First Sunday of Advent 2010

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

Some years ago, we experienced our first ever hurricane. Hurricane Isabella, a name I shan’t forget, as it is shared with my daughter who broke her arm in the aftermath of this hurricane. My memory of this hurricane is one of living in the uncertainty of expecting something of which I had no expectations. Having never been through a hurricane before, I gathered some candles, a few flashlights, put our kids to bed, and took on the normal routine of the evening, reading, checking emails, and watching some evening TV. When the winds came with ferocity, the lights went out, and there we sat in darkness as the night grew longer and more anxious. However, my expectation was that it would pass, that the darkness would yield to light, and our lives would go on the next day. Indeed, we would spend the night in darkness, listening to ferocious winds, and we did wake to the morning’s light, a new day. Life would go on; in fact, we would go to clear the few limbs that had fallen in the driveway and me to the store to get some coffee. (No power, you see). It was then I realized how unprepared I really was for this event. There would be no coffee, no quick return to the daily routine, for outside of my little driveway lay the chaos of the night before: downed trees, power lines, and surely NO Coffee–no one had power. It would only dawn on me hours later, in the afternoon as dusk promised, that there would be more nights in darkness to come, how many I had no idea; but almost three weeks I never imagined. To say I was unprepared is an understatement, and indeed for days to come, I would come to a deep appreciation of the dance between the light and the dark.

Advent I, and today our Collect of the Day captures the great paradoxical themes of Advent: darkness and light, fear and hope, anxiety and promise. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, implores early followers of the message of Jesus that it’s time to wake up and put on the armor of light. There is a dance between the darkness and the light, between fear and hope, between anxiety and promise. These are the great paradoxes of faith and life, and I suspect all of us live in these paradoxes.

Most of us, I suspect, dance the dance between light and the dark in our lives and, in fact, I would say, in many cases, we may feel unprepared for the fact of darkness in our lives and in the world, and equally unprepared for the hope of the light.

For people of faith, Advent is the hanging on to the reality of life (found in the real life), living in the tension between the darkness and the light, between the fears of our lives and the hopes of them, between the anxieties found in uncertainty and the promise of a peace that passes all understanding.

“Advent” means “coming,” and the themes found today in the Gospel is what Jesus seems to be describing as an “invasion.” "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…Keep awake therefore, for you do not know the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.”

The invasion, of course, is what Fred Buechner describes as “an invasion of holiness.” This is what advent is about: an invasion of holiness smack down in the midst of that space between darkness and light, fear and hope, anxiety and promise. Advent is “coming.”

Buechner writes, “What is coming into the world is the Light of the World. It is Christ. That is the comfort of it. The challenge of it is that it has not yet come in fullness. Only the hope of it has come, only the longing for it has come. In the meantime we are in the dark, and the dark, God knows is also in us. We watch and wait for holiness to heal us and hallow us, to liberate us from the dark.”

The eye of the storm, by the way, came in the midst of the darkest part of the night. It was marked by calm in such stark contrast to the ferocity of the winds we had heard before. The quiet was almost poetry. The candle lit across the room spread light on the beauty of the quiet, and I was filled with a sense of awe, even in this between time of the certainty of the darkness and anticipation of what would come next. It was a moment of holiness. In that moment of peace, I poignantly knew this truth. It was the Light I longed and hoped for. I think this is the Advent Truth. Brothers and sisters, put on the armor of Light.

Christ the King

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

There have been and are all types of rulers or kings throughout history. The American experience of Kings, of course, is painted with a despotic king who taxed and answered push back to that tax with an authority in the form of troops. Most images of kings or rulers we conjure from history paint pictures, at the least, of wealth and stature, a hope for reason and a spirit of common good; but in many cases examples of tyranny, triumphalism, and an authority ensured by military dominance. In mythology or story, the human experience of hopes of “good” or “evil” take their shape in the portraits of kings….the “good king” or the “evil king.”

Today, as we end another liturgical season and prepare to enter into the shadows of the season of Advent, with our eyes fixed on the light that will lead us to God’s hope in the world in the flesh of incarnation, we end our liturgical season with the Feast day of Christ the King. Whether historical or mythological, the chords of our impressions of kingship are at play today.

I suggest to you, whether historical or mythological, the theme of kingship we explore is the authority, the principles, and the proclamation of the Kingdom ushered in by the selfless giving of Jesus on the cross. A quick history lesson may orient us toward our invitation to again be “subjects” of this Kingship.

