The Ven. Richard I Cluett
November 19, 2006
Daniel 12:1-3 + Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 + Mark 13:1-8
“Famine, social unrest, institutional deterioration, bitter internal conflicts, class warfare, banditry, insurrections, intrigues, betrayals, bloodshed, and the scattering of people throughout the country...”
Sounds like the evening news, but it’s not. Sounds like the world today, but it’s not. It is how the historian Josephus described the scene in Israel & Palestine about the time when the Evangelist Mark was putting the Gospel to pen and paper.
Jesus spoke of wars and rumors of wars. He predicted the destruction of the temple that had been built by Solomon in Jerusalem. And when Mark put pen to paper it had come to pass or was about to. About the year 70 in the Christian Era.
Rome had been laying siege to Jerusalem for years, there were popular messiahs, prophets crying out woes on the city and temple, mock trials, and crowds creating tumults. There were wars and rumors of wars for the better part of ten years and Josephus reports portents, including a brilliant daylight in the middle of the night...
I have a photograph in my office that I took from the Mount of Olives at a place that had to be near where Jesus spoke to his disciples. There is now a chapel on that spot. You sit down and look out over the Kidron Valley, across to the Old City of Jerusalem and you see the lower walls that had held up the Temple. They are all that’s left of the Temple of Solomon. The wall is called the Wailing Wall.
The place is called the Temple Mount by Jews. It is called the Dome of the Rock by Muslims and contains Al-Aqsa Mosque. It is the site where many people believe Jesus will return to when he comes again to complete the work of creation.
It is also the site of major conflicts that keep the Middle East full of war and the rumors of war. “Not one stone will be left here upon another.”
Many individuals, many groups eagerly anticipate the Second Coming, eagerly anticipate the completion of this world and the inauguration of the next. Are you ready for the rapture?
Preacher Fred Craddock once said, "Maybe people are obsessed with the second coming because, deep down, they were really disappointed in the first one."
We are now in a period of the Christian year, this end of this aone and the one to come on Advent 1, when scripture focuses on the end time, the second coming, the eschaton, the eternal consequences of the Now.
Millennial thinking or more accurately, millennial guessing, is very popular in our time. Lots of people have a view of how it will go, “The Left Behind Series” being only the latest and most egregious example. I am sure you remember all the hoopla, fear, and prognostication in 1999 and 2000 about what will happen in this new millennium.
The Book of Daniel is an example of apocalyptic writing about the end time that was popular in the century before Jesus. The war then was with Syria. The basic theme is, “The present time is one of suffering because of evil, but those who persist, those who are faithful will be vindicated. God will win; God will deliver, so be faithful.
But what do we do while waiting for the Messiah?
Mark and the early followers of the Way believed that the end was imminent. The prediction of Jesus had already come to pass. But, now, we know more than 2000 years later that it is not imminent, that we are in for the long haul.
There are indeed wars and rumors of wars and false prophets, and portents, and earthquakes… but we know, we think, we believe, , we hope that the end is not today.
But when it comes “it will be all right.”
We have been assured that in the person of Jesus, in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us…” Everything will be all right.
Lutheran pastor Brian Stoffregren puts it this way. How often do parents say that to their children, "Everything will be all right"? A child falls and leaves some skin on the ground. "Everything will be all right," we say to the sobbing child. We tell the bed-ridden grandparent in the hospital, "Everything will be all right," even when we know that it might not be all right.
Just because we proclaim that everything will be all right, that doesn't mean that we do nothing. When children have fallen down and blood is all over the place, we don't just say, "Everything will be all right." There may be a fast trip to the emergency room. There may be bandages and antibiotics applied from the medicine cabinet. We do all that's in our power to make sure everything will be all right.
"How can I make ends meet, when more bills are coming in than income?"
"Everything will be all right"
"I'm having surgery tomorrow and I'm scared."
"Everything will be all right."
"The tests for cancer came back positive."
"Everything will be all right."
"My brother was just sent to Afghanistan."
"Everything will be all right."
"My mother just died."
"Everything will be all right."
And then we do everything in our power to try to make things all right and to encourage and support those in troubled times.
What do we do while waiting for the Messiah?
In the book Everything I needed to know I learned in Kindergarten one of the rabbi’s learnings is, “When you go out into the world, watch out, hold hands, and stick together.”
The author of Hebrews tells us this way, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day coming.”
Those who know Jesus know the way through troubled times and the way to wait for the end of time.
Amen
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Pentecost 23:Look Again
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Mark 12:38-44
I apologize. Please remember that--it will come up later, because things are not always what they seem.
That is perhaps the message of the Gospel passage we heard today. It is a familiar passage, one we often call the Widow’s Mite. Many of you know this story, right? It is especially popular for preachers this time of year, the liturgical season we call Stewardship. Many preachers look forward to it’s appearance in the lectionary and I have enjoyed preaching on it myself. This passage reminds us that that looks can deceive. Jesus and his disciples are sitting in the temple watching as people come and put money into the temple treasury. Just when it seems that $2000 is more than $2, Jesus points out otherwise. The amounts are not what they seem. If you are rich, to give $2000 is less than to give $2 if you are poor. Thus Jesus’ point.
As he watches many rich people put in large sums, he also sees a widow put in a couple of coins--all that she had to live on. He calls his disciples to notice, “Look, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest.” There are many sermons (and I have preached some of them) that use this story to talk about the importance of giving, or that the size of the gift isn’t as important as the intent, or that percentage giving is better than a fixed amount no matter how large, or that giving out of our need is somewhat more worthy than giving out of our abundance. Now if you love this story, and I do, I apologize--because things are not always what they seem. This is not the story you are familiar with, because Jesus doesn’t teach any such thing as those sermons would suggest.
Let’s look at the text. In fact, let’s look at what is not there. Jesus does not condemn the rich people. Nor does he commend the widow. He doesn’t say that the widow’s gift is better, he only comments that she gave more. Nor is the widow set apart because of her motivation, as if her reason for giving is better. The text does not tell us what is in the Widow’s heart. We simply do not know why she does what she does. Nor does the story suggest that Jesus knew he reason (Jesus didn’t know her heart as he sometimes does). In commenting on this passage biblical scholar Addison Wright remarks, “she could have acted out of despair, out of guilt, out of a desire to be seen contributing for all the story says. ”(The Widow’s Mite: Praise or Lament?—A Matter of Context, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 1982)
You know what else the text doesn’t say? It doesn’t tell us we should all go and be like the widow. Jesus does not tell the disciples to go and imitate her. There is no, “Go and do likewise” or, “Truly I tell you, she is close to the Kingdom of God” or even a note that Jesus looks kindly on her. A few weeks ago we heard the story of the Rich Young Man, you remember, the one Jesus told to go and sell all his possessions. In that story, the text clearly says Jesus looked at him and loved him--and then told him what to do. In this story Jesus doesn’t address the widow at all.
And I’ll tell you what comes next in the biblical text, just in case you think our reading ended before we got to the explanation. In the Bible, the story moves on.
As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
So what are we to make of this? This story that was so familiar but that we now find isn’t at all what it seems? The rich give out of their abundance and are not condemned. The widow gives out of her need but is not commended. If this text is not about how wonderful the widow is, what is it about?
I think perhaps one way to address this is to look where it begins. Jesus has it out for religious leaders who are more concerned about themselves than the love of God. The scribes were the teachers and recorders of Moses’ law. That in and of itself is not the problem. Many scribes were faithful, loving God with all their heart and mind and strength. The scribes that Jesus excoriates are those who allow privilege to blind them to need. Jesus condemns those who devour widow’s houses, who ignore or exploit the poor. So we do know from this passage what Jesus thinks of those who exploit the poor. We don’t know what Jesus thought of the widow, but as far as I know Jesus never told a widow or a poor person to give away everything they had to live on. Perhaps Jesus was scandalized that this poor woman would give away all that she had into the treasury of a temple which would not be left standing. Perhaps here is the widow whose house had been devoured by religious piety. What did Jesus think? We don’t really know.
I knew a widow once. She came to church faithfully and she worried constantly about many things. One of her worries was the appeals that came to her through the mail, especially the ones that told her she needed to give money to save her soul. She would come to the Church office clutching a letter in which some minister begged her through the written word to give more to insure her place in heaven. She worried that she had not given enough and was not good enough in God’s eyes. I had unkind thoughts in my heart about the people behind those appeals, who preyed on her, who devoured her. It appalled me. Perhaps Jesus was appalled by the sight of an old woman giving away to a religious institution all that she had to live on.
So what are we to make of this text if it is not the beloved story about sacrificial giving that we thought is was? What do we do with scripture when it doesn’t say what we think it does, or should? Please remember that I apologized up front, because I am not going to solve this one for us today. But we might ask ourselves what the gospel is for. What these lessons are for? What our scripture is for? I can get us out of this one by referring to the catechesis on p. 853 of the Book of Common Prayer. “Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God? …because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.”
These scriptures are for us the Word of God because God still speaks to us through them. I know that in times of joy, and in times of confusion and in times of need I have read the same scriptures and heard different things. Things are not always what they seem. I need to remember that maybe I don’t know so much about this scripture passage. Maybe I don’t know the mind of Christ. Maybe God’s word has more to tell me. So I am sorry I have no words of wisdom for you this morning; only a suggestion. Let this be your mantra this week: things are not always what they seem. What might we see, learn, wrestle with if we look at things with new eyes, hear with open ears? What might God be calling us to ponder?
Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Mark 12:38-44
I apologize. Please remember that--it will come up later, because things are not always what they seem.
That is perhaps the message of the Gospel passage we heard today. It is a familiar passage, one we often call the Widow’s Mite. Many of you know this story, right? It is especially popular for preachers this time of year, the liturgical season we call Stewardship. Many preachers look forward to it’s appearance in the lectionary and I have enjoyed preaching on it myself. This passage reminds us that that looks can deceive. Jesus and his disciples are sitting in the temple watching as people come and put money into the temple treasury. Just when it seems that $2000 is more than $2, Jesus points out otherwise. The amounts are not what they seem. If you are rich, to give $2000 is less than to give $2 if you are poor. Thus Jesus’ point.
As he watches many rich people put in large sums, he also sees a widow put in a couple of coins--all that she had to live on. He calls his disciples to notice, “Look, this poor widow has put in more than all the rest.” There are many sermons (and I have preached some of them) that use this story to talk about the importance of giving, or that the size of the gift isn’t as important as the intent, or that percentage giving is better than a fixed amount no matter how large, or that giving out of our need is somewhat more worthy than giving out of our abundance. Now if you love this story, and I do, I apologize--because things are not always what they seem. This is not the story you are familiar with, because Jesus doesn’t teach any such thing as those sermons would suggest.
Let’s look at the text. In fact, let’s look at what is not there. Jesus does not condemn the rich people. Nor does he commend the widow. He doesn’t say that the widow’s gift is better, he only comments that she gave more. Nor is the widow set apart because of her motivation, as if her reason for giving is better. The text does not tell us what is in the Widow’s heart. We simply do not know why she does what she does. Nor does the story suggest that Jesus knew he reason (Jesus didn’t know her heart as he sometimes does). In commenting on this passage biblical scholar Addison Wright remarks, “she could have acted out of despair, out of guilt, out of a desire to be seen contributing for all the story says. ”(The Widow’s Mite: Praise or Lament?—A Matter of Context, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 1982)
You know what else the text doesn’t say? It doesn’t tell us we should all go and be like the widow. Jesus does not tell the disciples to go and imitate her. There is no, “Go and do likewise” or, “Truly I tell you, she is close to the Kingdom of God” or even a note that Jesus looks kindly on her. A few weeks ago we heard the story of the Rich Young Man, you remember, the one Jesus told to go and sell all his possessions. In that story, the text clearly says Jesus looked at him and loved him--and then told him what to do. In this story Jesus doesn’t address the widow at all.
And I’ll tell you what comes next in the biblical text, just in case you think our reading ended before we got to the explanation. In the Bible, the story moves on.
As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
So what are we to make of this? This story that was so familiar but that we now find isn’t at all what it seems? The rich give out of their abundance and are not condemned. The widow gives out of her need but is not commended. If this text is not about how wonderful the widow is, what is it about?
I think perhaps one way to address this is to look where it begins. Jesus has it out for religious leaders who are more concerned about themselves than the love of God. The scribes were the teachers and recorders of Moses’ law. That in and of itself is not the problem. Many scribes were faithful, loving God with all their heart and mind and strength. The scribes that Jesus excoriates are those who allow privilege to blind them to need. Jesus condemns those who devour widow’s houses, who ignore or exploit the poor. So we do know from this passage what Jesus thinks of those who exploit the poor. We don’t know what Jesus thought of the widow, but as far as I know Jesus never told a widow or a poor person to give away everything they had to live on. Perhaps Jesus was scandalized that this poor woman would give away all that she had into the treasury of a temple which would not be left standing. Perhaps here is the widow whose house had been devoured by religious piety. What did Jesus think? We don’t really know.
I knew a widow once. She came to church faithfully and she worried constantly about many things. One of her worries was the appeals that came to her through the mail, especially the ones that told her she needed to give money to save her soul. She would come to the Church office clutching a letter in which some minister begged her through the written word to give more to insure her place in heaven. She worried that she had not given enough and was not good enough in God’s eyes. I had unkind thoughts in my heart about the people behind those appeals, who preyed on her, who devoured her. It appalled me. Perhaps Jesus was appalled by the sight of an old woman giving away to a religious institution all that she had to live on.
So what are we to make of this text if it is not the beloved story about sacrificial giving that we thought is was? What do we do with scripture when it doesn’t say what we think it does, or should? Please remember that I apologized up front, because I am not going to solve this one for us today. But we might ask ourselves what the gospel is for. What these lessons are for? What our scripture is for? I can get us out of this one by referring to the catechesis on p. 853 of the Book of Common Prayer. “Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God? …because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.”
These scriptures are for us the Word of God because God still speaks to us through them. I know that in times of joy, and in times of confusion and in times of need I have read the same scriptures and heard different things. Things are not always what they seem. I need to remember that maybe I don’t know so much about this scripture passage. Maybe I don’t know the mind of Christ. Maybe God’s word has more to tell me. So I am sorry I have no words of wisdom for you this morning; only a suggestion. Let this be your mantra this week: things are not always what they seem. What might we see, learn, wrestle with if we look at things with new eyes, hear with open ears? What might God be calling us to ponder?
Monday, October 30, 2006
Requiem Eucharist
The Rev. Laura Howell
October 29, 2006
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Collect for the Dead + Wisdom 3:1-9 + Revelation 7:9-17 + John 11:21-27
In the name of the Father (+) and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
From the most ancient times, the church has honored those who have died in faith. As a matter of fact, early Eucharists were celebrated on the flat, table-like tops of the tombs of the martyrs. Around 200 AD—1900 years ago!—Tertullian wrote that Christians offered prayers for the dead as part of the Eucharist. And St. Augustine in the 4th century wrote: “The souls of the pious dead are not separated from the Church, which even now is the Kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.”
At Trinity Bethlehem, we offer a Requiem quarterly. Sometimes folks who have come to us from other denominations ask why we pray for those who have died. They say, “If people are dead, our prayers for them don’t mean anything, do they?” I have several answers. First of all, praying for those who have gone before, helps ME—it’s kind of selfish, actually. It helps me remember them, it helps me to maintain spiritual contact with them, and there is comfort in that. When I am troubled, prayer helps anchor me. How much more do I need the balm of prayer when I am grieving?
But more importantly, I wonder what those questioners mean by the word “dead”? Do they mean that the physical body is now gone from my sight? That the person’s being is extinguished? That they are no longer in existence? St. Paul writes to the Romans with some incredulity in chapter 6 (3-4): “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” You can hardly put it any clearer than Jesus does: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” For us, as Christians, it’s a perfectly acceptable human thing to grieve greatly when someone we love dies—even Jesus grieved for his friend Lazarus. But we also recognize that grief is not the end of the story, because the person who is gone has been made anew in Christ.
Let me remind you about the collect we have chosen for this service: “Eternal Lord God, you hold all souls in life: Give to your whole Church in paradise and on earth your light and your peace; and grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served you here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into your unending joy.”
This collect harkens back to Augustine’s reflection. The church does not function just on this earth. Nor is it just in heaven. The church exists in that mysterious perpetual NOW which is God’s time. It straddles both time and eternity. It exists in that LIFE in which God holds all souls. I would hazard a guess that most of you are part of the church. Who else would come out to pray both in words and music at 5:00 on a blustery Sunday evening? As we enter into this Eucharist, without even realizing it, we step into eternity. It’s nice to have our bodies along, and to sit in the pew with our friends and family, who have also brought their bodies along. What is most important, however, is that your eternal souls are here inside those bodies. And at this Eucharist, all the rest of the church is present, too, with their eternal souls. It is in worship, in prayer, that we all gather, even if we can’t all see and hear each other with our physical eyes and ears.
