The 3rd Sunday of Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I Cluett

June 21, 2009

It is my observation that one of the favorite occupations of human beings is to think back fondly on the “good old days”, those days way back when, when things seemed so much better. To remember things that way, especially when we get to a certain age and are confirmed in our certainty that things were really so much, much better “way back when…”

This week I was reminding myself of how it really was “back then” in the good old 1900’s. I remembered there was the First World War, followed by the Great Depression, followed by the Second World War, followed by the Korean War, followed by the Vietnam War, which was followed immediately by a deep, deep recession, followed by a period of extraordinary greed, consumption, experimentation and personal excess, and then finally we moved into the 21^st century.

People were so beaten down or exhausted or confused or anxious that a new theology arose in the second half of the last century. The main tenet of this theology was that God was so fed up with us and the life, the world, we had made for ourselves; fed up with what we hade done with the goodness of creation; so fed up with us, that God had left.

The evidence was clear that God was bored, absent, asleep, or dead. The theology became known was “the Death of God” movement. And make no mistake, it was a very serious attempt to understand what was going on in the world, to understand why things were the way they were.

The power of God, the presence of God, the security of God, the comfort of God were nowhere to be found. So, God was nowhere to be found.

Very many folks, I think, feel some of that today. Things are so bad, so bad with wars and recession, so bad with the greed of individuals and corporations and institutions, so bad with man’s inhumanity to man, so bad with the demands and stresses of daily living, things are so bad that the question begs to be asked, “Where is God in all this?” Where are the signs of God’s presence, power, purpose, design?

An ancient theolog­ical term might be useful here. The term is Tohu Bohu, which means topsy-turvy or Chaos. It was out of the tohu bohu, out of chaos, that God created.

It may also be helpful to remember that the nature of the kingdom of God is that it is up side down from what the world, what we would normally expect. Jesus turned the na­ture of reality up side down.

And so we come to today’s gospel story. In a time of extreme, poverty, brutality, oppression and chaos comes Jesus of Nazareth proclaiming the presence of God, the reign of God, the power of God in the world and in the lives God’s people. And not only did he proclaim, but he also demonstrated the presence of God and the power of God in the here and now of people’s lives.

When Jesus quiets the forces that threaten chaos, when he makes the unclean clean, and when he restores the unacceptable to wholeness, these acts upend our cherished assumptions about order, security, autonomy, and fairness.

Jesus shows God at work in the world and in the lives of people, and he says over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” But the disciples were, and we are, too, so often afraid.

This story that was important enough to be included in all four Gospels is at the heart of the Good News for us, today and every day, and in every storm that makes us anxious.

One writer put it this way: “Time and time again in Scripture the word is, 'Do not be afraid.' It is, you might say, the first and the last word of the gospel. It is the word the angels speak to the terrified shepherds and the word spoken at the tomb when the women discover it empty: ‘Do not be afraid.’

Do not be afraid, “not because there are not fearsome things on the sea of our days, not because there are no storms, fierce winds, or waves, but rather, (do not be afraid) because God is with us… even though there are real and fearsome things in this life, they need not paralyze us; they need not have dominion over us; they need not own us, because we are not alone in the boat.”

A small boat in a stormy sea is a good metaphor for life, a good metaphor for faith. There’s nothing like a good, perfect storm to put our personal and human power into perspective. Perhaps I should say, to put the puny nature of our personal and human power into perspective.

I have been on a lake about the size of the Sea of Galilee when a storm came up with a mighty and erratic wind and capsized my small sailing boat and threw me into the chaotic, raging waters more than a mile from shore.

There is good reason for the Sailor’s Prayer to be, “O Lord, watch over me for the sea is so great and my boat is so small.

Frederick Buechner writes, “Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us, and we can call on him, as the fishermen did in their boat, to come awake within us and to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us our way through. May he be with us especially when the winds go mad and the waves run wild, as they will for all of us before we're done, so that even in their midst we may find peace, we may find him.”

The mysterious reality is that God’s love and presence and power are with us in every circumstance of life. We can have faith that this power at the heart of the universe, at the heart of all reality, at the very heart of creation, this power that dwells within each of us, in the end will allow all things to unfold in justice and in peace, making all things right, including our own small, but, in the eyes of God, immeasurably precious lives.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

The 2nd Sunday of Pentecost

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

I have planted a small vegetable garden this year. After three years of city life and two years after that with no yard to speak of, I was very excited when I found my house here in Bethlehem with its small backyard, and started planning out my beds and flowers in January, all on paper since I wasn’t even sure exactly what my yard would look like once the snow melted!

I joined the throngs of folks nationwide, inspired by the gardening efforts of our first lady, and bought all sorts of seeds. Heirloom, Old fashioned, hybrid- you name it, I bought it, even some seeds for vegetables I’d never seen before, like neon colored swiss chard, and radishes that were purple on the inside and white on the outside. I started clearing a patch of grass as soon as I moved in in late-March, and chomping at the bit I started seeds in baking dishes inside, so I could plant them as soon as the last frost passed (around late-May in these parts). Patience isn’t a virtue I was blessed with.

Finally the time came to plant seedlings and some seeds in the actual ground, and now, a month or so later, I have a pleasant little patch of sunflowers and green beans and tomatoes and those inside-out radishes and lots of other things, all squeezed into a corner of my yard. I’ve even started thinking about what I’m going to do with my bounty when it comes, and have been watching instructional videos on canning and pickling on YouTube, though I guess I shouldn’t count my green beans before they have hatched, as it were.

Gardening for me is more than a hobby and a fun way to put food on my table. It is a way of encountering Do in my life. When I was growing up, every year I would help my mom dig her big garden. She always had a large garden and grew corn and squash, peas, and zuchinni, and she actually made it to the canning and freezing part, so that my family would eat green beans and stuffed peppers all winter that Mom and Dad had harvested from our own backyard. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I got to grow my own little row of crops. I was given cherry tomatoes to plant.

My mom knew that it is almost impossible to fail with cherry tomatoes, and so she shook out the shrivelled tiny seeds into my hands, helped me space them evenly in my row, and patted the dirt back over them. Within a week or two, tiny sprouts appeared, and after that the sprouts developed ragged leaves, and in the blink of an eye, it seemed, those tiny seeds had turned into bushes, absolutely covered in small round red fruit. I did not know how this was possible, but I knew God was present in the miracle of growing things, and I felt joy in him.

My cherry tomato bounty of that summer is a family legend, as there are only so many things one can do with these tiny tomatoes, and after a few weeks we were giving them away by the bucketful to neighbors and relatives and anyone who would have them. It actually took me about ten years to eat tomatoes again, but the lesson that I learned was that, from the tiniest, least likely beginning, God brings forth miracles. Now, as I remember digging my bare toes into the rich dirt of that garden, looking on the wonders God had created with my help, “[my] Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul”, to borrow the words of Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and poet.