Pope Pius XI established the great feast of Christ, the King of the Universe, through the encyclical “Quas Primas.” The encyclical was released on December 11, 1925, in the fourth year of Pius’ papacy.

The feast was established in response to a historical time that saw a world coming out of a world war, great political and civil unrest throughout Europe, a rise in the number of dictatorships throughout Europe, and the rise of secularism. Pope Pius’ experience of this time was that many were putting their faith and trust in the promises of secular leaders, the authority of the teachings of the Church were being compromised, the result was war, unrest, triumphalism, and injustice.

The call to the authority of the Kingdom and Kingship of the teachings of Jesus reads like this: “(Christ) must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God (Romans 6:13).”

Jesus was no stranger to the injustices of a political system built on aggression, oppression, and dictatorship. Today, in the Gospel, we find him hanging on the cross, sentenced to capital punishment by an unjust system in response to a man and his followers’ campaign of peaceful advocacy to ignite in people the love God had for them, to invite them to a place of understanding where the challenges of downtrodden lives would be transformed by a spiritual renewal that transcend the literal poverty of their lives. Jesus, mistaken by many as an authority whose “Kingship and Kingdom” might be defined in power, war and aggressive takeover, was instead delivered more powerfully in an act of “sacrifice,” so far opposite violence and terror that the only response an oppressive system of government could imagine was to try to “kill it.” Especially on the cross, the power of the message of transformation through peace and forgiveness is made manifest by Jesus’ handing himself over and, even in his suffering, inviting a repentant sinner into the Kingdom Jesus lords over.

Of course, you and I are then invited to this peaceable Kingdom, to yield to the authority of it, and to take on the noble and difficult task to live in the world the way in which he invites us. This Kingdom asks us to respond to violence, not with swords or weapons, but with prayer and forgiveness, where things are broken we respond with an expectation that it will be made whole, where things are not “right” or “just” we respond with certainty and action to make “it so.” We do so as we stare down the season of Advent because our King is coming, and we behave and believe in the certainty of that coming!

King Jesus, we offer ourselves to you, all our churches to you, as you offer them to us. Make yourself known in them. Make your will done in them. Make our stone hearts cry out for your Kingship. Make us holy and human at the last that we may do the work of Love.

The 25th Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

How about these readings today, hmm? If you came to church bright and early this morning in the hopes of something cheerful and inspiring, you may be rethinking that plan about right now!

In today’s Gospel we hear of the coming destruction of the Temple, false prophets proclaiming a gospel of death, widespread persecution and trials. Theologian Neta Pringle says that there are three signs of the end times:

-impostors will mislead the faithful

-war and conflict will break out, seemingly endless

-natural disasters: famine, plagues, pestilence.

We have all three in this passage from Luke today. It is easy to pity the disciples- they, like many of their contemporaries, are wowed by the splendor and beauty of the Temple in Jerusalem, and are maybe living a little vicariously through its lavishness, taking some pride in its adornments and grandeur, praising their own culture that could come up with something so over the top.

They are simply doing what so many of us do- have you ever paged through an issue of Architectural Digest or some other home design magazine, admiring the luxury, reveling a little in the richness of a home you don’t posses, but would like to? For me it is Dwell magazine, I guess my fantasy home is sleek and modern and free of clutter and dog toys.

But so here are the disciples, hanging out in Jerusalem, admiring the sights, and Jesus turns their world upside down-

“This edifice, this temple that is probably the biggest man-made thing that you have ever seen, which is a wonder of our modern technology? Soon it will be stripped stone from stone, the glory of it will be ground into the dust of the street,” Jesus says.

The disciples immediately ask, when will this happen? Tell us so that we can escape such violence and destruction!

“Well, some other really bad things will happen first, “Jesus replies, “and basically you will think that the world is ending, but it won’t be. Yet.”

What? The disciples would have been amazed, incredulous, frightened, even- they thought they were taking the ancient version of a house tour of the fancy parts of Jerusalem, and now their leader is telling them that their world will end.

“There will be false prophets,” Jesus tells them, “who will claim to speak for me but who will lead you astray. Also, war will break out every where you have ever heard of, but that will just be the beginning. Kingdoms will turn against kingdoms and nations will turn against nations, and then there will be earthquakes, and famines, and plagues- but I forgot to mention that before any of this happens, you personally will be arrested and imprisoned and beaten and some of you killed, all for following me.”