There was a lady who was at Morning Prayer every morning for years and years. She had a particularly wonderful intonation when she said Canticle 1: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. Praise him and magnify him forever.” Every Monday morning I hear her saying with me, “Praise him and magnify him forever.” I pray for her and give thanks for her whenever I hear her voice. She has been living in God’s larger world for several years now. My mother is ill in another part of the country. I pray for her health and happiness several times a day. I can still travel to see her a couple of times a year, but she is as close in moments of prayer as my Canticle 1 lady. If we are all eternally present in God’s church now, wouldn’t it be a little silly of me to think that I could pray for one of them, but not for the other?
In part, prayer is a conversation between our spirits and God. In this requiem, we pray for those who have died. In other words, we talk with God about them. We express to God our hopes that they are well and filled with joy at being in God’s presence. We remember their lives and give thanks for what they have meant to us. We receive the comfort of knowing that the One who created the universe, and who cared so much that he would die for us, is looking after them. And maybe, if we are very blessed, we receive back a whisper of the peace that they are enjoying, and a reflection of the pure love in which they are now immersed.
I suppose that this could sound like sentimentalism. Or even some kind of emotional wish-fulfillment. But for 2,000 years, the church has recommended that we turn our minds to eternity and pray for and with those who have died. As we prepare to enter the 8-day celebration of All Saints and All Souls, I invite you to remember those who have gone ahead of us, who live in Christ, and with whom we, too, will live in eternal joy. AMEN.
October 29, 2006
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Collect for the Dead + Wisdom 3:1-9 + Revelation 7:9-17 + John 11:21-27
In the name of the Father (+) and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
From the most ancient times, the church has honored those who have died in faith. As a matter of fact, early Eucharists were celebrated on the flat, table-like tops of the tombs of the martyrs. Around 200 AD—1900 years ago!—Tertullian wrote that Christians offered prayers for the dead as part of the Eucharist. And St. Augustine in the 4th century wrote: “The souls of the pious dead are not separated from the Church, which even now is the Kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.”
At Trinity Bethlehem, we offer a Requiem quarterly. Sometimes folks who have come to us from other denominations ask why we pray for those who have died. They say, “If people are dead, our prayers for them don’t mean anything, do they?” I have several answers. First of all, praying for those who have gone before, helps ME—it’s kind of selfish, actually. It helps me remember them, it helps me to maintain spiritual contact with them, and there is comfort in that. When I am troubled, prayer helps anchor me. How much more do I need the balm of prayer when I am grieving?
But more importantly, I wonder what those questioners mean by the word “dead”? Do they mean that the physical body is now gone from my sight? That the person’s being is extinguished? That they are no longer in existence? St. Paul writes to the Romans with some incredulity in chapter 6 (3-4): “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” You can hardly put it any clearer than Jesus does: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” For us, as Christians, it’s a perfectly acceptable human thing to grieve greatly when someone we love dies—even Jesus grieved for his friend Lazarus. But we also recognize that grief is not the end of the story, because the person who is gone has been made anew in Christ.
Let me remind you about the collect we have chosen for this service: “Eternal Lord God, you hold all souls in life: Give to your whole Church in paradise and on earth your light and your peace; and grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served you here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into your unending joy.”
This collect harkens back to Augustine’s reflection. The church does not function just on this earth. Nor is it just in heaven. The church exists in that mysterious perpetual NOW which is God’s time. It straddles both time and eternity. It exists in that LIFE in which God holds all souls. I would hazard a guess that most of you are part of the church. Who else would come out to pray both in words and music at 5:00 on a blustery Sunday evening? As we enter into this Eucharist, without even realizing it, we step into eternity. It’s nice to have our bodies along, and to sit in the pew with our friends and family, who have also brought their bodies along. What is most important, however, is that your eternal souls are here inside those bodies. And at this Eucharist, all the rest of the church is present, too, with their eternal souls. It is in worship, in prayer, that we all gather, even if we can’t all see and hear each other with our physical eyes and ears.
There was a lady who was at Morning Prayer every morning for years and years. She had a particularly wonderful intonation when she said Canticle 1: “O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. Praise him and magnify him forever.” Every Monday morning I hear her saying with me, “Praise him and magnify him forever.” I pray for her and give thanks for her whenever I hear her voice. She has been living in God’s larger world for several years now. My mother is ill in another part of the country. I pray for her health and happiness several times a day. I can still travel to see her a couple of times a year, but she is as close in moments of prayer as my Canticle 1 lady. If we are all eternally present in God’s church now, wouldn’t it be a little silly of me to think that I could pray for one of them, but not for the other?
In part, prayer is a conversation between our spirits and God. In this requiem, we pray for those who have died. In other words, we talk with God about them. We express to God our hopes that they are well and filled with joy at being in God’s presence. We remember their lives and give thanks for what they have meant to us. We receive the comfort of knowing that the One who created the universe, and who cared so much that he would die for us, is looking after them. And maybe, if we are very blessed, we receive back a whisper of the peace that they are enjoying, and a reflection of the pure love in which they are now immersed.
I suppose that this could sound like sentimentalism. Or even some kind of emotional wish-fulfillment. But for 2,000 years, the church has recommended that we turn our minds to eternity and pray for and with those who have died. As we prepare to enter the 8-day celebration of All Saints and All Souls, I invite you to remember those who have gone ahead of us, who live in Christ, and with whom we, too, will live in eternal joy. AMEN.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Pentecost 21 ~ Making it through
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
October 29, 2006
Job 42:1-6, 10-17 + Mark 10:46-52
How are you going to get through this life? How are you going to make it? What will it take for you to make it through this life with your self intact; with your integrity, with self-respect, with honor?
What will be your legacy for those you love, those closest to you, your associates, your neighbors, your small part of the world? What will be known of your beliefs, your values, your worldview, and your faith?
What will your children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews know about you? About what’s important to you? How you view the world? What will they know and how will they know it?
Bishop Mark Dyer used to say that a person’s legacy could be seen in their calendar and in their checkbook. How we spend our time and our money are the best clues to what we value.
Are you a glass half-full person or a glass half-empty person? Are you a person who lives out of poverty – a sense that there never is enough; never enough time, enough money, enough resources, enough love, enough good will? Or are you a person who lives out of a sense of abundance; there’s enough to go around, there’s enough to do the job, there’s enough?
These are discipleship questions and these are stewardship questions. They are some of the questions raised by Job, both the man and the book.
This morning we hear Job acknowledge before God that God is God, and before God he is, and we are, but dust and ashes. Without God’s enlivening, creative, empowering spirit, the world is but dust and ashes.
But because God is God, Job is willing to risk it all again as he enters life anew, as he rebuilds his life again, knowing that it all could be lost again.
God's reasons for giving things to Job are as unexplained as the reasons they were taken away. God does not explain suffering, but God does not explain beatitude either. They are twin mysteries. The sources of each are hidden from our view, beyond our understanding.
But Job is willing to try again, risk again, and live again. Job has learned that chaos is inherently part of life. And that God provides the resources to make our way through the chaos and the ambiguity of life.
The chaos of the world is not the end or the answer. The answer is found in how we make our way through this life. Are we willing to risk with Job that God’s creation is inherently good? Are we willing to trust, to bet our lives that the God shown in Jesus Christ is the ONE who creates, who saves, who sustains, who will empower our ability to make our way through this life knowing grace and mercy?
What changed for Job was his perspective. The way we see, know, understand, and believe will determine whether the chaos of the world will reign in our lives, whether the circumstances of life will beat us down, whether we sink or whether we soar as if on the wings of eagles.
Many of you know that I was away last week to lead a conference for clergy; a wellness conference called CREDO. We have all learned that CREDO is the Latin word for “I believe”. But CREDO does not mean, “I believe” in the sense of intellectual assent to this or that proposition. (I agree with Dr. Einstein that e=mc2.) It means, “I give my heart to this.” It is an expression of my heart’s commitment and heart’s orientation. In the creed saying, I believe/I give my heart to the Father…
To what do you give your heart? To whom do you give your heart? That is a discipleship question. The stewardship question is what you do after you say, I believe, I give my heart to…?
Has Jesus opened your eyes to see the hand of God at work in the world around us? Or are you afflicted with the metaphorical blindness of Bartimaeus? The healing of Bartimaeus by Jesus gave Bartimaeus a new perspective, a new life.
Jesus was not only the sign of God’s kingdom; he was also the agent of God’s kingdom. Where he went he brought a new perspective; he brought the chance of new life for those who would believe. He brings to each of us a new way of seeing the world, a new perspective on how life is to be lived, and a new responsibility to join him in being agents of the Kingdom of God.
Where we go we are to bring life and healing, we are to help people know that God’s reign has begun and it includes them. We do that individually, but probably we do it most powerfully when we join together in the mission and ministry of this cathedral church. When we together witness to the world, to our neighborhood, and to one another that God’s hand is powerfully and importantly at work reweaving the torn fabric of creation, restoring to health and wholeness those whom the world has beaten down, those who have succumbed to the chaos in their lives, those who have been oppressed by evil powers of this world; bringing new life to lives that had appeared as though dead.
That’s what we are about here. That’s why God has placed us here. The Cathedral Church of the Nativity. And if we fail or fall short because of fear or timidity or lack of resources, we will have succumbed to chaos ourselves.
So what we do here and how we live here have both immediate and eternal consequences. The immediate consequences have to do with the well-being of God’s people; the eternal consequences have to do with how we will stand before the judgment seat of God. What will be the evidence, the testimony of our life? What will be our legacy as a community, as a person?
Next week when each of us is asked to make a financial commitment to Nativity, this is what we are being asked. Will we be faithful in our mission and our ministry; will we have the resources necessary to do the work we have been given to do?
I want you to think about these things as you make your pledge next Sunday. I don’t want you to think about paying your dues to pay the church bills. I want you to think about your soul’s health and your soul-legacy. I want you to think about this mission God has given this cathedral church.
Will you decide to stretch yourself in response to God’s abundant presence and power in your life? Will you decide to stretch yourself to bring new life and the light of Christ to those in need of God’s abundant presence and power in their lives? I pray each of us will.
According to Job and to Jesus, it is never too late to gain a new perspective. It is never to late start – again.
October 29, 2006
Job 42:1-6, 10-17 + Mark 10:46-52
How are you going to get through this life? How are you going to make it? What will it take for you to make it through this life with your self intact; with your integrity, with self-respect, with honor?
What will be your legacy for those you love, those closest to you, your associates, your neighbors, your small part of the world? What will be known of your beliefs, your values, your worldview, and your faith?
What will your children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews know about you? About what’s important to you? How you view the world? What will they know and how will they know it?
Bishop Mark Dyer used to say that a person’s legacy could be seen in their calendar and in their checkbook. How we spend our time and our money are the best clues to what we value.
Are you a glass half-full person or a glass half-empty person? Are you a person who lives out of poverty – a sense that there never is enough; never enough time, enough money, enough resources, enough love, enough good will? Or are you a person who lives out of a sense of abundance; there’s enough to go around, there’s enough to do the job, there’s enough?
These are discipleship questions and these are stewardship questions. They are some of the questions raised by Job, both the man and the book.
This morning we hear Job acknowledge before God that God is God, and before God he is, and we are, but dust and ashes. Without God’s enlivening, creative, empowering spirit, the world is but dust and ashes.
But because God is God, Job is willing to risk it all again as he enters life anew, as he rebuilds his life again, knowing that it all could be lost again.
God's reasons for giving things to Job are as unexplained as the reasons they were taken away. God does not explain suffering, but God does not explain beatitude either. They are twin mysteries. The sources of each are hidden from our view, beyond our understanding.
But Job is willing to try again, risk again, and live again. Job has learned that chaos is inherently part of life. And that God provides the resources to make our way through the chaos and the ambiguity of life.
The chaos of the world is not the end or the answer. The answer is found in how we make our way through this life. Are we willing to risk with Job that God’s creation is inherently good? Are we willing to trust, to bet our lives that the God shown in Jesus Christ is the ONE who creates, who saves, who sustains, who will empower our ability to make our way through this life knowing grace and mercy?
What changed for Job was his perspective. The way we see, know, understand, and believe will determine whether the chaos of the world will reign in our lives, whether the circumstances of life will beat us down, whether we sink or whether we soar as if on the wings of eagles.
Many of you know that I was away last week to lead a conference for clergy; a wellness conference called CREDO. We have all learned that CREDO is the Latin word for “I believe”. But CREDO does not mean, “I believe” in the sense of intellectual assent to this or that proposition. (I agree with Dr. Einstein that e=mc2.) It means, “I give my heart to this.” It is an expression of my heart’s commitment and heart’s orientation. In the creed saying, I believe/I give my heart to the Father…
To what do you give your heart? To whom do you give your heart? That is a discipleship question. The stewardship question is what you do after you say, I believe, I give my heart to…?
Has Jesus opened your eyes to see the hand of God at work in the world around us? Or are you afflicted with the metaphorical blindness of Bartimaeus? The healing of Bartimaeus by Jesus gave Bartimaeus a new perspective, a new life.
Jesus was not only the sign of God’s kingdom; he was also the agent of God’s kingdom. Where he went he brought a new perspective; he brought the chance of new life for those who would believe. He brings to each of us a new way of seeing the world, a new perspective on how life is to be lived, and a new responsibility to join him in being agents of the Kingdom of God.
Where we go we are to bring life and healing, we are to help people know that God’s reign has begun and it includes them. We do that individually, but probably we do it most powerfully when we join together in the mission and ministry of this cathedral church. When we together witness to the world, to our neighborhood, and to one another that God’s hand is powerfully and importantly at work reweaving the torn fabric of creation, restoring to health and wholeness those whom the world has beaten down, those who have succumbed to the chaos in their lives, those who have been oppressed by evil powers of this world; bringing new life to lives that had appeared as though dead.
That’s what we are about here. That’s why God has placed us here. The Cathedral Church of the Nativity. And if we fail or fall short because of fear or timidity or lack of resources, we will have succumbed to chaos ourselves.
So what we do here and how we live here have both immediate and eternal consequences. The immediate consequences have to do with the well-being of God’s people; the eternal consequences have to do with how we will stand before the judgment seat of God. What will be the evidence, the testimony of our life? What will be our legacy as a community, as a person?
Next week when each of us is asked to make a financial commitment to Nativity, this is what we are being asked. Will we be faithful in our mission and our ministry; will we have the resources necessary to do the work we have been given to do?
I want you to think about these things as you make your pledge next Sunday. I don’t want you to think about paying your dues to pay the church bills. I want you to think about your soul’s health and your soul-legacy. I want you to think about this mission God has given this cathedral church.
Will you decide to stretch yourself in response to God’s abundant presence and power in your life? Will you decide to stretch yourself to bring new life and the light of Christ to those in need of God’s abundant presence and power in their lives? I pray each of us will.
According to Job and to Jesus, it is never too late to gain a new perspective. It is never to late start – again.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Pentecost 19: Making Room for Jesus
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem PA
Mark 10:17-31
If you were here Friday night at the glorious Evensong for our diocesan convention, you would have worshiped with a church full of people, heard our glorious choir and seen a little red wagon here up front. The wagon was there to collect clothing for children at risk that people brought from all over our diocese. People chose to give out of their abundance to the powerless among us, to children for whom even basic things like enough socks and underwear are scarce. But before that wagon could receive those gifts, it had to be emptied. It had been sitting on my back porch full of newspapers waiting to go to the recycling center.
When the rich young man encounters Jesus, he too has to empty in order to receive. Perhaps he had been searching for Jesus, looking for an opportunity to connect with the compelling rabbi. Maybe he had heard of Jesus the teacher, healer, and miracle-worker. At any rate, he runs up, kneels before Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Really his question is, “What can I do to be saved?” Jesus tells him to follow the commandments. The man replies that he has followed them since he was a child. I love what the scripture says next: Jesus looking at him, loved him. Jesus loved him. Jesus gave him that generous love that wants nothing in return--the love which is agape.
Loving him, lovingly Jesus said, “You lack one thing…go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. Go, sell, give...then come, follow. But the man was shocked and grieved. He went away sad, because he had many possessions. He needed to let go of them, in order to receive treasure in heaven.
