The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 ~ Philippians 3:17-4:1 ~ Luke 13:31-35
Frederick Buechner, in his work entitled A Longing for Home, offers us a metaphor for home. It is a spiritual, emotional and sometimes physical place. It is a stirring up of rich and complex emotions – the notion of home. The idea of home, he suggests, is a place to which we have a sense of belonging and what we feel when we are in that place. It is a state of being that all will be well even when things are not going particularly well. Home!
Buechner suggests that to reflect on the idea of home often begs each of us to think back to our childhood, where an experience that was real or one that we dreamed about conjures up a state of being, that sees home as a place where we are safe, nurtured, cared for, where we can grow in stature and freedom. However, he says, that is not always the reality for everyone. Indeed, the idea of home, he suggests, is of that safety, of care, of nurture, of growth, of freedom in all of us.
Home is that state of being planted deep inside of us that he feels most of us spend our days longing for. That state of being that places us as belonging, as accepted, as secure with a certain level of hope and a level of certainty that all things are good, even when things are difficult. I believe this plays in our Old Testament story today. Abram, as the leader of a nomadic people, seems to be in negotiations with the God who created him and has claimed his people as his own.
Abram is seeking and searching for a place called home—a place where his descendants would taste life. In this particular case, a fixed place, a physical place. This comes in a promise of things unseen for Abram because God has made a promise to him, not only that he will have a place—a land—but also that he will have descendants that would be as many as the stars. At this point, Abram has yet to lay eye on either of these things.
It is what is inside of Abram that the idea of home for these nomadic people in these important ancient times gave him. Indeed, Abram would find the granting of land and what is in it with the promise of the stars, the potential for life for his people. It would be a place to grow, to be, to live and learn, to laugh, to eat of the fruits of the earth, to be sustained by the waters of life that flowed from it. It would be a place where his people would be safe and secure; a place where they could be. This is a big deal for nomadic people where Abram and his people were at this time. This would be a place to settle, to be a community to raise and care for their children, the sick and the aged, to find industry in the fruits of the earth. It is a big deal that is going on in the story. It is a place that Abraham could find home, his descendants would find purpose and the covenant they will make. Abraham would trust in God, he would be their God, and they would belong to God. That belonging would call them to their side of the covenant that would be to be God’s people in the world, to live and love in a radical way that they had never imagined or dreamed of. God would pitch a tent with them and they with God. They would indeed come home!
Lent—this is the second Sunday of Lent, by the way, for those of you who are keeping the calendar. Lent is a time to explore home, a time to explore the covenant that we have made and that God has made with us, to explore the home of our hearts where we long for God. We ask God once again, what is the purpose of our lives? How are we to be God’s people?
How many of you, if you could raise your hand, have lived and moved and had your being all of your days in the Lehigh Valley? Raise your hands high. Yes. Most of us, in the world in which we live today, find ourselves as a nomadic people. Few of us these days live and move and have our being in one place throughout all of our lives. Certainly we are connected, even in that nomadic lifestyle, in an unprecedented way. Although we do not live in community, the same community all of our lives, we do find ourselves now connected in a global community in unprecedented ways. Within minutes, we now read and see images of our connections to one another.
This past week, within minutes, I was connected with the pain and suffering and brought back home as my life-long best friend, childhood friend, lost his 22-year old son to a drug overdose. Within minutes I was connected by telephone to the person I could not touch, I could not embrace, and in whose heart I knew I needed to break with. Within minutes I was connected by, yes, dare I say it, Facebook, as I read his wife’s posting on her Facebook page declaring how brokenhearted she was. Within minutes I was connected to all of those from home as they reached out from across the country with prayers and heartfelt expressions of support.