All of the readings today seem to share in this experience, as they are filled with images of growing things, cedars and mustard plants, things green and succulent, cradling birds and all manner of living things in wide branches, offering shelter and shade to the world.

Is it any wonder that the writers of these texts, trying thousands of years ago to explain the mystery of God’s relationship with each one of us, could only use language of the mightiness of nature?

A cedar tree was not only a source of wood and fuel in ancient times, but the tallest thing most people would encounter in their lives, reaching far into the sky, beyond a person’s imagining- mighty, like our God.

And grain or seed, scattered on the ground, became wheat- a staple of a family’s diet, and the mystery of its growth was a sort of magic that kept that family alive, secure in its daily bread, for one more season- sustaining, like our God.

And a mustard seed, like my cherry tomato seeds, grew from a tiny speck into a giant shrub, offering a bounty so out of scale with its beginnings and what is put into it thatit confounds reason- transforming, like Jesus Christ.

And so, we are told, these wonders of the created world were given to us as a gift, by God, so that we might delight in God’s love for us, and in creation. For we can always find shelter in God’s expansive embrace, and solace in God’s branches. Comfort is offered to us, and delight, from a tiny speck of a mustard seed, which can grow into a whole world.

Trinity Sunday

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

There is a standing “inside skinny” to days such as these, that is days in which we celebrate Trinity. Trinity Sunday is the day that senior pastors or rectors often invite a guest to preach, perhaps someone with more academic acumen, or if such a person cannot be secured, a guest preacher from another discipline or even denomination. If this fails, perhaps the newest minted priest would be in line, or if one is fortunate enough to grab one, how about a seminarian? This, of course, is more in the camp of tongue and cheek humor about a day on the church calendar when we explore the fullness of God’s expression in that very familiar, but often confounding, concept of the Trinity.

Today I promise I won’t try to deliver an exposition on an ancient doctrine agreed upon some 300 or more years ago into the experience of the Christian church, an agreement of faith, if you will, designed for proclamation and unity of communities of faith scattered around the Roman World, a world of varied cultures, tongues, practices, and experiences. Instead perhaps you and I can explore the path of our delightful invitation to discover the fullness of God’s presence in our lives, as we explore a bit of the tangled dance of Nicodemus.

We stand today in the shadow of the Pentecost experience, the experience of varied tongues and cultures gathered in a holy waiting as the promised ADVOCATE of power came rushing like wind and fire. A holy moment was fashioned when lives were lit up and languages and cultures joined in one perfect union with God, each understanding fully those they could not understand before.

When I was young, my cousin and I played together daily. We were fortunate to have joined each others’ families for vacations or trips. We especially enjoyed trips to Philadelphia and Washington, DC. On those trips to more metropolitan areas we discovered that people were diverse in colors, creeds, and languages. We took to making adventures of our own, pretending we were from other places, countries, pretending to speak a foreign language with one another so that others would think we were different. One day, while strolling through the Smithsonian Institution, we were speaking our made-up tongue, of course not understanding a bit of what we were saying to each other, but giving one another direction. When in the fluid tongue my cousin responded to a direction and leaned over into an exhibit, touching a piece of it, an alarm suddenly sounded. We looked at each other surprised, confounded, and suddenly realized it was us – the alarm was about us. Our dialogue of misunderstanding had led us into unchartered waters.

Nicodemus stands today in an engagement of opportunity to explore and experience the fullness of what is standing before him which is God’s fullness of love and mercy. The problem in this interaction, of course, is that he and Jesus are speaking different languages. The educated “professor” and teacher of holy things has come near to try to grasp who and what this Jesus person is, and he seems to be struggling. Jesus tells this curious professor that to grasp the fullness of God’s revelation, one must be “born from above.” This is a metaphor for an invitation into the deep mystery of God’s person, the mystery that changes human lives, that shows old men and women they can still dance and dream, that invites beings whose eyes have grown tired and dark that new possibilities for sight are at the end of their noses. The mystery of God’s person that invites the human heart to change in such a powerful way that prisoners, repentant and changed, are teaching Sunday school, alcoholics and drug-addicted humans are extending a hand of hope for sobriety to others, warriors are sitting at tables of peace. All of this is because their being has entered into the fullness of God’s hopeful experience for their lives.

Instead of hearing a metaphor of invitation into this mystery, Nicodemus hears an improbable mechanism of biology. The Greek translation “one must be born from above” also translates “one must be born again.” For Nicodemus, an old man who has seen much, to be born again, to be born over again, just doesn’t make sense and it just can’t happen. Nicodemus cannot proof text what it is that Jesus invites him into; it just doesn’t add up. But the truth of the matter for Nicodemus and for you and me is that WE are invited into the fullness of God.

We are invited to dance as the music calls us together to dance. We are invited to speak a language of love that unites us in our understanding of one another. We are invited to know a God who creates us to delight in us, who desires to live with us in a way that touches us, heals us, redeems us, who desires to live in us a life force that brings light to the dimmest of eyes and bounce to the slowest of steps.

This Trinity Sunday we join to speak the truth of the fullness of God in whom we live and move and have our being, as the Prayer Book is want to say. We speak a truth that is not a proof text of something that exists or a formula of something that “works,” but rather an experience of authenticity. God is speaking authentically to our lives, and our lives are answering back to one another in the same. It is a truth called “holy authenticity.” Born from above, we are one with the fullness of God and we dare to let our life speak! If our life oozes compassion, then compassion is the truth we speak. If our lives ooze justice, then justice is the truth we speak. If our lives ooze forgiveness, then forgiveness is the truth we speak. If gentleness, then we cannot help but live gently authentically. If healing, we cannot help but live authentically as a person of healing.

To enter the Kingdom of God, one must be born from above. Amen.

John 17:6-9

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

In the year 1885 a meeting was called by Mrs. M. J. Franklin, a member of the Church of the Resurrection in New York City. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss with other women who the felt need to grow deeper in faith and prayer, and to ask God’s guidance. The spring of 1885 would bear fruit in the form of a bible class entitled “Daughters of the King.” This bible class at the Church of the Resurrection would grow into a communal experience for women built on the following premises: (1) To do God’s work, one must pray to God for the blessing of the Holy Spirit, and (2) Members of this communal experience would be devoted to prayer so that God’s Kingdom might be furthered. In other words, be devoted to prayer and service. These were the humble beginnings of what has grown today to be the “Order of the Daughters of the King,” an order of women throughout the Episcopal Church and beyond, dedicated to living in community with one another and with God, devoted to a discipline of prayer and service, a community of women devoted to prayer so that God’s Kingdom might be furthered. It is with gratitude that we institute a chapter of the Daughters of the King here in this Cathedral, this day.

