For the Israelite people, the commandments that Moses delivered from Yahweh were a contract, a code of living. This code of living would be what is described by scholars as an apodictic contract as opposed to casuistic contract that were common in ancient times with other peoples living in proximity to the Israelites
A casuistic code or contract was common in these times and of course were defined as “if you do so and so, such and such will be the penalty”.
The contract of the Israelites with Yahweh is apodictic, reflecting the nature of an agreement based upon a “Suzerainty arrangement”. This arrangement was present among some people and nations as they came to peace agreements in ancient times. Such an agreement or contract is reflected in Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. The definition of this contract recognizes a relationship between one who is greater in power but not oppressive in that power, which is beneficial for all. This apodictic contract then is what will define the Power-Load equation for God and God’s people, and to live by it, would give life!
As we examine our Power-Load equation, perhaps a look at the contract again, will lead us to a place of power.
You know them and I couch my examination of the commandments as Jerome Berriman would, “The ten best ways to live”.
First: The Best ways to Love God
1. I am the one true God, this is very important, everything depends on this, and so have no others than me. This best way to love God recognizes a profound statement of monotheism in the midst of polytheistic people’s and cultures. Not only is Yahweh the God who brought Israel out of bondage, the source of their salvation, but Yahweh is the source of all life, of all being, of all things.
2. Make no Idols to serve: If you are serving them, you are forgetting me and therefore you, be careful about our idols. In our own Power-load equation we must ask what idols need be cleared out because they are sabotaging our margin. Wealth, success, alcohol, drugs, etc. . . .
3. I am God- do not speak lightly of me. In ancient times it was commonplace to appeal to deities for the support of curses on others or in support of magical causes. Among pagans this included evoking deities to bless weaponry. This is not consistent with the code of Yahweh’s character and disruptive to the Power-Load equation.
4. Keep the Sabbath; this is the day Yahweh tells us that delight is to be found. Yahweh creates in six, and delights in it all. We are invited to delight in it all as well and in one another. How can we possibly create margin if our Power-load equation is saturated to the point where we can not take delight.
Such are the best ways to Love God, now here are the best ways to Love each other.
5. Honor your Father and your Mother. In an ancient order of things this is not just a mandate to honor your own mother and father but honoring the place of parenting in tribal life
6. Do not Murder seems self-explanatory, though I admit we seem to struggle a bit with this.
7. Do not break your marriage but more value it, honor it, and give power to it by intention, time, and appreciation.
8. Do not steal. Having respect for others property including slaves not only creates an ethic of common respect, but in this ancient time having been just freed from slavery, it is a direct commandment to stay away from the common practice of owning slaves. Having been freed slaves; do not be even tempted to steal one’s freedom. An advocate for freedom is an advocate for a healthy Power-load equation.
9. Do not bear false witness. More than just being truthful, but being respectful of another’s dignity is life giving to all.
10. Do not even want what others have. This of course implies we are grateful and satisfied with what we have. Being grateful for what we have at the exclusion of wanting what others have speaks to an inner place of gratitude. This inner place of gratitude speaks volumes to the power side of our equation.
We began our exploration of Margin now through a lens of contract or covenant. A life-giving code that speaks to a holy way of living that bears power as we encounter our load.
Jesus made this contract even simpler: as he quoted Summary of the Law- Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself.
Sigmund Freud described the contraction of life in birth with the term Point of No return: That is the point in which in delivery contractions force that which is about to be born into the birth canal- it’s the in between place then where a decision must be made, out or in! Contractions give birth to something new yet even I the midst of the contraction we may need to push a bit as we seek to embrace new life.
Perhaps your contract this Lent is to explore your power-load equation, discovering how best to Love your God, love your neighbor and love yourself. Push.
Sermon: Lent III
March 15, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Richard Swenson in his book “Overload, Learning to Live with Limits” describes his experience with patients in his medical practice. He describes a time when he recognized he was seeing more and more patients who were younger and younger who did not have easily identified issues for diagnosis but were demonstrating physical difficulties. The more time he spent with patients he recognized what you and I will hear as an obvious conclusion; all of them were living lives where the demand on their lives was more than they could possibly handle.
