Monday, August 12, 2013

Sunday, August 4, 2013

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa



“Therefore let us concern ourselves with heavenly things, not human ones, and like peregrini (pilgrims) always sigh for our homeland, long for our homeland, which is the resurrection.”  St. Columbanus of Bangor, 5th century
Well, hello! If you are visiting with us today, please know that today is a day when we both welcome The Rev. Kim Rowles, as our new associate for family formation ministry, and my own return from a three month sabbatical time. We are delighted that Kim is among us and look forward to her sharing her considerable gifts for ministry.
I return to you from a sabbatical time to share with you an overwhelming sense of gratitude. If I had to boil down in one simple statement the heart of my discovery on this sabbatical time, it would be gratitude. I am overwhelmed by God’s goodness and grace in my life, in my relationships, and in this vocation of witnessing to Christ that I share with you! I am most grateful to you for your prayers and for your continued witness to Christ while I was away.
The week before I returned to the Cathedral, I asked those closest to me (my family) what they thought folks at the Cathedral would like to hear from me upon my first opportunity to preach. I asked if folks would want to hear a sermon or just stories about my sabbatical time. They replied rather quickly, “stories about your sabbatical time, who wants to hear another sermon?” Well, today I hope to share a few stories about my sabbatical time and as I do perhaps you will also have a sermon worthy of holy reception.
The scriptures today have a solid theme. It can be summed up by saying that we human beings consistently struggle and strive to find truth and meaning about our lives through our labors, our relationships, and those things we seek to put our trust in. We human beings consistently do so by placing our trust in those things the world has to offer. We labor hard seeking security, possessions, the safety of shelter, food, recognition, and achievement of successes. We sometimes acquire material things, money, possessions, in the hope of security and comfort and with an authentic desire to provide for those we love best in the generations that follow us. We sometimes see our relationships and behave in them in ways that also bring definition to who we are, or value to who we are. All of this at face value, authentic, and part of the human experience. The scriptures however remind us of the deeper, sometimes mysterious and hidden truths about meaning, authenticity, trust, and value that can only be found in the spiritual realm, a much larger picture. The scriptures today warn and remind us that we too often will place our trust in worldly things to bring this meaning and security, missing the bigger picture of eternal truths that might lead us to life beyond our understanding. The writer of Ecclesiastes for example tells us that “everything under the Sun” is actually vanity of all vanities. That is those gathering material things for definitions of safety and success, those believing the end game is pass such things on to a generation that may have no appreciation of such things, and hoping to find eternal security and truth in such acts is in VAIN. 
Jesus in the parable he tells of the man who has fallen into the trap of reaping more and more as if it would guarantee happiness, meaning, and truth for his life, builds bigger barns that are at the end of the day, just bigger barns, when God Himself is hoping for so much more of this man’s life.
The scriptures of course provoke us to look beyond our earthly needs and strive for deeper heavenly treasures that open pathways to spiritual riches by “seeing the world” a different way, a way that is far less concerned about our looking to the world to satisfy our needs, but rather looking to “heavenly things” to open our hearts to meet the world’s needs on a spiritual level.
A story now if you will from my sabbatical time that I hope will invite your own reflection as you think about what is at play in the scriptures today. Some of you know that I was fortunate to be a guest and spiritual companion with Dr. Esther DeWaal, author and speaker on the topic of Celtic Spirituality. My time with Esther reminded me of the great Celtic pilgrims whose spiritual yearnings gave birth to the monastic movement in Scotland, Wales, England, and Europe, bringing a spirit of revival and the spread of Christian principles throughout these lands.
These pilgrims, like the authors of our scriptures today, too considered the endeavor of human beings seeking truth, to be found not in worldly gratification and discovery, but on a spiritual realm. These pilgrims influenced by the monastic lives of the dessert Fathers in the first century after Jesus death and resurrection, left all they knew of worldly comforts and securities. They hopped in rickety boats and began a journey across an unknown sea from Ireland to the coastlands of Wales, Scotland, and England. They departed on what they called “Peregrinatio”, that is holy pilgrimage with a mission of discovering spiritual truths they knew they would not find in worldly things. St. Columbanus of Bangor, one of these early “peregrini” and founder of the monastic order in Bangor Wales, invited fellow pilgrims with these words,
  “Let us depart as peregrini (Pilgrims) in a spirit of hospitas mundi, that is as guests of the world, in search of One’s resurrection, the peregrini to heaven, the true home and let us not get entangled with earthly things but fill our minds with heavenly and spiritual things- making our song, “when shall I come and appear before the face of my God”.
It was in this spirit of “peregrini” that I perhaps discovered a bit of insight about my own struggles with the themes we find in our scriptures today of missing perhaps some heavenly opportunity by looking to the world to satisfy my human needs. I will explain.