How appropriate, too, it is that in today’s Gospel reading we find Jesus in the midst of a prayer of proclamation and thanksgiving at the conclusion of what we know as his “farewell address” to his disciples. In his prayer to his Father in heaven he makes the case for what he knows will be necessary for his disciples to “live in the world,” as the embodied presence of the Kingdom he proclaims. Above all things, if they are to further God’s Kingdom, this community must be united with one another and with Jesus and, therefore, with God. Prayer and service! Jesus in his prayer says, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” Jesus’ hope for the community of faith He leaves behind is complete joy. Whether living in community as a “daughter” committed to prayer and service, or living as the broader community of faith living our baptismal covenant, we seek joy made complete so that we may be the community of the Kingdom that Jesus prays for us to be. We are a people of faith whose life attitude is to expect joy, but what is this joy Jesus speaks of in his “farewell address” and in his prayer just before his disciples would witness his greatest agony?

Joy, it seems to me, as Jesus speaks of it, is not to be confused with happiness or even delight, but joy is an experience of complete unity with God, an integration of sorts. Joy is the “magic,” if you will, of knowing your connection to God and to one another in a way that brings your heart to a full awareness that each breath you take in life is a holy one. Joy is like taking a path covered with thistle and brush that gives way to the most beautiful view of God’s grandiose creation. Joy is like being in the thicket of relationship with a loved one and coming to an awareness that you are so blessed by what is in your life you feel paralyzed by the weight of it, and so thrilled you could fly. Joy is like being in the deepest, darkest forest and knowing that you are not lost, but on the brink of discovering something thrilling. Joy is like stepping on water expecting to skip to another shore. The “magic” of Christian community is that we expect joy. The alternative just may give us a sinking feeling.

A community of faith expecting joy, it seems, is worth our joining Jesus in prayer. A community of women forming to ask God’s direction in their lives to help further the Kingdom, it seems, is worth our joining them in prayer.

I leave you with this prayer, the Daughter’s motto:

For His Sake, I am but one,
I cannot do everything, but I can do something,
What I can do, I ought to do
What I ought to do, by the Grace of God I will do,
Lord Christ, what will you have me do?
Amen.

May 17, 2009

The 6th Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

For the last few days I have been experiencing something that I understand many transplants to the Lehigh Valley experience, a sort of hazing for new residents. Despite growing up in the pollen capital of the south, with no adverse reactions, I seem to have come down with that local brand of hay fever that many have called: the Lehigh Valley crud.

It hasn’t been so bad, just some sneezing and coughing and dripping, and the whole experience has almost been worth it to hear Lulu, my beagle who also is apparently susceptible to exotic pollens, sneezing her way around the house. But all of this is an elaborate backstory to explain why I found myself, last night, spread out on the couch with a box of tissues in one hand and the remote in the other, watching the only thing I could find on the television, which was a Billy Graham Crusade from 1986.

I don’t think this is a clergy habit that I am exposing to the world, we don’t all spend our Saturday nights studying evangelism of the highest style, or if we do we don’t talk about it to each other, but I have seen this particular program before, a collection of classic footage of Graham’s arena-filling crusades from throughout his extensive career, always ending with an altar call as the thousand member choir sings “Just As I Am”.

Last night’s episode didn’t fail me- June Carter and Johnny Cash made an appearance, and that enormous choir sang a few other hymns I love from my youth before swelling into the strains of “Just As I Am, Without One Plea, But That Thy blood was shed for me, And that Thou bidst me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.” The altar call began, and hundreds of folks swarmed the field of the stadium, seeking Jesus.

And watching this program last night, I was struck by how often Graham talks about Heaven in his preaching. Heaven is a topic we just don’t hear about that much these days, yet it was something with which this preacher was both intimate and confident- and he seemed to define heaven as God’s eternal reward for a life lived to his glory here on earth.

I know for myself that my earliest thoughts of heaven were informed primarily by cartoons- fluffy clouds, angel wings, harps, that kind of thing. I’m not sure that it ever really matured much from there, and, as is true with most things, seminary left me with more questions than answers about what heaven meant for us as Christians and as Episcopalians.

However, I think that a true idea of what heaven looks like is given to us in the readings today. In the Gospel from John, Jesus says to us: “Abide in my love.” If we love God and each other as Jesus has loved us, we are told, our joy will be made complete.
And so that, I believe, is the closest we will get to a picture of heaven- the Kingdom of Heaven/ Kingdom of God on earth is when, in serving each other for the love of Christ, we become mirrors for God’s love. And as we reflect that divine love to each other, a community of love is born.

This past week the clergy of the Cathedral attended a clergy day at Good Shepherd, Scranton, and our speaker was The Rev. Dr. Courtney Cowart. Her ministry has primarily been one of disaster response. She was serving at St. Paul’s Chapel when the events of September 11 occurred, and she described looking around the historical chapel, days after the towers fell as it became the headquarters for rescue workers, and seeing letters of thanks and prayers from children all over the world, covering the walls (and the recent hundred thousand dollar paint job) to fifteen feet high. She saw Buddhists creating peace mandalas in front of the altar, and monks chanting psalms, and volunteers treating the ragged, rubble-injured feet of searchers in the “holiest of holies”- George Washington’s family pew. In that moment she saw the Holy Spirit working in this group of strangers suddenly made family- in the words from Acts, “the Holy Spirit truly fell upon all who heard the words, they gathered in places of tragedy and pain, and sowed love- without borders, even the Gentiles!” In that instant, that chapel was transformed into the Kingdom of God on Earth.

Dr. Cowart was also a part of the relief efforts in the Diocese of Louisiana immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and again, as residents reached out to one another and volunteers created a human flood of hope from around the country into the Ninth Ward and other devastated parts of the city of New Orleans, heaven became a reality, and the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand in the love shown by one stranger for another.

How do we live into this kingdom of God that we are called to in our everyday lives? How do we become a member of this Kingdom of God on earth, outside of the catharsis and superhuman intensity of tragedy? It is as simple as saying, “Have me, Lord- “Just As I am, o Lord, I come.”

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

May 10, 2009

Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8

In the Book of Acts today, we are privileged to eavesdrop on an encounter between Philip and an Ethiopian. Philip was one of the apostles. He knew Jesus, saw Jesus, heard Jesus, touched Jesus, and he believed! And he shared his first hand experience of Jesus with this other person who in turn heard and believed.

In John's first letter, John, who was an apostle, someone who saw Jesus, knew Jesus, heard Jesus, touched Jesus, is teaching what he learned from Jesus and about Jesus to the early church and any others who would hear so that they in turn might believe.

In the Gospel, we have Jesus himself speaking to his disciples; saying that if they are faithful, God will continue to be present with them in a way that will guide, encourage, sup­port, strengthen and help them know, appreciate, and live the truth of the Gospel.