His experience led him to prescribe for his patients that they be about creating Margin in our lives. He defines the concept of Margin as “The space that once existed between ourselves and our limits.” The equation he created is as follows:
Power-Load = Margin
Power= the things that give us energy, our skills, our time, our training, our emotional and physical strength, our faith, our finances, our social support, our relationship, our creativity.
Load= the things which demand things from us. Our work, problems, obligations, commitments, expectations (internal and external), debt, deadlines, interpersonal conflict, our health issues.
He suggests that the complex world and culture we live in presents an unprecedented complexity and challenge to the limitations we have as human beings. This complexity and challenge to our limits is what he calls the Sabotaging of Margin.
The Sabotaging of Margin
• 1.Progress differentiates our environment-giving us more and more of everything faster and faster
• 2. Spontaneous flow of progress is toward increasing stress, change, complexity. Speed, intensity and overload.
• 3. All humans have physical, mental, and financial limits that are relatively fixed.
• 4. The profusion of progress is on a collision course with human limits. Once the threshold of these limits is exceeded, overload displaces margin.
• 5. On unsaturated side of their limits, humans can be open and expansive. On the saturated side, however, the rules of life totally change.
One example he states for us to consider how our margin is being sabotaged is the difficulty of living in an age of information Overload. He suggests that there is more information in one edition of the Sunday New York Times than a person living in the 17th century would have encountered in a lifetime. I have not idea how he or anyone would really know that, but that sounded very cool to me.
We need not venture too far into this theory to realize some of the other ways the world we live in challenges our margin. We live in a time of Physical Overload. Technological advancements lead us to vocations and occupations where more and more, less and less is required of us physically.
When our relationships are strained with those we love, or with our colleagues, or even our brothers and sisters at church, the stress of this disruptions erodes our emotional and spiritual energy. Jesus stressing of forgiveness in his ethic clearly speaks to the disruption of what we would call sin. This erosion certainly isn’t unique in our time but is ever-present.
Many of us know that if we are to compete in a global economy the pressure on our time of productivity grows and grows. The work day has expanded with so many of us knowing what it is to rise in the morning in darkness and to return home at night in darkness with a long full day of “work”, only to go to bed and do the same thing the next day. Our time overloaded.
We know all to well these days the ramifications of financial overload. Consumerism is such a key component of our economy and its very premise is built upon creating a system where we need to buy and are tempted to extend. Some years ago I read a statistic that suggested that generation X on average was spending 120% of its annual household income. One need not be a mathematician to know how that equation works out. If you purchased a home in the past ten years it was probably not an uncommon experience to be invited into a “creative conversation” that included mortgage, second mortgage, packaged financing, that seemed more colluded to helping us believe we could buy a home we could not necessarily afford. We see now of course the difficulty in such a course of action and thought and many of us know all too well the stress of financial overload.
All of these things and others Dr. Swenson suggests contribute to the sabotaging of Margin! When Margin is sabotaged, he says, our limits are exceeded and the result is that we experience a decrease in perception. We cannot see the world and the choices we have in the world clearly, AND, because of this we perceive that we have lost options.
The antidote of course for Dr. Swenson, a Christian man, is that we intentionally seek to create margin in our lives. He suggests we pay careful attention to our Power-Load Equation and we seek to look at the areas in our lives where we can create the space for energy.
He suggests:
10% Margin in our Lives!!! (Reserves)
• 1. Margin in Emotional Energy
• 2. Margin in Physical Energy
• 3. Margin in Time
• 4. Margin in Finances
So the question of the day is,
HOW IS YOUR POWER-LOAD EQUATION?
If it is like those of the patients that Dr. Swenson began to encounter in his practice, chances are to begin a conversation when one is living an overloaded life means there may need to be come cleaning up of space on the hard drive. There is not better time for such examination and cleaning up then during Lent. One way to get there is through contraction.
Contraction is the popular word of the day being used currently to describe our economy’s response to our exceeding our limits on the financial side. I’d like to make use of this word today. First by reminding one another that at the root of this word is Contract.
In my wife’s line of work (a mother -baby nurse) contraction means an opportunity has arisen! New life, New Birth is about to take place
The Israelites knew of new life and new birth, being born into a new and unique relationship that would be defined by holy and faithful expectations of living in relationship to their God and to one another! A life-giving relationship would be guided for a nomadic people with new found freedom and promise with a contract that would define their Power-load equation.
