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.