He uses the old-fashioned word “abide.” “Abide in me as I abide in you.” We don’t use that word much anymore. It has to do with persevering, continuing, lasting, staying with it. “Stick with me and I will stick with you.”

The three lessons describe encounters with God in Jesus; they describe what its like to be close to God. They speak of pow­erful, direct first-hand meetings with the reality of God – who is Jesus, and they speak of the promise of this kind of intimate expe­rience.

These lessons don't deal with ideas about God, images of God, symbols for God; rather they deal with first-hand, "up-close and personal" encounters with God - in Jesus, in scripture, in one person telling another where they have found love, security, meaning, direction, purpose, future; one person saying to another, “Come see what I have found.”

When I asked Patricia to marry me, now over some 40 years ago, as you might imagine, it was with fear and trembling, as it often is. When I asked her to marry me, I did not say “Will you come and abide with me?” I said “Will you marry me and come live with me?” But what I meant was, “Will you abide with me?” Will you know me so well, love me so deeply, be with me in good times and bad, build a future with me, let me count on you to be there?

That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Live in me as I live in you. Know that I will be there with you day in and day out, encouraging, supporting, guiding, healing, forgiving. Live in that, because I live in you. Choose that, chose to abide with me.”

We live in a disposable age. We dispose of items when we are through using them. We dispose of products, we dispose of relationships, we move on. Someone has said, “No wonder the term, abide, is rare. What it means is rare, in our time.”

But that is what God wants for us, that is what Jesus offers us, and that is what we are asked to offer others in the name of God, on behalf of Jesus. The chance to abide in the love, grace, and mercy of God, constantly being called and nurtured to be our best selves.

In the early church it was not enough to say the gospel was for all, because all meant all Jews, but not Gentiles. So when the Word of God in that time was heard, those Christians had to be sure to specify that the gospel was not only for Jews but also for the Greeks. Paul's letters are full of other specific designations for whom the gospel was meant; slaves gentiles, and more. We have not yet fulfilled the meaning of “the gospel is for all.”

Being part of a welcoming community places upon us a responsibility to share the experiences we have come to value; helping to bring others to the experience we have come to know. It has been said that evangelism is "one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread."

By the grace of God, we have found bread here. We can abide here with God and with one another. That places upon us an obligation to share the good news with others. We are to become, with Paul, "… all things to all people, that we might by all means save some."

The love of Christ in which we abide, that we have known in our lives, that we cherish in the very core of our being, that has made us a new cre­ation – that love of Christ is the love in which we are to abide and we are to share.

The Love of Christ is not for private consumption. It is given, to be given away. It is part of our life, that we might share life. It is generative, welling up, erupting into life through lives to bring life.

His Love is not a possession to be garnered, gained, grasped and kept for oneself – it is to be spread abroad with powerful abandon so all may have the opportunity to abide in that love.

It is important to remember that this love in Christ is not ex­clusively spiritual transfor­mation, although it is that. It is also a liberation that touches every dimension of human existence. Healing, empow­ering, exorcising, befriending, bringing the lost, the oppressed, the dis­enfranchised, the outcasts back into the light and the life for which God created them. Using the power of God's love to heal and rec­oncile, save and forgive, restore and renew.

Today’s readings invite us to open ourselves to the power and presence of God in our lives - in this very life that we live every day, and to dwell there, abide there, and to tell others what we have found. By the Grace of God, thanks be to God. Amen.

 

The Second Sunday of Easter 2009

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

When I first started seminary, not that long ago, I was confused to hear my professors and other learned church folks describe all things Christian as being “Easter-centered”.

As followers of Christ we are Easter People, defined by Christ’s empty tomb on Easter morning. Our 30 year old “new” prayer book is an Easter Prayer Book, as it intentionally re-centers our worshipping life around the resurrection of Jesus, both on the micro-level of sharing in the Eucharistic Feast at every Sunday service, and the macro-level of focusing on the promise of resurrection in every major event in our lives as a church- our holiest days, our ordinations, weddings, baptisms, even funerals where the color of vestments the priests wear was shifted from solemn black to Easter white, all to remind us that we were given life when Jesus triumphed over death.

I quickly added this to my own glossary of church speak, and on this second Sunday of Easter it resonates even stronger. This is the golden time of our liturgical year, the solemnity of Lent has been survived, and the relentless schedule of Holy Week has been completed and the lilies and brass bands and general hustle and bustle of Easter Sunday came off without a hitch and now we can sit back and relax enough to bask in the glow of what we just experienced and say:

Alleluia, alleluia Christ is Risen!

Today we are given a glimpse into what it really means to be an Easter People as Christians- literally in John’s Gospel as we hear of the life of the apostles in the days immediately following Christ’s resurrection, and more metaphorically in the message from Acts and in the Psalms, describing what it looks like to have heaven on earth, how the earliest Christian communities embraced Easter in their daily lives, as brethren lived together in unity, and no one was needy, and no one had more or less than they needed.

And in it all, we have the shadow of Thomas, and his doubt. We’ve all heard so much about Thomas that when I realized I would be preaching about him this week I mentally yawned, because what is there to say about Thomas that hasn’t already been said? In a way I feel bad for him, I see him as that stock foot-in-mouth character from tv shows and movies who has the very bad luck of having the exact person he was talking about standing right behind him. But as I sat with this story this week, I started to see more in Thomas than the blustering oaf who didn’t have enough faith, and I actually started to be very thankful that Thomas wasn’t in the room that first day when Jesus appeared to the other disciples, so that he could say, when he heard about it, that he simply couldn’t believe such a thing to be true without proof. In that moment Thomas let us all off the hook for our very human-ness, stated flat out that this risen Lord thing is a very difficult concept and he would like to ask a few more questions before he bought it, in short- he made it okay for us to be faithful and also admit that we don’t really have all the answers.

Facebook story: I recently reconnected with someone I went to high school with via that most astounding of unifiers- Facebook. After the initial round of “how’s your mama and daddy” and “you are a what?” sort of catching up, he told me that lately he had begun to have questions about the things he had been taught in church, and that he was deeply unsettled by this. He was afraid that after an entire life of unshakeable faith, he was no longer able to believe in God.

I don’t think I am breaking his confidence by discussing our online conversation from the pulpit, not just because you could never pick him out of the 500 folks I graduated with, all of whom seem to be on facebook, but because I realize that, in the unorthodox setting of an online networking community, I was given the opportunity to help someone address the questions that I know I have had and I bet everyone in this room has had at some point, the really basic ones like “How can God allow suffering and evil in the world?” and “How can a God of love condemn those who have never had a chance to learn about Jesus?” and “Is there a hell?”.