Within minutes we witnessed the devastation of yet one more earthquake. (And I’m getting to the point where I might just be thinking God may be telling us something.) One earthquake was off the coast of Japan that did, indeed, affect the small islands of Japan and quickly went off the radar screen to the bigger earthquake that was in Chile yesterday. Within minutes we were seeing images, either on the Internet or on the news, of the brokenness and the devastation of our brothers and sisters in another time and in another place. Within minutes we heard and read about the possibility of a tsunami coming and hitting Hawaii, and within minutes I was reaching out to friends who live there, asking them if they were okay. Within minutes I was relieved as I watched and saw that, indeed, the surge was not one that would devastate. Within minutes, we are connected to one another. We stand not all that far from the distance of Ash Wednesday. In the midst of uncertainty and tragedy, as our bishop reminded us in a prayer he sent to us by email yesterday, we are reminded of the fragile nature of humankind. Yet in that fragile nature, we are called home. We are called home to find the spiritual promise that results in our purpose. When we go home, we are met in our longing for care and nurture, for grace and freedom. We are met by a God who stands firm with us, even when things are not going all that well—
especially when things are not going all that well. Somehow in that spiritual union—in our setting up tents and inviting God into our homes, we find the gumption to reach out and reach into the brokenness of others. It is what makes us God’s people. We find a God who makes a covenant with us, a covenant of presence and promise. We are called to work through the ashes of life. We are called to have the courage to dirty our hands and faces as we reach out and lift one another up. This is the sacred space of home. It is not a place we long for to hide or to retire, but a place that calls us to discover who it is that God made us to be—that is, desperate lovers of one another.
Amen.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The First Sunday of Lent
The Very Rev. Robert V. Taylor
I invite you to imagine this scene. It is Ash Wednesday in a large urban church. In the tradition of that place one of the clergy is available throughout the day to impose ashes for anyone who wants to receive them. The lines form early in the morning with people on their way to work; the line snakes through the church all day. Most of those who come are unfamiliar faces to the clergy.
My friend, who is rector of that congregation, was sitting in the pew meditating as he watched the expectant faces, the attentive body language, of those waiting to receive ashes. He was startled, surprised and unprepared for what he saw. He noticed a woman in line wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women. After receiving the ashes she stopped to say “thank you” to him. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked. “For the ashes. I come every year for them” she said. My friend was a little perplexed and said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking you this, but you are Muslim and yet you are thanking me for the ashes that you come each year to receive. I’m not sure I understand.” She smiled broadly at him; one of those wise smiles from deep within. Thinking for a moment she said, “The ashes remind me to be grounded, to pay attention to my life, to become the person of love I try to be. Coming here to receive them makes me think of being welcomed by God.” She added, “Thank you for this gift. And now, I have to go to work.” My friend watched her leave, marveling at the sight of this woman leaving a church, wearing a hajib with ashes on her forehead. Although he’d been a priest for 29 years he felt as though he had just had an insight into the Ashes of Lent unlike any other. The unexpected love and generosity of God has been experienced in a surprising way through this visitor.
When I first heard his story I thought about the Holy One always breaking through the enclosures of what we think we know. I wondered if the ashes are as compelling and inviting to many of us as they are to that occasional visitor. I wonder what the ashes of Lent mean for you? Do we share the yearning of that occasional visitor? The story is a window in to the generosity of God; the generosity that Lent invites us to rediscover, the generosity of Jesus who always invites people in, never excluding. Are the ashes an invitation to pay attention to your life, to draw closer into the love that Jesus bears? To go beyond the quick fixes that we’re tempted by in our own lives and go deeper.
In today’s Gospel we encounter Jesus faced with the choice of easy solutions; to be an instant rock star meeting the worlds needs and remaking it as he might see fit. The temptations were designed to keep him from trusting his voice, denying his imagination and manipulating his generous compassion by setting him off course. Instead, Jesus trusts his own voice and imagination. This story invites us to trust our own voice and imagination as well.
The gift of Lent is modeled after the spacious forty days that Jesus spent wrestling with all that conspired to keep him from his life’s purpose. As he wrestled with the ashes of the world and those of his own life he was able to trust his own imagination. Look at his tempter! He was offering a menu of ago old cheap illusions, of ways to avoid being fully alive. The tempters enticements were rancid, old news, devoid of any imagination. The tempter did not understand that getting mussed up in the ashes and the muddiness of life had allowed Jesus to know the truth that we are made in God’s imagination.
Jesus was preparing to invite people into a dance, or a walk to the center of a labyrinth; a way of going deeper into the heart of generous love that must have seemed insane to the Tempter.
