June 17, 2012 Proper 6

June 17, 2012

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, PA

                                             Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 6

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

I Samuel 15:34-16:13; Mark 4:26-34

First, let me name the day that is today in our secular calendar. Father’s day. A prayer of thanksgiving we lift for Father’s and for the vocation of Fatherhood.  I pray this is a day that sustains and builds up relationships and a day for warm remembrance. For those who find such days as this difficult, I pray for a peace that passes all our understanding in the depth of love of our God who made and loves us.

As we enter into another election season it has been estimated that nearly 6 billion dollars will be raised and spent in elections all over this country. One somewhat startling characteristic of elections in our era is that more than 90% of elections won is by the candidate with the most money. In stark contrast to machines of image and politically motivated promises we entertain are the subtle stories of scripture that have us introduced to an  anointed shepherd king and mustard shrub kingdoms.

 Mark in his Gospel has Jesus quoting the Prophet Isaiah  just prior to the telling of these parables, that people would “look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand. (Mark 4:12).

The passage from 1 Samuel also invites us into this seeming predicatable habit of the human condition ; seeing those things we wish to see, or understanding those things as we would have them and conversely  not seeing or understanding  holy things and holy direction.

Samuel’s initial and persistent instinct to anoint the one who looks to be the  most attractive candidate is met by a HOLY other set of expectations. The young, inexperienced, eighth option, not even on Samuel’s ballot makes no sense at all to the reasonable mind.  Yet David it is for HOlY choosing. God’s future is God’s, it rarely looks the way we might initially conceive it.

Likewise, Jesus teaches that there are truths about the kingdom difficult for us to see, almost hidden it seems amidst sleeping gardeners and in the branches of an ordinary shrub born of the tiniest of seed.  Subtle, ordinary even, unremarkable and maybe even unnoticed by the human eye and heart when such has been conditioned to look to the glitz and glimmer of a well oiled public relations image or message.

 The truths of the Kingdom of God may not be obvious to any at first glance or even at the twentieth hearing. Even we who are followers of the one who reveals to us the truths of this Kingdom sometimes lose sight of its subtle but powerful truth.

In this era of communication where we would be foolish not to make good use of marketing strategies, webpages, facebook pages and even twitter; we must be careful and mindful of those occasions where for the sake of “building the Kingdom” we reflect what looks good on the outside, but inwardly has very little to do with the one who kingdom begins in something as insignificant as a mustard seed. Indeed like Samuel we may be attracted to the best looking profile of success and Lord Knows we want to be “liked” on our Facebook page posts.

 It takes a holy imagination to see a King in the runt of the litter and to get excited about a mustard shrub. Yet if Scripture is to soak into our hearts we may begin to see and maybe understand that is precisely where the heart of the Kingdom is located.

Our challenge is to lift our eyes from our hypnotic gaze toward  those daily messages fueled by budgets and spectacle making messianic promises for society and life that cannot be kept,  we just might have the eyes to begin seeing God at work right here in the simple mustard shrub shades of the relationships we enjoy and the service we extend. The seeds of the kingdom it seems are sown in the fertile ground of one another’s challenges and hopes and yearning for one another’s authenticity.  In a common belief that the sum of our parts is greater than any of us can ever hope to appropriately post on a facebook page.

Those who find rest in the shade of this congregation’s  branches promise no obvious return on investment. The faithful subtlety of ministry of this congregation will win no awards or rewards, or even find itself on the front page of the local paper which seems to prefer stories about churches “failing”.  Instead, we put on our eyes of faith and seek to understand that the Kingdom of heaven is like 35 men on a cold winter night simply eating a good hot meal and sleeping on a cot in a warm auditorium. The Kingdom of heaven is like a fiery and faithful women in her golden years, carrying the sacrament to a lifelong member of the congregation who has just learned they must go to hospice care, Christian friends for years, sharing a holy meal just as they had done many times before, but now with no words spoken other than the prayers they both know, and it is sufficient. Indeed the Kingdom of heaven is like a Sunday School Teacher running a race to raise money and awareness for cancer prevention and treatment, motivated by the quiet and unnoticed bond they have made with a parent of one of their students, conveying hope and extending love, that no ONE but the two can know and understand!

 To many eyes these things might look to be insignificant and unremarkable, to many not even noticeable. Certainly not “newsworthy”, but for those with eyes to see,  the Kingdom of God is blooming. Look.

Trinity Sunday - June 3, 2012 - The Rt. Rev. Paul V. Marshall

Trinity Sunday

June 3, 2012

The Rt. Rev. Paul V. Marshall

In my life in the last two months, I have experienced the birth of a grandchild, the marriage of a wonderfully Christian nephew and spouse, and the election of three of my former seminary students as bishops.  The unexpected learnings and joy of these moments have put me into something of a whirl, and this text from last week’s readings keeps intruding into my thinking, because as I age, I find God showing me the world in ways I could not have anticipated, and that I have to digest and grow into.

So I am still living with a fragment of last week’s Gospel—one that captivated me to a level that I didn’t preach on it last week at Mediator. It is this:

John 16:12-15

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth;

Jesus words about what we cannot bear now but will learn later invite us to deeper wisdom about our entire life cycle.

When a couple learns that they have a child coming, the excitement of that new life can be one of the most beautiful things that happen to them.  People celebrate with them…and then some people start giving advice. Some of it may be useful, some of it may increase fear unnecessarily—but most of it goes unheard because the couple are in one state of mind and are not yet ready for what comes next. Even if you happen to be the world’s leading authority on child development, there is no point in telling a newly pregnant couple the ten most important points about raising a teenager.

Having recently watched the awe and love of new parents up close, I knew that the last thing they need from me was advice about anything. They need my presence, love and support. And when the time comes to learn about raising toddlers, ‘tweens and teens, they will learn—and the knowledge they get then may be fresher than the war stories I could tell them about my mistakes as a father. As a grandfather I think my role is just to love them all. And speak when spoken to.

Again, all of this is meant to remind us that there are, in life, all kinds of things that are true, but depending on where we are, we aren’t ready for them, or as Jesus told his disciples, there are things we can’t bear to know. Let’s take discomfort in that one degree deeper, sticking with the life cycle.

It is a bit of an agony to prepare a couple for marriage: there is so much they cannot hear. They are in love and can hear very little else. They cannot hear that in five or six years their safe conversation will be exhausted, opening the door to tedium and resentment. I cannot tell them that much of what excites them now in their romantic moments can become dull and limited. I cannot tell them how much courage and strength will be required of them to be honest and risk-taking with each other to go to the next level of relationship rather than to sink into what is quiet, safe, and unexciting. I can only tell them that there is a 100% possibility that there will be new and wonderful joys and that there will be new stresses and that the church will indeed be there for them when is it time to grow again.

What this has to do with Trinity Sunday and baptism and confirmation is very important.

The teaching that God is three persons yet one God, and that God is essentially those persons in a constant relationship of creation, love, and outreach, took about 350 years to develop—the Spirit leads the Church into truth at God’s own pace. Other things that we now recognize as obviously true were once utterly unbearable.

An example of unbearable truth is very American. The Wright brothers had an interesting dad. He was a bishop in the Methodist church, and something of a public speaker. He is remembered for giving a fiery sermon on God’s obvious intention that humans should stay out of the air, because God did not intend us to leave the surface of the planet, whether by balloon or other means. A few years later Wilbur and Orville went out to Kitty Hawke and changed the world. His children had to lead him into truth which was unthinkable to him.

In our own past, those of us over a certain age can remember a time when it simply was unthinkable that women could be full partners in human life, unthinkable that they could be assertive without being called pushy, and that their anger and their special joys were not pathology. For some folks, and not just men, those have been very hard truths to receive.

This is the point. One of the most startling things about Christianity for its earlier competitors was that its God did things, led people to new places, that their revelation grew. Their God was in motion—the ideal for the Greeks who followed Plato was that God sat perfectly still contemplating his own perfection—not to much use for people seeking growth or change.

That idea that God is in motion throughout our life is why children are brought to baptism today, and we together thank God that their families want that for them. And I want to say directly to those young people being confirmed today that I know that Nativity has is second to none in having a well developed and challenging confirmation preparation. I say that sincerely, and wish more people put this kind of energy into preparation. You who are to be confirmed have had the best preparation for this day, and have come to this day because you are ready for it, because each of you decided it is something that you personally are ready to do. That gives me great joy and satisfaction; it is something to celebrate, and in Sayre Hall we will continue to celebrate it.

At the same time that I congratulate you on being informed and clear about what you are doing, I just want to plant the same seed that Jesus did: there is a great deal more to learn. The one that is guaranteed is that life still has many stretches and challenges and perhaps some pain ahead. Sometimes you may have to struggle to make sense out of things. Those are precisely the times when you want to get closer to God and be very attentive to where the Spirit may be leading you. The more you know, the more you can learn.

It is precisely at the moments where religion may seem boring or irrelevant that you may be God’s instrument for leading the rest of us to something new. Boredom is not a cue that somebody should entertain you: boredom is a cue that your mind needs to do something. Use boredom or discomfort in school, marriage, job, religion, as a cue to listen hard to what the Holy Spirit may be saying not just to you about your job or marriage, but to all of us.

That can be a little unsettling, that thought of going to a new place. So there is a little prayer I wish I could find a place for in the liturgy. It is this: “Guard us from contempt for what is old and from fear of what is new.” Honoring the old and welcoming the new is a spiritual discipline that works for marriage, job, religion and most of all, for your own life and God leads you through what you may not think you can bear to what you will come to treasure. God who has brought you this far will indeed stay with you for the rest of the journey.