Epiphany 4C

A Sermon by The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Jeremiah 1:4-10 ~
 Corinthians 13:1-13 ~ 
Luke 4:21-30

You can read the bible time and time again, and you can still come across a little time-bomb that God has placed there especially for you on that day, and you find yourself exposed to a whole new perspective about God, the world or, most often, yourself.

The time bomb this week was planted in Jeremiah. “Jeremiah I have need of thee. I need you. I formed you in the womb – for a purpose. I have something for you to do.”

Perhaps the amazing miracle that Scripture reveals to us this week is not that God created everything in the cosmos, or even that God came into human life in Jesus. Maybe even more remarkable than all that is the realization ‘God, the Lord has need of us!” You. Me. Imagine that. And immediately like Jeremiah we think, “Oh Lord, I can’t. I am only – a boy.”

That’s a most terrible phrase, “I am only...” Isn’t that what the world tries so hard to teach us? “You are only… You are only a kid; – a woman; – a teenager; – a secretary; – a clerk; – a freshman; – a mechanic, or for me, you are only – a geezer. But, do fill in your own blank. I know you can. And so we begin to think, “I am - only…”

When I was a very young boy I decided to make my father a Christmas present, a leather wallet. Now I wasn’t going to do that from scratch, There are kits for making wallets. My mother and I went one day to the craft store and bought a wallet kit.

The kit contained several pieces of leather precut for a wallet and pre-punched for binding, with several feet of plastic binding. Making the wallet consisted of knitting the pieces of leather together in the right places in the right sequence with the plastic binding.

I spent hours and hours and hours and hours binding those floppy, slippery leather pieces together – and unbinding the mistakes – and rebinding and rebinding and rebinding. Finally, I had made a wallet.

It was pretty crude. It was lumpy in places. The binding was uneven in places. When it was folded over to go into a pocket, it was about an inch thick – empty! It was pretty crude.

I wrapped it up, put it under the Christmas tree and on Christmas morning with great seriousness and expectation – as well as a good bit of anxiety because I knew that it was crude, not perfect – I handed it to my father, “Merry Christmas, Dad”.

He opened the package and took out the wallet and with only a nano-second of hesitation, his face broke into a huge smile and he uttered words of awe and wonder that his son could have produced such a fine wallet, and how much work it must have taken, and how wonderful it was.

The message was given and the message was received. My crude gift announced to him my love for him and by his response I knew that he had gotten the message, and I got one, too. Love doesn’t have anything to do with perfection. It is pure gift.

Have you ever been invited to a home for dinner and arrived to find exquisite perfection in the decorating of the house, and precise formality of manners in the hosting of the dinner? How about going to a home where the hosting was warm and welcoming and the people and conversation engaging and you knew they were glad that you were there? And you never noticed the décor.

I had a clergy friend who wore baggy suits, needed a better barber, drove an old car - and loved his flock. I remember another who wore fine suits, had impeccable hair, drove a luxury car - and enjoyed looking great.

I remember a college professor I had who was brilliant, but judgmental about which of us were of his attention. I remember another who saw beyond my crude efforts and encouraged my curiosity.

I know of a parish church whose buildings are immaculate, only the loveliest of furnishings and finest of art in its windows. People speak in quiet, hushed tones. I know another parish where there are books and papers on tables and chairs and kids running around and their drawings on the walls to display their unique and wonderful talents and insights – even when they are crude.

I want to show you one of my favorite works of art in the whole world. It has hung on the wall of my office for more than 30 years. It is a mixture of media – some might say, a mess of media – pen and ink, crayon, and watercolor. It demonstrates a free and happy spirit. It’s also a bit crude. But it is a priceless work of art. My son Tyler made it when he was 5 years old.

Jeremiah the prophet was a crude affair. John the Baptist was a crude affair: both men of the wilderness, living off the land, rough in their preaching, treated roughly by the people. The crudeness of their appearance and the roughness of their prophecies provided excuses to marginalize each of them - as we often use appearance to marginalize people in our own day and time.

They served God by doing their answering their call, no matter how crude their efforts. They spoke God’s word to the people with whom they lived, regardless of lumps and uneven bindings.