I didn’t have any easy answers for my friend, and I don’t have any for us here today. He is growing out of a particular denomination’s answers and searching, like we all have to eventually, for answers he must come up with on his own. But I was thankful for the luxury of talking about these basic parts of our faith, which too often I think we just don’t let ourselves question, afraid to ask about for fear of our ignorance being exposed, for our selves to be exposed as doubters. It is a lot easier to develop strongly held opinions about the esoteric things like incense or architecture or who really owns the church property, and avoid the shame of being a fraud.

Jesus wouldn’t let Thomas off the hook so easily- he offered up the marks of the nails in his hands to be touched and the wound in his side for inspection, and by doing so he let Thomas know that he could have all the physical proof in the world, but without faith in his heart, none of it mattered. All the proof Thomas needed, that any of us need, of God’s existence can be found in the way each of us chooses to live Easter everyday- to love God above all else, and our neighbors as ourselves, because we were shown in sacrifice and an empty tomb the triumph of a life lived not to our own glory, but to the glory of God.

AMEN.

Great Vigil of Easter

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

This is the night.

This is the night- as we heard in the ancient hymn of praise called the Exsultet just moments ago- when we rejoice with choirs of angels and all the company of heaven that Jesus Christ has risen, and lives again. This is the night when two Marys travelled to a tomb with spices and oils to anoint the body of their crucified Lord, and found instead an angel with news of resurrection. This is the night when our faith was formed in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, and we form it again every Triduum as we kindle the new flame out of the darkness, and watch as that single flame grows into a flood of light and we are reminded, once again, that though Christians preach Christ crucified, we are defined by Christ resurrected.

In talking with a wise friend about what I should preach tonight, he said, “Say nothing! On this of all nights the symbols do all the preaching that is needed!”

And it is tempting, to bask in the silence after that beautiful chanting and drama, and appreciate the hard work of the altar and flower guilds and all the other guilds that made tonight’s splendor possible, and say nothing for fear of spoiling the message!

However, as the newest priest on staff, I figure I should earn my keep, so let me say this:

Historically the newest members of the Christian faith were inducted on this night, so that they could begin their new life as Christians as all Christians re-lived the mystery of Christ’s resurrection that gave birth to our religion. Anyone who has ever worked diligently through a confirmation class will feel they got off easy when they hear that these earliest catechumens spent three years in preparation and classes. For three years, they were led out of the church after the liturgy of the word, denied sharing in the Eucharistic feast, until they were deemed ready by their teachers.

We have a first hand account of the process from Egeria, a 4th century pilgrim to Jerusalem:
“On the first day of Lent, the candidates [who have been prepared] are led forward in such a way that the men come with their godfathers and the women with their godmothers. Then the bishop questions individually the neighbors of the one who has come up, inquiring: "Does he lead a good life? Does he obey his parents? Is he a drunkard or a liar?" And he seeks out in the man other vices which are more serious. If the person proves to be guiltless in all these matters . . . the bishop . . . notes down the man's name with his own hand. If, however, he is accused of anything, the bishop orders him to go out and says: "Let him amend his life, and when he has done so let him then approach the baptismal font."”

Those who are deemed proper candidates for baptism then spend the entirety of Holy Week reading the Scriptures and thinking on holy things, so that their minds and bodies are ready for the transformation that is coming.

Other historical documents have allowed us to piece together what happened on the night of the vigil itself, when these initiates were asked questions much like we just were in our renewal of our baptismal vows, then stripped of their clothing to enter the darkened baptistry, stepping one by one down the steps into a pool- not a font like we have here, but a pool large enough for an adult to be submerged in. With each step the water would rise higher on the candidate’s body, until it covered the head. At this point the candidate would probably feel like he or she was drowning, with no sense of the direction to the steps and safety in the darkness. At some point in this confusion and panic, the priest would offer a hand and pronounce the words: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, and the new Christian would be anointed with holy oil and led from the pool- reborn into a new life in Christ. Then she or he would be wrapped in a new, pristine garment of white cloth, and led into the blinding light of the church, illuminated by hundreds of candles, to participate in the Lord’s supper for the first time.

You can imagine the joy of the new Christian, half-drowned but safe, and clean, and dry, and surrounded by warmth of candlelight and community, warmed inside by the presence of the Lord.

It is no coincidence that this moment in the life of our church happens as the Earth around us is waking from the deep sleep of winter, and the sun is warming the ground so that the grass greens up, the daffodils and tulips and hyacinths spring from the dirt in a riot of color and scent, and nature begins to come to life again. That in itself is the richest sort of symbolism- the whole earth is welcoming the resurrection of Jesus Christ by reminding us of the Loving Creator who made it. And so again we are reminded of that Creator’s love for us, in the sacrifice and resurrection of his son, our Lord on this night-


For tonight our Risen Lord has conquered sin and death, and assured us of everlasting life in him!

Good Friday

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

We hear the words of this familiar Negro spiritual this day, knowing our journey in this “Great Week” and on this second of the three holiest days ritualizes God’s powerful action of love and freedom for our lives. For the Christian, the action we are invited to is the deepest of intimate moments. The spiritual we sing is crafted by one who clearly is not reflecting ABOUT Jesus on the day of his crucifixion, but instead is a love song being sung by one who KNOWS Jesus. This KNOWING is clearly expressed with a depth of love and intimacy. This Jesus is one who is named as Lord, declaring the author’s willingness to adore, love, and to follow Jesus. To declare as Lord is to find a deep intimacy that leads to complete trust and faith in the one who leads. To declare as Lord is to lose one’s own need to control, to protect, to play it safe, and to risk the losing of much in the hope of gaining something new and unexpected. This is intimacy and trust-defined faithfulness, to follow wherever this Lord may lead. Not without uncertainty, not without trembling, not without grief, but following in spite of it. In this case, the following leads perhaps to the most unexpected of places, to a tree, where there are nails and torture and death. The one who sings this song KNOWS this Lord. What else would be a response to such a circumstance than the very trembling professed, surely a trembling in disbelief, deep grief, and disquiet.

I might suggest this day, as you approach the experience of this ritual, that you consider the question of how we receive the story. Do we receive the story as those who hear about Jesus of Nazareth? Or do we engage the story of one we KNOW, intimately, lovingly, beautifully, in the depth of love, one to whom we dare give our hearts over and follow because we have claimed him and trust him as LORD!

