The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

This weekend finds us just about at the mid-point of the summer season. That is a bit startling for me because I don’t feel that I have started summer yet having been traveling every week since the first of June. But I am home now and I am ready to get to it.

My idea of summer, which is informed by both experience and observation over low these many decades that constitute my life – summer is supposed to reflect the summer theme song by Nat King Cole, “Oh those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer”. The days are longer, more relaxed. There’s time for recreation, time for reading, time for conversation, occasionally time for a nap. The deck or the shade tree beckons irresistibly.

I hope your summer is well under way, and that you have achieved (and this may be an oxymoron)… I hope that you have achieved a state of rest, a more relaxed lifestyle. I hope that you have read something that is totally fun for you, that even while working you have managed to slow your life down to an appropriate summer pace, that you have been able to get outside to experience some of the wonders of creation.

There’s something else about summer. I remember when I was growing up that at some point during the summer, sometimes in the mid-point of a family vacation, my parents would sit down together for a heart-to-heart talk, or for a conversation that when on for a few days. It seemed to be a ritual of summer for them.

Then I noticed that Puddy and I did that as well. For us the heart-to-heart conversations usually took place on vacation in Maine, a week or two into the vacation. Plenty of time first for decompressing and slowing down, plenty of time for getting into a family vacation rhythm, plenty of time for lazing about and ruminating about life and stuff, plenty of time for dreaming.

And then we would just meet in this relational, temporal space when and where we were both ready to share the stuff of our heart with one another, in ways we had not been able to do for a while because of the schedules and demands of daily life in a family of five.

Thus would begin a time of opening our hearts anew to one another, sharing our concerns, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our needs, our hungers. We would talk about ourselves, we would talk about the two of us, we would talk about the kids.

At some point in the conversation we would begin to envision the future, or the next stage or phase of life for ourselves, for the two of us, for each of the kids. We would begin to formulate plans and directions that would flow from what we had learned in our heart-to-heart sharing.

It was kind of a ritual of our summer, perhaps you have experienced summer in similar ways or had similar experiences in other seasons. It seems that summer affords the luxury of slowing down, getting in touch – with ourselves and others, gaining clarity, acknowledging our hopes and dreams and needs.

And now you are wondering what in the world this has to do with the scripture appointed for today – miracles of feeding and water-walking? Well, I think the designers of the lectionary schedule of readings put this scripture in the middle of the summer for good reason. I don’t believe it was the luck of the draw or by default that we have these readings today, at the mid-point of summer. I think they know what goes on in the lives and hearts of people when they find space to spend time with themselves.

Listen again to how the psalmist summarizes what today’s readings are about:

The eyes of all wait upon you, O LORD, *

and you give them their food in due season.

You open wide your hand *

and satisfy the needs of every living creature. Ps 145:16-17

When I was in seminary the King James translation introduced the blessing over the noon meal most days. It goes like this:

The eyes of all wait upon Thee O Lord, * And Thou givest them their meat in due season.

Thou openest Thine hand, * And fillest all living things with plenteousness

That seems to me to be a pretty good summary of the scripture appointed for today. God fills all things with plenteousness.

In the first reading from 2 Kings and in the gospel reading we hear of the power of God being revealed in abundance; the abundance of food when there appeared to be not enough and in the abundance of God’s presence in the midst of people’s lives. The hunger of God’s people is acknowledged and responded to by God. In whatever ways are needed, people are fed out of the abundance found in God’s kingdom.

In the second miracle in today’s gospel, the abundance of God is revealed in the person of Jesus, as he says, “Don’t be afraid, it is I.” Or a better and more accurate translation, “I am, do not be afraid.” Remember that is what God said to Moses on the mountain as God was sending him to Israel, captive in Egypt. Moses asked God what he should say when people ask him who sent him. God says “Tell them, ‘I am has sent you’.”

And today we hear Jesus say to his followers, “I am, do not be afraid.” The power and the presence of God revealed in the person of Jesus coming to meet his disciples at the point of their need.

This is a pretty timely reminder, I think. We are in a time when so many people are living out of a sense of scarcity and are using all the power at their disposal to acquire and accumulate and safeguard enough to meet their need. Some are seeking their fair share, others are after all they can lay their hands on, fair or unfair. The scriptures today remind us of another way to live.