Believers forever have wanted to see Jesus as perfect, beyond reproach, beyond any normal human failings, his every word a gem, his every step thoroughly planned. But what if Jesus was just a guy who said Yes to God, Yes to God’s purpose for him?

Think about it. What if Jesus really was tempted by Satan at the start? What if he was a bit grandiose in his teaching at Nazareth and stunned by their rejection? What if he learned messiah-ship while living into his Yes? What if he figured out the “suffering servant” role at the end in Gethsemane, and his glory was not in having known everything all along, but in his seeing the cross and saying Yes, responding to God’s love ready or not?

Jeremiah the prophet spoke these words (9:23-24): Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they know and love me, that I am the Lord; that I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.

What if God sees us as works in progress, too? What if that’s the miracle and our hope? What if this Christian adventure is about crude and imperfect affairs like Jeremiah, John and Jesus – and us, being embraced by a loving God?

What if the center of this Gospel enterprise is indeed the wounded caring for the wounded, the "least of these" loving the "least of these," the fallen raising themselves and others up, not the perfect bowing down to lift up losers, not the experts pretending perfect craftsmanship while scorning the uneven lumpy work of others?

The Incarnation is preceded by crude prophet after crude prophet. It began with birth in a crude stable to marginalized parents, followed by the crude figure of John announcing a miracle by the name of Jesus. It climaxed in the rough wood of the cross amidst the chaotic nattering of crude and confused disciples.

So, maybe the gospel is about love, and not perfection - and maybe, just maybe, we can trust there is room in it for us, for the likes of you and me, and even that God has need of thee and me.

I do believe it is so. Amen

Epiphany 3C

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 ~ Psalm 19 ~ 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a ~ Luke 4:14-21

I want to introduce you to Godwill. Godwill is a 10-year-old boy that I met in the Sudan, and I want you to hear Godwill’s voice. (Dean Pompa turns on recorder.) (Godwill sings.) “He’s in control all around the world. Master Jesus. He’s in control.” Meet Godwill, a 10-year-old boy whose father is a priest, one of the clergy of the Diocese of Kajo Keji, who has been living in exile since the civil war that has afflicted that people. His father is returning for the synod, the convention of the Diocese of Kajo Keji, considering his return to serve in that Diocese. Meet Godwill and meet the spirituality of a people returned from exile. He’s in control all around the world. Master Jesus. He’s in control. The people of Kajo Keji are like the people of Israel who have returned form Babylonian exile in the Old Testament lesson we read today. The people of Israel are returning from exile, the Babylonian exile, and they find in the Persian system of government a sympathetic system, one that has appointed Nehemiah the governor, Nehemiah being a faithful Israelite. Nehemiah, the governor, has been given permission by the Persian government to help rebuild the wall that surrounds the temple in Jerusalem.

The people who have been sent away in exile under the Babylonians now experience what they never imagined, but always hoped for–-that they could return to Jerusalem to the temple that they themselves would be bringing the materials and the stones that would rebuild that wall around the temple. But more so...many, of course, never imagined but always hoped that they would be in a place where they, too, would again be returned to their system of life, their rediscovery of the law that defined their relationship with God, a reconnection with that place of worship, a rediscovery of their spirituality, a spirituality that God is at the center of their lives, and that God himself is in control.

The people of Kajo Keji are among the 5% who are Christian in the Sudan, most of them being the South of the Sudan. They returned from the exile the civil war had forced upon them. You may have heard about this before from Archdeacon Cluett and others. It is hard for us to tell the story, hard even to comprehend unless you are there and see it. But short of chartering a number of jets, this is the best I can do.

A people who were forced into exile, fleeing from civil war, are returning home to their villages. Christian people are rediscovering that their humble infrastructure has been destroyed during that civil war. Their small churches, mostly made of mud and straw, have been empty for years and are now being repopulated and rediscovered.

Their bishop who was in exile now remains back in Kajo Keji and as they return and are slowly building again what most of us have taken for granted, that is their churches, literally the buildings of their churches and the structure to carry out the mission of the church. Actually their bishop in this geographic area that is their diocese is now leading that restructuring. Some churches are now being built out of cement block, and you know because we’ve partnered with them, that schools are now being built out of cement block as opposed to the schools that are made of mud and straw.

