Sunday, April 28, 2013



The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Good morning! 

Well once again I find myself as a preacher climbing into this pulpit and once again coming off of a peculiar and difficult week.  We’ve had a difficult week.  Like you I watched the images.  I listened to as many reports as I could stand.  At some point, I confess, I got tired of the press just making it up as they went along.  But the truth of the matter is that we have once again endured a tragic and an intentional hurt and harm.  So you and I find ourselves again, this time in the mist of our Eastertide, we come again with a story that we’re familiar with.  It is the story of our faith.  This real story, a story of Good Friday and of Easter lest we forget.  Like the disciples in Jerusalem, who followed Jesus who they put their entire trust and hope in only to see it devastated literally by an intentional act of harm on the cross, we find ourselves this week going to Boston where we indeed again are invited in to the depth of grief and horror and terror, like the disciples found themselves at.  It is indeed the foot of the cross where we stand again.  And like them, who locked themselves away in fear, we might find ourselves on this day joining a lament. 

Somehow this lament reminded me of W.H. Auden’s,

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Whether we join in the grief of those who were harmed and maimed in Boston or those who lost loved ones or even with those in West Texas, killed and harmed and maimed in an accident, we people of faith rightly might raise our song of lament, we rightly might stand at the foot of the cross.  But once again, like the disciples who went to the cross, who also stared into the events of life, they like us must ask this question, “Is that the end of our story?  Do we stop at the cross and give way to the terror?  Do we allow it to overcome us?”  Or, is ours a story that finds its truth and poignancy in the midst of despair.  A story that calls us up and out.  A story that even brings a hallelujah to our lips.  And here we are finding ourselves in the scriptures today in the Acts of the Apostles.  A story of the followers of Jesus who had watched him die in despair and who are trying to make sense of his resurrection.  Perhaps we’re not so far from those disciples this day. 

Tabitha, her Hebrew name, or Dorcas, her Greek nameboth names translating to gazelle, the spirit of speed and grace, of quickness and of beauty.  Tabitha was a widow of respect in the communities of followers of Jesus.  She put her heart and her trust in the teachings of Jesus and out of that she had a ministry of sewing for the naked and she fed the poor.  She lived in the small village by the sea named Joppa.  And Luke describes her with the Greek word mathétria, that is female disciple, the only time, by the way, that word is used in the New Testament.  Tabitha is a fabric of the believers in Jesus teaching.  She was one, we believe, who joined with the disciples, who knew all of the disciples, who grieved desperately and violently on that day that Jesus was killed.  And who lived with hope in her heart and the belief that what Jesus stood for and was had been risen anew in the world.  It is this Tabitha who is dead.  Peter and the disciples are known to be just 12 miles away12 miles is pretty far in those days.  And they send for Peter, their leader to come and perhaps join them in the grieving of one so faithful to their cause.  And what happens next in the story in the Acts of the Apostles is what determines who we are should we chose it.  Peter comes to Tabitha already lying dead in an upper room.   And Peter it is who comes and kneels by her side and prays.  And as he prays, Tabitha opens her eyes.  And when she recognizes that it is Peter, fellow follower of Jesus, she takes his hand as he literally lifts her from the depth of death.  He takes her to the window and shows her to the community of believers, to the beloved, for those who love her and mourn for her and proclaims her alive.  This is an important story in the Acts of the Apostles because it is the decision point for the early followers of Jesus.  Will they be a community of believers who believed that the one they had put all their hope and trust in was dead and buried or would they become the resurrection through their witness and through their actions.  Peter chooses resurrection.  We’ve had a difficult week.  We’ve had a difficult week again in our country and in our community.  And, if you’re like me, what you want to do then is come and be with those whose voice you know, whose faces you want to see and the community that lifts you up.  So, like Tabitha, who is it in your life whose voice you most need to hear when grief grabs on to your heart?  And when you open your eyes in the morning, who is the first person that you want to see?  And when you are down and out and overcome by all that that may overcome you in this life and in this world, who is it most in your life who you wish to reach out to a hand that will lift you up?  So in it all again, my fellow followers of Christ, we’re asked to be a resurrection people.  We’re asked to say our lament for Jesus certainly knew that we wouldn’t be lifted away from the challenges of life.  But, through Jesus in the midst of those challenges, we have another song to sing.  So the images I’ve latched onto are the images of the brave who ran into the midst of that horrible chaos, the images of those who literally reached down into the muck, who literally reached down into the pain and the suffering, who literally reached down into the carnage and lifted up those who needed to hear a voice who needed to see a face of aid and who literally needed to be carried to sanctuary.   