Whenever it is that we get in touch with ourselves, whenever we re-member ourselves, whenever we open our hearts to ourselves and acknowledge our fears and needs and dreams, whenever it is time to chart a new direction in our lives – whether that is in summer, fall, winter or spring, God would have us know of the abundance of life available to us, and the power of God that is available to us for living such a life.

So… Are you taking the time at this mid-point of the summer season to listen to yourself, to get back in touch with your life, to open your heart? The abundance of God’s love, grace, mercy and power are waiting to lead you deeper into your life.

An Idea

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Elizabeth Yale

Just reading that the Epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians gives me a funny feeling now. I was in Ephesus about two months ago, and the only people there now are advertised GENUINE FAKE WATCH sellers and souvenir shop owners. No one makes their home in Ephesus; they have all moved 6 km down the road to the much more modern town of Selcuk. There isn’t actually much left at Ephesus comparative of its hey-day size. From an archeologist’s standpoint, it is very well preserved, being one of the largest and best-preserved ruins in Turkey. But, unfortunately, the size of the former town cannot be determined today because the people, the ordinary day-to-day people, did not live in stone temples or civic buildings. But Paul gives us a glimpse of the people who were living in Ephesus in the first century. They were a divided people. They were a confused people. They were a people that struggled with who they were and what they were doing. (Does that sound familiar?) But despite their struggles, there are no signs of their struggles left in Ephesus. No signs of the drama that unfolded between people on the issue of circumcision. There are no statues, no reliefs depicting this almost theological deal-breaker between Paul and some of the other disciples in Jerusalem. But the people truly did struggle with who to include in their new community. That is what the circumcision issue is really about – who is in, and who is not. The people of Ephesus and other cities were building a community for God and they were not sure what material to use. Only Jews? Those who knew the old rules and promises? Or all people, regardless of any previous religious community? Paul instructs them to include all people because Jesus has broken the dividing wall between each group. From Paul’s point of view, God wants to try something new. God is trying to build a house for himself using people of all nations. God tried before to build a house for himself, once through the Israelites, the children of Jacob and Moses. Another time, through David and Solomon, again through Jesus and the fisher people of Galilee. God continues through Paul and the Christians in Ephesus, Iconium, and Cappadocia. This seems wonderful to me, that God should have a House dedicated to him that makes his presence known in the world, but I have to wonder, why is God using humans? I mean, I don’t know how often any of you have tried to build something using only humans, but they don’t hold up well under weather, they fall over, they get tired, they complain, they’re unpredictable, and sometimes their brains just go off to the store for some fresh strawberries without notifying their own bodies. Humans are not the easiest building material to work with in the world.

But God seems to love the challenge. It’s not like God stopped after the first few tries. God’s house of promise, of peace, of healing, still stands as an ideal in the minds of humans. We work toward our goal in any way we can, but sometimes it seems so hopeless. But if you look up and to your right, at the middle stained glass windows, you can see what the people of Nativity have done in the past. They started Lehigh University. They built ships and buildings through Bethlehem Steel. They started St. Luke’s Hospital. And today, people of Nativity are still slowly building the House of God. And while I don’t think the vision of an open House of God, filled with fresh linen, fresh fruit, fresh ideas, and fresh passion for the coming future is around the corner, we each need to have a vision, because otherwise the House of God ends up like the ruin of the Temple of Trajan in Ephesus where students go to discuss the futility of man. And so I wonder, what is the vision of the Cathedral Church of the Nativity? What will the people of Nativity build next?

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

Today, we have some familiar stories in the readings.

We have the story of Amos, a simple man, filled with the spirit of the Lord and driven to prophesy in the temple to the priests and elders. This man, a shepherd and “dresser of sycamore trees” – and I think that Old Testament scholars are still puzzling over what exactly a dresser of sycamore trees was or did, but whenever Amos’ name comes up, I immediately fill in “dresser of sycamore trees” – was sent a series of visions that shook him to his foundation and drove him to leave his flocks and his trees, go to the priests and the elders in the temple, and speak out against the actions of the king. For this he was run out of town, banished from the temple by leaders who refused to hear his message, who told him to take his message to Judah, to the Israelites, anywhere but in the temple, which the king supported. Amos spoke truth to power, and for that he lost his home.