One pastor in writing about this story calls it a healing story.* After all, healing is what most people ask Jesus for. They run after him, fling themselves at his feet and beg healing. Healing for themselves. Healing for those they love. Why did this man need healing? Because he was possessed--possessed by his possessions. Confronted by what he needs to do in order to be healed, the rich young man goes away sad. The story doesn’t say he was angry, but sad. I think that’s because he got it. He knew Jesus was right. He understood that God was calling him to let go. And he realized just how hard and painful that would be. I wonder we he did next? I wonder if he was able to let go?
Jesus knows what we each long for and what we each lack. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important. In fact it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
Now, if you are reading this sermon, I am sorry to say that you are missing the visual aids that accompany it. This is a case of you-had-to-be-there. If you imagine a couple of cardboard camels and a package of needles and lots of laughter you will get an idea of what happened next.
In fact, it is impossible to get that camel through. “Then who can be saved,” the disciples wonder. Jesus says it is impossible. For you, for mortals, it is impossible. But not for God. For God all things are possible.
What might you need to let go of in order to receive the abundance God has in store for you? Jesus knows what we each lack. Jesus knows what we each long for. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important--in fact, it is impossible. Fortunately, salvation is not up to us. Salvation is God’s work.
I put myself into this story and I wonder. I wonder what the response would be if it was me? This is how it plays out. I see Jesus, and I run up to him, kneel in from of him. And I say, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus: You know the teachings
Anne: Yes, and I truly try to follow them. You know I was brought up in the
church and I know I’m not perfect but I really don’t think I am a bad
person.
Jesus (looking at me and loving me): You lack one thing…
I wonder what one thing I lack? I wonder if you wonder that about yourself.
*Stacey Elizabeth Simpson, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Edison Georgia, from an article in The Christian Century, September 27- October 4, 2000 p. 951
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem PA
Mark 10:17-31
If you were here Friday night at the glorious Evensong for our diocesan convention, you would have worshiped with a church full of people, heard our glorious choir and seen a little red wagon here up front. The wagon was there to collect clothing for children at risk that people brought from all over our diocese. People chose to give out of their abundance to the powerless among us, to children for whom even basic things like enough socks and underwear are scarce. But before that wagon could receive those gifts, it had to be emptied. It had been sitting on my back porch full of newspapers waiting to go to the recycling center.
When the rich young man encounters Jesus, he too has to empty in order to receive. Perhaps he had been searching for Jesus, looking for an opportunity to connect with the compelling rabbi. Maybe he had heard of Jesus the teacher, healer, and miracle-worker. At any rate, he runs up, kneels before Jesus and asks, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Really his question is, “What can I do to be saved?” Jesus tells him to follow the commandments. The man replies that he has followed them since he was a child. I love what the scripture says next: Jesus looking at him, loved him. Jesus loved him. Jesus gave him that generous love that wants nothing in return--the love which is agape.
Loving him, lovingly Jesus said, “You lack one thing…go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. Go, sell, give...then come, follow. But the man was shocked and grieved. He went away sad, because he had many possessions. He needed to let go of them, in order to receive treasure in heaven.
One pastor in writing about this story calls it a healing story.* After all, healing is what most people ask Jesus for. They run after him, fling themselves at his feet and beg healing. Healing for themselves. Healing for those they love. Why did this man need healing? Because he was possessed--possessed by his possessions. Confronted by what he needs to do in order to be healed, the rich young man goes away sad. The story doesn’t say he was angry, but sad. I think that’s because he got it. He knew Jesus was right. He understood that God was calling him to let go. And he realized just how hard and painful that would be. I wonder we he did next? I wonder if he was able to let go?
Jesus knows what we each long for and what we each lack. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important. In fact it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.
Now, if you are reading this sermon, I am sorry to say that you are missing the visual aids that accompany it. This is a case of you-had-to-be-there. If you imagine a couple of cardboard camels and a package of needles and lots of laughter you will get an idea of what happened next.
In fact, it is impossible to get that camel through. “Then who can be saved,” the disciples wonder. Jesus says it is impossible. For you, for mortals, it is impossible. But not for God. For God all things are possible.
What might you need to let go of in order to receive the abundance God has in store for you? Jesus knows what we each lack. Jesus knows what we each long for. Jesus knows it is hard and painful to let go of the things we think are important--in fact, it is impossible. Fortunately, salvation is not up to us. Salvation is God’s work.
I put myself into this story and I wonder. I wonder what the response would be if it was me? This is how it plays out. I see Jesus, and I run up to him, kneel in from of him. And I say, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus: You know the teachings
Anne: Yes, and I truly try to follow them. You know I was brought up in the
church and I know I’m not perfect but I really don’t think I am a bad
person.
Jesus (looking at me and loving me): You lack one thing…
I wonder what one thing I lack? I wonder if you wonder that about yourself.
*Stacey Elizabeth Simpson, pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Edison Georgia, from an article in The Christian Century, September 27- October 4, 2000 p. 951
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Pentecost 17: “Do not stop him…”
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
October 1, 2003
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50
The readings today lay out a whole smorgasbord of possibilities. I can pick any one of Jesus’ sayings and spin those out (in a good kind of spin. I like to think) or I can take some of the injunctions in James, or the experience of Israel in the desert or the problems of leadership exemplified in Moses, or others…
But what intrigues me the most this week is the theme that goes through all the readings – the theme of discipleship. What is a disciple? Who can be a disciple? What does a disciple do? What does being a disciple of (to be specific) Jesus require of us?
For the last couple of weeks we have heard Jesus on the subject of being his follower: “If any would be my disciple, let him deny himself take up his cross and follow me.” And, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Today the disciples closest to him want to make Jesus a legal franchise. In order to be his disciple, you must fulfill certain requirements, pay certain dues, have a personal call or endorsement, be deemed by Jesus to be special and then be set aside for the special ministry and relationship of disciple.
Who can be a disciple, who can claim to be a disciple, who is allowed to serve as a disciple, who is authorized to function as a disciple in the name of the master? These are very old, time-honored, well-worn questions. They are from time immemorial. Whenever more than one has been gathered together these questions of authority and appropriateness of discipleship arise.
In the reading from the Book of Numbers, the question is raised. It is easy to concentrate on and make fun of the weeping of the people over having nothing to eat but manna. Actually, I think my personal translation of the Hebrew is not “weeping”, but “whining”. Or it is easy to identify with the plight of leadership shown by Moses, rather than the abundance that God provides for his people – all of them. The people are starving, God provides Manna. The task of leadership is too great, God provides 70 elders to be specially designated and authorized as helpers.
And not only that, God’s abundance is such that even if others, who have not been officially designated and set aside, feel called to do something on behalf of God’s providence, to care for God’s people, God empowers them, en-spirits them powerfully to do so.
Eldad and Medad are but two guys who feel called to do a good work. Joshua says, “Stop them. They are not authorized and empowered to do work on your behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.” Who do they think they are?! And Moses says in effect, “They’re doing that? Wonderful! It would be wonderful if everyone who believes felt moved to do such, empowered to do such, and then went ahead and did it. Wonderful!”
And then we jump ahead about 1400 years to the time of Jesus and what do we encounter? Exactly the same issue. Who is a disciple, who is authorized? This time it’s not about prophesying, it’s about healing, but the core issue is the same: who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people?
And Jesus says, “"Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”
It is the nature of God, it is in the providence of God, it is the abundance of God that there be no dearth of work being done on behalf of the welfare of the God’s people, no limit on the workers, no arbitrary set of requirements or categories defining who is allowed to do a good work, who is appropriate, who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people. There is no limit, no requirement.
You cannot be too young, too old, too small, too large, too educated, too uneducated. You cannot be too poor or too rich. You cannot speak the wrong language. You cannot be the wrong gender, the wrong color, the wrong ethnicity, or the wrong age. You cannot even be too sinful -- or too pure. You cannot even be in the wrong religion to do a good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.
All God asks, all God seeks is someone, anyone who will care for, work for the well being of God’s people. All God asks, all God seeks is the likes of you and me.
So the question becomes, "Are we who have been called and follow and do name ourselves as a disciple of Jesus: Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Risen Christ, Jesus the friend of the poor, the outcast, the prisoner and the sinner, Jesus the reconciler… Are we who are his disciples doing any good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people? Personally."
Is this community of disciples, the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless? By our work are we proclaiming to the community around us that God’s abundance is for them? Can we look at our neighbors and see how well they are being fed, how comfortably they are being housed, how warmly they are being dressed, how well they are being educated, how often they are being welcomed as a direct result of our good work as disciples of Jesus?
One commentator writes that Jesus gives us a description, an example, of a discipleship that is “inclusive, attentive to the vulnerable, and diligent in recognizing those things that will lead one to stumble or offend…”
I recently heard about a conversation between a Christian and his Jewish friend who was speaking of his experience of Rosh Hashanah. The friend pointed to this reflection:
*Rosh Hashanah: ruminations
The day has come
To take an accounting of my life.
Have I dreamed of late
Of the person I want to be,
Of the changes I would make
In my daily habits,
In the way I am with others,
In the friendship I show companions,
Woman friends, man friends, my partner,
In the regard I show my father and mother,
Who brought me out of childhood?
I have remained enchained too often to less than what I am.
But the day has come to take an accounting of my life.
Have I renewed of late
My vision of the world I want to live in,
Of the changes I would make
In the way my friends are with each other
The way we find out whom we love
The way we grow to educate people
The way in which the many kinds of needy people
Grope their way to justice?
Worthy ruminations for our own discipleship, I think. Am I, are we, signs of God’s abundant care of God’s people?
Blessed is someone, anyone, who comes in the name of the Lord.
*from The Wings of Awe, A Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, Washington, D.C., with thanks to Mark Harris at Preludium
October 1, 2003
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50
The readings today lay out a whole smorgasbord of possibilities. I can pick any one of Jesus’ sayings and spin those out (in a good kind of spin. I like to think) or I can take some of the injunctions in James, or the experience of Israel in the desert or the problems of leadership exemplified in Moses, or others…
But what intrigues me the most this week is the theme that goes through all the readings – the theme of discipleship. What is a disciple? Who can be a disciple? What does a disciple do? What does being a disciple of (to be specific) Jesus require of us?
For the last couple of weeks we have heard Jesus on the subject of being his follower: “If any would be my disciple, let him deny himself take up his cross and follow me.” And, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
Today the disciples closest to him want to make Jesus a legal franchise. In order to be his disciple, you must fulfill certain requirements, pay certain dues, have a personal call or endorsement, be deemed by Jesus to be special and then be set aside for the special ministry and relationship of disciple.
Who can be a disciple, who can claim to be a disciple, who is allowed to serve as a disciple, who is authorized to function as a disciple in the name of the master? These are very old, time-honored, well-worn questions. They are from time immemorial. Whenever more than one has been gathered together these questions of authority and appropriateness of discipleship arise.
In the reading from the Book of Numbers, the question is raised. It is easy to concentrate on and make fun of the weeping of the people over having nothing to eat but manna. Actually, I think my personal translation of the Hebrew is not “weeping”, but “whining”. Or it is easy to identify with the plight of leadership shown by Moses, rather than the abundance that God provides for his people – all of them. The people are starving, God provides Manna. The task of leadership is too great, God provides 70 elders to be specially designated and authorized as helpers.
And not only that, God’s abundance is such that even if others, who have not been officially designated and set aside, feel called to do something on behalf of God’s providence, to care for God’s people, God empowers them, en-spirits them powerfully to do so.
Eldad and Medad are but two guys who feel called to do a good work. Joshua says, “Stop them. They are not authorized and empowered to do work on your behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.” Who do they think they are?! And Moses says in effect, “They’re doing that? Wonderful! It would be wonderful if everyone who believes felt moved to do such, empowered to do such, and then went ahead and did it. Wonderful!”
And then we jump ahead about 1400 years to the time of Jesus and what do we encounter? Exactly the same issue. Who is a disciple, who is authorized? This time it’s not about prophesying, it’s about healing, but the core issue is the same: who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people?
And Jesus says, “"Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”
It is the nature of God, it is in the providence of God, it is the abundance of God that there be no dearth of work being done on behalf of the welfare of the God’s people, no limit on the workers, no arbitrary set of requirements or categories defining who is allowed to do a good work, who is appropriate, who is authorized and empowered to do work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people. There is no limit, no requirement.
You cannot be too young, too old, too small, too large, too educated, too uneducated. You cannot be too poor or too rich. You cannot speak the wrong language. You cannot be the wrong gender, the wrong color, the wrong ethnicity, or the wrong age. You cannot even be too sinful -- or too pure. You cannot even be in the wrong religion to do a good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of the people.
All God asks, all God seeks is someone, anyone who will care for, work for the well being of God’s people. All God asks, all God seeks is the likes of you and me.
So the question becomes, "Are we who have been called and follow and do name ourselves as a disciple of Jesus: Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Risen Christ, Jesus the friend of the poor, the outcast, the prisoner and the sinner, Jesus the reconciler… Are we who are his disciples doing any good work on Jesus’ behalf, God’s behalf, or on behalf of the welfare of God’s people? Personally."
Is this community of disciples, the Cathedral Church of the Nativity, feeding the hungry and housing the homeless? By our work are we proclaiming to the community around us that God’s abundance is for them? Can we look at our neighbors and see how well they are being fed, how comfortably they are being housed, how warmly they are being dressed, how well they are being educated, how often they are being welcomed as a direct result of our good work as disciples of Jesus?
One commentator writes that Jesus gives us a description, an example, of a discipleship that is “inclusive, attentive to the vulnerable, and diligent in recognizing those things that will lead one to stumble or offend…”
I recently heard about a conversation between a Christian and his Jewish friend who was speaking of his experience of Rosh Hashanah. The friend pointed to this reflection:
*Rosh Hashanah: ruminations
The day has come
To take an accounting of my life.
Have I dreamed of late
Of the person I want to be,
Of the changes I would make
In my daily habits,
In the way I am with others,
In the friendship I show companions,
Woman friends, man friends, my partner,
In the regard I show my father and mother,
Who brought me out of childhood?
I have remained enchained too often to less than what I am.
But the day has come to take an accounting of my life.
Have I renewed of late
My vision of the world I want to live in,
Of the changes I would make
In the way my friends are with each other
The way we find out whom we love
The way we grow to educate people
The way in which the many kinds of needy people
Grope their way to justice?
Worthy ruminations for our own discipleship, I think. Am I, are we, signs of God’s abundant care of God’s people?
Blessed is someone, anyone, who comes in the name of the Lord.
*from The Wings of Awe, A Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, Washington, D.C., with thanks to Mark Harris at Preludium
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Pentecost 16: Welcoming a Child--Receiving Jesus
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a Mark 9:30-37
It has been much noisier outside my office window lately in the late afternoon. I hear cacophony, yelling, and shrieks…of laughter! Ever since the new playground equipment was installed this new symphony accompanies my afternoon work. If the noise is any indication, the neighborhood children who belong to the after-school program known as The Welcome Place are thoroughly enjoying themselves. The Welcome Place is not a program that this cathedral runs. It is a program of the South Bethlehem Neighborhood Center. We provide the space--the hospitality if you will. It is a large room on the basement level of our parish hall building which opens out onto the play area. This space is about to get much better, inside and out, thanks to the scout projects of two of our teenagers: Carl Kolepp’s Eagle Scout project and Betsy Yale’s Girl Scout Gold Award. The children of our parish enjoy the area too on Sundays or other times; but it is the Welcome Place kids that use it five afternoons a week and all summer long during the summer camp. To hear how much those children enjoy the space delights me to no end. I can’t wait for the interior work to be completed so that the welcome this parish provides for the children is all that it can be. Serving children draws us closer to God.
Again and again, Jesus tries to teach his disciples about just who he is, what kind of messiah he is. They may have gotten the Son of God part of it, but it was the suffering and death part--the servant part, the vulnerable giving-in part--that the disciples just couldn’t get. So once again, as they are walking along, Jesus tells his disciples about his necessary betrayal and murder and resurrection. They just didn’t understand; “they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him.” So they travel on, still unclear about how the reign of God will commence and what it will look like. Their conversation turns to other things--well, they talk about greatness. So when they arrive at Capernum Jesus confronts them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” They were silent. But Jesus knows what they were up to. He knows they are confused. Perhaps he sighs at the knowledge that they just don’t get it. So being the good teacher that he is, he tries again. This time with a visual aid.
Imagine the scene. Jesus sat down. He called the twelve. He said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child. He put the child in the midst of them. Then, he took the child in his arms. He said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” Can you see it?
It would be easy for us to dismiss this picture of Jesus with a child in his arms as a sweet gesture. Think about it. Would you ever characterize Jesus or his ministry as sweet? Cute? Isn’t Jesus the one who confronted authorities, hung out with the poor, exorcized demons, and insisted that he was the messiah who would be betrayal and killed. Didn’t he tell his friend and follower Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” So when he takes a child and places it in the midst of the disciples, it wasn’t about being cute. It was nothing less than the whole of the Gospel message. To be great in the reign of God is to be last of all and servant of all. To be great in the kingdom of God is to love and serve children.