This Power-load equation would be defined in covenant or in contract. Perhaps as we seek the 10% of Margin in our lives, and examine our Power-load limit, we can learn something new of the Ten Best Ways to Live as Jerome Berriman expressed them in Young Children and Worship.
For the Israelite people, the commandments that Moses delivered from Yahweh were a contract, a code of living. This code of living would be what is described by scholars as an apodictic contract as opposed to casuistic contract that were common in ancient times with other peoples living in proximity to the Israelites
A casuistic code or contract was common in these times and of course were defined as “if you do so and so, such and such will be the penalty”.
The contract of the Israelites with Yahweh is apodictic, reflecting the nature of an agreement based upon a “Suzerainty arrangement”. This arrangement was present among some people and nations as they came to peace agreements in ancient times. Such an agreement or contract is reflected in Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. The definition of this contract recognizes a relationship between one who is greater in power but not oppressive in that power, which is beneficial for all. This apodictic contract then is what will define the Power-Load equation for God and God’s people, and to live by it, would give life!
As we examine our Power-Load equation, perhaps a look at the contract again, will lead us to a place of power.
You know them and I couch my examination of the commandments as Jerome Berriman would, “The ten best ways to live”.
First: The Best ways to Love God
1. I am the one true God, this is very important, everything depends on this, and so have no others than me. This best way to love God recognizes a profound statement of monotheism in the midst of polytheistic people’s and cultures. Not only is Yahweh the God who brought Israel out of bondage, the source of their salvation, but Yahweh is the source of all life, of all being, of all things.
2. Make no Idols to serve: If you are serving them, you are forgetting me and therefore you, be careful about our idols. In our own Power-load equation we must ask what idols need be cleared out because they are sabotaging our margin. Wealth, success, alcohol, drugs, etc. . . .
3. I am God- do not speak lightly of me. In ancient times it was commonplace to appeal to deities for the support of curses on others or in support of magical causes. Among pagans this included evoking deities to bless weaponry. This is not consistent with the code of Yahweh’s character and disruptive to the Power-Load equation.
4. Keep the Sabbath; this is the day Yahweh tells us that delight is to be found. Yahweh creates in six, and delights in it all. We are invited to delight in it all as well and in one another. How can we possibly create margin if our Power-load equation is saturated to the point where we can not take delight.
Such are the best ways to Love God, now here are the best ways to Love each other.
5. Honor your Father and your Mother. In an ancient order of things this is not just a mandate to honor your own mother and father but honoring the place of parenting in tribal life
6. Do not Murder seems self-explanatory, though I admit we seem to struggle a bit with this.
7. Do not break your marriage but more value it, honor it, and give power to it by intention, time, and appreciation.
8. Do not steal. Having respect for others property including slaves not only creates an ethic of common respect, but in this ancient time having been just freed from slavery, it is a direct commandment to stay away from the common practice of owning slaves. Having been freed slaves; do not be even tempted to steal one’s freedom. An advocate for freedom is an advocate for a healthy Power-load equation.
9. Do not bear false witness. More than just being truthful, but being respectful of another’s dignity is life giving to all.
10. Do not even want what others have. This of course implies we are grateful and satisfied with what we have. Being grateful for what we have at the exclusion of wanting what others have speaks to an inner place of gratitude. This inner place of gratitude speaks volumes to the power side of our equation.
We began our exploration of Margin now through a lens of contract or covenant. A life-giving code that speaks to a holy way of living that bears power as we encounter our load.
Jesus made this contract even simpler: as he quoted Summary of the Law- Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself.
Sigmund Freud described the contraction of life in birth with the term Point of No return: That is the point in which in delivery contractions force that which is about to be born into the birth canal- it’s the in between place then where a decision must be made, out or in! Contractions give birth to something new yet even I the midst of the contraction we may need to push a bit as we seek to embrace new life.
Perhaps your contract this Lent is to explore your power-load equation, discovering how best to Love your God, love your neighbor and love yourself. Push.
Monday, March 02, 2009
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Sermon: Sunday March 1, 2009
I Lent Mark 1:9-15
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
“God is not something people choose for themselves. (Being chosen by God) does not grant access to all the answers but means contending with hard questions, thankless tasks, and usually a harrowing journey.”