The story of John the Baptist is even more familiar, I would imagine, though most know it as the story of Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils. But the central figure of the story is John, a prophet living in the wilderness, preaching the coming of the Lord and initiating believers, using a ritual of water and words that was pretty identical to the one we will be using here, today, to welcome a new Christian. John was content to live in the desert, subsisting off of locusts and wild honey, dressing in the hides of wild beasts, until he caught word of the scandal occurring at the royal court, of a king murdering his brother to marry his sister-in-law, and so committing triple offenses of murder, covetousness, and adultery. He spoke out against this behavior and found himself in chains in Herod’s dungeon, though even this did not stop him from insulting the king and queen. We all know what happened next – a dance, a wish granted – Salome in this story is renamed Herodias, but dances for her stepfather at the behest of her mother, and appears not as a wily and wicked temptress, but as a child caught up in a struggle for power she doesn’t fully comprehend, trapped between the pride of her father and the vengeance of her mother, and manipulated by both. It is John who loses his life, though, ultimately for the offense of speaking out against what he saw as dangerous folly on the part of the ruling classes, once again, speaking truth against power, and for this, he loses his head.

This week I have been thinking a great deal about those who have spoken up in the face of might, as I have been reading the writings of Dorothy Day. The former Roman Catholics in the congregation today are probably familiar with Dorothy Day, described by many as a saint of the 20th century, but for those who are not, a brief biography:

Day was a staunchly secular communist and pacifist, writing for communist party publications, marching for women’s suffrage, working for the rights of laborers and those suffering the degradations of poverty in Chicago and New York in the early decades of the last century. She was a force in the workers’ movement and anti-war efforts, and then, just shy of her 30th birthday, was suddenly overcome by love of God and confirmed as a Roman Catholic. She brought all of her views on the rights of the common worker to dignity and a living wage with her into her new church, though, saw in Jesus’ love for the poor and his directions to his disciples to care for the outcasts as a call to everything she had been working for in her own life before becoming a Christian, and soon she was an outcast within her new church home. She was a thorn in the side of the Church, and she was a very vocal thorn- in response to the complicity she saw in the leaders of the Church in the Second World War, the denial of civil rights, the subjugation of the poor in third world countries, she quoted Romano Guardini, a German theologian and professor at the University of Munich who had been dismissed under the Third Reich, saying “The Church is the cross upon which Christ was crucified.” However, Day also said of her life and faith: “We have all known the long loneliness, and we have all found that the answer is community.”

In this spirit, Dorothy Day brought forth the Catholic Workers Movement, published a newspaper of the same name for over 35 years exhorting her fellow believers to take to the streets and fight for those who could not fight for themselves, and set up a network of Hospitality Houses and working farms across the United States in which devoted Catholic laity and clergy lived and worked in community with the poor and abused, living on starvation wages and helping to create a social fabric from within the working classes to promote reform in the factories, teach skills, and liberate the poor from the crippling cycles of poverty. Many of these Hospitality Houses are still in existence today, and a whole generation of Catholic social and liturgical reform can be traced to the spark Day and her compatriots created in the institutional church.

These days Day is regarded as a saint-in-waiting, but in her life she suffered constant censure and denial by the church she loved and devoted herself to. She spoke truth to power, and because of it she was ostracized, written off by the leaders of the church and derided as possibly insane.

So we have three stories, spanning the millennia, of individuals filled with the spirit of God and moved, no, compelled to speak up against people and institutions so much bigger, so much more powerful than themselves, despite the risk this posed to their lives, their families, their happiness.

What does that mean for us, as Christians, as Episcopalians? Our own church is meeting this week in Anaheim for our triennial General Convention, and in that meeting there is bound to be a lot of truth spoken, and a lot of power challenged. When it is sitting, our General Convention is the largest legislative body in the Western world, with over 8000 lay and clerical deputies from all over the nation. There is an argument among historians about whether our twin houses of bishops and deputies was the model for the framers of the Constitution when they designed the House and the Senate, or if it was the other way around, but regardless, a meeting of General Convention is a wonder of administration and canonical procedure to behold. To be fair, for many, it also puts truth to that old saying about watching sausage being made.

That body is struggling this week with some very big issues, and all sides are presenting their arguments and bearing witness to the truth as they believe God is calling them to testify. We must pray that at the end of this time together, none lose the church they have called their home, and that everyone holds onto their heads.

Let us pray:

Almighty and everlasting Father, you have given the Holy Spirit to abide with us for ever: Bless, we pray, with his grace and presence, the bishops and other clergy and the laity assembled in your Name, that your Church, being preserved in true faith and godly discipline, may fulfill all the mind of him who loved it and gave himself for it, your son Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.

Pentecost 5 Year B

The Rev. Canon Joel Atkinson

“O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak to you.”

Gets your attention, doesn’t it?

Awe, wonder, a little bit of fear…am I losing my mind! These were a few of the feelings Ezekiel must have felt as he stood in that thunderstorm in Mesopotamia [modern day Iraq]. Ezekiel’s encounter with God was not enough to get him up. So God lifted him up.

More words came: “I am sending you to my people and your people.”

Who are the “my people” and the “your people” God calls Ezekiel to go to? Is it those we like? Is it those who are like us? NO! NO! “Everyone” is the only correct answer.

Advice was given: They are “a nation of rebels”…they “have transgressed”…they have not changed. “They are impudent and stubborn.” Listen to some synonyms for these two words: cheeky, insolent, rude, disrespectful, impolite, presumptuous, ill-mannered, sassy, mouthy – obstinate, immovable, willful, mulish, intractable.

Imagine with me the conversation between God and Ezekiel. Lord GOD, are you sure you have the right man? YES, I am sure! Ezekiel, you are going and you will say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD.” But Lord GOD, they’ll think I am a fool. They’ll make fun of me. They’ll ban me from their towns…huh, huh, I may lose everything. Yes, all this is, sadly, very true. Like I said, they are a rebellious bunch, but if you maintain the course they will know a prophet has been with them. Okay, okay, okay, but sticks and stones do break my bones. I’ll do it, but know I’ve got plenty of reservations.

If we say “yes” to God, God even takes us with our reservations!

From Ezekiel, standing in a thunderstorm and hearing God’s call, the scene moves forward more than 600 years to another prophet standing in his hometown of Nazareth. He has been rejected by his people, prefiguring his final rejection in Jerusalem. Being a prophet of God is still not an easy thing. Thus we hear a few words concerning the treatment of prophets. “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

Jesus’ words are bitter but so true, so true. Times have not changed very much.

Imagine with me a conversation between Jesus and God. Father, when I agreed with you to do this thing, I hoped those who knew me best would listen and might understand something of what you and I are about. Instead, voices are not raised in praise for a local boy making good. ‘Tis true, my Son, but you must live and reveal in your life the true nature of who I am.

Jesus goes on. He is not deterred by all the nay sayers and unbelievers. In fact, as Moses did in the wilderness, he appoints some followers to assist him in his call. Go out two by two. Don’t burden yourself with either too many possessions or too many expectations, but keep on keeping on. Please don’t take all the rejections you will encounter personally. Please don’t hold on to all the pain those you encounter will seek to lay upon you. Rather proclaim the life I have been teaching you about and make real in the lives of those you encounter the healing redemptive love of God.

Once more the scene changes as we move forward a few years. Jesus has been violently executed. Paul has taken up the mantle of discipleship and been sent on his way, like those who were sent two by two from Jesus. Like Ezekiel, called by God to standup and speak, like Jesus, who we proclaim as God’s son, Paul met the Lord GOD on the road to Damascus and his life was changed forever.

Paul speaks of the pain he has faced in following God as a thorn that is a constant torment which keeps him from feeling fulfilled in his work. Following the Lord GOD is no easier for Paul than it was for Ezekiel and Jesus. What is the thorn which so upset Paul? I expect it was a thorn similar to the one Ezekiel and Jesus assumed in their calling, a common thorn shared by all three, a thorn existent when deep and profound rejection comes from those whom you love, a thorn that digs in ever more deeply when your own people refuse to hear, and then act to pass their pain on to you and your mission.

Paul expresses how he deals with the physical, mental and spiritual rejection of neighbor and family. Listen to what he says, “My grace [God’s grace] is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Then Paul responds, “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ for whenever I am weak then I am strong.”

It was Jesus’ weakness that led him to execution on the Cross at Calvary, and it was his weakness that won God’s victory over life and death for him and for all of us.

Three calls…three responses…three thorns to be dealt with…three witnesses expressing God’s healing redemptive love…three victories won and three lives we cannot forget.

How about our lives? How do we measure up?

“O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak to you.”

Gets your attention, doesn’t it?