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.