These words were written by an individual to set a context of their experience of being drawn into a community of faith and coming to a decision for the first time in her life to “join” or become part of a church. Kathleen Norris, author of “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace”, describes her journey that propelled her to overcome her fears of being part of a church, to be patient with the boundaries that churches sometimes unknowingly present to un-churched people, and to come to a point of making a decision to become part of a community of faith. Kathleen Norris describes the experience as not so much having made a choice, but of coming to an understanding that God has chosen her, AND everyone else she was about to join in this new journey in her life.
She writes, “All Christians are considered to have a call to what is commonly termed, ‘the priesthood of all believers’; all are expected to use their lives as to reveal the grace of the Holy Spirit working through them. It’s a tall order, to literally be a sacrament, and it helps to remember Jesus statement, “You did not choose me, I chose you”.
She continues,
St. Bonaventure wrote, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”
By now you may have figured that I would like to focus this sermon today on the idea of choice. Surely by now you are in full awareness that we have embarked on our journey into Lent. You know this because at the very least, there is a prediction of 3-6 inches of snow, the normal weather prediction at the beginning of every lent. You also can see of course that the liturgical colors have changed to purple. If you had the opportunity you bore on your head the ash that reminds you of God’s calling you into being out of the very dust of the earth and your inextricable connection to one another and to the God who made you. We began this morning in penitence, asking God’s forgiveness through corporate confession. You have been invited to a season of self-examination and prayer. You may also be well on your way to establishing and living into your Lenten discipline. This discipline conversation may involve these questions: “What shall I give up? Or what shall I take on? This endeavor of course comes with the memory that such efforts find their meaning in the purpose of becoming more intentional about removing the obstacles or providing a path toward growing closer to God and neighbor.
I said in the beginning this sermon would focus on choices. I am aware that often our Lenten disciplines lead to an exploration of choices. If you are a list maker often such exploration leads to a list far more robust on the side of bad choices rather than good ones. Today, this first Sunday of Lent, with deference to our inclination to make disciplines about delving morosely into the bad choices we have made, I instead want at least for us to consider a bit not so much the choices we have made, but rather what it means to be chosen.
St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes choices in one way, Christ another.” We live in a world and in a culture that values deeply choice. In fact, having the opportunity to make choices is a core value of who we are as a free people. I suggest however that the spirit of having choices has also grown into all aspects of our lives from consumerism to moral decision making. We have so many choices about us that I suggest we are sometimes numbed by the choices that are about us. I remember escorting a young African man who had just arrived in Austin Texas to begin study to the grocery store. I will never forget watching the incomprehension on his face as he considered the possibility of so much food in one place, and then the deeper mystery when he realized there were choices of the same kind of food. He was frozen in his place, numb, and unable to move forward to make any decisions about food.
In our Lenten journey you may be pondering the choices you have made, and sometimes making a list of things we “ought to be doing” or “ought to have done”. I suggest sometimes an exploration of such a list may lead to a level of “frozen incomprehension” as it did my African friend on his first visit to a grocery store. So I offer another way to look at this Lenten journey and the issue of choice. I suggest to you as you take this journey to remember as you consider those things that are in the way of a holy and faithful life that you remember not so much of your choosing and choices, but that God has already chosen you!
The account of Jesus’ Baptism in the Gospel of Mark depicts the moment of Jesus Baptism. A voice descends from heaven, “This is my beloved Son with you I am well pleased”, In other words, Jesus, I have chosen you! Jesus is blessed with an understanding of his being chosen and immediately propelled into the wilderness where he will face with temptation what it means to be chosen by God. He will emerge from that 40 days and 40 nights knowing the course ahead will have him contend with difficult questions, be full of thankless tasks, and often be harrowing. He will go however, and as Mark would have it, be about proclaiming the immediacy of the Kingdom of God.
I have a fantasy each time I preside at or participate in a baptism. In that fantasy I can see the face of the individual emerging from the waters of baptism and I can hear a voice crying from heaven Bill, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Mary, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Jane, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! In other words, whoever you are, child of God, I have chosen you! Now into the world with you, knowing I never said it would be an easy ride to be chosen, so face the demons in your life, and know that wild beasts will be your companion in this world, But go broken as you may be full of limitation and often not getting it right, but go knowing I have chosen you!