The bishop not only is leading that effort, but Bishop Poggo is now trying to build the very structures of what it means to be a church. He is building the Diocesan center where the leadership and the clergy can gather and be trained and educated, and sent to go and lead in the small villages around the Diocese. These villages are populated by the poor, and by the poor they are being built. We literally saw the beams being raised as we were there. Being built and raised are the beams of the Cathedral. At first Raymond Arcario, who was with me, and I looked at each other thinking–-it seems so counter-intuitive. Why not running water first? Why not a good system of food and transportation first? But why the beams of a Cathedral? As the week went on, we got it. Because the people there have to know, just like the people of Israel had to see the walls of the Temple being rebuilt, they had to know that the church was there, that the church was investing in them, and that they would have a place to worship, not only to worship, but to learn and to grow and to be taught and to be sent.

Indeed the Cathedral is being raised, a symbol and center for worship and education. Schools are being built to educate their children. Indeed, we attended more than one village gathering where, just like you, they attend PTA meetings. The parents of these children came with gratitude in their hearts that new schools were being built, and with a desire for their children to learn and grow and to become more than they had ever imagined.

Not only is infrastructure being built, but an economy is being built there–-places to train people, to teach them skills so that they might make things that can be traded or sold. Indeed, there is much being built in Kajo Keji after a return from exile. And like the people who stand at the water gate outside the Temple in Jerusalem, they return with an astounding hope, astounding hope. All of this rebuilding sits on a firm foundation of their understanding of spirituality. Jesus is in control.

Raymond Arcario, your Senior Warden, and I journeyed to Kajo Keji and we anointed ourselves ambassadors of joy. We’re ambassadors of joy.

I was there to represent the Bishop at their Diocesan convention and to teach a course on preaching in their leadership school. Raymond was there to be an ambassador of this Cathedral and to meet the people of Emmanuel Cathedral, our partner church. Our experience was that the firm foundation that we are building is, of course, built on relationships, and we were blessed to build relationships with a fiercely faithful, hopeful, resilient, and joyful people.

There we met Pianaleh, their Dean. We’ve been praying for him as Samuel. He prefers Pianaleh. (I’m going to change it in the prayers of the people and we’ll have a little crash course for all of the readers.) As a child Pianaleh, himself, chose to remain in his village during the civil war because his grandmother said to his family, “let us not flee to Uganda. We must remain here.” He now finds himself a spiritual leader in a rebuilding community.

Pianaleh is smart and sweet. He is compassionate and determined. These are gifts God has given him. There we met Anna Ponee and Peter Wanee, the other clergy of the Cathedral, joyous in spirit and committed to pastoral and educational ministries. There we met Seteracaw, an elder and a church teacher. His words were wise. His skin was weathered. His spirit was confident. There we met Longa Alex, the church warden, definitely a companion of Raymond Arcario. We met Jerry Joseph, the young worship leader who leads their Cathedral in youth ministry and leads their youth choir. Does this all sound familiar?

We met some of the women of the Cathedral: Rejoice Ponee, Roy Peta Adeta Colulee, Cecelia Wageia, who, by the way, we sang a little Simon & Garfunkel to--because that’s the only song I knew with Cecelia in it. I didn’t sing the whole thing, don’t worry. We met these committed women and we heard of their plans to expand their women's bible studies so that more women of the village of Romogi might have an opportunity to participate. Does this sound familiar?

And there we met Grace Taboo. Grace was the caretaker of all things, the coordinator of most things, the Bishop’s administrator, and a faithful member of the Cathedral’s women’s group. She offered us hospitality beyond measure. She laid scriptural foundation to our two Cathedrals’ budding relationship quoting Galatians 3:15 which, in summary, said that “when members of the Christian community come together in agreement on anything, no one can break it.”

There is a church, literally a church, being built before our very eyes, and how grateful I am that we can be part of that. This church is being built on faith and hope and a theological understanding that it is Jesus’ church and that Jesus is in control. It is a life attitude there. It has to be given all that they have experienced. They literally hand over their lives to God.