Regardless of whether a culture honors children or dismisses them, regardless of whether they are beloved or not, children have the lowest social standing. They are powerless, dependant, and have few rights. They are least, they are last, and in God’s economy they are signs of the kingdom. In very important ways, children are no different than adults. We all bear the image of God. We are all beloved. We are all limited human beings. Just as it would be a mistake to dismiss Jesus’ encounter with this child as “sweet,” it would also be a mistake to romanticize children as somehow more pure than adults. In trying to explain why Jesus would hold up a child as an example of the reign of God, many people focus on what qualities children have that adults lack. Now we might be tempted to think of children as possessing the good kind of wisdom that we heard about today in the reading from the letter of James. James speaks of two kinds of wisdom: an earthly one full of ambition, and one from above which is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full mercy and good fruits without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. So we could say that in arguing about greatness the disciples displayed an earthly wisdom full of ambition while children…but honestly the rest doesn’t follow. I may be the only one, but I have experienced four-year-olds who are not pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits or without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Children are not examples of the kingdom because they are somehow different than adults in nature, but because of their status. They are powerless: easily ignored, mistreated, and overlooked. When Jesus takes that child and places her in the midst of his disciples, he demonstrates that welcoming children is the responsibility of all who would be great in the community. When he picks up that child and holds her, he shows that serving children is part of being kingdom bound. And if his actions are not enough, there are his words, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
The word welcome here means to receive, like to receive guests. It implies offering hospitality-- a hospitality which includes serving those who you welcome into your home. Jesus demonstrates service by taking that child into his arms.
Physician, writer, and child advocate Janusz Korczak was a man before his time. During the early part of the 20th century he dedicated his life to respecting and serving children. Advocating for their rights in his native Poland, he founded orphanages that were models of caring communities. He included the children in decision making. He treated them as full human beings, made in the image of God. When the Nazis invaded Poland during WW II, Korczak and the orphans were forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto: the doctor and the children were Jewish. A renowned physician, Korczak was offered the chance to escape to safety, but he refused to leave the children.
On an August day in 1942, Dr. Koczak and 200 children were marched from the ghetto, through Warsaw, to the train station to be “relocated.” The loving staff of the orphanage organized the children into rows of four and they walked calmly through the streets, singing as they went, Dr. Korczak carrying one child in his arms and holding another by the hand. When they arrived at the deportation point, again the good doctor was recognized and offered a chance to leave. He refused. He and the children boarded the trains that took them to Treblinka: the death camp where everyone was immediately sent to the gas chambers.
Welcoming children, serving children, is the responsibility of all who would be great in the Kingdom of God. But it is even more than that. Welcoming children is a way of receiving and serving Jesus as well. And if Jesus, then God. Whoever welcomes, whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me, but the one who sent me. To welcome is to receive with open arms and hearts. Which of us would not want to open our hearts to God? To draw near to God?
Dr. Korczak wrote, “Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously and to be treated with tenderness and respect. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. The unknown person inside each of them is our hope for the future.” (as quoted in Ten Amazing People by Maura D. Shaw)
The unknown person inside a child is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown person inside the child sitting nearest to you is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown persons inside the children who use our Welcome Place are our hope--what are we going to do about it?
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a Mark 9:30-37
It has been much noisier outside my office window lately in the late afternoon. I hear cacophony, yelling, and shrieks…of laughter! Ever since the new playground equipment was installed this new symphony accompanies my afternoon work. If the noise is any indication, the neighborhood children who belong to the after-school program known as The Welcome Place are thoroughly enjoying themselves. The Welcome Place is not a program that this cathedral runs. It is a program of the South Bethlehem Neighborhood Center. We provide the space--the hospitality if you will. It is a large room on the basement level of our parish hall building which opens out onto the play area. This space is about to get much better, inside and out, thanks to the scout projects of two of our teenagers: Carl Kolepp’s Eagle Scout project and Betsy Yale’s Girl Scout Gold Award. The children of our parish enjoy the area too on Sundays or other times; but it is the Welcome Place kids that use it five afternoons a week and all summer long during the summer camp. To hear how much those children enjoy the space delights me to no end. I can’t wait for the interior work to be completed so that the welcome this parish provides for the children is all that it can be. Serving children draws us closer to God.
Again and again, Jesus tries to teach his disciples about just who he is, what kind of messiah he is. They may have gotten the Son of God part of it, but it was the suffering and death part--the servant part, the vulnerable giving-in part--that the disciples just couldn’t get. So once again, as they are walking along, Jesus tells his disciples about his necessary betrayal and murder and resurrection. They just didn’t understand; “they did not understand what he was saying and they were afraid to ask him.” So they travel on, still unclear about how the reign of God will commence and what it will look like. Their conversation turns to other things--well, they talk about greatness. So when they arrive at Capernum Jesus confronts them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” They were silent. But Jesus knows what they were up to. He knows they are confused. Perhaps he sighs at the knowledge that they just don’t get it. So being the good teacher that he is, he tries again. This time with a visual aid.
Imagine the scene. Jesus sat down. He called the twelve. He said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child. He put the child in the midst of them. Then, he took the child in his arms. He said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” Can you see it?
It would be easy for us to dismiss this picture of Jesus with a child in his arms as a sweet gesture. Think about it. Would you ever characterize Jesus or his ministry as sweet? Cute? Isn’t Jesus the one who confronted authorities, hung out with the poor, exorcized demons, and insisted that he was the messiah who would be betrayal and killed. Didn’t he tell his friend and follower Peter, “Get behind me Satan!” So when he takes a child and places it in the midst of the disciples, it wasn’t about being cute. It was nothing less than the whole of the Gospel message. To be great in the reign of God is to be last of all and servant of all. To be great in the kingdom of God is to love and serve children.
Regardless of whether a culture honors children or dismisses them, regardless of whether they are beloved or not, children have the lowest social standing. They are powerless, dependant, and have few rights. They are least, they are last, and in God’s economy they are signs of the kingdom. In very important ways, children are no different than adults. We all bear the image of God. We are all beloved. We are all limited human beings. Just as it would be a mistake to dismiss Jesus’ encounter with this child as “sweet,” it would also be a mistake to romanticize children as somehow more pure than adults. In trying to explain why Jesus would hold up a child as an example of the reign of God, many people focus on what qualities children have that adults lack. Now we might be tempted to think of children as possessing the good kind of wisdom that we heard about today in the reading from the letter of James. James speaks of two kinds of wisdom: an earthly one full of ambition, and one from above which is pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full mercy and good fruits without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. So we could say that in arguing about greatness the disciples displayed an earthly wisdom full of ambition while children…but honestly the rest doesn’t follow. I may be the only one, but I have experienced four-year-olds who are not pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits or without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.
Children are not examples of the kingdom because they are somehow different than adults in nature, but because of their status. They are powerless: easily ignored, mistreated, and overlooked. When Jesus takes that child and places her in the midst of his disciples, he demonstrates that welcoming children is the responsibility of all who would be great in the community. When he picks up that child and holds her, he shows that serving children is part of being kingdom bound. And if his actions are not enough, there are his words, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
The word welcome here means to receive, like to receive guests. It implies offering hospitality-- a hospitality which includes serving those who you welcome into your home. Jesus demonstrates service by taking that child into his arms.
Physician, writer, and child advocate Janusz Korczak was a man before his time. During the early part of the 20th century he dedicated his life to respecting and serving children. Advocating for their rights in his native Poland, he founded orphanages that were models of caring communities. He included the children in decision making. He treated them as full human beings, made in the image of God. When the Nazis invaded Poland during WW II, Korczak and the orphans were forced to move into the Warsaw Ghetto: the doctor and the children were Jewish. A renowned physician, Korczak was offered the chance to escape to safety, but he refused to leave the children.
On an August day in 1942, Dr. Koczak and 200 children were marched from the ghetto, through Warsaw, to the train station to be “relocated.” The loving staff of the orphanage organized the children into rows of four and they walked calmly through the streets, singing as they went, Dr. Korczak carrying one child in his arms and holding another by the hand. When they arrived at the deportation point, again the good doctor was recognized and offered a chance to leave. He refused. He and the children boarded the trains that took them to Treblinka: the death camp where everyone was immediately sent to the gas chambers.
Welcoming children, serving children, is the responsibility of all who would be great in the Kingdom of God. But it is even more than that. Welcoming children is a way of receiving and serving Jesus as well. And if Jesus, then God. Whoever welcomes, whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me, receives not me, but the one who sent me. To welcome is to receive with open arms and hearts. Which of us would not want to open our hearts to God? To draw near to God?
Dr. Korczak wrote, “Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously and to be treated with tenderness and respect. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. The unknown person inside each of them is our hope for the future.” (as quoted in Ten Amazing People by Maura D. Shaw)
The unknown person inside a child is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown person inside the child sitting nearest to you is our hope--what are we going to do about it? The unknown persons inside the children who use our Welcome Place are our hope--what are we going to do about it?
Copyright © Anne E. Kitch 2006
Monday, September 18, 2006
Pentecost 15: The Way
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
September 17, 2006
Proper 19 ~ Mark 8:27-38
All throughout the land on Monday morning, bells tolled. Slowly, marking each of the four events of September 11th, slowly marking the finality of the deaths that day, slowly marking the reality of that day.
Robert D. McFadden wrote in The New York Times, the next day under the headline "Nation Marks Lives Lost and Signs of Healing":
You can almost hear the bell toll as Jesus spoke his truth, his reality against the messianic hopes and dreams of the people.
This is probably not the last time that a follower of Jesus thinks he has perfect understanding of the life, ministry and way of Jesus. Indeed Christian history and the Christian Church and even this cathedral is peopled with those who have thought we had a clear vision of how God wanted things to be or go.
Bishop Mark Dyer tells the story of his paying for a friend’s dinner. The friend, instead of a simple thank you for the gift, said. “Well I’ll get it next time.” Mark asks, what response can there be to the gift of Jesus on the cross for the redemption of the world? Will it be, “Well Jesus, I’ll get it next time.” The Cost of Messiahship was great. Jesus says the cost of discipleship can be great as well.
It is true that the bell tolls for thee and me. Disciples follow the way of the master. Indeed, since the earliest days of the followers of Jesus following his death and resurrection, we have been called “The Way.”
Peter attempted to pull Jesus away, off the way, out of the way to distract him from the way all in an attempt to save the friend and master he loved so much. But Jesus says to him and to us, “This is the way of the Messiah and this is the way of the disciple, to follow me.”
William Willimon gives this example.*
Do you remember the song from “Paint Your Wagon”, the 1951 musical by Lerner and Loewe?
September 17, 2006
Proper 19 ~ Mark 8:27-38
All throughout the land on Monday morning, bells tolled. Slowly, marking each of the four events of September 11th, slowly marking the finality of the deaths that day, slowly marking the reality of that day.
Robert D. McFadden wrote in The New York Times, the next day under the headline "Nation Marks Lives Lost and Signs of Healing":
Once more the leaden bells tolled in mourning, loved ones recited the names of the dead at ground zero, and a wounded but resilient America paused yesterday to remember the calamitous day when terrorist explosions rumbled like summer thunder and people fell from the sky.There was no escaping the truth, the reality of that day as the bells tolled.
You can almost hear the bell toll as Jesus spoke his truth, his reality against the messianic hopes and dreams of the people.
The Son of Man must suffer. (The bell tolls)Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. But it all goes terribly wrong. Not even Peter, the most devoted disciple can believe it. He pulls Jesus away to tell him it cannot be so. “There is supposed to be a warrior king, a second David, and a mighty revolutionary army, and the world order will be over thrown. It cannot be the way you say.”
And be rejected. (The bell tolls)
And be killed. (The bell tolls)
And then rise again. (The bell tolls)
It’s not like you think. (The bell tolls)
You don’t understand. (The bell tolls)
This is the way. (The bell tolls)
This is the way that will change the world. (The bell tolls)
This is probably not the last time that a follower of Jesus thinks he has perfect understanding of the life, ministry and way of Jesus. Indeed Christian history and the Christian Church and even this cathedral is peopled with those who have thought we had a clear vision of how God wanted things to be or go.
Bishop Mark Dyer tells the story of his paying for a friend’s dinner. The friend, instead of a simple thank you for the gift, said. “Well I’ll get it next time.” Mark asks, what response can there be to the gift of Jesus on the cross for the redemption of the world? Will it be, “Well Jesus, I’ll get it next time.” The Cost of Messiahship was great. Jesus says the cost of discipleship can be great as well.
It is true that the bell tolls for thee and me. Disciples follow the way of the master. Indeed, since the earliest days of the followers of Jesus following his death and resurrection, we have been called “The Way.”
Peter attempted to pull Jesus away, off the way, out of the way to distract him from the way all in an attempt to save the friend and master he loved so much. But Jesus says to him and to us, “This is the way of the Messiah and this is the way of the disciple, to follow me.”
William Willimon gives this example.*
“The doctor spared few words. "Your baby is afflicted with Down’s Syndrome, mongoloidism. I had expected this, but things were too far along before I could say for sure."Disciples follow the Master.
"Is the baby healthy?" she asked.
"That’s what I wanted to discuss with you," the doctor said. "The baby is healthy -- except for the problem. However, it does have a slight, rather common respiratory ailment. My advice is that you let me take it off the respirator -- that might solve things. At least, it’s a possibility."
"It’s not a possibility for us," they said together.
"I know how you feel," responded the doctor. "But you need to think about what you’re doing. You already have two beautiful kids. Statistics show that people who keep these babies risk a higher incidence of marital stress and family problems. Is it fair to do this to the children you already have? Is it right to bring this suffering into your family?"
At the mention of "suffering" I saw her face brighten, as if the doctor were finally making sense.
"Suffering?" she said quietly. "We appreciate your concern, but we’re Christians. God suffered for us, and we will try to suffer for the baby, if we must."
"Pastor, I hope you can do something with them," the doctor whispered to me outside their door as he continued his rounds.
Two days later, the doctor and I watched the couple leave the hospital. They walked slowly, carrying a small bundle; but it seemed a heavy burden to us, a weight on their shoulders. We felt as if we could hear them dragging, clanking it down the front steps of the hospital, moving slowly but deliberately into a cold, gray March morning.
"It will be too much for them," the doctor said. "You ought to have talked them out of it. You should have helped them to understand."
But as they left, I noticed a curious look on their faces; they looked as if the burden were not too heavy at all, as if it were a privilege and a sign. They seemed borne up, as if on another’s shoulders, being carried toward some high place the doctor and I would not be going, following a way we did not understand.”
Do you remember the song from “Paint Your Wagon”, the 1951 musical by Lerner and Loewe?
Where am I goin'?All we can know is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and Life itself. All we can do is to follow him to have the best chance to save our life, the life of those we love, and maybe even the life of the world.
I don't know.
Where am I headin'?
I ain't certain.
All I know Is
I am on my way.
When will I be there?
I don't know.
When will I get there?
I ain't certain.
All that I know Is
I am on my way.
* William Willimon, The Christian Century, March 2, 1983, pp. 173-174
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Pentecost 14: The Justice of Healing
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 James 2:1-10, 11-17 Mark 7:24-37
Anniversaries. They are a way we mark time. The word itself comes from the Latin words for year and turn: the turning of the years. To honor an anniversary is to return again to a time, a place of remembrance. At the end of August I attended an annual training event to be recertified and an EFM mentor. It was a return for me as I found myself with the same five people who I had been in a small group with the year before. It wasn’t until we sat down together to begin our work that I was suddenly aware that a year had passed--and what a year it had been. The event gave me a chance to review in a very tangible way where I had been in the past year. Specifically, I became aware of where there had been healing in my life. A year before I had arrived at the training exhausted and overwhelmed and in many ways broken. Now I came full of joy and energy and playfulness. How had that happened? How had the healing taken place with me unaware of it?
I was filled with a powerful sense of God’s care for me and a sudden knowledge that God had worked powerfully in my life in ways that I had been unconscious of. This really shouldn’t surprise me. It is often my experience that while God is working in my life, I am sometimes unconscious of it as an ongoing event. But then I have a moment to reflect, to look back, and I can see how God has been there. I realize how God’s good work has been done in me. It seems I sometimes only recognize God’s healing in retrospect. And then there are times that I actively seek it out.