Claiming Jesus as Lord is not an easy thing. First of all, in modern times and in our culture, to call one Lord invites us into a fear that we might be “LORDED OVER” and for a politically-free people, this has negative connotations. Secondly, depending on how we are wired, we may find ourselves of the ilk whose default mode is to manage things on our own. We are apt to be trained to find that extra effort and skill to resolve things on our own. This, in itself, is not a bad approach to life, but oft times, in spiritual matters, is met with futility. Beyond that, we are human beings living in a world where we may not easily become vulnerable to another, vulnerable enough to show our tender spots, our roughest edges, our greatest weaknesses. To do so takes so much trust. Ask yourself this day, really, “Who do you trust?” Who do you trust to be most vulnerable with? Do you feel you KNOW Jesus well enough to let go? To expose your tender spots, your roughest edges, your greatest weakness? To hand your heart over and call him Lord, trusting that he will meet you in those tender places, to meet you in those rough edges, to meet you in that greatest weakness, and not only meet you there but invite you to meet him in his?

I submit to you this day that this meeting of Jesus in this most intimate circumstance is where we may find power and meaning of this day we dare call “Good.” Meeting Jesus in his most vulnerable and tender moment, in his roughest edge, meeting him in his greatest weakness, NO, following our Lord into his greatest weakness, this is perhaps where God’s mysterious power waits for us.

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

Come and know him, see what God can do with the most vulnerable of circumstances. See the paradox of how weakness becomes the crucible for power and new life. It was not a tree, of course, but a tree, if you will, in the shape of a cross that Jesus hangs on today, dies on today. Make no mistake, the cross in Jesus time was a symbol of power, the power of an occupying Roman government that chose crucifixion as the method of capital punishment for those who broke the laws of Rome and for those who posed a political threat. Jesus, our Lord, was executed as a criminal, make no mistake. Remarkable then, isn’t it, that this symbol of judgment and murder would become for followers of Jesus a symbol of God’s power. Why? Because God’s ways of power would be strikingly opposite to the ways of an oppressive government that ruled by fear, instituted a system of economic injustice for the powerful’s gain, and to keep the poorest poor; and whose response to conflict was war and terror. Instead, God would choose to transform the world by showing another way of being whose most powerful weapon was compassion and forgiveness, the core values of Jesus’ life and teaching. For those who follow Jesus to the cross, there we find a symbol not of execution, but of God’s turning weakness into power. For all who KNOW Jesus know that our weakness, our rough spaces, our tender spots, are offered to the world as compassion and forgiveness, the ointment of transformation. Knowing Jesus means knowing God is banking on this power, and it is in you and it is in me.

So we follow our Lord and offer him our hearts, grateful for our meeting him. And on this day, we lay him in the tomb and we wait, for we KNOW there is another day coming.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

Maundy Thursday

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
April 9, 2009

There is a Latin word for where we find ourselves tonite. The word is Triduum. It is Latin for three days. Patrick Malloy, the rector of Grace Church in Allentown, who has recently been called to be associate professor of liturgics at General Seminary in New York City, has described the Triduum this way:

“(We have three liturgies that) are really one liturgy.
• Thursday, we experience in the washing of feet and the sharing of the eucharist how servanthood is true risen life. 

• Friday, we celebrate Jesus’ victory on the cross and how in our own daily dying, we live. 

• Saturday night, we see in fire and the stories of how God saved our ancestors through water and in the eucharist how risen life is now ours, and how we are charged with sharing it.

We have been working and living for this time for a long time. And then comes Sunday with the celebration of the Easter resurrection of Jesus.”

But tonite we focus on incredible, amazing, incomprehensible acts of love performed by Jesus as he provides a meal for his friends and disciples and as he lovingly bathes their feet in an act of humility and servanthood.

Later in this liturgy, after we all have shared in this last supper with our Lord, Mariclare and I will lovingly wash the altar. The accent is on the word, lovingly. This is a night made for love. Not the romantic kind, but the kind that does move the earth and the heavens and the hearts of all of God’s faithful people. This is a big night! And it is all about love.

The offering of bread and wine, the offering of the body and blood of Jesus – these are the things that will connect his disciples to him and to one another forever. It will be their strength. It will be their nourishment. It will be their bond. It will be his continuing presence with them.

Jesus offers one last teaching, one last demonstration of the nature of God’s kingdom that he is bringing into being, one last act which incarnates – which brings to life right there and then – the purpose of his life and ministry, and the nature of God and God’s kingdom.

He does it by washing their feet in a humble and humbling act of love. “The only way to teach the disciples the reality of the kingdom was to get down on his knees and wash their feet.”

The Gospel of John was written decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus to a church that was polarized with division, with contention, with great disputes about who was more right, more righteous, who had the best take on the truth, knew best what God wanted for people, for the world and for the church.

It seems disciples will be disciples no matter in what era they live. The gospel writer obviously felt that the great divisions of the world and the church needed to hear again this final teaching from Jesus that the kingdom of God is defined by love as he has loved and by servanthood as he has served.

And tonight we hear again this message addressed to our world, and to our church, and to us. It seems that things are not much different today. Still self-righteousness, still “my way or the high-way”, still separation of one from anther, still division in the church among the Roman, and the Orthodox, and the Anglican, and the protestant denominations; still between the evangelicals and the social gospel crowd; still between the Episcopal Church USA and the conservative churches of the Anglican Communion, etc., etc. etc.

In the hope that the message, the commandment to love and serve will work deeper into our personal and communal life and practice, we remember once again that “Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”

We hear him say again, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one an-other's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

My wonderful friend and colleague Bill Lewellis holds dear a vision of how Jesus will greet each of us when we arrive in heaven. Tired and worn, Jesus greets us with a towel tied around him and a ba-sin and water to wash and refresh, as he says “welcome to the banquet that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

This self-offering and servanthood is not what the people of that time – including the disciples – expected from God, from the Messiah of God, or from the man, Jesus. It is not what people from this day and time expect, either. People do not expect the power of God Almighty to be shown in humbly serving all sorts and conditions of people, especially the lonely, outcast, the sick,

"The tired, the poor,
The huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse on our teeming shore.
The homeless, tempest-tossed," 
The illegal alien, the un-lovely,
The inconvenient, the pesky and the pest.
Whatever the sort and whatever the condition.

They do not expect power to be patient in suffering. They do not expect power to be an offering of love. They do not expect power to have to - or to be able to - endure. They do not expect power to serve others.

The Jesus who offers himself, the Jesus who serves others, the Jesus who goes to the Cross, is the truth of God. It has been said, “The crucified Jesus is the only accurate picture of God the world has ever seen.”

That is the One we are to walk with this Triduum, these three days – and rejoice in on Easter morning – and follow all the days of our life.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
March 29, 2009
John 12:20-33

I climbed into the pulpit to preach one Sunday, not into this pulpit but one where I was the guest preacher. In the pulpit on the little wooden stand for notes was a small brass plaque, dark with the venerable age of the early 20th century. The plaque contained a short message for the preacher, each preacher privileged to climb the steps to preach. In the language of King James it read, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

I imagine that you, too, are here today to see Jesus; to see Jesus so that, as the old hymn goes, you will be better able to:
      See him more clearly.
     Love him more dearly.
    Follow him more nearly day by day.