The physical structures that are coming to life because of our Diocesan partnership are important and vital-–a college, schools and churches. But the building up of the gospel is coming to life in the people there and our people here. The gifts that they have and what we have that we are willing to share with one another is where our relationship comes to life in the discovery of God’s wonder and gifts given and shared in one another.

In Corinthians today, St. Paul reminds the people of Corinth that there are many gifts that come from the same spirit. St. Paul knew, as Jesus knew, that to be the body of Christ, that is to be the hands and heart of Christ in the world, the people of the church must come to know their gifts and offer them to the world freely. St. Paul needed to remind the people of Corinth, and we need to be reminded that not one gift is greater than another, but the gifts woven together make a perfect tapestry that gives life and hope to the communities in which we live. This is the foundation in which our ministry and partnership comes to life on that side of the world and on this side.

The people of Kajo Keji asked one another in their synod, and by the way, if you’re wondering, their Diocesan convention is just like ours. Everybody is in a room, the bishop talks, gives an address, people offer not so much legislation, but things that need to be acted upon. It felt very much like any other church meeting of which I’ve been a part. And you know how much I love those. But in their Synod, these are the questions that they were asking of one another. How do we expand our ministry with youth? How do we become better evangelists? How do we become better stewards of what God has given us? Believe me, their understanding of what God has given them is amazing. How do we support the work of the church with our time and talent and our treasure? Does that sound familiar? Oh, and this one, I chuckled at this one. How do we understand ourselves as a Diocese? How do we move from an understanding of Diocese from that which a bishop and staff will do for us to an understanding of how we can support one another and our other churches in this Diocese with our gifts, our resources, and our talents shared?

There is a people, a church, returned from exile being born in the Sudan. The physical structures and support systems are coming to life before our very eyes, and our relationship is agreed upon. As it grows, I pray it will become strong. With that relationship, what it has to offer us is an authentic experience of what it literally means to be the body of Christ, a sharing of gifts to become the body of Christ. For now I recognize that we here in our own Cathedral face the same issues of being the church. We have our own issues of sustaining our physical presence in this place, a physical place where people can come and know that there is a Diocesan center, and a parish church where we can learn and grow and witness to the community in which we live. People need to know that we are here. They need to physically see us. We have challenges to keep the ship afloat, and we have ever-increasing opportunities for ministry. How do we expand our ministry with our youth? How do we live into a strategic and intentional ministry of evangelism, sharing the good news of Christ with the world and inviting others to come and join us to be part of this community? How do we continue to live as faithful stewards where we share our time, talents, and treasures, and support the work, the important work, of God’s church?

I pray we find our relationship with Emmanuel Cathedral. I pray that we discover a truth, a truth of spirituality that, in it all, we are not in control. God is in control. I pray that we can hand over our anxieties of how to keep the ship afloat, and accept and live out the gifts God has bestowed in each of us. Working together for the common purposes for which we have been called, I pray we may find yet another opportunity in this relationship with our brothers and sisters across the world to live into the questions of what it is to be the church, the body of Christ. I have a feeling that if we are faithful to that relationship with one another and with our brothers and sisters in Romogi, we will find ourselves affirmed that we, indeed, are the hands and hearts of Christ in the world.

Amen.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

What can one really say, this day, about wedding feasts, and wine, about the Gospel, without acknowledging the catastrophe that is occurring in Haiti right now?

Haiti is the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church, and is the home of a Cathedral, a seminary, parishes and priests and thousands of faithful Episcopalians, in addition to missionaries from other dioceses throughout the United States. As lines of communication begin to open, we have learned that the seminary was perhaps destroyed, the cathedral damaged, at least four people were killed as they worshipped in a local parish, the bishop’s wife was injured, and many, many more people are still not accounted for, families are separated, and those who are not injured are trying to do what they can with limited supplies and resources to help the millions left homeless, hospital-less, lost.

More and more gruesome photographs and heartbreaking reports are emerging each day, and so we, here, must pray, as we weep with our brothers and sisters, with all in Haiti, as that already desperate nation tries to find sure footing in the midst of this tragedy.