Where does healing come from? How does healing happen? Healing was a huge part of Jesus’ ministry. He healed poor people and rich people, children, adults, soldiers, and homemakers, He healed Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, and Romans. He cured lifelong afflictions and ordinary fevers, chronic conditions and birth defects. mental and psychological anguish. He exorcised demons and raised people from the dead. Where did his healing come from? And what exactly does a healing ministry have to do with being the Son of God and the messiah?
In the two healing stories we heard today, the healing is sought. The woman comes to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. Friends bring the deaf man to Jesus. Jesus didn’t go looking for them. In fact sometimes he seemed to want to hide from all the needs and hurts of others. When he went to the region of Tyre after his confrontation with the Pharisees (some 35 miles North of Galilee, more than a day’s walk from his home territory), “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean sprit immediately heard about him and she came and bowed down at his feet.”
Now this woman lived in Tyre. She was not one of Jesus’ people. She was not the same religion or ethnicity or even from the same country. The text refers to her as Syrophoenician, meaning she was living in Phoenicia but of Syrian descent (like Italtian-American or French-Canadian). She was also a Gentile, or some texts say Greek--clearly not Jewish. When you are exhausted, when you want time to yourself, when you do not want to be found, it is hard enough to have to respond positively to a family member or a friend who seeks you out. You definitely don’t want to have anything to do with an outsider, a stranger who has no claim on you. This woman had no claim on Jesus. He was not her rabbi, not her countryman; he was not her messiah. And when she asks for healing for her daughter, he tells her as much (basically a loose translation of that children and dogs comment would be, “You have no claim on me!”)
Having been put off, she then asks for something else. She asks for justice--and in doing so reminds Jesus, reminds us, who does have a claim on him. See, Jesus is not Israel’s messiah. Jesus is not the savior of the Jews. Jesus is the savior of the world--including the world of a Syrian, non-Jewish woman in Tyre. She demands justice and receives it. And her daughter is healed. What is the relationship between healing and justice?
The region of Tyre is much in the news today. You only have to read the headlines to get a good picture…
Lebanon Prepares Mass Graves in Tyre
Officials say more than 500 Lebanese civilians have been killed since the conflict began, and more mass burials are planned Monday in the southern port city of Tyre
(August 2, 2006, NPR)
Returning Lebanese Rebury the Dead
Lebanese are now back in towns that were the focus of Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, and they're giving proper funerals to loved ones who were buried in mass graves. At the port of Tyre, more than 160 bodies were reburied.
(August 20, 2006, NPR)
Sidon Journal; Wake of War Idles Lebanon's Fleet, and Its Fishermen
Every morning, the fishermen gather at a grimy outdoor cafe overlooking the docks of this ancient port town. It is the height of the fishing season, but their boats sit at the water's edge like abandoned cars, rusting. ''We have been sitting here for 50 days,'' said Muhammad Ibrahim
(August 28, 2006, NYTimes)
Besieged
Things were getting back to normal in Tyre. The bomb craters in the main streets had been filled in with dirt, which slowed traffic but at least made passage possible. Some of the town’s more spectacular ruins were already being shoveled into great heaps of rubble. (September 3, 2006, NYTimes)
And in the midst of that rubble who is in need of justice? Of healing? Of peace? In an online journal reflection on today’s lessons, Jerry Goebel (a minister to at risk youth in WA) writes “In Tyre, this week, a woman still cries out for her daughter. She [is] not part of the hatred and politics that turned southern Lebanon into a disaster zone. Yet, that woman still cannot find a voice in an area torn asunder by religion and politics.” So many Christians in our country are fond of asking WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Do in Tyre? “We already know. The same thing he did 2,000 years ago in that ancient city. He would find the most ignored, most forgotten, most desperate person in the city, and he would heal her daughter.”*
When do we receive healing? Where does healing come from? How is it related to justice? What does a Syrophoenician woman have to do with Jesus? What do people in the Middle East have to do with us?
This week we encounter the anniversary of 9/11. We have marked the time for five years. We return again to a time, a place of remembrance. Consciously or unconsciously we revisit a time of horror and tragedy and terrorism. It is hard to enter those waters again. But as I contemplate this anniversary I find I am compelled to take stock in terms of healing. Where has there been healing over the past five years, and where has there been none? Where has there been justice, and where has there been none? Healing and justice, justice and peace.
What about us? Who has a claim on us? What are we called to do? Where does healing come from? In reflecting on this anniversary, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Director of Worship Resources for the United Methodist Church, writes, “Healing comes as we act in love toward those who harmed us, forgive our enemies, and reach out in love toward those who hurt the most — whoever they are, wherever they are. Healing comes as our souls, which need not be destroyed by outward pains, choose love again — not fear, not pain, not hate.” **
Healing and justice go hand in hand. Scripture is clear. In Proverbs we read, “whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.” And in the letter of James, “What good is it if a brother or sister lacks daily food and you say ‘Go in peace: keep warm and eat your fill,’ but do not supply their bodily needs?” And then there are the actions of Jesus.
On Friday evening my children prayed with friends of theirs before they sat down and ate their pizza. This was their prayer:
Bless our food, Dear God we pray,
And bless us too throughout this day.
Keep us safe and close to You,
Keep us just in all we do.
Keep us just in all we do.
Copyright © 2006 Anne E. Kitch
*Jerry Goebel: 2005 © http://onefamilyoutreach.com.
** Taylor Burton-Edwards, Reflections and a Hymn for the Fifth Anniversary of September 11, 2001 http://www.gbod.org/worship
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 James 2:1-10, 11-17 Mark 7:24-37
Anniversaries. They are a way we mark time. The word itself comes from the Latin words for year and turn: the turning of the years. To honor an anniversary is to return again to a time, a place of remembrance. At the end of August I attended an annual training event to be recertified and an EFM mentor. It was a return for me as I found myself with the same five people who I had been in a small group with the year before. It wasn’t until we sat down together to begin our work that I was suddenly aware that a year had passed--and what a year it had been. The event gave me a chance to review in a very tangible way where I had been in the past year. Specifically, I became aware of where there had been healing in my life. A year before I had arrived at the training exhausted and overwhelmed and in many ways broken. Now I came full of joy and energy and playfulness. How had that happened? How had the healing taken place with me unaware of it?
I was filled with a powerful sense of God’s care for me and a sudden knowledge that God had worked powerfully in my life in ways that I had been unconscious of. This really shouldn’t surprise me. It is often my experience that while God is working in my life, I am sometimes unconscious of it as an ongoing event. But then I have a moment to reflect, to look back, and I can see how God has been there. I realize how God’s good work has been done in me. It seems I sometimes only recognize God’s healing in retrospect. And then there are times that I actively seek it out.
Where does healing come from? How does healing happen? Healing was a huge part of Jesus’ ministry. He healed poor people and rich people, children, adults, soldiers, and homemakers, He healed Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, and Romans. He cured lifelong afflictions and ordinary fevers, chronic conditions and birth defects. mental and psychological anguish. He exorcised demons and raised people from the dead. Where did his healing come from? And what exactly does a healing ministry have to do with being the Son of God and the messiah?
In the two healing stories we heard today, the healing is sought. The woman comes to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. Friends bring the deaf man to Jesus. Jesus didn’t go looking for them. In fact sometimes he seemed to want to hide from all the needs and hurts of others. When he went to the region of Tyre after his confrontation with the Pharisees (some 35 miles North of Galilee, more than a day’s walk from his home territory), “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean sprit immediately heard about him and she came and bowed down at his feet.”
Now this woman lived in Tyre. She was not one of Jesus’ people. She was not the same religion or ethnicity or even from the same country. The text refers to her as Syrophoenician, meaning she was living in Phoenicia but of Syrian descent (like Italtian-American or French-Canadian). She was also a Gentile, or some texts say Greek--clearly not Jewish. When you are exhausted, when you want time to yourself, when you do not want to be found, it is hard enough to have to respond positively to a family member or a friend who seeks you out. You definitely don’t want to have anything to do with an outsider, a stranger who has no claim on you. This woman had no claim on Jesus. He was not her rabbi, not her countryman; he was not her messiah. And when she asks for healing for her daughter, he tells her as much (basically a loose translation of that children and dogs comment would be, “You have no claim on me!”)
Having been put off, she then asks for something else. She asks for justice--and in doing so reminds Jesus, reminds us, who does have a claim on him. See, Jesus is not Israel’s messiah. Jesus is not the savior of the Jews. Jesus is the savior of the world--including the world of a Syrian, non-Jewish woman in Tyre. She demands justice and receives it. And her daughter is healed. What is the relationship between healing and justice?
The region of Tyre is much in the news today. You only have to read the headlines to get a good picture…
Lebanon Prepares Mass Graves in Tyre
Officials say more than 500 Lebanese civilians have been killed since the conflict began, and more mass burials are planned Monday in the southern port city of Tyre
(August 2, 2006, NPR)
Returning Lebanese Rebury the Dead
Lebanese are now back in towns that were the focus of Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, and they're giving proper funerals to loved ones who were buried in mass graves. At the port of Tyre, more than 160 bodies were reburied.
(August 20, 2006, NPR)
Sidon Journal; Wake of War Idles Lebanon's Fleet, and Its Fishermen
Every morning, the fishermen gather at a grimy outdoor cafe overlooking the docks of this ancient port town. It is the height of the fishing season, but their boats sit at the water's edge like abandoned cars, rusting. ''We have been sitting here for 50 days,'' said Muhammad Ibrahim
(August 28, 2006, NYTimes)
Besieged
Things were getting back to normal in Tyre. The bomb craters in the main streets had been filled in with dirt, which slowed traffic but at least made passage possible. Some of the town’s more spectacular ruins were already being shoveled into great heaps of rubble. (September 3, 2006, NYTimes)
And in the midst of that rubble who is in need of justice? Of healing? Of peace? In an online journal reflection on today’s lessons, Jerry Goebel (a minister to at risk youth in WA) writes “In Tyre, this week, a woman still cries out for her daughter. She [is] not part of the hatred and politics that turned southern Lebanon into a disaster zone. Yet, that woman still cannot find a voice in an area torn asunder by religion and politics.” So many Christians in our country are fond of asking WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Do in Tyre? “We already know. The same thing he did 2,000 years ago in that ancient city. He would find the most ignored, most forgotten, most desperate person in the city, and he would heal her daughter.”*
When do we receive healing? Where does healing come from? How is it related to justice? What does a Syrophoenician woman have to do with Jesus? What do people in the Middle East have to do with us?
This week we encounter the anniversary of 9/11. We have marked the time for five years. We return again to a time, a place of remembrance. Consciously or unconsciously we revisit a time of horror and tragedy and terrorism. It is hard to enter those waters again. But as I contemplate this anniversary I find I am compelled to take stock in terms of healing. Where has there been healing over the past five years, and where has there been none? Where has there been justice, and where has there been none? Healing and justice, justice and peace.
What about us? Who has a claim on us? What are we called to do? Where does healing come from? In reflecting on this anniversary, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Director of Worship Resources for the United Methodist Church, writes, “Healing comes as we act in love toward those who harmed us, forgive our enemies, and reach out in love toward those who hurt the most — whoever they are, wherever they are. Healing comes as our souls, which need not be destroyed by outward pains, choose love again — not fear, not pain, not hate.” **
Healing and justice go hand in hand. Scripture is clear. In Proverbs we read, “whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.” And in the letter of James, “What good is it if a brother or sister lacks daily food and you say ‘Go in peace: keep warm and eat your fill,’ but do not supply their bodily needs?” And then there are the actions of Jesus.
On Friday evening my children prayed with friends of theirs before they sat down and ate their pizza. This was their prayer:
Bless our food, Dear God we pray,
And bless us too throughout this day.
Keep us safe and close to You,
Keep us just in all we do.
Keep us just in all we do.
Copyright © 2006 Anne E. Kitch
*Jerry Goebel: 2005 © http://onefamilyoutreach.com.
** Taylor Burton-Edwards, Reflections and a Hymn for the Fifth Anniversary of September 11, 2001 http://www.gbod.org/worship
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Pentecost 13: Don't Blame the Pharisees!
September 3, 2006
The Rev. Cn. Joel Atkinson
Preached at St. Barnabas, Kutztown, PA
After the crucifixion there was not a Christian church!
The earliest followers of the man who died upon that cross at Calvary
were Jews engaged in a Judaism
centered ’round the Temple in Jerusalem.
Those early followers saw no discontinuity
between the teachings of the Torah
and the teachings of the man
whom they had pledged their allegiance to.
It is true there was some discomfort
within the religious establishment of Judaism
and those out of the box thinking Jewish followers of Jesus
and with other developments taking place within the Judaism of their day.
Rather than seeking a middle way,
so typically human,
a game of blame the other came into play.
Another and perhaps better word
for this game is “scapegoating” those who held opposing views.
When we scapegoat we don’t take responsibility
for our contribution to the conflict between them and us.
Then there was Paul
and his zealous evangelism
among the uncircumcised,
that is, all those non-Jews out there.
As a consequence, a split occurred
between the Jewish and the Hellenist wings of our early church
threatening the existence of that early church.
“After all it was Paul’s fault,
that former Pharisee,”
the Jewish Christians said,
“He did it,” and fingers were waggled,
“for introducing Hellenistic views
into our so, so Christian Jewish community.”
Fortunately, a middle way was found
[The first Anglicans were born!]
and our church made it beyond
those raucous infant days.
Unfortunately, between the early Jewish Christians
and what was soon to be a synagogue-centered Judaism
a permanent split took place.
We were a rather aggravating lot!
On the other hand,
perhaps we’d not have become who we are today
if we’d not been booted out.
In all this mess,
those righteous Pharisees got a very bad press.
I use righteous
not intending a negative judgment
as it’s often used when associated with them,
but as actually complimentary
for those who sought to uphold the good order
of their particular religion.
Scapegoating has to have ones to fault
and in this conflict the Pharisees
were convenient targets.
With all the rancor and waggling fingers,
it was easy to ignore the message
of He who had died to set them free,
thus the reminder
in the message
contained in the lessons read today.
Therefore, I will not spend any time
in those ancient arguments
nor any we might have today.
I’ll not do any finger-waggling at the Pharisees!
I wonder how often today
the Good News is not heard
because we enter into such blaming, scapegoating games?
I wonder too how often opportunities
to be more fully God’s people
are not taken
because of our blaming and scapegoating ways?
This is not meant to deny
the conflicts Jesus had
with the religious authorities of his day.
His teachings pushed the edges of their theological thinking
and heaven forbid crowds of the faithful came to listen.
Naturally this led to conflicts
with those in power.
Honestly, folks,
doesn’t this sound familiar,
too often,
like our church today?
Enough is enough
now to the message
we are supposed to hear this day.
[Solomon 2:8-13]
The voice of my beloved! Look, He comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall. Gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
The intent of his metaphor
for us who will listen to these words
is God is the lover who calls
and we the beloved are asked to respond.
God is the one who rushes to us.
God is the one who desires for us to come away with God.
Our time of separation is over
and God calls for us to come away
into a new life only God can give.
What is it that keeps us from arising and going with God?
What is it that keeps us from truly living into all God calls us to be?
What is it that keeps us alienated from our lover?
Can you guess?
It is not those,
who in our opinion,
have replaced
those righteous Pharisees of old
nor is it those
who as Paul
push the edges of our theological understanding.
Rather the answer is our idolatry.
We think so much of ourselves
that we want to be in charge
rather than God!
We want to tell God who to be and what to be and how to be.
We want to box God in.
We want to catalog and categorize God
in order to better define
that which is beyond definition.
We make God into an idol of our creation,
something less than who God really is.
Then we worship our creation
seeking the Life only God can give –
how ironic.
God is beyond the boundaries of the universe
with its billions of galaxies
and the billions of suns within each
of those billions of galaxies.
Yet, in some ineffable way
God is as small as the smallest thing.
In all the enormity of the universe
I’ve described nothing is too small
for God not to be there.
God is with us each today
and into all the time to come.
Yet we constantly defile ourselves
with our idolatrous way.
We defile ourselves
when we blame others [when we scapegoat]
to avoid acknowledging our own sinful ways.
We defile ourselves
with idolatrous ways
when we move ourselves from God’s embrace
so that we might be in control.
God come to us this day.
Come that our eyes might be open to see.
Come that our ears might be open to hear.
Come that our minds might be open to learn.
Come that our hearts might be open to feel.
Open us to our lover’s presence.
Open us to listening to our lovers call.
Let us be open to the God
who comes into our lives
that we might find what it is we are called to do
as loved and forgiven children of God
commissioned to make known God’s love in a world
too often broken and alienated from our lover’s call.
Let us be open to the God who
comes to give us Life.
“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
If some day you or I find ourselves drifting from the call of God,
don’t blame the Pharisees
or the Paul’s in our lives
who push the edges of our understanding of God.
