Sunday - September 15, 2013

The 17^th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 19 C
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
The Rev. Kimberly Reinholz
Luke 15:1-10

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                I love the game “Hide and Seek”.  I often play it with my nieces and nephews and look forward to playing it with my own children, but whenever I play I am reminded of a story I heard once of how quickly an innocent game of “Hide and Seek” escalated into something more serious, because not everyone involved knew there was a game being played. 

A little boy about 5 years old and his baby sitter went to a local department store.  The babysitter gets distracted for a moment and turns around to find the boy missing.  She is hysterical she starts tearing around the store looking for him.  She gets the manager and all the store employees looking for him.  The police are called.  In the mean-time the little boy has started his own game of hide and seek and is climbing in the clothing racks, sneaking from rack to rack whenever someone gets close.  Eventually he gets tired of running around and falls asleep on a pile of clothes in the fitting room, which is where they eventually find him.  All’s well that ends well right? Thank God this story has a happy ending. 

                Imagine what it must have felt like to be that baby sitter frantically missing the child for whom she was responsible.  It must have been horrible!

                Imagine what it felt like to be the boy who thought he was playing the best game of hide and seek ever.  It must have been awesome!

In the Gospel today Jesus tells about how valuable each and every one of us is.  When the Pharisees are disturbed by Jesus fraternizing with sinners and tax collectors, those who liked to ignore the laws which the Pharisees held sacred Jesus reminds them that people are more sacred than the law. 

                Jesus shares a pair of parables: the lost sheep and the lost coin which both end with rejoicing because what had been lost is now found. As Christians it is this rejoicing which we hope everyone has the opportunity to experience.  This exuberant welcoming home, this embrace, this celebration at being reunited with God, is like the little boy being swept up into the arms of the baby sitter when he is found resting in the fitting room, the lamb which is flung across the shoulders of the shepherd when it had wandered off, or the coin safely stored in the woman’s purse after it had been misplaced. 

It is wonderful to think that there will be rejoicing when the lost person or the lost item is returned to its rightful place, but how often are we ignorant of the fact that we are lost, how often do we think instead that we are playing a game of spiritual hide and seek from God the creator of us all?  How often do we fool ourselves into thinking that we don’t need to come to church , or join that small group, or participate in that ministry because God is everywhere not just in this building?  I know that many of my friends, family and colleagues in and outside of the church feel this way.  It is impossible to explain to those who have never been part of a congregation why it is important to come to church, because can’t you worship God in your garden or in your living room, why do you have to go to some stuffy old building to experience community?  I will admit that sometimes I am envious of people who sleep in, have brunch and do the crossword puzzle on most Sunday mornings.  That doesn’t sound like being lost to me, it sounds like a nice relaxing morning where I know exactly where I am, happily relaxing in my fluffy robe and bunny slippers and it sounds better than running around editing my sermon or looking for my clerical collar. 

I know that not everyone who isn’t here is enjoying a mimosa and scone.  I know that there are people who have to work elsewhere on Sundays.  I know that there are people who have other responsibilities which divert their attention from worship. Sometimes in our busy lives coming to church feels like it just one more thing to do, and we just can’t do anymore.   

I recognize that we are part of a culture which has moved away from the observation of a Sabbath.   But the truth is that observing the Sabbath, by coming to church, is exactly the opposite of having something else to do.  Yes we do a lot when we come to church we worship the Lord our God, celebrate the Eucharist, read scripture, recite prayers, seek intercession for our own needs and those of others, and come together in this holy space so that we can go out refreshed and renewed into a world that doesn’t understand us and feels like what we do here is a waste of valuable “down time”.  But in reality what we do when come here is we refocus on God- our gaze does not fall on ourselves, our children, our friends, or co-workers but in worship we turn our eyes, our hearts and our minds towards God. We stop and take stock of where we are, what we are doing and where we will be going next. 

This is orienteering essential. Only if we look towards Christ Jesus can we find our true north, can we find our true value, and we can discern who we are and what God expects us to be.  If we do not take this time regularly to focus on our creator, redeemer and sustainer we are deluding ourselves into thinking we are playing a game of Hide and Seek when in fact we are truly Lost. 

Like the shepherd seeks out the sheep, the woman scours for her coin, and the sitter panics as the loss of her charge so too Jesus searches for each and every soul of each and every person in creation.  In his searching Jesus rejoices exponentially more than the shepherd or the woman or the babysitter whenever a person, stops and takes a breath, looks up, focuses on God, and remembers that there is more to life than their calendar. In those moments when Jesus rejoices and all the company of heaven rejoices with Him, all of us who were playing at knowing what we are doing, realize that we were in reality lost are now are truly found. 

I think that the next time I feel like I might be wasting my time on Sunday morning by going to church, I might just ask myself am I really playing an intricate game of hide and seek with God?  If that is the case I know that I won’t be wasting my time in going to worship, I will just be reaffirming what has been sung time and time again in that beautiful hymn Amazing Grace- I once was lost but now am found was blind but now I see. 