Before coming to the Cathedral I served in a parish which sponsored a missioner in Port Au Prince. This woman, whose name is Kyle Evans, had been the church’s youth minister for many years and I was not surprised at all when she chose to answer God’s call and become a missioner for the national Church, and she packed up a few belongings and moved into a small dormitory with no hot water in a poverty stricken city half a world away which had recently made the news because the people were rioting because of food shortages. During her year of service she worked with students in the Episcopal seminary in Port au Prince, led art classes for children of the slums in that huge city, and through Kyle I came to know some of her students who finished their ordination preparation at Virginia Seminary. Some friends and I even went on a shopping trip for one student before he arrived one January, buying a winter coat, boots, gloves, scarves, sweaters- all the things a Haitian would need to live through his first Virginia winter. Upon arrival he immediately sent pictures to us and to home of himself, ankle deep in white snow on the seminary lawn, modeling I think all of his new wardrobe, layered against the cold. I imagine his family was aghast that he would travel to a place so frigid and so foreign, all on behalf of God, were afraid for his safety, much as we were afraid the first time Kyle told us she was going to Port Au Prince for a year. Kyle came back from Haiti late last November, shining like the sun with the power and joy of her time there, with the friendships she had made and the testimony to God’s love and grace she had experienced in the incredibly poor community she had been a part of, determined to go back as soon as possible.

As our Presiding Bishop noted in a statement earlier this week about the earthquake, the nation of Haiti was already in a desperate place economically, sometimes politically, well before this natural disaster struck. It has been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for generations. But Kyle’s experience, and that of many others who have had the chance to live there, serve there, or minister to Haitians in the US, is that faith was something the people of Haiti had in abundance. In the midst of all of this suffering, we can be sure that God is with the people of Haiti, and they continue to praise him in the midst of their pain and fear and anger. Several news reports from the most ravaged areas quote an often heard Creole phrase: Beni Swa L’eternal- which translates to Blessed Be the Lord.

Inevitably, this week, before the dust had even settled, before the first supply convoy landed, a small chorus of voices appeared in our own media, claiming to speak for God, and proclaiming this horrible tragedy a judgment on the people of Haiti for supposed sins of their forefathers and mothers. I admit that I was enraged at this, and appalled at this co-opting of the faith that I have chosen to devote my life to, and my response did not show much Christian charity. Cynically, I was sure that this was a simple bid for attention or viewers, born of the worst judgment imaginable, or perhaps an outright intentional manipulation of those seeking answers for political and personal gain. Luckily I have surrounded myself with good friends who are even better theologians (and the best of Christians), and one of these suggested a less cynical view. She thought that what we were seeing writ large across the national screen was a battle of Gospel-views. On the one hand, she pointed out, we had the perspective of the many missionaries drawn to Haiti before this tragedy and the hundreds of relief workers on their way there now:
“So many folks are transformed by the good news that God chose to be born into a world when there was no room for Him that they'll give up all our cozy American conveniences and move to the poorest country on this side of the globe. They'll risk their lives to serve people that maybe the world likes to think we just don't have room for- The Gospel is God's good news, God's glad tidings. People in comfortable lives give up everything to come serve [others] when [the]ir world falls apart? Sounds like good news to me. A (very) rich…guy with a cable TV show proclaims God's curse on a now homeless nation? Not so much.”*

Her explanation helped me to see through my anger and my shame at being lumped into some monolithic “Christianity” with folks who could not see the good in God’s message to us, and ultimately I was able to gain perspective, and that charity I had lacked.

Suddenly I could see these vocal critics as angry, frightened, living in a world where God’s love was finite, and since there simply wasn’t enough of God’s love to go around, when bad things happened, there must be fault, there must be blame, or else anyone might be at risk.
And at that moment I realized the gift that I have been given by God in my faith, in my unshakeable belief that his Grace and love are without limit. The God I serve made a covenant with Noah, after the flood, to never wreak such destruction on the world again, and he sealed it with a rainbow, and said that humankind would never have to fear Him. God made a promise to all of us of his love, and he sealed that covenant with his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
What can one really preach, this day, except the abundant nature of God’s love for us? It flows like wine at that wedding feast in Cana, and there will always be enough for us all.