My routine with Esther was to study and read in the morning, reflect aloud over coffee mid-morning, and being sent in the afternoon by Esther to discover holy places, pray, and reflect. One afternoon, Esther fitted me in a pair of boots and sent me into the three streams that run and join on her property. She sent me with the reminder that in Celtic spirituality, water is a powerful symbol. Streams are symbols of purity and eternity. In ancient Celtic spirituality, holy shrines were created in places where streams and springs flowed from the earth. Where streams join together, two forces of eternity coming together, this would be exceptional, but where three streams flowed together, this was a holy of holy place. I was instructed to put my feet in the streams, in each stream, to “pay attention” to all that around me, the feel and flow of the waters, and to follow the streams to the places of their joinings and in this case of their branching off again, and to “follow” where I felt led.
It was standing in these streams in full communion with the power, majesty, and beauty of my surroundings, literally “in conversation” with all of creation that I came in communion with a voice for reflection, particularly as in regards to the themes in our scriptures today.
Again, I hope as I share this you might resonate and reflect on your own lives where such themes might be at play. First, the voice, “why do I labor so hard?” Why do I spend my mornings into nights laboring at trying to get things “right”, get things done. Of course we are supposed to work hard, but “why?” What was I expecting, needing, hoping for, and to what or whom was I looking to get these things from?
Then I realized much of my labor, my need to work so hard, “get things” right (whether they are “right” or not is a whole other conversation) to do them well, with expectations that those around me would do the same, perhaps was coming from a place of “worldly” resolve. To be honest, I realize that I had come to a place where I didn’t want the “world” to believe that I could fail! What if the world would decide that professionally, I wasn’t all that effective, all that good at what I do? What would that mean for who I am, what I am about?  This response on “earthly or worldly” terms of course has no reward that lives in eternal things, eternal like the streams I was standing in. My behavior and the internal script that comes with this is distant from the spiritual heart of peregrini, which is to discover the truth of my being and the home of resurrection. The truth that God knew me before I was born, that a fear of failure is woven in earthly definitions of success and leads to behaviors and beliefs that are life-threatening not just to me but to those around me, as opposed to life-giving.
The second insight I had those days standing in those streams that have been flowing for generations and generations. I am one of those folks who is approaching 50. I know some of you have been there, for some its far away, and some are there with me now. It may not seem old, but for me on some level it’s a big deal. My kids are at that age, entering teenage years and adulthood, where my role as lover and parent is shifting. I am keenly aware at least that their physical presence in my household is coming near its natural end. Somehow standing in that stream I became aware again that internally and probably behaviorally, I was looking at my relationship with my children through worldly eyes. That script goes like this. I have a very short amount of time left with my children! I must give them everything they need, provide everything they need. I must love them well and deeply so that they will always know of that love, right now! I must share all the wisdom I have right now, so that I can fill them up forever.
Then the voice came again. “Tony, don’t you believe in the promises that have been made? Don’t you believe what you have been preaching half your life, really, that love is eternal! Forever, and ever! You have an eternity to love your children and to be loved by them, an eternity!”
Like a trip to Target with a list of things I feared would not be in stock, I realized I was carrying anxiety and fear defined by worldly things that was interfering with the way I was enjoying the richness of loving those closest to me! The Celtic pilgrims journey begs me, begs us to “not get entangled in earthly things”, but to “set our eyes upon “heavenly things” seeking our homeland, which is resurrection, that is eternal things! To live with our eyes set upon “heavenly things” and not hoping to find our meaning, reward, comfort, trust from a world which cannot deliver, means we can be free of the despairing and love in ways that flows as powerfully as the streams my feet were set upon that day.
I said to my son a few days before returning from my sabbatical, “perhaps I should return to work!”  He said to me, “good idea Dad, after all you are the bread maker”. He meant of course to say bread winner, which by the way his mother can rightly argue with as she joins me so faithfully in “winning the bread” in our home. But I think I like what he said better, yes, bread maker.
I found a slice of heavenly bread- standing in the streams of eternity- where my ancestors both blood and spiritual stood-generations of faith, wisdom, labor, Love, Truth descending upon me in the flow of these gentle eternal streams!  My children will know of this toil, this love, this care, and find meaning in eternal things promised by God and handed down for generations,- and their children will know it EVEN when they are not aware of it! 
So people of Bethlehem, of this Cathedral, House of Bread, shall we make some bread together? Bread from heaven, life-giving bread, where we hand over our fears and anxieties and set our eyes on “heavenly things”?
Shall we set ourselves upon a vocation of “peregrinatio”, asking God to show us who we are and who we are to be?
Let’s make some bread, life-giving bread, and set ourselves upon a vocation of peregrini- setting our eyes on heavenly things and asking God to show us who we are and who we are to be?
“Therefore let us concern ourselves with heavenly things, not human ones, and like peregrini always sigh for our homeland, long for our homeland.”  St. Columbanus




No comments: