The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
God loves us. Each and every one of us.
The readings today tell us this in a multitude of ways.
In James we are told that we are “a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures.”
“First fruits” was a term of art in ancient times – the first fruits were the finest, most perfect specimens of the harvest. The first born lambs, free of blemish, the first vegetables and fruits of the trees and vines, the first, most pure pressing of the olive oil – all of these were the first fruits that were presented at the temple as a sacrifice to God – the finest of creation for the creator of them all. And we people, says the author of James, are the first fruits, we are the most perfect of creation, presented back to God for his appreciation.
God created not only us in his image, but he created this world full of beautiful, wondrous things as our home, as our place to delight and be glad, and really, we shouldn’t need any more proof of God’s love for us than this world!
But, God also gave us free will and the ability to think for ourselves, and as soon as we were created, we started to out distance between ourselves and God, and in that space, evil grew.
We began to honor God with our lips, but not our hearts. We began to worship in vain, teaching human precepts as doctrine, and separate ourselves from God’s love through theft, murder, adultery, avarice, through wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, and slander, through the folly of pride.
We began to set up barriers between ourselves and our fellows, arguing over who was closer to God, who was more beloved, while insuring in our very arguments and judgments that we were each, in fact, farther out of reach of God’s healing embrace, and eventually we mastered that state of evil, of pride, of folly that we were warned against when ignored the command to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger…to rid ourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and instead to be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves…”
And yet, while we still continue with our striving and our judging, our slander, our pride our evil – all the while, God watches over us, and God calls to us still, like a lover, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come…Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The11th Sunday after Pentecost
11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 16, 2009
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
Those of you who have been in church the last two Sundays will easily recognize today’s Gospel reading. It is almost exactly the same one from each of the past two Sundays. Each week expands it a little, but they all have to do with Jesus as the Bread of Life.
I haven’t been able to be here the last two Sundays, but I have read the sermons from the last two Sundays and both the dean and the canon have wonderfully unpacked this passage as they, to quote our dean, “Mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, broken and shared…” the Bread of Life which is to be known and found in Jesus the Christ.
And we have it again today. I am wondering if you have had your fill of bread readings from the Gospel of John. You’d think the church would spread them out a bit over the year rather than have them Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, bread and more bread and more bread. We get it, right? Enough with the bread!
Well, gospel truth to tell, there may be a good reason why we have this passage three Sundays in a row. I want to see if we can find it. It’s probably important.
There is an old proverb about preaching a sermon that is learned on day one in seminary. It goes like this: “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them.” The point being, it takes a lot to get through the busyness that occupies the human attention and mind before you can get to the human heart.
Reflect for a minute on all the things that occupied your mind, heart, and attention as you came through the doors of the cathedral this morning. If you are like me it is a cacophony of competing wants, needs, demands, priorities, voices, details of life. And that’s not just this morning. That’s life, as Frank Sinatra would sing. That’s how most of us go through life. That’s how most of us live life.
There is so much that calls us, grabs at us, yells at us demanding our attention… So much, that it is possible to lose one’s sense of self, to lose one’s orientation, to get lost in all of it.
Robert Kysar suggests that what Jesus was getting at, and the reason why we have this passage – again, is that Jesus is saying that we need literally to take Jesus into ourselves, to make him part of our essence, part of our very being, to have him at the very core of our lives, the center point from which all our life flows.
Back in the 1950’s there was a TV quiz show with Groucho Marx. It was called “You Bet Your Life”. Contestants were asked questions such as, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” The point of the show was to have fun. It never approached a serious question about betting one’s life.
But the Gospel of Jesus Christ does. “On what do you bet your life?”
In my work around the church, I often start with asking questions that help me and those I am working with get in touch with those principles upon which they base their communal life. We call them Core Values. Core Values aren’t chosen, they aren’t decided upon intellectually, they just are. And they are non-negotiable. They are what define us. They guide everything else. All else flows from them – concerns, priorities, plans, strategies, tactics, and actions. And when a plan does not work out, we still know who we are at our very core. Everything comes from that center.
Let’s look at the scripture from 1Kings. Solomon has just ascended to the throne of his father David, that beloved king of Israel. It is a succession marked by court intrigue and competition between rival factions.
After all the intrigue and struggle, now Solomon is king, and he goes to Gibeon to offer sacrifices to the Lord. The Lord appears to him in a dream there and says, "Ask what I should give you." It is a remarkable offer for this young king; "Ask what you will," says God. One can imagine what he might request: long life, riches, power, and victory in battle.
Solomon asks for none of that. Instead, he praises God for God's faithfulness to his father David, and he describes his own situation. He is a young man. He has to govern a very numerous people; and not just any people, but a nation of God's own choosing.
He has a lot on his plate, his mind and his heart. He has bet his life on the Lord. And everything else flows from that. Therefore, he asks of God a "listening heart" or in our translation this morning, an “understanding mind" in order to judge God's people, and "to discern between good and evil."
A listening heart, an understanding mind, the ability to discern what is right and good — qualities essential to good governance, qualities we should pray to find in all our leaders. Actually these are qualities we would hope and pray for our children and ourselves – qualities that would give them – and us – a way to walk through this life with purpose, with integrity, with confidence and security that we are on the right path.
The bread that is being offered by Jesus Christ these weeks is himself. He offers to be so intimately part of who we are, that we can bet our life on him – at the very center of our life, at the very core of our being, the guiding light that shines on our path in good season and bad. The center from which all else flows… plans, strategies, tactics, actions, responses to all those voices that call us, those seductive songs that would lead us in their way, rather than ours.
The Poet Mary Oliver has a poem, “The Journey”, that speaks of these things.
One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice—
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations,
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
The Bread of Life Jesus offers is himself and it is life giving indeed. It can give us, not just life, but our life – our life to live with purpose, with integrity, with security, and with confidence that we are on the right path, today and forever.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
The 10th Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
Lately, I have been reading several books by James Martin, a member of the Society of Jesus and a popular author on the topic of faith. He describes a distinctly Jesuit method of contemplative prayer, a way of reading scripture that involves putting one's self in the story. It relies quite heavily on the imagination, as the reader places him or herself into the role of disciple, prophet, Jesus, or fellow villager, and when effective, it can lead to a new level of insight and revelation. When not so effective, it can just leave one feeling silly. I have a friend, himself a Benedictine monastic of some 25 years, who said to me that he could never be a Jesuit, because he wasn't creative enough. So it was with some trepidation that I tried this method on today's Gospel.
Jesus said to the people, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
I cannot imagine what my reaction would have been, had I been standing there that day, some 2000 years ago, and heard Jesus utter these words. I would hope that I would have been a perfect disciple, would have understood instantly, would have accepted his words without question and looked on, secure, maybe smug in my all-trusting knowledge, as the other villagers questioned and sneered.
However, I think it is much more likely, knowing how my brain works toward rational explanation, that I would have been one of the villagers who, looking upon this man whom I had known since birth, with whom I had played in the fields as a child, whose parents were Mary, the sweet gentle woman with the sad eyes, and Joseph, the hardworking carpenter who loved all his sons equally, despite the murmurings about betrothal dates and births that surrounded talk of this oldest one, Jesus- I think that daily familiarity with all of this , I would have been among the grumblers, the ones who suspected that this Jesus was putting on airs, or, worse, fully off his rocker.
It is so much easier, after all, from the perspective of lazy intellect, to assume that the thing which cannot be comprehended easily, or at all, is the product of a mistake on the part of the one who said it, rather than a radical shifting of the world.
At the end of the second World War, looking out over a world that had been a witness to evil on a scale never before considered, whole populations decimated by hatred, generations of young men lost to battle, a German theologian said, “What this world needs is liturgy and community.”
By liturgy, I think that theologian meant reverence such as that experienced in holy worship, a sense of the holy in otherwise everyday actions, a manifestation of God and our love of God in the physical.
By community, I think he meant a means by which we could reflect God’s love in the faces of each other. We have, in our readings today, in graceful simplicity, both.
Liturgy- St. Athanasius said that God became man so that man might become a god, and we experience this most literally in our Eucharistic feast. With the statement “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus transformed the eating and drinking of physical food for nourishment of our bodies into a spiritual communion with him, and a nourishing of our souls.
As for community, well, Paul’s words to the Ephesians are an instruction manual of how men can be Godlike to one another.
“Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors," Paul said, "for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
To extract the essence of this would be to say: Be Christlike to one another, make every thought, every action, an act of worship.