*Quoting from a post of Jan. 15, 2010 on www.moamy.org

The Second Sunday after Christmas

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

Intro:
A lot has happened since we last were all at church together. Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a safe and joyous celebration and are enjoying this 10th day of Christmas. You may have noticed our Three Wise Men making their way across the rood screen behind me, headed for the manger and the Christ child within. We have two more days of this most wondrous of seasons, and then the trees come down, the decorations go back into storage, we celebrate Epiphany and the next stop is Ash Wednesday and Lent. So we should relish these two more days of Christmastide, and Epiphany tide that follows.

The office was closed on Friday and so I celebrated the new year by sleeping in, making breakfast, and settling in to read the New York Times with several cups of coffee. This august publication devoted considerable space to the most pressing issue of our new year, and I was surprised that that issue was not related to safe air travel or economic planning or unrest in Iran and other countries, but was apparently what we call this year. Some said Two thousand and ten, others, arguing for brevity, Twenty Ten. Whole articles were devoted to parsing these two options and though I began the day without any particular allegiance I ended my reading of these fiercely persuasive arguments convinced that this might be the hot new issue of our time! Other, lesser, options were proposed: two thousand ten, 2K10, two oh one oh, one neo-Luddite even suggested MMX, pronounced em em ecks, as a tribute to our Roman forebears. Passions ran high and I ultimately decided to leave the fight up to greater linguistic minds than mine as I refilled my coffee cup and realized that no matter what we call it, this New Year is special because it is a New Beginning. Few of us are pining for the year we’ve now left behind, and I think most of us are embracing the possibilities of a brand new year, a fresh start, another chance. In a new year, everything is made new again, old habits can be put aside, disappointments can be forgotten, lessons can be considered learned and steps forward can be taken.

Health clubs and diet emporiums all over the Lehigh Valley are counting on it! This is the time when we make resolutions, forgive ourselves for falling short in the past and pledge to ourselves that we can do better, this will be the year that we get the exercise we know we need, this year we will take time to be with our family and friends regularly, we will stop smoking or will give up self-destructive habits, or we will smarten up our resume and start looking for that new job, or we will be more disciplined in our prayer. We all know that some of these resolutions will be more successful than others, but there is something about this time of year, the flipping over of the calendar to a fresh January, that makes all things seem possible. We have another chance, if only we will take it. We can make a fresh beginning.

I think this was God’s plan as well, when he decided to meet humanity in the form of Jesus in the dark days of winter, to come into our being in the form of a child, to embrace a new beginning with us, his beloved creation. St. Athanasius said, “God became human so that humans might become divine”, and I think we see the correctness of this in our Gospel today.
In our readings today we have parallel messages: we have a STORY-of Jesus’ life-and a PROMISE made to us, right now, in him.

We have the story of Jesus’ life. We’ve heard of his humble birth on Christmas Eve, his parents’ flight to Egypt, and today we jump ahead to his twelfth year, when he visits Jerusalem with his family. He stays behind when the others leave, and it takes his mother and father a day or so to realize his absence. Travel was dangerous in those times and so large groups moved together, safety was in numbers, but it also made it hard to keep track of a boy. When Jesus’ absence was realized his parents returned to the city and searched, we are told, for three days. After four days sick with worry they found him, sitting in the Temple, arguing Torah with rabbis and students. His mother admonishes him and his father probably scolded him and I imagine he pouted a little as he was forced to leave the excitement and head home. And so Jesus is fully human-a boy mischievously running off from his parents, excited by the big city, risking his safety for adventure. But Jesus is also divine-he was in his father’s house, pondering points of law, amazed at his parents’ concern. We hear the story of Jesus growing into manhood, into his role as teacher and leader.

But we also have in these readings a promise: the promise of salvation. In Jesus Christ we are no longer separated form God, we have achieved our full inheritance. Our sins are pardoned, our debts are paid, and all things have been made new again. Happy are those people whose strength is in God, whose hearts are set on the Pilgrim’s Way! For they know what is the hope to which God has called them.

And so, as we start this New Year, let us be fully awake to God’s plan for us, and fully aware of our rebirth in him, through Christ, as heirs of his eternal kingdom. Let us rejoice, and be glad in the Lord, and in the hope that we have been given in him. And may all our resolutions be grounded in God’s love. Amen.