I imagine that the disciples were speechless at this point, shocked into silence- Jesus was telling them that the world would end, soon: false prophets, war, natural disasters- all those signs of the end times, were coming, and I suspect that the disciples were terrified.

False prophets, war, natural disasters- is any of this starting to sound familiar? Add in record unemployment rates and an increasingly alienating political system and potential economic collapse, and Jesus could be talking to us, here, today.  Like the disciples, we are finding ourselves in a time when all the things that once were our security are becoming uncertain. Investments that we have always believed to be reliable have failed us, employment opportunities that once seemed endless are now scarce, retirement are postponed, homes are lost, and opportunities to get ahead or even to just keep our heads above water seem nonexistent. It can feel like the ground has fallen out from under our feet.

So what hope does Jesus offer us in the midst of all this darkness?

He does not soothe us with false platitudes, he does not tell us that everything will be alright, that we will be saved- instead he changes the game entirely.

You will suffer, Jesus says, you will be betrayed by those you trusted and some of you will die, but in all this you will keep your faith, and by your endurance you will gain that most precious of possessions- your own soul.

Jesus is not offering us easy comfort; he is offering a radical culture change, a reprioritization that is a gift, though a painful one. We will be stripped of the things that have taken the place of God in our lives- our richly adorned temples, our earthly treasures, we will die to our old lives of getting and buying and having and status, and we will begin to prize those things we took for granted, those things that are priceless- the love of our spouses and partners, our families, our communities, our faith.

In return we will get our souls.

The image Jesus paints for us is one of a phoenix, that mythological bird that, at the peak of its life, bursts into flame and burns into nothing. Our souls, our selves, will rise from the smoldering ashes of our former selves, and we will have been refined by our suffering, empowered by our endurance.

A spiritual director once told me that when we find ourselves in a dry period in our spiritual journey, when we feel distant from God, alone, this is often the precursor to a time of great spiritual development, as if there must be a firm foundation of loss laid down, so that when God breaks open our world and shows us a new way of being in him, we can withstand it, as if we must be emptied so that we can contain the magnificence of the new world God is showing us, one of life and hope.

All Saints' Day

The Very Rev. Anthony Pompa

Good morning, and on this occasion, we are up to much. On this occasion we gather together to celebrate the feast of All Saints. This is what happens when All Saints’ Day falls on a Monday–we move it to the following Sunday. This is also a day when we welcome new members into the communion of saints as we gather around the baptismal font, as so many before us, and we baptize these three beautiful children in thanksgiving. This is also the day in our common life together when we gather our gifts in thanksgiving to God, that is, our first fruits, the gifts of our time and talent and, particularly on this day, our financial treasure. We gather our estimate of giving cards, that which supports our common mission in ministry. We are up to a lot on this day.

Over the past few weeks, we have heard from various members of this community of faith as they have talked about their spiritual journeys, living life as stewards of God’s great abundance. You probably have been as encouraged and lifted up, as I have, as these reflections were shared. Those who responded in reflection were asked to reply to a series of simple questions as a way to focus their witness. The questions were: Who are you and how long have you been part of the Cathedral? (That was the easiest one.) What ministry or ministries do you participate in? What motivates you to give of your time, talent and treasure to these ministries? Where do you find God in these ministries? We also asked them to thank you, us, each other, this community of faith, for the giving of your time and your talent and your treasure in support of our common mission.

Turn around is fair play is what I have decided, so what I ask of others should also be asked of me, if you don’t mind my walking, as the preacher, the fine line between telling you a little bit about myself and my journey with God. I hope that you will hear it in the spirit in which it is offered, that this story is about God, not so much about me. The Collect of the Day reminds us that we are knit together, saints of God, both the living and those living in the nearer presence of God, those who have died and live in hope of the resurrection, that we are knit together in a mystical communion that is called the body of Christ. I hope you don’t mind my sharing my witness through this lens of All Saints.

