The Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

Today in our readings we have many beautiful images that are being painted with words for us. In Isaiah, we have the image of God as mother and Zion as child. God, in this metaphor, is described like a pregnant woman and creation as her child, moving in the womb. God can no more forget us than a pregnant mother can forget the child that lives within her. Isaiah restates this and said God is like a nursing mother, unable to take her mind off of the child that she must feed every hour or two, her very body protesting if too much time goes by between feedings. A number of my girlfriends have been having children lately, so I know from being around nursing women and any of you who have been a nursing woman, there is a sort of second plane of existence that happens when you are responsible for nourishing another being. You really can’t ever take your focus off of what’s going on with that baby.

This is powerful stuff that we’re getting today. This is beautiful, tender stuff. We are told that not only can God not forget us, but God inscribes our names on the palms of his hands so that we are always comforted and held within him. These beautiful pictures go on into Matthew’s gospel with the lilies and the birds. I can’t read this passage without thinking of a hymn that was sung to me as a child and I think everyone knows it, even if you weren’t Southern Baptist at one time. It’s about how God’s eye is always upon us. “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free. His eyes are on the sparrow, so I know he watches me.” It’s such a beautiful sense and a wonderful sense of how important we are to God.

God’s eye is always upon us. He cares for the birds of the air so how could he possibly forget us? We are told not to worry about what we will eat because God feeds all of his creatures, even those who don’t sow or reap, or store up in barns. We are told also not to worry about how we are clothed and where we will find clothing. We are told to look to the lilies of the field that are clothed in the purest white and cloth of gold, clothed even surpassing the lavishness of Solomon but, like the grasses, they only wither and die. So how much more must God love us, whose lives are longer than a thousand lilies?

We are given all of this beautiful reassurance throughout the readings today and then we are told, don’t be anxious. This is one of those questions or one of those statements that Jesus makes throughout his Gospel that catches us off guard, if we are really listening. This part of Matthew comes right after the Beatitudes, so we are still in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus gives these wonderful comforts and then says, so don’t be anxious. I think for most of us, on one hand we can weigh those beautiful comforts, but on the other hand we can still have a lot of anxiety because everything we see every day is telling us to be anxious. You can’t get on the Internet or open a newspaper or call your mother, in my case, without being reminded of all the things that we should be worrying about.

So how do we live as a non-anxious presence in an anxious world? I don’t think that Jesus is telling us today that we shouldn’t worry about where things come from, that we shouldn’t plan ahead, that we shouldn’t try to make sure that we are covering our future needs, but I think what he is telling us is actually we shouldn’t let that worry become so central to our lives, so much a part of our being, that we are paralyzed by it. We are anxious because we have reason to be anxious. There are many frightening things going on in the world today. We have many more worries – we have to worry about college funds, retirement plans, bank bailouts, all of these things, but all of this anxiety serves to keep our focus on ourselves, and ultimately to keep our focus off of our neighbor and off of God.

How do we live a non-anxious life? I think the only answer that we have to this question truly is prayer. Prayer is the only real balm that we have. There is a school of thought that defines sin as distance from God, and I think that anxiety can fall under the same definition. When we are so anxious that we can only focus inward, we can only focus on our own immediate needs, we can’t focus outward. We can’t make room for God to come in and hold us with the palms of his hands, and comfort us, and give us his strength. So how do we pray? I think ultimately prayer, at its essence, is learning to be comfortable with our silent selves and in that way, becoming comfortable with God. I think this can only be achieved through constant steady conversation with God. If we have a prayer life, then we have a foundation for an examined and non-anxious life, and a life that can then be turned over to the work of God rather than anxiety.

How do we pray? We pray in many ways. As Episcopalians, obviously we come together corporately on Sunday mornings, on Wednesday mornings, on Saturday evenings, and we pray together. We know that we can find God and hear God in the midst of our community. We also pray individually. For me, silence is key in this. Now you can pray on your knees, you can pray on a walk, you can pray on a comfortable chair, looking out the window or sort of sitting in that place that’s in between waking and sleeping, but I think the important aspect is that it is intentional. We intentionally give ourselves a moment to stop, lay aside the worries of the day, clear our heads, clear our minds, give ourselves over to God, and give God the opportunity to be present in our lives, to be present in us. We must empty ourselves so that we can be filled with God’s love.

So prayer is intentional and prayer is self-examining, but ultimately, I think, if we keep at it, we will find ourselves in a place where we will know with certainty that, just as God’s eye is on the sparrow, he is always watching us, and our anxieties will leave us at last as we remember that we are inscribed on the palms of God’s hands always, and he can never forget us.

Amen.

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Stephen Bayne, a wise bishop and saint of this church, wrote many years ago:  God put freedom into his created universe in order that the universe could respond to his love with an answering love of its own – given out of its freedom. That’s Life.

The scripture appointed for this day lays before us a stark and clear presentation of a choice. “… today I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him…”

The choice is to align one’s life according to God’s way and know the blessings that will come in the doing or to follow in some other way and reap what is sown down that path.

As I was driving around the Lehigh Valley the other day, I saw a church sign that read, “God’s message doesn’t change”. I believe that to be true. The core truth is the core truth. But who hears it changes. The era in which it is heard changes. The culture through which it is heard changes. The time in the life of the person who hears it changes.

One time I heard God’s message was as a newly ordained person Then I drove around in a car left over from a more frivolous time of my life. It was a hot, little orange/red Fiat convertible sport car that wore a bumper sticker that declared, “Choose Life!” (Actually it is kind of fun to remember those days when “father” would drive up in it to parishioners’ homes.)

But this was not some adolescent hippie exclamation, nor was it an anti-abortion slogan. It was more basic than that. It was more of a primal shout! What I wanted to say to the world in my youthful enthusiasm was “Choose LIFE”. Choose a way of life that leads to joy and exuberance and love, and provides a pathway through the tough times of life that come to one and all regardless of stature or status. Choose life that ultimately leads to living in God’s blessing and returns to God and the people among whom we live a love that answers God’s love given in our creation.

It is, I believe, the deep desire of God’s heart that we make the choice for Life. It is as we pray in the Eucharistic prayer, Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace. Claiming God’s love, receiving God’s love, and living in God’s love is the “way of freedom and peace.”

It is not the way to a problem-free life, it is not a way to escape the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it is not a way to dodge all the stuff that life throws at us, it is not the way to skip the pains of aging or adolescence or sexuality or any kind of hard time. But it is a way through them.

Those times are part of life, but they don’t define our lives. They are part of us, but they don’t define us. We have been created for freedom, and peace, and love and if we are faithful in our living, steadfast in our doing, then we will know freedom, we will know peace, we will abide in love.

There are forces that would draw us away from these, take us down other paths, seduce us into other ways, try to make us a different person – some of those forces come from outside of us and some come from within ourselves.

But we know, too, that within us and within all of humankind there are stronger powers drawing us toward the love of God and toward the God given right of freedom and peace and life lived in tranquility with family and neighbor alike.

Our nation is based on this belief, is based on these truths. Our Declaration of Independence boldly states what could not be seen and was not known in the lives of the people at that time in this place, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And to bring those things that are ours by divine right into being, we ordered ourselves as a nation. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

A people claimed their heritage as God’s creation and wanted the ability for themselves and their children to live in peace, justice, and freedom. That’s what God intended in the beginning and that’s what our forebears brought into being. They chose Life.

And it is amazing to me that in my adult life I have seen the same choice made by the people of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Latvia and Estonia, and East Germany and in each of the countries of the Soviet Union. The choice for Life was made by the people of South Africa, the choice for Life was made by the people of Southern Sudan, the choice for Life was made by the people of Tunisia, and in these last days the choice for Life was made by the people of Egypt.

The people claim the promise that predates even God’s Covenant with Moses. “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

Our president declared on Friday, “This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have … (put) the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence -- not terrorism, not mindless killing -- but nonviolence (the) moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

“And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can't help but hear the echoes of history -- echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.

“The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people -- of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.”

We stand in awe and we kneel to give thanks to God that “we have seen the hand of God at work in the world around us” once again when God’s people have chosen LIFE. It is the deep desire at the heart of God that we Choose Life.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

In the world of Biblical criticism and scholarship, there is a constant tension between two ways of approaching scripture.

These are Exegesis v. eisegesis.

Exegesis (from the Greek meaning “to lead out”) is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The goal of Biblical exegesis is to explore the meaning of the text which then leads to discovering its significance or relevance.

Exegesis includes a wide range of critical disciplines: textual criticism is the investigation into the history and origins of the text, but exegesis may include the study of the historical and cultural backgrounds for the author, the text, and the original audience. Other analysis includes classification of the type of literary genres present in the text, and an analysis of grammatical and syntactical features in the text itself. Most modern, or post-modern, commentaries on the Bible take exactly this approach, and you will find endless footnotes telling you the subtleties of the translation or giving you historical context so that one can better wrap one’s mind around the words on the page.

Eisegesis (from the Greek meaning “into”) is the process of misinterpreting a text in such a way that it introduces one's own ideas, reading into the text. While exegesis draws out the meaning from the text, eisegesis occurs when a reader reads his/her interpretation into the text. As a result, exegesis tends to be objective when employed effectively while eisegesis is regarded as highly subjective.

This sounds pretty black and white- but anyone who has ever translated something from one language to another knows that it is very much a grey area, words in one do not have exact correlatives in the other, choices are made that result in one shade of meaning over another, and the end result is always somewhat subjective, which is exactly why we have the practice of exegesis in the first place.

I mention all of this because the Gospel passage we heard today is probably one of the most exegeted, and most eisegeted, in our canon. We’ve read this passage as a formula for getting into God’s grace, a set of instructions for how to become a child of God, instead of an affirmation of our belovedness from before we were formed in the womb.

The phrase “salt of the earth” has come to mean something quite different than what it would have meant to the Gospel writers- where we hear it as meaning good, simple, and honest, two thousand years ago, when salt was the only spice widely available and was used not only for preserving foods but also for enhancing their flavors, it would have meant something special, something that made common things greater.

In the same way, the strength of light in a world before electricity is perhaps something we can’t wrap our minds around- it is hard now to get away from light, one must go far from populated areas to see the night sky without ambient brightness from streetlights, cars, humanity. So the power and promise of a single lamp doesn’t quite impact us, I think, with the weight it is meant to have.

Fred Craddock, writing in the Christian Century, says this about today’s Gospel: “For the first context, Jesus offers affirmation, warning and instruction. The affirmation is in two vivid images, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world.” Notice “You are” not “You ought to be or should try to be.” Both salt and light are so basic and essential to human life that Jesus felt no need to spell out what this meant. However, having introduced the existence of hostility toward the gospel, Jesus does elaborate on what can happen to God’s people under persecution and sustained opposition. Salt can lose its integrity, its identifying quality as salt. This does not occur suddenly, of course, but so gradually that those to whom it happens do not perceive themselves as changing and cannot identify later a single time or place when their faith ceased. Certainly the loss was not intentional; it was more a matter of drifting away…

“Or, says Jesus, how easy it is to lose initiative in mission and take up a posture of protection and defense after one suffers verbal, physical, social or economic abuse for one’s faith. For example, building a city on a hill is sound strategy for self-defense, but the increased visibility attracts even more hostility. Or again, putting a lamp under a bushel certainly reduces the chance of having it blown out, but the price for such protection is darkness. In other words, the way of Christ is mission: witnessing and benevolent intrusion into the life of the world.

There is no way that Christ’s cause can be converted into an individual or community lifestyle of self-interest, self-protection and defense against vulnerability. To do so is not to interpret Christ differently, but to abandon him. The way of Christ is to take the initiative and rather than hide from the world, let the light shine in the hopeful trust that the praise of God will be increased.

This is perhaps easy to hear but more difficult to live. We are constantly assailed by messages that we could be better, do more, work harder. Instead, Jesus is telling us, we should strive to be faithful above all else.

This is a tough message to hear, particularly for us, right? As Americans, as a country of folks founded on the notion that, like a character out of a Horatio Alger story, anyone being able to pull themselves up by the boot straps and become wildly successful with enough hard work, and for us as Protestant, Reformation Christians, who have heard these passages used for generations to reinforce the notion of righteousness by works, that if we just work hard enough, pray correctly, God will admit us to his love.

The message today is radical- our place in the kingdom is assured, has been since our creation, and our responsibility is to live out the power of that assurance, the confidence that is only possible through God's wide embrace. This isn’t something we can do. This is something we have to be.

Jesus said he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, to complete it- and by living into the spirit of the covenant God made with us In our births, into the gifts that God has given us, we spread the light of God’s love in the dark places we encounter, we spread our saltiness in all that we undertake, and finally we rest in the knowledge that if all that we do is grounded in Christ, it will have been well done.