The song we’re asked to sing is a difficult song.  And even in the midst of what is the world in which we live, we people of faith, and we’ve seen it over and over and over and over again, sing the songs of resurrection.  Which say there is life even in the midst of death.  There is hope even in the midst of fear.  There is love which overcomes terror.  Whereas Tony Campollo once said quoting an old Negro spiritual, Good Fridays indeed may come but Sundays, there always a comin’.  Amen.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

The Third Sunday of Easter


The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

How do we recognize the Risen Christ today?

In the gospel reading we have the disciples, who have gone back to their everyday lives, bringing their boat back to the beach after a long, unsuccessful night of fishing. Jesus is standing on the shore calling out to them, but they do not know that it is Jesus. They had trouble recognizing the Risen Christ even when he was right in front of them.

Now here are you and I two millennia later, and I think we are faced with the same dilemma, the same question; how do we recognize the risen Christ while we are in the midst of our own everyday lives? How do we know it is Jesus who calls? How do we know it is Jesus who stands right in front of us?

How do we even come to know Jesus at all in our own day and time? It was so difficult for those who were with him way back then in his day and time.

We heard in the reading from Acts that Saul, who was a very devout man of God, a leader in the faith, thought that Jesus was a revolutionary, disturber of the peace, fomenting insurrection that would bring down everybody with it. He was so convinced the he knew precisely who Jesus was, what Jesus was, what Jesus was doing, that he dedicated his life to ridding the world of his followers.

So how did Saul come to know the real Jesus? This is how: “suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" He asked, "Who are you, Lord?" The reply came, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

He came to know Jesus, because Jesus smacked him down! Gave him a hit upside the head to get his attention. He gave him a timeout, so that he nothing to do but ponder and learn and get to know Jesus and eventually to follow Jesus in his way.

The writer Flannery O’Connor once said of Paul, “I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse.” Not that the scripture says that Paul was on a horse. But we get the idea.

The story of Saul’s conversion to faith and the apostleship of Paul – by the way, his real name was Saulus Paulus. Saul as his fellow Jews called him was known by his more formal name, Paul, out in the wider Greco-Roman world – his story has almost become the standard by which all conversions have come to be judged. “I had a Damascus Road experience.”

Some people have, indeed, come to know Jesus through such a powerful, cataclysmic, life-altering experience. But I confess to you this morning that I am not numbered among them. I have not had a Damascus Road type encounter with the risen Christ.

There are moments when I envy those who have had such an encounter. Things become so clear, so absolute, so sure. No doubt about it. “Yup, that was the moment when I came to know Jesus.” Sometimes I think that would have been nice. Other times I am not sure that I want a smack down by Jesus.

But nevertheless I have not met Jesus that way. How about you? Think for a moment, remember when you come know Jesus as the risen Christ, as the Lord of life, as the Son of God, as the way to live out your life? Remember…

By the way, if you are here today, this morning, in church, in a worship service, you know Jesus. You may not know all about Jesus. You may not know Jesus as well as you want to, but you know Jesus. How do you think that happened? How is that you have come to know Jesus well enough to seek him?

As for me, the knowing of Jesus is just something that has grown in my heart, little by little, moment by moment, day by day, challenge by challenge. Even for someone such as I –  a priest, a professional believer – Jesus has at times been elusive, absent, a low priority, confusing, frightening, demanding, inconvenient, forgotten.

But what I have come to know over all these days and years is that Jesus is always, always, always seeking me out and seeking you out. I have learned that Jesus is the main character in any conversion story. It is Jesus who changes lives. It is Jesus who changes my life and your life. All we have to do is to want him to be in our lives. All we have to do is to let him be in our lives. And then we will know him and we will meet him in all the moments of our lives, in the people in our lives – be they family, friend or stranger, near neighbor or man, woman, or child across the world.

All we have to do to know Jesus is to want to; to want him in our lives; to want him in our hearts. That is the grace. That is the Amazing Grace.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

Jesus. We do the seeking, Jesus does the finding. And before we have thought to seek him, we have been found by him. Amazing grace.

Do you want to see Jesus? You can and you will. If you seek him you will find him, because he is seeking you. You may meet him in church. You may meet him in your work or play. You may meet him in prayer. You may meet him in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. You may meet him in a stranger. You may meet him in a loved one. You may meet him in a need that is presented to you. But rest assured he has found us already.

If we find him and later lose him, if we lose our way, we simply seek him again. And we will find him and know him. We will know again that he is our peace. That he is where we will know God’s love and mercy and forgiveness. That he is where we will find what it is we are to do.

We hear his words to Peter, Simon son of John. And because we know Jesus they are for us too.

“Do you love me? Follow me.”

In the name of Jesus, the Risen Christ. Amen.