Kathleen Norris, quoting St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”
Some on this Lenten journey may ask of you; Have you chosen Jesus today? Some may ask what choices you have made instead of choosing Jesus? My grandfather was a lifelong Roman Catholic but not a churchgoer. Every Christmas Eve he celebrated Mass with the Pope on television and by his bed stand after his death sat a well worn crucifix that I prize to this very day. I can remember profoundly just a few days after my grandfather’s death being approached by a well meaning member of my community of faith knowing of my grandfather’s lack of church attendance, she stated, “I certainly hope your grandfather chose Jesus.” Working through the insensitivity of what I firmly believe was a statement not designed to offend, I knew inside of me what the response was to that statement. I do not know how my Grandfather chose Jesus, but one thing for sure I knew, I knew Jesus chose him!
I submit to you that our Lenten journey be an opportunity not so much to do an accounting of our disappointments and poor choices as a vehicle for understanding the depth of our faith, but rather to ponder the depth of what it means to be chosen by God. God chooses us with our limitations, our transgressions, our dirty little secrets, our imperfections and our brokenness. What God does with such weakness and vulnerability, well, is the whole point of the story isn’t it! It’s called Grace!
This Lent let us lay vulnerable before the God who has chosen us. Let us lay before God what he already knows: That we are too quick to judge and condemn rather than to forgive. That we are too quick to reject those who differ from us in opinion, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and even beliefs in God. That we give in to easily to apathy or selfishness when it comes to giving of ourselves for the healing of the world. That we too often hoard our resources, our money, our food, even our thoughts and feelings. That we too often allow our Eyore complex to have the day rather than go give Charlie Brown a say.
Lay all of this weakness before God, it will be familiar to him. He knows you already because he has chosen you! Because he has chosen you there is no time to let it weigh you down, instead, watch what happens as the God of our collect for the day does what God does, taking the weaknesses of each of us, and finding the might to save us! Amen.
Sermon: Sunday March 1, 2009
I Lent Mark 1:9-15
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
“God is not something people choose for themselves. (Being chosen by God) does not grant access to all the answers but means contending with hard questions, thankless tasks, and usually a harrowing journey.”
These words were written by an individual to set a context of their experience of being drawn into a community of faith and coming to a decision for the first time in her life to “join” or become part of a church. Kathleen Norris, author of “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace”, describes her journey that propelled her to overcome her fears of being part of a church, to be patient with the boundaries that churches sometimes unknowingly present to un-churched people, and to come to a point of making a decision to become part of a community of faith. Kathleen Norris describes the experience as not so much having made a choice, but of coming to an understanding that God has chosen her, AND everyone else she was about to join in this new journey in her life.
She writes, “All Christians are considered to have a call to what is commonly termed, ‘the priesthood of all believers’; all are expected to use their lives as to reveal the grace of the Holy Spirit working through them. It’s a tall order, to literally be a sacrament, and it helps to remember Jesus statement, “You did not choose me, I chose you”.
She continues,
St. Bonaventure wrote, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”
By now you may have figured that I would like to focus this sermon today on the idea of choice. Surely by now you are in full awareness that we have embarked on our journey into Lent. You know this because at the very least, there is a prediction of 3-6 inches of snow, the normal weather prediction at the beginning of every lent. You also can see of course that the liturgical colors have changed to purple. If you had the opportunity you bore on your head the ash that reminds you of God’s calling you into being out of the very dust of the earth and your inextricable connection to one another and to the God who made you. We began this morning in penitence, asking God’s forgiveness through corporate confession. You have been invited to a season of self-examination and prayer. You may also be well on your way to establishing and living into your Lenten discipline. This discipline conversation may involve these questions: “What shall I give up? Or what shall I take on? This endeavor of course comes with the memory that such efforts find their meaning in the purpose of becoming more intentional about removing the obstacles or providing a path toward growing closer to God and neighbor.
I said in the beginning this sermon would focus on choices. I am aware that often our Lenten disciplines lead to an exploration of choices. If you are a list maker often such exploration leads to a list far more robust on the side of bad choices rather than good ones. Today, this first Sunday of Lent, with deference to our inclination to make disciplines about delving morosely into the bad choices we have made, I instead want at least for us to consider a bit not so much the choices we have made, but rather what it means to be chosen.