So have you taken into yourself this hope from today’s Gospel story? You have come here today, and perhaps you wait hopefully, expectantly, even attentively to see Jesus. I pray you do.

What is it that you hear when Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”?

I want to explore with you for a few minutes what it means for Jesus to say that judgment of the world has been rendered; that the ruler of the world has been thrown out.

What would it mean for you if today the ruler of the world were really driven out? What would it mean if the ruler of you were driven out? What would it mean if those powers to which you feel subject were driven out? The power of not having enough? The power of not being good enough? The power of the now, over the future of what could be? The power of a life of insufficiency? The power of me first? The power of what was? The power of the status quo? The power of the fear of the unknown?

What is it? Which is it for you?

Do you remember hearing a child say to an older more powerful child, “You’re not the boss of me”? Well, who or what is trying to be the boss of you? What power or powers rule, govern, guide your life, your behavior, your actions, your goals? What if today they were driven out and you became truly free? Think about it.

Free to be. Free to do. Free to dream. Free to live a dream. Do you have a dream waiting to be lived?

Remember that dream spoken of on the mall in Washington.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!"
And look at what’s happened since then?

If you have a dream, what’s keeping you from living into it? What ruler prevents you from living toward it, reaching for it? If there is something in the way of you and your living into your dream, well that is a power that rules over you. What if today that ruler of your world was driven by out by Jesus Christ?

If you can say, Jesus is Lord, then you are on the way to recognizing the truth that Jesus is Lord, the Lord of you, and the other rulers of your world have been driven out. You are on the way to knowing there is nothing between you and Jesus. There is nothing between you and the true you, the one God created you to be.

If you truly believe Jesus is Lord, then you have been freed from the powers of this world. There is nothing between you and the person you are created to be, and you are free to live that way – now.

“The judgment of this world” is the climax of Jesus’ work on earth, the end of everything that separates us from one another and from God and from our true selves. It is nothing less than the answer to our prayer that God's kingdom come and God's will be done -- on earth and in us, as it is in heaven. And nothing else has a hold on us.

Are you waiting to use your voice, your power, your life for some purpose until you've got the education, the money, the institutional clearance, the world's permission? Why are you waiting if the time is now. If there's something you're passionate about, some possibility that has ignited your imagination, some dream perhaps to make some corner of the world a little more like the visible sign of God's love, God's peace, God's justice, and God's blessing, you need no permission from the rulers of this world or of your world. They have been driven out.

We are very close to Holy Week and looking toward the journey of Jesus to the Cross. The Cross is the judgment God renders on this world. It is the end of everything that separates us from one another and from God and from our true selves.

Listen to how St. Paul puts it. "If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? … Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …No… For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." – Romans 8:31-39

If Paul is right that Jesus is right, then we don't need to fear. We need to follow. When Jesus is lifted up, he draws all people to him. The God we see in Jesus Christ, the God who created the universe – the God who created you, and redeemed you, and calls you, and loves you – that God is still drawing the universe toward the dream for which it – and you – ache. That God is calling you. He is the one who has already freed you from the rulers of this world.

Is this the Jesus you see? If it is, follow him.

Palm Sunday Homily-Sunday April 5, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania


" Throughout the whole week, beginning from to-morrow, let us all assemble in the martyrium, that is, in the great church, at the ninth hour." This is the instruction as recorded by Egeria, a nun and a pilgrim to Jerusalem in the late fourth century. The instruction is given by the Archdeacon and is part of the ritual of Holy week as experienced by those who would travel to Jerusalem seeking through ritual a connection with Jesus. The instruction was the beginning of invitation for what would be called the Great Week, or as we call it today Holy Week. Our ritual today in this liturgy of Palm Sunday finds its roots in the early experiences of Pilgrims to Jerusalem.
Someone once said that to recognize the signs of God, pay attention to your stirrings. Look closely when you feel the swell of joy within, or the tightness as your throat closes up in sorrow. Live in that moment, poke around in its corners, and feel the texture of its walls. Sit with it for awhile, long enough to sense the presence of God sitting with you.(1)
Today we begin our ritual gifted by a tradition of pilgrimage dating back to the fourth century. We begin our “Great Week” with ritual opportunities to recognize and pay attention to signs of God. Today in our Palm Sunday ritual we have shared our enthusiasm and affection for our Lord by welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem riding on a donkey while onlookers sing Hosannas and wave palms. In the ritual we are reminded that both the donkey and the palms were signs of royalty in the ancient world. The fact that Jesus chose a donkey over a horse to ride was also significant. Kings at war rode horses; kings entering in peace rode donkeys. Jesus comes to Jersualem very intentionally embodying a peacefulness of his kingdom theology. Those expecting a military kingship to smite enemies and restore Israel, would need to look elsewhere. Jesus also comes with courage. Jesus is surely aware his entry into Jerusalem will catch the attention and despise of Roman authorities and Jewish religious leaders. This Jesus is remarkable in his insistence to ride into the roughest of circumstance so that love may have its day.
Our ritual today has brought us to meet him. We bring our hopes and expectations whatever they may be to Jesus and we have waived our palm branches and have sung All Glory Laud and Honor in welcome. Then not too long after we join voices in shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” We are remarkable at times in our inability to hold the course in following him. It is a human experience isn’t it, to savor the opportunity to join in the goodness and fervor of worshipping the triumphant nature of Christ, we do after all like to be on the winning side, And at another moment to find ourselves pushing Christ away, losing sight of our call to follow Jesus into the roughest of places.
It is startling then isn’t it, that we end up at the foot of the cross and there find instead of rejection, arms stretched wide with an embrace of forgiveness. Glancing through the shadow of the cross we see a light of new life. There is a chance for us after all. How remarkable is this Jesus?

Welcome to the Great Week. Welcome to this week of ritual that promises much. Pay attention to your stirrings. Look closely when you feel the swell of joy within, or the tightness as your throat closes up in sorrow. Live in that moment, poke around in its corners, and feel the texture of its walls. Sit with it for awhile, long enough to sense the presence of God sitting with you.(1)
(1) Reference taken from www.explorefaith.org

The Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 22, 2009
Numbers 21
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, writing in the June 1867 edition of the periodical The Atlantic monthly shares his observations of the then “negro” people. He reflects particularly on their spirituality as reflected in the songs they would sing. Higginson writing some two years after the Emmancipation, he speaks to a people who have been freed by law but who continue to wait to experience the fullness of freedom.
A long waiting of oppression continues and our writer comments on the power of the songs that carried a people held in captivity to a place of perseverance even while they waited. One such spiritual of waiting goes like this:
Go in de wilderness,
Go in de wilderness, go in de wilderness,
Jesus call you. Go in de wilderness
To wait upon de Lord.
Go wait upon de Lord,
Go wait upon de Lord,
Go wait upon de Lord, my God,
He take away de sins of de world.