I want to first tell you about Rae Bartelt. Rae Bartelt was my kindergarten age Sunday school teacher at St. Mark’s Church in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Rae made her living by working at the county unemployment office. She was a life-long faithful Episcopalian, and she taught that particular grade of Sunday school for over 30 years. As she gathered us, many like me, around, she taught me things that I will never forget–songs, for example, that still, to this day, stick in my head. “A helper kind and good, a helper kind and good, a fireman is a helper, he’s a helper, kind and good.” Anybody know that one? You just kind of insert whoever. And then another one. I’ll do it in King James since we’re reading in King James’ version today. “Praise ye, praise ye, all the little children, God is love, God is love. Praise ye, praise ye, all you little children, God is love, God is love.” Ruth Paul knows that one. These are the things that stick.

In Rae Bartelt’s classroom, in the little chapel to the side where there was a cross and two candles, there was also a multi-colored wooden chair. It was the birthday chair. Of course, we all couldn’t wait until it was our turn to sit in the birthday chair where, in our morning devotions, we would light our candles and for whoever’s birthday it was, special prayers were said and happy birthday would be sung. In one of my very first stewardship lessons, Rae Bartelt would have the birthday boy, in this case, me, bring a gift for God in thanksgiving for the gift of life that God had given me. Ah, this is a stewardship lesson. The lesson was that God was interested in me, that my life was the gift and the appropriate response to that gift was me, all of me, in that chair, being nurtured in that communion and community of saints.

As I grew a little bit, I decided that I wanted to be an acolyte, that I wanted to serve. I wanted to do that because my three brothers were acolytes and I wanted to do what they were doing. That’s not necessarily true anymore. But, believe it or not, there was a time when I was known as Tiny Tony, and I was a little bit too young for the acolyte corp. Though I expressed my desire to serve on the altar, I was told “you’re just a little too tiny, Tony.” (I’ve not heard that too much recently.) I went to John Diehl, who was our interim rector. I think some of you might have known John Diehl who now lives in the nearer presence of God. I begged him, could I please acolyte? He said, “Tony, you’re just a little too tiny.” But my uncle, Bill, who was really my great uncle who served a long life and was retired, (he was a military captain and we sometimes called him Captain Bill), was the acolyte master. I threw myself on his mercy and he advocated for me. So the rule was waived and I was trained as an acolyte. Tiny Tony took his place, reaching to light the candles. Uncle Bill was one of those people who faithfully served his community of faith. It was a time in the church when he, quite literally, went and recruited the acolytes. He would get in his car on a Sunday morning and he would drive around town. He would pick up the acolytes in his car, making sure they were there, and he would drive us home. On one particular grey November day, I remember Uncle Bill driving us home and my sitting in the back of his old blue Chevy. As he drove along the Lehigh River that day, I can remember being a nine- or ten-year-old and looking out at the Lehigh River, where I heard a still, small voice, literally speaking to my heart. The voice was not that of my Uncle Bill. It was a still, small voice that spoke from inside my heart, and it said “I love you. I love you.”

When I was 13, my father made the difficult and painful decision to divorce my mother. Life as I had known it would change dramatically. Everything I knew and trusted and believed in was crumbling around me as my father left. I would lean on that still, small voice of love harder than I ever had before. As a 13-year-old in the midst of that chaos, I threw myself, with faith and with doubt, into the one place of mercy that I believed would be constant, and that was in my relationship with God and in my church community. I leaned on God big time, and I leaned on my brothers and sisters in church big time. Suddenly, my definition of family was redefined and expanded. I relied on the youth group that met every Sunday. I took to them the disruption of my life, the pain, and the grief. I threw my confidences on my parish priest, as did my family. People like Betty Benscoter, Charlie and Sarah McGhee, Peter Pocalycko, Hilda Burnhauser, Sylvia Redline, and the list goes on and on and on, of those fellow parishioners who, joining together, knew of the circumstances of my family. They not only bound together and supported us, leading us through rough times, but became that holy fabric that would lift me up and offer me in thanksgiving.