These words are so easy to hear, in this gorgeous, holy place, surrounded by the familiar trappings and faces of our faith, but something happens when we cross the threshold, and go out into the world. Somehow, in the (admittedly rather long) distance between this altar and the cathedral door, the values of our secular world creep back into the most well meaning heart. Individual struggle takes over, fear of not having enough to take care of ourselves and our families takes hold, concern about mortgages and 401(k)s and health insurance – not that these things aren’t important, they are, but we cannot let them take the place of God, become idols to us, so that the face of our fellow man is obscured by fear of scarcity. Because Jesus offers us abundance, simply, almost unbelievably, when he says to us: I am the bread of life.
With this bread, none shall hunger, and none shall thirst.
Lately, I have been reading several books by James Martin, a member of the Society of Jesus and a popular author on the topic of faith. He describes a distinctly Jesuit method of contemplative prayer, a way of reading scripture that involves putting one's self in the story. It relies quite heavily on the imagination, as the reader places him or herself into the role of disciple, prophet, Jesus, or fellow villager, and when effective, it can lead to a new level of insight and revelation. When not so effective, it can just leave one feeling silly. I have a friend, himself a Benedictine monastic of some 25 years, who said to me that he could never be a Jesuit, because he wasn't creative enough. So it was with some trepidation that I tried this method on today's Gospel.
Jesus said to the people, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
I cannot imagine what my reaction would have been, had I been standing there that day, some 2000 years ago, and heard Jesus utter these words. I would hope that I would have been a perfect disciple, would have understood instantly, would have accepted his words without question and looked on, secure, maybe smug in my all-trusting knowledge, as the other villagers questioned and sneered.
However, I think it is much more likely, knowing how my brain works toward rational explanation, that I would have been one of the villagers who, looking upon this man whom I had known since birth, with whom I had played in the fields as a child, whose parents were Mary, the sweet gentle woman with the sad eyes, and Joseph, the hardworking carpenter who loved all his sons equally, despite the murmurings about betrothal dates and births that surrounded talk of this oldest one, Jesus- I think that daily familiarity with all of this , I would have been among the grumblers, the ones who suspected that this Jesus was putting on airs, or, worse, fully off his rocker.
It is so much easier, after all, from the perspective of lazy intellect, to assume that the thing which cannot be comprehended easily, or at all, is the product of a mistake on the part of the one who said it, rather than a radical shifting of the world.
At the end of the second World War, looking out over a world that had been a witness to evil on a scale never before considered, whole populations decimated by hatred, generations of young men lost to battle, a German theologian said, “What this world needs is liturgy and community.”
By liturgy, I think that theologian meant reverence such as that experienced in holy worship, a sense of the holy in otherwise everyday actions, a manifestation of God and our love of God in the physical.
By community, I think he meant a means by which we could reflect God’s love in the faces of each other. We have, in our readings today, in graceful simplicity, both.
Liturgy- St. Athanasius said that God became man so that man might become a god, and we experience this most literally in our Eucharistic feast. With the statement “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus transformed the eating and drinking of physical food for nourishment of our bodies into a spiritual communion with him, and a nourishing of our souls.
As for community, well, Paul’s words to the Ephesians are an instruction manual of how men can be Godlike to one another.
“Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors," Paul said, "for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
To extract the essence of this would be to say: Be Christlike to one another, make every thought, every action, an act of worship.
These words are so easy to hear, in this gorgeous, holy place, surrounded by the familiar trappings and faces of our faith, but something happens when we cross the threshold, and go out into the world. Somehow, in the (admittedly rather long) distance between this altar and the cathedral door, the values of our secular world creep back into the most well meaning heart. Individual struggle takes over, fear of not having enough to take care of ourselves and our families takes hold, concern about mortgages and 401(k)s and health insurance – not that these things aren’t important, they are, but we cannot let them take the place of God, become idols to us, so that the face of our fellow man is obscured by fear of scarcity. Because Jesus offers us abundance, simply, almost unbelievably, when he says to us: I am the bread of life.