Rather let us look to ourselves.
The Rev. Cn. Joel Atkinson
Preached at St. Barnabas, Kutztown, PA
After the crucifixion there was not a Christian church!
The earliest followers of the man who died upon that cross at Calvary
were Jews engaged in a Judaism
centered ’round the Temple in Jerusalem.
Those early followers saw no discontinuity
between the teachings of the Torah
and the teachings of the man
whom they had pledged their allegiance to.
It is true there was some discomfort
within the religious establishment of Judaism
and those out of the box thinking Jewish followers of Jesus
and with other developments taking place within the Judaism of their day.
Rather than seeking a middle way,
so typically human,
a game of blame the other came into play.
Another and perhaps better word
for this game is “scapegoating” those who held opposing views.
When we scapegoat we don’t take responsibility
for our contribution to the conflict between them and us.
Then there was Paul
and his zealous evangelism
among the uncircumcised,
that is, all those non-Jews out there.
As a consequence, a split occurred
between the Jewish and the Hellenist wings of our early church
threatening the existence of that early church.
“After all it was Paul’s fault,
that former Pharisee,”
the Jewish Christians said,
“He did it,” and fingers were waggled,
“for introducing Hellenistic views
into our so, so Christian Jewish community.”
Fortunately, a middle way was found
[The first Anglicans were born!]
and our church made it beyond
those raucous infant days.
Unfortunately, between the early Jewish Christians
and what was soon to be a synagogue-centered Judaism
a permanent split took place.
We were a rather aggravating lot!
On the other hand,
perhaps we’d not have become who we are today
if we’d not been booted out.
In all this mess,
those righteous Pharisees got a very bad press.
I use righteous
not intending a negative judgment
as it’s often used when associated with them,
but as actually complimentary
for those who sought to uphold the good order
of their particular religion.
Scapegoating has to have ones to fault
and in this conflict the Pharisees
were convenient targets.
With all the rancor and waggling fingers,
it was easy to ignore the message
of He who had died to set them free,
thus the reminder
in the message
contained in the lessons read today.
Therefore, I will not spend any time
in those ancient arguments
nor any we might have today.
I’ll not do any finger-waggling at the Pharisees!
I wonder how often today
the Good News is not heard
because we enter into such blaming, scapegoating games?
I wonder too how often opportunities
to be more fully God’s people
are not taken
because of our blaming and scapegoating ways?
This is not meant to deny
the conflicts Jesus had
with the religious authorities of his day.
His teachings pushed the edges of their theological thinking
and heaven forbid crowds of the faithful came to listen.
Naturally this led to conflicts
with those in power.
Honestly, folks,
doesn’t this sound familiar,
too often,
like our church today?
Enough is enough
now to the message
we are supposed to hear this day.
[Solomon 2:8-13]
The voice of my beloved! Look, He comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall. Gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
The intent of his metaphor
for us who will listen to these words
is God is the lover who calls
and we the beloved are asked to respond.
God is the one who rushes to us.
God is the one who desires for us to come away with God.
Our time of separation is over
and God calls for us to come away
into a new life only God can give.
What is it that keeps us from arising and going with God?
What is it that keeps us from truly living into all God calls us to be?
What is it that keeps us alienated from our lover?
Can you guess?
It is not those,
who in our opinion,
have replaced
those righteous Pharisees of old
nor is it those
who as Paul
push the edges of our theological understanding.
Rather the answer is our idolatry.
We think so much of ourselves
that we want to be in charge
rather than God!
We want to tell God who to be and what to be and how to be.
We want to box God in.
We want to catalog and categorize God
in order to better define
that which is beyond definition.
We make God into an idol of our creation,
something less than who God really is.
Then we worship our creation
seeking the Life only God can give –
how ironic.
God is beyond the boundaries of the universe
with its billions of galaxies
and the billions of suns within each
of those billions of galaxies.
Yet, in some ineffable way
God is as small as the smallest thing.
In all the enormity of the universe
I’ve described nothing is too small
for God not to be there.
God is with us each today
and into all the time to come.
Yet we constantly defile ourselves
with our idolatrous way.
We defile ourselves
when we blame others [when we scapegoat]
to avoid acknowledging our own sinful ways.
We defile ourselves
with idolatrous ways
when we move ourselves from God’s embrace
so that we might be in control.
God come to us this day.
Come that our eyes might be open to see.
Come that our ears might be open to hear.
Come that our minds might be open to learn.
Come that our hearts might be open to feel.
Open us to our lover’s presence.
Open us to listening to our lovers call.
Let us be open to the God
who comes into our lives
that we might find what it is we are called to do
as loved and forgiven children of God
commissioned to make known God’s love in a world
too often broken and alienated from our lover’s call.
Let us be open to the God who
comes to give us Life.
“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
If some day you or I find ourselves drifting from the call of God,
don’t blame the Pharisees
or the Paul’s in our lives
who push the edges of our understanding of God.
Rather let us look to ourselves.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Pentecost 13: The Way of Life
September 3, 2006
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Proper 17 ~ Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-9,21-23 Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
It was Groucho Marx who said when he was refused entrance into a club on Long Island, “I don’t want to belong to a club that would accept someone like me.”
Who’s in? Who’s out? On what basis are they in or out? Who decides?
It’s an age-old game. It’s been around as long as humans have been walking upright, maybe longer. Whenever more than one is gathered together there is an opportunity to play the game. Shall we let them into our circle or shall we not?
Are they the right kind to be in our circle? Do they walk like we do? Talk like we do? Eat what we do? Wear what we do? Like the same things we do? Act like we do? Believe what we do?
What are the signs that they are enough like us to be with us, to be one of us? What are the rules they have to follow to be one of us?
So here we have today two lessons that have to do with the rules and signs of identity and belonging. Moses is preaching a sermon about the importance of Torah, following the Law, the commandments.
Remember that Israel is on the banks of the Jordan River, on the verge of Jordan, ready to enter the long-promised land, and as a gift, as a gift, God gives them, through Moses, a way to live in this new place that will enable them to claim the promise, claim their destiny, claim their heritage, live out their identity as the people of the Lord God Jehovah.
God does not lay upon them a burden of the Law, but rather the gift of what they need to establish their identity as God’s people. By this, they will know that they are God’s people. By this they will show others that they are God’s people.
Not rules to confine, not laws to conform, but a way to live, to establish and claim their identity.
How will they know, how will others know who they are and whose they are? …By how they live.
But, my oh my, how they and we have perverted that gift of life and identity! By the time of Jesus, the Scribes and Pharisees have made the law to be a heavy yoke to be borne around the necks of the children of God. Someone counted 613 commandments in the five books of Moses (the Torah).
These laws encompassed nearly every aspect of human life — birth, death, sex, gender, health, economics, jurisprudence, social relations, hygiene, marriage, behavior, and ethnicity. And the Gentiles were automatically considered impure.
Purity had become more important than prayer; ritual more important than reconciliation; conformity more important than compassion. Rules defined righteousness.
to impose and police the rules, to decide who was pure and who was impure, who was righteous and who was unrighteous, who was a good Jew and who was not a good Jew, and indeed who because of their behavior was not a Jew at all, because they had by their behavior removed themselves outside the circle of the chosen people of God.
As I said earlier, the game has been played ever since and is played to this day. Garrison Keillor speaks of his own Lutheran ancestors coming to this country and to the harsh winters of the northern mid-west. He says his forbearers left their homeland and came “seeking greater restrictions.”
The Anglican Communion today is in the full game-mode of deciding who is in and who is out, who is conforming and who is not. Are you Anglican enough, traditional enough, evangelical enough, scriptural enough, liberal enough, catholic enough, orthodox enough, pure enough?
And so the stage is set for the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. The law has become, not the gift of a way of life, but instead has become the yoke of oppression and the means of exclusion.
And Jesus says, “Enough!” Do not lay upon this, my people the burden of the laws. Let them live their lives out of their love for God and God’s ways.
The first verse of Psalm 15 poses the question, “Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle and who may abide on your holy hill?” The Pharisees would say, “only those who have completed all the ritual acts of purity.” But through the psalmist God replies in verse 2, “Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, who speaks the truth from his heart.”
From his heart, Jesus touched and healed a man with leprosy, a woman with a hemorrhage, the dead body of his friend Lazarus -- violations of every purity law. Jesus the Jew ignored the Sabbath laws relating to diet and activity. He consorted with sinners, and immediately after this week's story he healed two Gentiles.
Marcus Borg wrote that “the new community that Jesus announced is characterized by interior compassion for everyone, not external compliance to a purity code, by radical inclusivity rather than by hierarchical exclusivity, and by inward transformation rather than outward ritual. In place of the Leviticus injunction to ‘be holy, for I am holy’ (Lev. 19:2), Jesus deliberately substituted the call to "be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36).”
I want to belong to that community. I want my life to be a sign of that understanding. I want my heart to follow that path. I want to base my life on that truth. I want to live my life that according to that rule. I want to spend my time on those things. I want to bet my life on that God. I want to follow that way, the way of Jesus.
How about you?
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Proper 17 ~ Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-9,21-23 Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23
It was Groucho Marx who said when he was refused entrance into a club on Long Island, “I don’t want to belong to a club that would accept someone like me.”
Who’s in? Who’s out? On what basis are they in or out? Who decides?
It’s an age-old game. It’s been around as long as humans have been walking upright, maybe longer. Whenever more than one is gathered together there is an opportunity to play the game. Shall we let them into our circle or shall we not?
Are they the right kind to be in our circle? Do they walk like we do? Talk like we do? Eat what we do? Wear what we do? Like the same things we do? Act like we do? Believe what we do?
What are the signs that they are enough like us to be with us, to be one of us? What are the rules they have to follow to be one of us?
So here we have today two lessons that have to do with the rules and signs of identity and belonging. Moses is preaching a sermon about the importance of Torah, following the Law, the commandments.
Remember that Israel is on the banks of the Jordan River, on the verge of Jordan, ready to enter the long-promised land, and as a gift, as a gift, God gives them, through Moses, a way to live in this new place that will enable them to claim the promise, claim their destiny, claim their heritage, live out their identity as the people of the Lord God Jehovah.
God does not lay upon them a burden of the Law, but rather the gift of what they need to establish their identity as God’s people. By this, they will know that they are God’s people. By this they will show others that they are God’s people.
Not rules to confine, not laws to conform, but a way to live, to establish and claim their identity.
How will they know, how will others know who they are and whose they are? …By how they live.
But, my oh my, how they and we have perverted that gift of life and identity! By the time of Jesus, the Scribes and Pharisees have made the law to be a heavy yoke to be borne around the necks of the children of God. Someone counted 613 commandments in the five books of Moses (the Torah).
These laws encompassed nearly every aspect of human life — birth, death, sex, gender, health, economics, jurisprudence, social relations, hygiene, marriage, behavior, and ethnicity. And the Gentiles were automatically considered impure.
Purity had become more important than prayer; ritual more important than reconciliation; conformity more important than compassion. Rules defined righteousness.
to impose and police the rules, to decide who was pure and who was impure, who was righteous and who was unrighteous, who was a good Jew and who was not a good Jew, and indeed who because of their behavior was not a Jew at all, because they had by their behavior removed themselves outside the circle of the chosen people of God.
As I said earlier, the game has been played ever since and is played to this day. Garrison Keillor speaks of his own Lutheran ancestors coming to this country and to the harsh winters of the northern mid-west. He says his forbearers left their homeland and came “seeking greater restrictions.”
The Anglican Communion today is in the full game-mode of deciding who is in and who is out, who is conforming and who is not. Are you Anglican enough, traditional enough, evangelical enough, scriptural enough, liberal enough, catholic enough, orthodox enough, pure enough?
And so the stage is set for the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. The law has become, not the gift of a way of life, but instead has become the yoke of oppression and the means of exclusion.
And Jesus says, “Enough!” Do not lay upon this, my people the burden of the laws. Let them live their lives out of their love for God and God’s ways.
The first verse of Psalm 15 poses the question, “Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle and who may abide on your holy hill?” The Pharisees would say, “only those who have completed all the ritual acts of purity.” But through the psalmist God replies in verse 2, “Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, who speaks the truth from his heart.”
From his heart, Jesus touched and healed a man with leprosy, a woman with a hemorrhage, the dead body of his friend Lazarus -- violations of every purity law. Jesus the Jew ignored the Sabbath laws relating to diet and activity. He consorted with sinners, and immediately after this week's story he healed two Gentiles.
Marcus Borg wrote that “the new community that Jesus announced is characterized by interior compassion for everyone, not external compliance to a purity code, by radical inclusivity rather than by hierarchical exclusivity, and by inward transformation rather than outward ritual. In place of the Leviticus injunction to ‘be holy, for I am holy’ (Lev. 19:2), Jesus deliberately substituted the call to "be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" (Luke 6:36).”
I want to belong to that community. I want my life to be a sign of that understanding. I want my heart to follow that path. I want to base my life on that truth. I want to live my life that according to that rule. I want to spend my time on those things. I want to bet my life on that God. I want to follow that way, the way of Jesus.
How about you?
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Pentecost 12:Longing for God
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Proper 16 – 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84, John 6:56-69
In the early morning stillness that is not silent... soft patter of rain, the ticking of a clock, distant wail of a train whistle and wet tires on the street below, the surrounding world still asleep. In the exuberant bustle of an adolescent gathering...voices out-shouting one another in an enthusiastic cacophony coalescing finally into recognizable song. On the streets of Southside... faces of hunger and need met by hands offering food and compassion. In the ordered rows of Cathedral pews...familiar books, comfortable words, soothing rhythm. Prayer. Worship. People longing for, reaching out for connection to God. To loved ones. To others. In one place or another, in one pattern or not, with words and music and images, with silence and emptiness, with form or none at all people seek God. My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord prays the psalmist almost 3000 years ago.
What does your soul desire? How do you pray? I was born and baptized into an Episcopal church whose worship was bound in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. My early spirituality was formed by the shape and language and familiarity of that book. When I was confirmed at age 11(because that’s how we did it back then) my Godparents gave me a white leatherette prayer book with my name embossed on it in gold. The 1928 Prayer Book. But on Sunday mornings something else was happening. We worshiped out of the green book, the zebra book, and the purple book, named for the color of their covers. These “trial” liturgies were used on Sundays as the Episcopal church began to explore language and form heading for the 1979 BCP which you now find in your pew. So people who longed for the Lord, who raised their hearts and voices in worship, struggled with change. This struggle was a gift to the church, infusing our gathering with a richness and variety of liturgy. And it was a gift to me, allowing me to experience process and journey as the way to something full of possibility. I grew up thinking such change and variety were normal. My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
What do we long for? In part, being connected to God and one another in meaningful worship. What is God calling us to do? To renew that connection and tell others about it so that they can know a place to bring their longing hearts. In steady times and uncertain times, in transition times and new times, when we stand in the doorway or on the precipice, when we are confused or crystal clear our souls have a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
Around 960 BCE Solomon builds and dedicates the temple in Jerusalem and significantly moves the Ark of the Covenant into what is to be its permanent dwelling. This is no small thing. The Ark of the Covenant, considered the earthly dwelling place of God, built by Moses according to God’s instruction, is the most sacred symbol for the people of Israel. The Ark contains...holiness. It is said to have held the two stone tablets on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments, or a pot of manna preserved from the wilderness journey, or scrolls of sacred writings. It was carried with the Israelites wherever they went had had no permanent place. But neither had the people. They had wandered through Canaan for generations before David built Jerusalem. Before that they wandered 40 years in the wilderness with Moses. And for the longest time before that they had been resident aliens in Egypt. And before that? There had been Jacob, Isaac and Abraham, all of them following God’s call as they wandered about the fertile crescent through what is modern day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine and Egypt. How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In our hearts? When Solomon built the first permanent temple for God and placed the Ark in it people were asking, where is God’s dwelling place. In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In this temple? Journey and Exodus had defined them, been their reality for the longest time. God and the worship of God were not to be found in any one place (we sometimes struggle to remind ourselves that God is everywhere and not just within these wall son Sunday morning. They didn’t have that struggle). Yet Solomon builds the temple in faithful response to God’s call for him. And it left some of the people with questions. Can God hear in heaven the prayers we pray in this temple of stone? Can God dwell on earth?
So as Solomon dedicates the temple he prays. He prays that it will be OK to pray in this place. “Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today… hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place.” Solomon longs for God. He longs also to know that this change will be OK. His prayer of dedication is longer than the excerpt we have in our passage this morning. He asks for God to hear and act. He pleas, if someone sins, hear and act. When Israel is defeated by an enemy, hear and act. When drought comes, hear and act. When there is famine, hear and act. When even the foreigner prays, hear and act. All who pray are to be heard and the prayers acted upon so that the whole world will know the God of Israel, will know that God hears and acts. How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord. Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In our hearts, minds, souls? In this Cathedral? In this gathering? In Christ?