In that experience, my spirituality grew and I decided that I wanted to be a lay reader. That still, small voice was speaking louder and louder at that time in my life. Maybe I wanted to be a priest, I said. I was 15 or so at that time. I became a lay reader and I read in church. I went to my sophomore year in high school where I met John Lutinsky, who was my math teacher. The beautiful part about my relationship with John Lutinsky was that I was horrible at math; I still am. I struggled in math; I still do. But John Lutinsky and I had something in common. We were both lay readers in our churches, he being a lay reader in his Methodist church in Freeland, Pennsylvania, and I being a lay reader in my church in Jim Thorpe. Somehow, in the dealings of our math, he discovered we had that in common. In that time—I’m not sure it would happen today—he shared his faith with me. He shared with me why he read, how active he was in his congregation, and what relationship he had with God in his life. Our relationship grew and it was good. It was John Lutinsky, who along with another teacher from high school and another student–this would never happen today–with my mother’s permission, took me and the fellow student to Penn State University for a weekend where we experienced our first football weekend. The rest is written in history, 400-some wins of history.(Oh, I couldn’t help that, sorry.) It was being there, through that relationship with John Lutinsky, who shared his faith with me, who invested who he was, who understood himself to be a child of God, and invested in his students in ways that maybe others would not have, that I was introduced to a place and a space where God would continue to nurture and grow in my life.

That was true in my college years at Penn State. On one of the weekends visiting home, I visited John Lutinsky, and it was then that he shared with me that he was diagnosed with leukemia. At that time he shared with me his wonderment and his fear, his doubts and his trust, his trying to discern where God was in the midst of his struggles, but his firm, firm foundation in placing all of his trust in that God. He died six months later. But again, like sitting in that birthday chair, I learned a stewardship lesson from one of the saints of God. He had given his life, all of his life, in thankfulness to the God who had made him, and it made him who he was—in this case, to my benefit.

As I told the eight o’clock congregation, I won’t give you all 45 years (oh, I’m supposed to lie, all 35 years) of my life. But you know how it goes, that still, small voice grows and speaks, and where it all ends up is in the birthday chair. Back in the birthday chair, giving my life as an expression of thanksgiving, knit together in a communion so mystical and beautiful that in all of life’s circumstances, there is a depth of grace that transforms all things. There were commissions on ministries, there were discernment groups in my home parish, and there were standing committees. There were archdeacons across the parking lot, one named Rick Cluett and, indeed, as the church would have it, that still, small voice speaking in me led to ordination. Now the ministry that I share, the time and the talent and the treasures that I give, is a ministry of priesthood.

For those of you who have memorized the examination of the priesthood found in the Book of Common Prayer, it goes like this: You are to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people with whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach and declare God’s forgiveness, to pronounce God’s blessings, and to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of the body and blood, and to perform other ministrations entrusted to you. Even in the ordination examination, there is the clause and other duties as assigned. That examination concludes: In all things, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come…nourishing Christ’s people from the riches of grace, and strengthening them to glorify God in this life and the next.

So how is it that I find that place of giving time and talent and treasure? Why do it? It starts in the birthday chair, where all of our lives, yours and mine, are offered in thanksgiving for the gift of life that God gives us. I could list for you the number of ministries here that motivate me for wanting to give my time and my talent and my treasure. There are 67-some ministries that take place because of you being the hands and heart of God in the world. I could list all those, but I will not. Instead I will say to you that the giving of time and talent and treasure as a priest is because I am graced to live in a fabric that is knit together, this mystical and mysterious body of faithful and ordinary people who are nourished from the riches of grace and give God honor by the honesty of their lives, and enrich my life and others with the honor of knowing and serving them. As we lift one another up, we are the very hands and heart of God in the world. Giving time and talent and treasure is easy for me because, when we meet at that table or at that baptismal font as we will shortly, and we share in the communion, I know that you are reaching out your hands to meet the mystery of holiness when you are seeking consolation and comfort because your heart is aching with grief or doubt or fear. I know there are times when you reach out at that altar table, when you reach out your hands to meet the holy because you are seeking forgiveness and healing for hurt and woundedness and transgression. I know that there are times when you reach out your hands to meet the mystery of holiness with certainty and joy, with hope and with passion, because you know, in your heart of hearts, that there is an abundance of grace that passes all understanding. It is as if Henry Heneghan, son of Julie and Ron Heneghan, who have recently moved to Maryland, had it right when he visited his new parish for the first time. As his mother tells the story, he went before the altar, reached out his hands and as the priest came by with the host, he looked up and said, “I’ll take two.”

We do this together, the giving of our time and our talent and our treasure, because it is an abundant grace that nourishes us greatly, and motivates us, and moves us to glorify God at all times as we nourish one another. Thank you for sharing in the ministry of giving ourselves to God, of giving our time, our talent, and our treasure. Amen.