With this bread, none shall hunger, and none shall thirst.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Proper 13 - John 6:24-35
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
There was a man who was just not feeling right. His energy was waning and he felt himself a bit lethargic. Setting himself up with a homespun plan of attack, he visited an upscale grocery store that promised to wow the consumer with the purest, healthiest and brightest organic vegetables. He purchased beautiful vibrant cucumbers, colorful and rich carrots, and the juiciest looking dark green beans he had ever seen. A few days later, still feeling the same lethargy as before, he visited his doctor, his new remedy in hand. Strange as it may seem, he entered the doctor’s office with beautiful cucumbers, one in each ear, a bright orange carrot in one nostril, and the deepest green, juiciest string bean in the other. He told the doctor of his issues and asked, “What do you think is wrong?” The doctor responded, “Well, for one thing you just don’t seem to be eating right!”
Our Old Testament and gospel readings for today seem to present to us the question of just what will satisfy the needs we have. How do we find the right “diet,” if you will, that leads us into a place of wholeness? The need in the case of these scriptures, it seems, is the real need for daily sustenance using the well-known commodity of the ancient world – bread. The need also stated is the need to know of God’s faithful presence in the yearnings of life, everyday life, even when there is nothing wowing that life. For in the Old Testament lesson, the Israelites, coming off a spectacular and wowing experience of liberation to freedom who are now experiencing firsthand that freedom comes at a cost, no longer have bread provided for them as they did as slaves. How will they eat? Will this God they have followed be with them now, faithful to them now? The relationships with one another and with God is being re-defined now as a free people, what will it be, how will it be?
The Gospel story picks up where Jesus left off last week. A crowd of folks coming off the “wow” of the feeding of 5,000 chase Jesus down and want to know “was that for real?” and “could you do that ‘wow’ thing again, so we know this God you speak of will be faithful?” In both cases, the relationship of God and God’s people is being re-shaped, re-imagined. In both cases the transition from the experience of God through the wow moves into the invitation to a deeper experience of the holy through the hard work of a daily relationship. The sustenance of life, it seems, really does come through the ingredients of a daily faith life; “give us this day our daily bread” the prayer reads, after all.
How complex are we? We are spiritual beings, having our human experience as we rightly yearn for stability and safety, for the basic provisions of food, water, and shelter. We live our complexity as we simultaneously seek to be wowed by life and, I suggest, by the holy. Jesus’ response to the listener, who is looking to be wowed with literal bread as their ancestors were in the wilderness, is that “bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus goes on to say that he himself is that bread. I think what this means is that the real ingredients to a sustained and holy life are not found in the “wow,” but are instead found in the hard work of everyday living into a deeper understanding of God and God’s desire for a just world. A world where faithful living is striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, a world where we seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Bread is the image Jesus uses, the simple ingredients of flour, water, yeast, and maybe a little salt for taste. Literal bread is the difference between life and death for the listener. The simple ingredients for the followers of Jesus are prayer, humility, forgiveness, and living for the good of the others. These are the simple ingredients for a life in Christ.
Living in a culture, as we do, that is driven so fiercely by the concepts of commodities that are dressed and marketed to create a belief that we will be and should be wowed, I wonder how we hear such a simple image and message about our need for God and God’s desire for us. I wonder how we receive the bread of life, the daily bread we pray for in the prayer our Lord taught us to pray. I confess, as a product of our culture, I too look for the glitzy, the sexy, the salty, the sweet. Jamaican spice bread, Maine pumpkin raisin bread, jalapeno corn bread – these sound like they may have the ability to wow me, much more so than something called daily bread. Jesus, it seems to me, is saying to those who will listen, then and now, in response to the yearnings and hungers of our lives, that it is an everyday thing, this life in God that is fulfilling and sustaining. The ingredients are as simple as a daily loaf of bread, and there may not be anything glitzy about it, but it is life-giving, life-changing.
There is nothing new from my lips today that you have not heard before about these ingredients for a life in Christ, but as Robert Frost once said, “Everything deserves repeating until we answer from within. The thousandth time may prove the charm.”
Ingredients:
Two cups of scripture daily, stirred and salted for your own understanding and growth. A good measure of prayer daily to be still and be aware of God’s presence in your life. A pinch or two of forgiveness for your own shortcomings and for those who have offended you.
A large cup of fellowship, listening for and encountering the joys and sorrows of your neighbor.
Mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, broken and shared, Jesus said, “I am the bread of heaven.” Give us this day our daily bread.
There was a man who was just not feeling right. His energy was waning and he felt himself a bit lethargic. Setting himself up with a homespun plan of attack, he visited an upscale grocery store that promised to wow the consumer with the purest, healthiest and brightest organic vegetables. He purchased beautiful vibrant cucumbers, colorful and rich carrots, and the juiciest looking dark green beans he had ever seen. A few days later, still feeling the same lethargy as before, he visited his doctor, his new remedy in hand. Strange as it may seem, he entered the doctor’s office with beautiful cucumbers, one in each ear, a bright orange carrot in one nostril, and the deepest green, juiciest string bean in the other. He told the doctor of his issues and asked, “What do you think is wrong?” The doctor responded, “Well, for one thing you just don’t seem to be eating right!”
Our Old Testament and gospel readings for today seem to present to us the question of just what will satisfy the needs we have. How do we find the right “diet,” if you will, that leads us into a place of wholeness? The need in the case of these scriptures, it seems, is the real need for daily sustenance using the well-known commodity of the ancient world – bread. The need also stated is the need to know of God’s faithful presence in the yearnings of life, everyday life, even when there is nothing wowing that life. For in the Old Testament lesson, the Israelites, coming off a spectacular and wowing experience of liberation to freedom who are now experiencing firsthand that freedom comes at a cost, no longer have bread provided for them as they did as slaves. How will they eat? Will this God they have followed be with them now, faithful to them now? The relationships with one another and with God is being re-defined now as a free people, what will it be, how will it be?
The Gospel story picks up where Jesus left off last week. A crowd of folks coming off the “wow” of the feeding of 5,000 chase Jesus down and want to know “was that for real?” and “could you do that ‘wow’ thing again, so we know this God you speak of will be faithful?” In both cases, the relationship of God and God’s people is being re-shaped, re-imagined. In both cases the transition from the experience of God through the wow moves into the invitation to a deeper experience of the holy through the hard work of a daily relationship. The sustenance of life, it seems, really does come through the ingredients of a daily faith life; “give us this day our daily bread” the prayer reads, after all.
How complex are we? We are spiritual beings, having our human experience as we rightly yearn for stability and safety, for the basic provisions of food, water, and shelter. We live our complexity as we simultaneously seek to be wowed by life and, I suggest, by the holy. Jesus’ response to the listener, who is looking to be wowed with literal bread as their ancestors were in the wilderness, is that “bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus goes on to say that he himself is that bread. I think what this means is that the real ingredients to a sustained and holy life are not found in the “wow,” but are instead found in the hard work of everyday living into a deeper understanding of God and God’s desire for a just world. A world where faithful living is striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, a world where we seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Bread is the image Jesus uses, the simple ingredients of flour, water, yeast, and maybe a little salt for taste. Literal bread is the difference between life and death for the listener. The simple ingredients for the followers of Jesus are prayer, humility, forgiveness, and living for the good of the others. These are the simple ingredients for a life in Christ.
Living in a culture, as we do, that is driven so fiercely by the concepts of commodities that are dressed and marketed to create a belief that we will be and should be wowed, I wonder how we hear such a simple image and message about our need for God and God’s desire for us. I wonder how we receive the bread of life, the daily bread we pray for in the prayer our Lord taught us to pray. I confess, as a product of our culture, I too look for the glitzy, the sexy, the salty, the sweet. Jamaican spice bread, Maine pumpkin raisin bread, jalapeno corn bread – these sound like they may have the ability to wow me, much more so than something called daily bread. Jesus, it seems to me, is saying to those who will listen, then and now, in response to the yearnings and hungers of our lives, that it is an everyday thing, this life in God that is fulfilling and sustaining. The ingredients are as simple as a daily loaf of bread, and there may not be anything glitzy about it, but it is life-giving, life-changing.
There is nothing new from my lips today that you have not heard before about these ingredients for a life in Christ, but as Robert Frost once said, “Everything deserves repeating until we answer from within. The thousandth time may prove the charm.”
Ingredients:
Two cups of scripture daily, stirred and salted for your own understanding and growth. A good measure of prayer daily to be still and be aware of God’s presence in your life. A pinch or two of forgiveness for your own shortcomings and for those who have offended you.
A large cup of fellowship, listening for and encountering the joys and sorrows of your neighbor.
Mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, broken and shared, Jesus said, “I am the bread of heaven.” Give us this day our daily bread.
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