Solomon asked, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?” Almost 1000 years after Solomon placed the Ark in the temple God indeed came to dwell on earth in a whole new way. Not in a temple, not on a throne, but embodied in humanity. Incarnate. In Christ. In Christ Jesus who had the audacity to claim to be the bread of life. Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” This was such a shock, so difficult to grasp, that even some of his disciples stopped following him. I have no doubt that all of those disciples longed to be connected to God and that they had sung that hymn, How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord. Jesus knew from the first there would be those who would not believe. But that didn’t stop him from preaching the good news to them. And some people left because…because it was difficult? Because it was about eating flesh? Because they thought Jesus didn’t have what they longed for? Or perhaps because they thought Jesus was what they longed for?
Do you also wish to go away?
“Do you also wish to go away,” Jesus asks the twelve. Simon Peter answers, “Lord to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In our hearts? In this Cathedral? In this gathering, the very Body of Christ? In the early morning stillness? In a group of enthusiastically singing youth? In a soup kitchen on the Southside of Bethlehem? How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
Proper 16 – 1 Kings 8:1, 6, 10-11, 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84, John 6:56-69
In the early morning stillness that is not silent... soft patter of rain, the ticking of a clock, distant wail of a train whistle and wet tires on the street below, the surrounding world still asleep. In the exuberant bustle of an adolescent gathering...voices out-shouting one another in an enthusiastic cacophony coalescing finally into recognizable song. On the streets of Southside... faces of hunger and need met by hands offering food and compassion. In the ordered rows of Cathedral pews...familiar books, comfortable words, soothing rhythm. Prayer. Worship. People longing for, reaching out for connection to God. To loved ones. To others. In one place or another, in one pattern or not, with words and music and images, with silence and emptiness, with form or none at all people seek God. My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord prays the psalmist almost 3000 years ago.
What does your soul desire? How do you pray? I was born and baptized into an Episcopal church whose worship was bound in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. My early spirituality was formed by the shape and language and familiarity of that book. When I was confirmed at age 11(because that’s how we did it back then) my Godparents gave me a white leatherette prayer book with my name embossed on it in gold. The 1928 Prayer Book. But on Sunday mornings something else was happening. We worshiped out of the green book, the zebra book, and the purple book, named for the color of their covers. These “trial” liturgies were used on Sundays as the Episcopal church began to explore language and form heading for the 1979 BCP which you now find in your pew. So people who longed for the Lord, who raised their hearts and voices in worship, struggled with change. This struggle was a gift to the church, infusing our gathering with a richness and variety of liturgy. And it was a gift to me, allowing me to experience process and journey as the way to something full of possibility. I grew up thinking such change and variety were normal. My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
What do we long for? In part, being connected to God and one another in meaningful worship. What is God calling us to do? To renew that connection and tell others about it so that they can know a place to bring their longing hearts. In steady times and uncertain times, in transition times and new times, when we stand in the doorway or on the precipice, when we are confused or crystal clear our souls have a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
Around 960 BCE Solomon builds and dedicates the temple in Jerusalem and significantly moves the Ark of the Covenant into what is to be its permanent dwelling. This is no small thing. The Ark of the Covenant, considered the earthly dwelling place of God, built by Moses according to God’s instruction, is the most sacred symbol for the people of Israel. The Ark contains...holiness. It is said to have held the two stone tablets on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments, or a pot of manna preserved from the wilderness journey, or scrolls of sacred writings. It was carried with the Israelites wherever they went had had no permanent place. But neither had the people. They had wandered through Canaan for generations before David built Jerusalem. Before that they wandered 40 years in the wilderness with Moses. And for the longest time before that they had been resident aliens in Egypt. And before that? There had been Jacob, Isaac and Abraham, all of them following God’s call as they wandered about the fertile crescent through what is modern day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine and Egypt. How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In our hearts? When Solomon built the first permanent temple for God and placed the Ark in it people were asking, where is God’s dwelling place. In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In this temple? Journey and Exodus had defined them, been their reality for the longest time. God and the worship of God were not to be found in any one place (we sometimes struggle to remind ourselves that God is everywhere and not just within these wall son Sunday morning. They didn’t have that struggle). Yet Solomon builds the temple in faithful response to God’s call for him. And it left some of the people with questions. Can God hear in heaven the prayers we pray in this temple of stone? Can God dwell on earth?
So as Solomon dedicates the temple he prays. He prays that it will be OK to pray in this place. “Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today… hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place.” Solomon longs for God. He longs also to know that this change will be OK. His prayer of dedication is longer than the excerpt we have in our passage this morning. He asks for God to hear and act. He pleas, if someone sins, hear and act. When Israel is defeated by an enemy, hear and act. When drought comes, hear and act. When there is famine, hear and act. When even the foreigner prays, hear and act. All who pray are to be heard and the prayers acted upon so that the whole world will know the God of Israel, will know that God hears and acts. How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord. Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In the Ark of the Covenant? In our hearts, minds, souls? In this Cathedral? In this gathering? In Christ?
Solomon asked, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth?” Almost 1000 years after Solomon placed the Ark in the temple God indeed came to dwell on earth in a whole new way. Not in a temple, not on a throne, but embodied in humanity. Incarnate. In Christ. In Christ Jesus who had the audacity to claim to be the bread of life. Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.” This was such a shock, so difficult to grasp, that even some of his disciples stopped following him. I have no doubt that all of those disciples longed to be connected to God and that they had sung that hymn, How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord. Jesus knew from the first there would be those who would not believe. But that didn’t stop him from preaching the good news to them. And some people left because…because it was difficult? Because it was about eating flesh? Because they thought Jesus didn’t have what they longed for? Or perhaps because they thought Jesus was what they longed for?
Do you also wish to go away?
“Do you also wish to go away,” Jesus asks the twelve. Simon Peter answers, “Lord to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Where is God’s dwelling place? In the heavens? In our hearts? In this Cathedral? In this gathering, the very Body of Christ? In the early morning stillness? In a group of enthusiastically singing youth? In a soup kitchen on the Southside of Bethlehem? How dear to me is your dwelling, O lord of hosts, my soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord.
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
Monday, August 21, 2006
Pentecost 11: A Flesh & Blood Faith
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
August 20, 2006
Proper 15 ~ 1Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14, John 6:51-58
Do you remember when we first met David? King Saul had gone astray. Samuel, the prophet of the Lord had been sent to the home of Jesse the Bethlehemite to see if there was there one who had the potential to lead the House of Israel.
1 Samuel 16. 11 Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.’ 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
And today we encounter the time some 40 years later when David sleeps with his ancestors and the boy Solomon now sits on the throne of his father David.
Of all that he could ask of God, he asks this: And now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?"
And God grants Solomon a wise and discerning mind, and so much more; that today we speak wishfully and wistfully, sometimes wantingly of the Wisdom of Solomon.
We can remember that David did walk faithfully with his God – some of the time. We remember, too, that there were serious lapses in his decorum, in his behavior, and in his deeds – murder, adultery, and more. But he always, always, always returned to the Lord in repentance, attempting once again to walk before God in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart.
And we know the story of Solomon as well. Marrying multiple wives to secure military alliances, he sacrificed on those high places less and less to the God of Israel and more and more to the gods of his wives; he walked less and less with his God, turning more often to the lesser gods of his wives. Until the days came when Jehovah finally would no longer walk with Solomon.
We can treat this history, these stories as if they were a “Days of Their Lives” soap opera, or some ancient Greek drama, or a more modern drama like the ”Perils of Pauline”, or we can learn from them.
It is important to remember that the great men and women of the Bible were just ordinary people like you and me; flesh and blood, fallible, mortal. Yet God could and would and did use them. If God could work in the world through a murderer like David, or an idolater like Solomon, then perhaps, in some way, he can use us.
So the question becomes how do we make it through this life walking in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart? How do we make it though the day? How do we make the right decision? How do we build a just society? How do we make peace in the world, in our community, in our homes, in our own hearts? How do we stay faithful?
We stay as close as possible to the Source of our strength, the Source of our Salvation, to the One who shows us the that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Jesus said, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
Just as David and Solomon and all the others were real flesh and blood, fallible, mortal human beings, so is this faith we ascribe to a flesh and blood faith; real life meeting real life. A real price was paid by Jesus of Nazareth, a blood price was paid for the soul of the world and for the souls of Rick and Mary and Sue and George and Trevor and William and each and every one of us.
Sarah Dylan Breuer writes: Flesh and blood are the seat of life -- life belonging only to God, life that can be claimed rightly only by God. And yet in Jesus, God has willingly poured out that life for the sake of the world -- not just the good people, the people who try hard to do the right thing, the people who praise and encourage the saints, but as much or more for the people who hate, and who act on their hatred...
He is… the Source of our eternal salvation and the Source of our daily strength. "Eternal God you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ and you have fed us with spiritual food in the sacrament of his Body and Blood."
The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.
The best chance we have for living grace-filled lives is to accept this incomparable gift of the body broken and the blood shed for us, and to accept it often and regularly so that as it strengthens our bodies and souls and minds and hearts, we can know that Christ dwells in us and we in him.
Time and again we can receive this holy food and drink of new and unending life. It is given for you. Take it and feed on him in your heart by faith with thanksgiving.
A Baptismal Coda
As God selected David and Solomon as his chosen people, today God brings Trevor and William into His divine life, with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of being a child of God. It is imperative that parents and Godparents keep them close to the source of strength that will empower their lives each and every day and beyond, so they may walk in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart before their God all the days of their lives.
It is an awesome responsibility and this community is here to support you in it.
Amen.
August 20, 2006
Proper 15 ~ 1Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14, John 6:51-58
Do you remember when we first met David? King Saul had gone astray. Samuel, the prophet of the Lord had been sent to the home of Jesse the Bethlehemite to see if there was there one who had the potential to lead the House of Israel.
1 Samuel 16. 11 Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.’ 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
And today we encounter the time some 40 years later when David sleeps with his ancestors and the boy Solomon now sits on the throne of his father David.
Of all that he could ask of God, he asks this: And now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?"
And God grants Solomon a wise and discerning mind, and so much more; that today we speak wishfully and wistfully, sometimes wantingly of the Wisdom of Solomon.
We can remember that David did walk faithfully with his God – some of the time. We remember, too, that there were serious lapses in his decorum, in his behavior, and in his deeds – murder, adultery, and more. But he always, always, always returned to the Lord in repentance, attempting once again to walk before God in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart.
And we know the story of Solomon as well. Marrying multiple wives to secure military alliances, he sacrificed on those high places less and less to the God of Israel and more and more to the gods of his wives; he walked less and less with his God, turning more often to the lesser gods of his wives. Until the days came when Jehovah finally would no longer walk with Solomon.
We can treat this history, these stories as if they were a “Days of Their Lives” soap opera, or some ancient Greek drama, or a more modern drama like the ”Perils of Pauline”, or we can learn from them.
It is important to remember that the great men and women of the Bible were just ordinary people like you and me; flesh and blood, fallible, mortal. Yet God could and would and did use them. If God could work in the world through a murderer like David, or an idolater like Solomon, then perhaps, in some way, he can use us.
So the question becomes how do we make it through this life walking in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart? How do we make it though the day? How do we make the right decision? How do we build a just society? How do we make peace in the world, in our community, in our homes, in our own hearts? How do we stay faithful?
We stay as close as possible to the Source of our strength, the Source of our Salvation, to the One who shows us the that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Jesus said, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
Just as David and Solomon and all the others were real flesh and blood, fallible, mortal human beings, so is this faith we ascribe to a flesh and blood faith; real life meeting real life. A real price was paid by Jesus of Nazareth, a blood price was paid for the soul of the world and for the souls of Rick and Mary and Sue and George and Trevor and William and each and every one of us.
Sarah Dylan Breuer writes: Flesh and blood are the seat of life -- life belonging only to God, life that can be claimed rightly only by God. And yet in Jesus, God has willingly poured out that life for the sake of the world -- not just the good people, the people who try hard to do the right thing, the people who praise and encourage the saints, but as much or more for the people who hate, and who act on their hatred...
He is… the Source of our eternal salvation and the Source of our daily strength. "Eternal God you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ and you have fed us with spiritual food in the sacrament of his Body and Blood."
The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.
The best chance we have for living grace-filled lives is to accept this incomparable gift of the body broken and the blood shed for us, and to accept it often and regularly so that as it strengthens our bodies and souls and minds and hearts, we can know that Christ dwells in us and we in him.
Time and again we can receive this holy food and drink of new and unending life. It is given for you. Take it and feed on him in your heart by faith with thanksgiving.
A Baptismal Coda
As God selected David and Solomon as his chosen people, today God brings Trevor and William into His divine life, with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of being a child of God. It is imperative that parents and Godparents keep them close to the source of strength that will empower their lives each and every day and beyond, so they may walk in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart before their God all the days of their lives.
It is an awesome responsibility and this community is here to support you in it.
Amen.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Pentecost 10: Feeling Puny
August 12, 2006
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Proper 14 ~ 1Kings 19:4-8, John 6:35. 41-51
My mother used to have an expression that she would use from time to time when she wasn’t feeling “up to par”. She would say, “I’m feeling kind of puny today.” Feeling puny… We took that expression up in our family, too. “You feeling okay? You’re looking a little puny.”
What she and we meant by that was just not feeling or being “up to it”, whatever it was. Feeling a little weak, not our usual robust self. You get the idea.
Well, in the lesson from the First Book of Kings, we meet up with Elijah who is feeling kind of puny, not his usual powerful, prophetic self, not up to the task, vulnerable to the whims and actions of other people, other powers, vulnerable to fate, itself.
Let me provide a little context for this unusual, for Elijah, but supremely common human situation.
To use a baseball analogy, Elijah had just pitched a no-hitter. He had just cleaned the clock of the prophets of Baal. Elijah was the last and only true prophet of Jehovah left and there were in that territory 450 prophets of Baal. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a showdown, actually a call-down, where the prophet of each god would call down from on high the power of their God to take up an offering.
It is written in 1Kings 18: “So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, ‘O Baal, answer us!’ But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.” (It is rather clear whose side the writer is on.)
Then it was Elijah’s turn. “At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, ‘O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.’ Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt-offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.’”
It was a magnificent display of the power of God and the power of God’s prophet, and yet we find him in today’s lesson skulking off into the wilderness, feeling sorry for himself, feeling not up to the task, feeling downright puny, and wishing it all would end for him.
It could all be written off with a facile, “Oh, its only a post-miracle depression. It happens all the time. He’ll get over it.” Well, maybe it does happen all the time, but it is happening now, here with this person, and he is in great suffering, he is sick of it, even unto death.
I have not experienced a post-miracle depression, but I do know the feeling of “puny”. I do know the feeling of “it all being just too much”. I do know the feeling of just not being up to it, not having it. I do know the feeling of wishing it would just go away, if it would just pass me by, if I just didn’t have to do deal with it. I feel the puniest in the middle of the night.
Perhaps you have felt that way once or twice, or from time to time, or during some extended period. Feeling that what you know to be your gifts, your strengths, your powers… they are nowhere to be found. Your “getup and go” has gotten up and gone away. You’re running on empty.
Elijah and you and I need some Bread.
One way of looking at Elijah’s situation is to see that he has forgotten the Source. He has moved away from his center. He is relying solely on “what he brings to the table”. And he has given his all, given his best shot, and it still isn’t enough to do all that is needed, to provide all that is needed, to finish the job, to bring it to completion. He feels alone, bereft, and empty.
And it is then that the Angel of the Lord comes to him to point out what is needed. He is in need of Manna. He is starving for the bread of life. He hungers to be filled. He needs sustenance for his strength to be renewed. And the Angel of the Lord comes and provides bread enough.
“He got up and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”
And Jesus tells us, “I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger; and they who believe in me shall not thirst… even if they die, they shall live forever.” (Hymn 335)
Whenever we have moved from the center, whenever we have forgotten the Source, whenever we have spent all that we have, the Angel of the Lord comes, in whatever guise, to re-center our lives, to remind us of the source, and to replenish our supply of bread.
So we come weekly, regularly, to the Source, to the table, to the altar of God. As our friend Ann Fontaine says, “We come to the Eucharist to drink the wine of encouragement and eat the bread of sustenance.”
And we remember, “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed, says the Lord. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood dwell in me and I in them, says the Lord.” (Anthem S169)
We find it to be, as my stepfather used to say, an “elegant sufficiency”. Bread sufficient for all the days of our life… and beyond.
You’re feeling a little puny today? Try some Bread.
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Proper 14 ~ 1Kings 19:4-8, John 6:35. 41-51
My mother used to have an expression that she would use from time to time when she wasn’t feeling “up to par”. She would say, “I’m feeling kind of puny today.” Feeling puny… We took that expression up in our family, too. “You feeling okay? You’re looking a little puny.”
What she and we meant by that was just not feeling or being “up to it”, whatever it was. Feeling a little weak, not our usual robust self. You get the idea.
Well, in the lesson from the First Book of Kings, we meet up with Elijah who is feeling kind of puny, not his usual powerful, prophetic self, not up to the task, vulnerable to the whims and actions of other people, other powers, vulnerable to fate, itself.
Let me provide a little context for this unusual, for Elijah, but supremely common human situation.
To use a baseball analogy, Elijah had just pitched a no-hitter. He had just cleaned the clock of the prophets of Baal. Elijah was the last and only true prophet of Jehovah left and there were in that territory 450 prophets of Baal. Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a showdown, actually a call-down, where the prophet of each god would call down from on high the power of their God to take up an offering.
It is written in 1Kings 18: “So they took the bull that was given them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, crying, ‘O Baal, answer us!’ But there was no voice, and no answer. They limped about the altar that they had made. As midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.” (It is rather clear whose side the writer is on.)
Then it was Elijah’s turn. “At the time of the offering of the oblation, the prophet Elijah came near and said, ‘O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.’ Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt-offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord indeed is God; the Lord indeed is God.’”
It was a magnificent display of the power of God and the power of God’s prophet, and yet we find him in today’s lesson skulking off into the wilderness, feeling sorry for himself, feeling not up to the task, feeling downright puny, and wishing it all would end for him.
It could all be written off with a facile, “Oh, its only a post-miracle depression. It happens all the time. He’ll get over it.” Well, maybe it does happen all the time, but it is happening now, here with this person, and he is in great suffering, he is sick of it, even unto death.
I have not experienced a post-miracle depression, but I do know the feeling of “puny”. I do know the feeling of “it all being just too much”. I do know the feeling of just not being up to it, not having it. I do know the feeling of wishing it would just go away, if it would just pass me by, if I just didn’t have to do deal with it. I feel the puniest in the middle of the night.
Perhaps you have felt that way once or twice, or from time to time, or during some extended period. Feeling that what you know to be your gifts, your strengths, your powers… they are nowhere to be found. Your “getup and go” has gotten up and gone away. You’re running on empty.
Elijah and you and I need some Bread.
One way of looking at Elijah’s situation is to see that he has forgotten the Source. He has moved away from his center. He is relying solely on “what he brings to the table”. And he has given his all, given his best shot, and it still isn’t enough to do all that is needed, to provide all that is needed, to finish the job, to bring it to completion. He feels alone, bereft, and empty.
And it is then that the Angel of the Lord comes to him to point out what is needed. He is in need of Manna. He is starving for the bread of life. He hungers to be filled. He needs sustenance for his strength to be renewed. And the Angel of the Lord comes and provides bread enough.
“He got up and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”
And Jesus tells us, “I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger; and they who believe in me shall not thirst… even if they die, they shall live forever.” (Hymn 335)
Whenever we have moved from the center, whenever we have forgotten the Source, whenever we have spent all that we have, the Angel of the Lord comes, in whatever guise, to re-center our lives, to remind us of the source, and to replenish our supply of bread.
So we come weekly, regularly, to the Source, to the table, to the altar of God. As our friend Ann Fontaine says, “We come to the Eucharist to drink the wine of encouragement and eat the bread of sustenance.”
And we remember, “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed, says the Lord. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood dwell in me and I in them, says the Lord.” (Anthem S169)
We find it to be, as my stepfather used to say, an “elegant sufficiency”. Bread sufficient for all the days of our life… and beyond.
You’re feeling a little puny today? Try some Bread.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Feast of the Transfiguration: Let Your Light Shine
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Exodus 34:29-35
Luke 9:28-36
I have it under good authority that Transformers still exist; there is even an upcoming movie. These the toys that start out as human-like robots and then as the need arises they transform into something else. You fold in arms and legs and twist torsos around and suddenly you have race cars or jets or helicopters. There are also super heroes like Power Rangers, Wonder Woman, Superman living ordinary-looking human lives but when need arises they transform into something else; something greater , more powerful, stronger. Yet with all their super strength they do not cease to be who they are. They don’t permanently change into something else, rather they temporarily live into part of who they are. When they are done saving the world, they once again become ordinary youth, women and men. Well something like this happens to Jesus.
Jesus is transfigured. He goes up to a mountain top to pray, taking Peter and John and James with him. He is suddenly transfigured before their eyes; the appearance of his face changes and his clothes become dazzling white. Glory surrounds him. As preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes “While Jesus was praying, he caught fire from within.” In that moment, Jesus reveals his God-self. The glory of God shone from within him and all around him. Moses the great law-giver and Elijah the great prophet show up for a conference.
Now this was something Jesus’ friends had never seen before. Sure, at some level they knew he was the messiah and the son of God, Peter had even said the words aloud. But they had never seen it. They knew Jesus as their beloved friend and teacher. He did go around casting out demons and healing people, but he walked and talked and ate just like any other man. But now, here on the mountain, his Godself was revealed in all its glory. They must have been stunned.
Before we go any further, let me be clear that Jesus is not a super-hero. Jesus is the Son of God, fully human AND fully divine and very real. He is not a comic book hero or an invented character embodying the attributes of someone we all wish we could be. Rather he is perfect human. Someone without sin. Someone who lived connected to God every moment of everyday. Jesus did not have super strength or x-ray vision or spider sense. What he did have was love; and a sure and certain trust in God. I’m not sure he had love in greater amounts than the rest of us, but he was better able to live in that love and share it generously. He wasn’t impervious to pain and death—and that is the point. Remember what he and Moses and Elijah talked about while Jesus shone in all his glory? They talked about his departure, his exodus, his upcoming death. In the end it was not any super strength but his human vulnerability and love and the giving up of his very life that saved the world…and continues to save the world.
Jesus’ transfiguration was a moment when his divine nature shone out leaving no doubt about who he was. And the transfiguration was more. The power and significance of this event was not just that Peter and John and James saw the light, but that the light shone in the first place. God’s light. Jesus let them see God’s glory pouring out of him and so they knew; knew in ways that they had not perceived before just what kind of messiah they were dealing with. Just like God’s light shone in Moses as he came down Mt. Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments.
Moses may rightly be called one of the heroes of the Hebrew people. But he was no super hero. He was an ordinary human being, one who had been in a lot of trouble. In fact, he had broken more than one of those very commandments he bore. But in that moment when he walks down that mountain, his face shines because he had been with God. He had listened to God and done what God asked of him and lived in to all the giftedness that he had. He became the great law-giver. God’s light shone out of him so that all could see. Just like God’s light is in each of us.
Yes its true. We are not super heroes. But we don’t even have to be super human to shine like that. We have only to be ourselves, to be who God calls us to be. I have seen it. I have seen ordinary people transformed in moments when they do very ordinary feats of love. I have seen the light of Christ shine forth in youth of this parish at camp and in Sunday school classrooms. I have seen it people visiting and working with people in hospitals and nursing homes. I saw it last evening as members of this parish wearing yellow T-shirts went off to volunteer at Musicfest in the name of Share-Care. I have witnessed people living into their giftedness and letting the light shine from within them. They do not necessarily manage this all day everyday, but are able to grasp those moments, those opportunities, to save the world.
Just who are we called to be? What are we called to do? Scripture is full of guidance. How about those Ten Commandments that Moses was carrying. We are called to love God first, with all our hear and soul and mind, and have no other gods. We are not to make any idols for ourselves. We are supposed to speak God’s name lovingly and with awe rather than with malice and contempt. We are to remember the Sabbath day, and set aside time for worship and rest. We are to honor our father and mother. We are not supposed to kill people, or commit adultery, or steal. We are not supposed to lie or give false testimony. We are supposed to be satisfied with what we have and not covet what is not ours. Well, that is certainly a good place to start and we haven’t even gotten to Jesus yet. Jesus doesn’t so much add to this list as intensifies it. If we are to be his followers we are to feed the poor, help the wounded, work for justice, not ask for more than our due, not abuse people, and in some cases give away all our possessions. These are the things that being a follower of Christ are about. These are the things that being a Christian are all about. When we do these things, then the light of God shines out of us and that holiness transforms the world.
Now once Peter figured out what he was seeing on that mountain, he wanted to stay there in that transfigured place full of glory. But that’s not how it works. They didn’t stay there. They went down that mountain and got to work. The disciples had some healing to do and Jesus had the cross ahead of him. As Sr. Joan Chittester writes, “The purpose of holiness is not to protect us from our world. The purpose of holiness is to change the way we live in the world, not for our own sake but for the sake of others. Jesus demands the same thing.” When God’s light shines from within us, it is not for our sake but the sake of others. This is how we are called to live; not for our sake, but for the sake of others. To live a Christian life is not about seeking our own comfort. Do you remember the prayer of St. Francis? It does not go: Dear God, let me be loved and forgiven, remove my doubt, give me hope, light and joy. Rather it goes like this:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. (Book of Common Prayer p. 833)
It is a well-loved prayer. But I wonder if people really pay attention to how it so simply and beautifully outlines our call: to orient ourselves to the other. It also beautifully outlines the great gift: when we do these things, then we are filled and healed and comforted.
We do not live in the glory zone, but we can touch it. It can touch us. I believe this because it happens all the time. In my bible there is a section in Matthew that has the helpful heading “The Witness of the Disciples.” Under that heading comes this quote, “In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matt 5:16) To witness is to let the light of God shine forth from you, to do good for others that others can see that light. The glory is given not to you, but to God.
God does not ask us to be super heroes or even super human. God calls us to love, to again and again make loving choices toward all those around us. In the end it will not be our super strength but our human vulnerability and love and giving up of our very lives that will help transform the world. Go out from this place and be who you are called to be. Go out and serve others. Go with Christ saving the world, one loving choice at a time.
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
(Barbara Brown Taylor quoted from “Dazzling Darkness” The Christian Century 1998, Joan Chittester quoted from “30 Good Minutes” 1991)
Exodus 34:29-35
Luke 9:28-36
I have it under good authority that Transformers still exist; there is even an upcoming movie. These the toys that start out as human-like robots and then as the need arises they transform into something else. You fold in arms and legs and twist torsos around and suddenly you have race cars or jets or helicopters. There are also super heroes like Power Rangers, Wonder Woman, Superman living ordinary-looking human lives but when need arises they transform into something else; something greater , more powerful, stronger. Yet with all their super strength they do not cease to be who they are. They don’t permanently change into something else, rather they temporarily live into part of who they are. When they are done saving the world, they once again become ordinary youth, women and men. Well something like this happens to Jesus.
Jesus is transfigured. He goes up to a mountain top to pray, taking Peter and John and James with him. He is suddenly transfigured before their eyes; the appearance of his face changes and his clothes become dazzling white. Glory surrounds him. As preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes “While Jesus was praying, he caught fire from within.” In that moment, Jesus reveals his God-self. The glory of God shone from within him and all around him. Moses the great law-giver and Elijah the great prophet show up for a conference.
Now this was something Jesus’ friends had never seen before. Sure, at some level they knew he was the messiah and the son of God, Peter had even said the words aloud. But they had never seen it. They knew Jesus as their beloved friend and teacher. He did go around casting out demons and healing people, but he walked and talked and ate just like any other man. But now, here on the mountain, his Godself was revealed in all its glory. They must have been stunned.
Before we go any further, let me be clear that Jesus is not a super-hero. Jesus is the Son of God, fully human AND fully divine and very real. He is not a comic book hero or an invented character embodying the attributes of someone we all wish we could be. Rather he is perfect human. Someone without sin. Someone who lived connected to God every moment of everyday. Jesus did not have super strength or x-ray vision or spider sense. What he did have was love; and a sure and certain trust in God. I’m not sure he had love in greater amounts than the rest of us, but he was better able to live in that love and share it generously. He wasn’t impervious to pain and death—and that is the point. Remember what he and Moses and Elijah talked about while Jesus shone in all his glory? They talked about his departure, his exodus, his upcoming death. In the end it was not any super strength but his human vulnerability and love and the giving up of his very life that saved the world…and continues to save the world.
Jesus’ transfiguration was a moment when his divine nature shone out leaving no doubt about who he was. And the transfiguration was more. The power and significance of this event was not just that Peter and John and James saw the light, but that the light shone in the first place. God’s light. Jesus let them see God’s glory pouring out of him and so they knew; knew in ways that they had not perceived before just what kind of messiah they were dealing with. Just like God’s light shone in Moses as he came down Mt. Sinai carrying the Ten Commandments.
Moses may rightly be called one of the heroes of the Hebrew people. But he was no super hero. He was an ordinary human being, one who had been in a lot of trouble. In fact, he had broken more than one of those very commandments he bore. But in that moment when he walks down that mountain, his face shines because he had been with God. He had listened to God and done what God asked of him and lived in to all the giftedness that he had. He became the great law-giver. God’s light shone out of him so that all could see. Just like God’s light is in each of us.
Yes its true. We are not super heroes. But we don’t even have to be super human to shine like that. We have only to be ourselves, to be who God calls us to be. I have seen it. I have seen ordinary people transformed in moments when they do very ordinary feats of love. I have seen the light of Christ shine forth in youth of this parish at camp and in Sunday school classrooms. I have seen it people visiting and working with people in hospitals and nursing homes. I saw it last evening as members of this parish wearing yellow T-shirts went off to volunteer at Musicfest in the name of Share-Care. I have witnessed people living into their giftedness and letting the light shine from within them. They do not necessarily manage this all day everyday, but are able to grasp those moments, those opportunities, to save the world.
Just who are we called to be? What are we called to do? Scripture is full of guidance. How about those Ten Commandments that Moses was carrying. We are called to love God first, with all our hear and soul and mind, and have no other gods. We are not to make any idols for ourselves. We are supposed to speak God’s name lovingly and with awe rather than with malice and contempt. We are to remember the Sabbath day, and set aside time for worship and rest. We are to honor our father and mother. We are not supposed to kill people, or commit adultery, or steal. We are not supposed to lie or give false testimony. We are supposed to be satisfied with what we have and not covet what is not ours. Well, that is certainly a good place to start and we haven’t even gotten to Jesus yet. Jesus doesn’t so much add to this list as intensifies it. If we are to be his followers we are to feed the poor, help the wounded, work for justice, not ask for more than our due, not abuse people, and in some cases give away all our possessions. These are the things that being a follower of Christ are about. These are the things that being a Christian are all about. When we do these things, then the light of God shines out of us and that holiness transforms the world.
Now once Peter figured out what he was seeing on that mountain, he wanted to stay there in that transfigured place full of glory. But that’s not how it works. They didn’t stay there. They went down that mountain and got to work. The disciples had some healing to do and Jesus had the cross ahead of him. As Sr. Joan Chittester writes, “The purpose of holiness is not to protect us from our world. The purpose of holiness is to change the way we live in the world, not for our own sake but for the sake of others. Jesus demands the same thing.” When God’s light shines from within us, it is not for our sake but the sake of others. This is how we are called to live; not for our sake, but for the sake of others. To live a Christian life is not about seeking our own comfort. Do you remember the prayer of St. Francis? It does not go: Dear God, let me be loved and forgiven, remove my doubt, give me hope, light and joy. Rather it goes like this:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. (Book of Common Prayer p. 833)
It is a well-loved prayer. But I wonder if people really pay attention to how it so simply and beautifully outlines our call: to orient ourselves to the other. It also beautifully outlines the great gift: when we do these things, then we are filled and healed and comforted.
We do not live in the glory zone, but we can touch it. It can touch us. I believe this because it happens all the time. In my bible there is a section in Matthew that has the helpful heading “The Witness of the Disciples.” Under that heading comes this quote, “In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matt 5:16) To witness is to let the light of God shine forth from you, to do good for others that others can see that light. The glory is given not to you, but to God.
God does not ask us to be super heroes or even super human. God calls us to love, to again and again make loving choices toward all those around us. In the end it will not be our super strength but our human vulnerability and love and giving up of our very lives that will help transform the world. Go out from this place and be who you are called to be. Go out and serve others. Go with Christ saving the world, one loving choice at a time.
© Anne E. Kitch 2006
(Barbara Brown Taylor quoted from “Dazzling Darkness” The Christian Century 1998, Joan Chittester quoted from “30 Good Minutes” 1991)
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