Joseph Campbell says that each of us must have a place that we go to every day where no one knows you and where you owe no one anything; a place where you do not know who you work for, who you are married to; a place that is for our own self. Jesus’ time in the desert was such a place. Lent invites us to return to or create those spaces to listen to our voice, to trust our imagination.
Do the ashes invite us to return to that which grounds us on our spiritual journey? I had an unexpected and amusing reminder of that grounding in my own life a few years ago. I was on a short list of candidates being considered for nomination as a Bishop in California. The time arrived to interview with a team representing the Search Committee. The came to Seattle for interviews with a variety of people and used the offices of a rabbi friend at a neighboring synagogue. The Temple was a familiar place to me. I had attended and participated in services there. It was a fairly typical, wet, grey January morning in Seattle.
After parking the car I suddenly realized that I couldn’t find the correct door to enter through. I felt a tinge of panic. This was not a time to be lost! As I went from the front doors, headed towards the north side of the buildings, I took a massive slide! There I was dressed for the interview, wearing a suit, looking fairly formal, sliding on the moss and mud, and finally landing on the ground. My hands were grazed and covered with dirt. There was mud on my trousers. The materials I had inside a folder were splattered with mud and dirt. As I fell, I was surprised by my reaction. As I braced for the fall and the dirt I was laughing at myself and my impeccable timing!
It was a great moment! It felt messy. It made me think about the root word for humility, of humus which means “earth” and which is related to the word for “low” and “humble”. They are words which reflect our dependence on the Divine One and on one another. The interview went well and afterwards I wondered if that had something to do with falling in the mud. Any potential for self-importance in the interview was tempered by the foibles and imperfections of my own steps and missteps. The unexpected gift of landing in the mud was the reminder to take myself lightly.
Whatever the mud or ashes are experienced as in your own life, it is usually an invitation to walk lightly into what beckons us. The ashes of Lent invite a return to the grounding of your life. Our own journey to the heart of Divine Love is usually discovered in getting mussed up in the dirt and ashes. It’s there that we re-discover our oneness with God. Through the ashes you discover or re-discover that you are loved for no reason than that of your existence. Emerging from the ashes we are able to open some of our self-fulfilling enclosures which keep us from loving with abandonment.
The ashes, the mud, are not about gloomy glumness. As Jesus emerged from his forty days, with clarity about his person, his life and his work, so we are invited to become fully alive in new ways through the work we do in Lent. We’re invited to be re-grounded in the truth that the only message of Jesus is one of generous love. God says to us, “Please know that you are loved for nothing other than your existence. Please know you are loved and beloved of God. And so is every single person. Please, I need you to be my helpers in making that love known. Please!”
Robert V. Taylor invites you to visit www.robertvtaylor.com
I invite you to imagine this scene. It is Ash Wednesday in a large urban church. In the tradition of that place one of the clergy is available throughout the day to impose ashes for anyone who wants to receive them. The lines form early in the morning with people on their way to work; the line snakes through the church all day. Most of those who come are unfamiliar faces to the clergy.
My friend, who is rector of that congregation, was sitting in the pew meditating as he watched the expectant faces, the attentive body language, of those waiting to receive ashes. He was startled, surprised and unprepared for what he saw. He noticed a woman in line wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women. After receiving the ashes she stopped to say “thank you” to him. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked. “For the ashes. I come every year for them” she said. My friend was a little perplexed and said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking you this, but you are Muslim and yet you are thanking me for the ashes that you come each year to receive. I’m not sure I understand.” She smiled broadly at him; one of those wise smiles from deep within. Thinking for a moment she said, “The ashes remind me to be grounded, to pay attention to my life, to become the person of love I try to be. Coming here to receive them makes me think of being welcomed by God.” She added, “Thank you for this gift. And now, I have to go to work.” My friend watched her leave, marveling at the sight of this woman leaving a church, wearing a hajib with ashes on her forehead. Although he’d been a priest for 29 years he felt as though he had just had an insight into the Ashes of Lent unlike any other. The unexpected love and generosity of God has been experienced in a surprising way through this visitor.
When I first heard his story I thought about the Holy One always breaking through the enclosures of what we think we know. I wondered if the ashes are as compelling and inviting to many of us as they are to that occasional visitor. I wonder what the ashes of Lent mean for you? Do we share the yearning of that occasional visitor? The story is a window in to the generosity of God; the generosity that Lent invites us to rediscover, the generosity of Jesus who always invites people in, never excluding. Are the ashes an invitation to pay attention to your life, to draw closer into the love that Jesus bears? To go beyond the quick fixes that we’re tempted by in our own lives and go deeper.
In today’s Gospel we encounter Jesus faced with the choice of easy solutions; to be an instant rock star meeting the worlds needs and remaking it as he might see fit. The temptations were designed to keep him from trusting his voice, denying his imagination and manipulating his generous compassion by setting him off course. Instead, Jesus trusts his own voice and imagination. This story invites us to trust our own voice and imagination as well.
The gift of Lent is modeled after the spacious forty days that Jesus spent wrestling with all that conspired to keep him from his life’s purpose. As he wrestled with the ashes of the world and those of his own life he was able to trust his own imagination. Look at his tempter! He was offering a menu of ago old cheap illusions, of ways to avoid being fully alive. The tempters enticements were rancid, old news, devoid of any imagination. The tempter did not understand that getting mussed up in the ashes and the muddiness of life had allowed Jesus to know the truth that we are made in God’s imagination.
Jesus was preparing to invite people into a dance, or a walk to the center of a labyrinth; a way of going deeper into the heart of generous love that must have seemed insane to the Tempter.
Joseph Campbell says that each of us must have a place that we go to every day where no one knows you and where you owe no one anything; a place where you do not know who you work for, who you are married to; a place that is for our own self. Jesus’ time in the desert was such a place. Lent invites us to return to or create those spaces to listen to our voice, to trust our imagination.
Do the ashes invite us to return to that which grounds us on our spiritual journey? I had an unexpected and amusing reminder of that grounding in my own life a few years ago. I was on a short list of candidates being considered for nomination as a Bishop in California. The time arrived to interview with a team representing the Search Committee. The came to Seattle for interviews with a variety of people and used the offices of a rabbi friend at a neighboring synagogue. The Temple was a familiar place to me. I had attended and participated in services there. It was a fairly typical, wet, grey January morning in Seattle.
After parking the car I suddenly realized that I couldn’t find the correct door to enter through. I felt a tinge of panic. This was not a time to be lost! As I went from the front doors, headed towards the north side of the buildings, I took a massive slide! There I was dressed for the interview, wearing a suit, looking fairly formal, sliding on the moss and mud, and finally landing on the ground. My hands were grazed and covered with dirt. There was mud on my trousers. The materials I had inside a folder were splattered with mud and dirt. As I fell, I was surprised by my reaction. As I braced for the fall and the dirt I was laughing at myself and my impeccable timing!
It was a great moment! It felt messy. It made me think about the root word for humility, of humus which means “earth” and which is related to the word for “low” and “humble”. They are words which reflect our dependence on the Divine One and on one another. The interview went well and afterwards I wondered if that had something to do with falling in the mud. Any potential for self-importance in the interview was tempered by the foibles and imperfections of my own steps and missteps. The unexpected gift of landing in the mud was the reminder to take myself lightly.
Whatever the mud or ashes are experienced as in your own life, it is usually an invitation to walk lightly into what beckons us. The ashes of Lent invite a return to the grounding of your life. Our own journey to the heart of Divine Love is usually discovered in getting mussed up in the dirt and ashes. It’s there that we re-discover our oneness with God. Through the ashes you discover or re-discover that you are loved for no reason than that of your existence. Emerging from the ashes we are able to open some of our self-fulfilling enclosures which keep us from loving with abandonment.
The ashes, the mud, are not about gloomy glumness. As Jesus emerged from his forty days, with clarity about his person, his life and his work, so we are invited to become fully alive in new ways through the work we do in Lent. We’re invited to be re-grounded in the truth that the only message of Jesus is one of generous love. God says to us, “Please know that you are loved for nothing other than your existence. Please know you are loved and beloved of God. And so is every single person. Please, I need you to be my helpers in making that love known. Please!”
Robert V. Taylor invites you to visit www.robertvtaylor.com
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