Sunday, September 8, 2013

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Deuteronomy 30:15-30; Luke 14:25-33

John Arthur Nunes, newly appointed to a professorship of Christian values and Public life at Valparaiso University, recently wrote about the beginnings of his new adventure moving from his role as an executive director of a non-profit religious group providing a ministry of relief and care to those in need around the world to a new beginning as a teacher of Christian values in an academic setting.

He wrote, “A life transition—like any effort to follow Jesus—is stressful.  Packing, unpacking, moving from one set of commitments to another, focusing on a new future. It might be best summarized by the ancient North African Bishop Tertullian’s interpretation of Luke’s Gospel  (Take up your cross and follow me)  “Take up your Stress and Tortures”

Once again our scriptures bring us in a forceful way to the drama of what it was, and what it is, and what it might be to be a disciple, that is a follower of Jesus. Once again we are given the narrative that is ours to discern and discover of what speaks to our own “being”, our own experiences, our own narrative of patterns in life where we like Dr. Nunes, experience the “cost of discipleship”. That is the experience of that stress or conflict as we find ourselves in our own lives either literally or figuratively packing or unpacking, moving from one set of commitments to another, focusing on a new future.

For those literally following Jesus in that countryside where today’s Gospel lesson takes place, Jesus captures that sense of the dramatic (as he does in Luke’s Gospel), upping the ante for those who might not yet quite understand just how deep and broad the commitment to a new future of following him may be. To follow Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem, one will be entering a new focused circle of family, literally leaving behind relationships and yes even possessions. (Because you can’t take your mother or your herd with you on this journey to Jerusalem.) If you are following on this journey it is going to cost you some, so “do the math” as it were, consider the “price of admission” to this journey, and if you choose, pick up your cross, and follow me.

Imagine the “Packing and Unpacking” literal and figurative for those deciding in those moments to set their eyes and hearts on this new future and commitment.

But surely you do and have had the experience of your own, “packing and unpacking” as you yourself follow Jesus. You yourselves have known by the nature of being alive and the nature of your lives of faith, those times when you may have literally or figuratively “left home” to be in the company of others who would lead you to a new future. You yourselves in time and in place surely have at times done the “accounting” and have made decisions in life that have cost you something when following a path that you know has been informed by your relationship with Christ. Perhaps spend a bit of time this day or this week pondering these things.

Recently in my prayer time I have re-discovered the power of walking the labyrinth. If you don’t know the labyrinth, it is a patterned walk with one entrance and one exit that leads you on a journey to a defined center, then leads you back out again from the pattern. The labyrinth pattern is an ancient one, pre-dating Christianity, though adopted by Christians and non-Christians as a tool for meditation or prayer.

The walking of the labyrinth for me gives me a pattern of journey that allows me to shed those things that distract me from centering my heart on the presence of the holy, leading me to a center where I can leave those things and lift my eyes to see what the holy might bring. The journey then back out of the labyrinth reminding me that I take that unity of the sacred center back to the margins of life, where surely the “stressors and tortures” of following Christ are felt as they conflict the uncertain and unsteady forces of the world in which we live.

I share with you my journal from my walk in the labyrinth this week, pondering our Gospel lesson today.

“I have prayed again the labyrinth and there I was greeted again and again, as I pondered in my heart the faith of generations and the demands placed on that faith. And there I imagined their and my own struggle to find reconciliation of the conflict that exists between my own need and desire for a deep pool of peace, Grace, and Joy — that place I find in a sacred Center — where life is full, congruent, authentic, and at peace.

And the demands that this Jesus seems to place on us — Where we know that when we do the accounting of following Jesus’ way, it’s going to cost us something, the cost typically showing up in the “conflict” or “stress” of “carrying a cross” emboldened with an ethic Jesus has taught us.

Then I realize again as I walked the labyrinth, at least today, that the journey to the sacred center is that place of becoming aware of our “true selves”, that is the self as God sees it.

It is that place where all the fear, mistrust, doubts, desires, and distractions of life that impede the joining of souls and beings, are peeled away on this journey, and offered on the cold stone Altar, and there in that sacred center is the opportunity to join with beauty, love, hope, joy, awe.

I began the pathway back out of the labyrinth, now making my way back out to the edges, a distance growing from the “sacred center” now aware that this is exactly what is taken to the edges, the margins of life, the sacred center. Back to the complexities and challenges of life and the decisions that are to be made in it.

The accounting I have this day, the cost of the journey, a few shekels of doubt, fear, mistrust, uncertainty. The real cost I realize in following Christ to that “Sacred Center” of course is the offering of the true Self to the edges and margins of life/the world.  Full of joy, and awe, of peace, and of Quiet, of certitude and grounding. Back out here now on the edges, I do the “accounting”.  This is worth the price of admission.