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.