St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes choices in one way, Christ another.” We live in a world and in a culture that values deeply choice. In fact, having the opportunity to make choices is a core value of who we are as a free people. I suggest however that the spirit of having choices has also grown into all aspects of our lives from consumerism to moral decision making. We have so many choices about us that I suggest we are sometimes numbed by the choices that are about us. I remember escorting a young African man who had just arrived in Austin Texas to begin study to the grocery store. I will never forget watching the incomprehension on his face as he considered the possibility of so much food in one place, and then the deeper mystery when he realized there were choices of the same kind of food. He was frozen in his place, numb, and unable to move forward to make any decisions about food.
In our Lenten journey you may be pondering the choices you have made, and sometimes making a list of things we “ought to be doing” or “ought to have done”. I suggest sometimes an exploration of such a list may lead to a level of “frozen incomprehension” as it did my African friend on his first visit to a grocery store. So I offer another way to look at this Lenten journey and the issue of choice. I suggest to you as you take this journey to remember as you consider those things that are in the way of a holy and faithful life that you remember not so much of your choosing and choices, but that God has already chosen you!
The account of Jesus’ Baptism in the Gospel of Mark depicts the moment of Jesus Baptism. A voice descends from heaven, “This is my beloved Son with you I am well pleased”, In other words, Jesus, I have chosen you! Jesus is blessed with an understanding of his being chosen and immediately propelled into the wilderness where he will face with temptation what it means to be chosen by God. He will emerge from that 40 days and 40 nights knowing the course ahead will have him contend with difficult questions, be full of thankless tasks, and often be harrowing. He will go however, and as Mark would have it, be about proclaiming the immediacy of the Kingdom of God.
I have a fantasy each time I preside at or participate in a baptism. In that fantasy I can see the face of the individual emerging from the waters of baptism and I can hear a voice crying from heaven Bill, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Mary, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Jane, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! In other words, whoever you are, child of God, I have chosen you! Now into the world with you, knowing I never said it would be an easy ride to be chosen, so face the demons in your life, and know that wild beasts will be your companion in this world, But go broken as you may be full of limitation and often not getting it right, but go knowing I have chosen you!
Kathleen Norris, quoting St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”
Some on this Lenten journey may ask of you; Have you chosen Jesus today? Some may ask what choices you have made instead of choosing Jesus? My grandfather was a lifelong Roman Catholic but not a churchgoer. Every Christmas Eve he celebrated Mass with the Pope on television and by his bed stand after his death sat a well worn crucifix that I prize to this very day. I can remember profoundly just a few days after my grandfather’s death being approached by a well meaning member of my community of faith knowing of my grandfather’s lack of church attendance, she stated, “I certainly hope your grandfather chose Jesus.” Working through the insensitivity of what I firmly believe was a statement not designed to offend, I knew inside of me what the response was to that statement. I do not know how my Grandfather chose Jesus, but one thing for sure I knew, I knew Jesus chose him!
I submit to you that our Lenten journey be an opportunity not so much to do an accounting of our disappointments and poor choices as a vehicle for understanding the depth of our faith, but rather to ponder the depth of what it means to be chosen by God. God chooses us with our limitations, our transgressions, our dirty little secrets, our imperfections and our brokenness. What God does with such weakness and vulnerability, well, is the whole point of the story isn’t it! It’s called Grace!
This Lent let us lay vulnerable before the God who has chosen us. Let us lay before God what he already knows: That we are too quick to judge and condemn rather than to forgive. That we are too quick to reject those who differ from us in opinion, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and even beliefs in God. That we give in to easily to apathy or selfishness when it comes to giving of ourselves for the healing of the world. That we too often hoard our resources, our money, our food, even our thoughts and feelings. That we too often allow our Eyore complex to have the day rather than go give Charlie Brown a say.
Lay all of this weakness before God, it will be familiar to him. He knows you already because he has chosen you! Because he has chosen you there is no time to let it weigh you down, instead, watch what happens as the God of our collect for the day does what God does, taking the weaknesses of each of us, and finding the might to save us! Amen.
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