"Jesus a-waitin'. Go in de wilderness,
Go, & Go.
All dem chil'en go in de wilderness
To wait upon de Lord."

Waiting upon the Lord is where we find our engagement with the scriptures this day as we turn our sights on the Book of Numbers. The Book of numbers translated from the Vular English is Numeri. The Greek is Arithmeti but the Hebrew title for this book reads B’midhar, which reflects more the reality of the book itself, translating “in the wilderness”.
The Book of Numbers is the fourth of the Pentateuch. It is a compilation of 1,000 years of experience and scholars tell us contains at least three different sources who are reflecting back on the years of the people of Israel’s time of waiting in the dessert for the full promise of God’s salvation after having been liberated from slavery in Egypt. Its characterized by telling the story of God’s salvation with God’s people, and the ordering of those people. It is a wilderness story and it is a story of waiting. It is a story of the struggle that exists to be patient in waiting, to struggle with keeping eyes fixed on a hopeful dream, when the realities of the wilderness of life are chipping away at those dreams.
The scripture speaks of this struggle . Numbers tell us that Moses led the people out of Egypt by way of the Red Sea going around the land of Edom. On the way we are told, “the people grew impatient”. They asked Moses, did you bring us out to this desolate and awful place to die? There is no water and the food is horrible. One can understand Yahweh perhaps responding to this “impatient whining” negatively given all the trouble to free these folks. Moses himself must intercede on behalf of the people when God’s disappointment is manifest through poison serpents biting those who have lost the vision of hope for their lives. Ironically it seems Moses himself is begging God to remind the people of the vision of freedom rather than give in to the limitations of the struggle in the dessert where people will die. Yahweh responds with a symbol of life, a serpent on a stick, those who are bitten by despair and hopelessness may now turn and gaze upon a vision of life. In the wilderness wait upon the Lord. Be Patient and look for life.


The text book definition of patience is,
1. the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.
2. an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay

Let us be honest with one another, it is easy to lose patience when the provocation, annoyances, misfortunes and pain of life is more than we can bear. It is not unnatural to experience restlessness or annoyance when the movement of our hopes and dreams of our lives are delayed.
All of us know misfortune, all of us know pain. All of us know irritation. When all the guarantees of life and the hope of what has been promised is so distant we have lost sight of it, then what? Some of us may know first hand what it is to have our sights set upon a life long dream, even having labored toward that life long dream only to be left in some in-between place waiting and wondering what happened or what is going to happen. I myself was certain at this point of my life I would enjoy my induction into the baseball hall of fame after a successful career at second base with the Philadelphia Phillies. More seriously we have had dreams perhaps for our children, investing time, love, money, hope in the lives of one you love only to see that child run into a difficulty or become involved in choices of life that dash their potential. We have had dreams perhaps of our own lives when health, emotional or physical, present challenges that dash our own potential. We have had dreams perhaps of relationships we imagined with fullness and joy instead stressed and strained dashing our imagination of love. We have had dreams perhaps for our professional lives believing we would arrive at a promised land of accomplishment only to spend time in the wilderness waiting to a point of impatience where we can no longer even imagine a once tangible reality of future.

Indeed wilderness is a time that tests our patience. Like the people of Israel where will we turn? Who will intercede for us? How will we discover again God’s presence and how will God remind us of his dream for our lives? In the wilderness, especially in the wilderness we need to be reminded of God’s dream for our lives. It is especially when the things the world can offer us for our existence seem to be working against our dream that we must pray for intercession to reach for those things that cannot be quantified to lift us to a new place, a new reality.

You all remember the story of Frederick. Leo Leoni’s dreamer field mouse. You remember how Frederick and his friends prepared so very differently for a long and arduous winter.

You remember about the chatty little field mice who began to collect straw and corn for the winter. The staples to keep them warm and fed. They worked hard and long, all except Frederick you remember.

Working hard and growing tired of seeing Frederick seemingly doing “nothing” they asked,
“Why are you not working Frederick?” “ I am”, he said. “I do work. I gather Sun Rays for the cold dark Winter Days.”
Again another day, the field mice worked hard, pulling food closer to the wall that would become their refuge for the winter. In the distance they looked and they saw Frederick staring off into the meadow. Frustrated and with despair they asked, “And now Frederick?”
“I am gathering colors for winter is gray.”
Finally, after a long day of work, the busy mice gazed upon a meadow only to see Frederick standing by himself. In Frustration they proclaimed, “And now Frederick, now what are you doing?”

Frederick proclaimed, “I am gathering words for the long winter days, for surely we will run out of things to say”.

Well you remember the story, the snow came and the mice were prepared. For some time, they nibbled comfortably in the warm wall, feeling good they shared stories of foolish foxes and silly hens.

Slowly their supplies ran out. They winter days grew longer and colder and slowly the supplies so carefully stored began to run out. Finally, their worst fears became a reality and the field mice were left without food. Cold and hungry they realized they had nothing left and turned to Frederick. ‘What about your supplies Frederick?”
“Close your eyes”, said Frederick.

“Now I send you the rays of the sun. Do you feel how their golden glow?” The mice began to grow warmer.

“And how about the colors Frederick?”, the field mice begged.

They closed their eyes and told them of blue periwinkles, red poppies in yellow wheat, and green leaves on a berry bush, they saw colors as clearly as if they has been painted on the sky above them.

“Now the words”, they exclaimed, “Give us the words Frederick!”

Frederick stood among them, cleared his throat and exclaimed,

“Who scatters snowflakes? Who melts the ice?
Who spoils the weather? Who makes it nice?
Who grows the four-leaf clover in June?
Who dimes the daylight? Who lights the moon?

Four little field mice who live in the sky.
Four little field mice….like you and I.

One I the Springmouse who turns on the showers.
Then comes the Summer who paints in the flowers.
The Fallmouse is next with walnuts and wheat.
And Winter is last….with little cold feet.

Arent’ we lucky the seasons are four?
Think of a year with one less…..or one more!”


Like a vision of something more God holds out for us the promise of new life even in the wilderness. A serpent on a stick or a poet’s words painted on our hearts. We hold and wait for God to draw near to us and point us expectantly to a new day.
A people waiting patiently to see the fullness of their freedom sang these words and we join them this day:
THE COMING DAY

"I want to go to Cannan,
I want to go to Cannan,
I want to go to Cannan,
To meet 'em at de comin' day.
O, remember, let me go to Canaan (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
O brudder, let me go to Canaan, (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
My brudder, you -- oh! -- remember (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
To meet 'em at de comin' day."

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Sermon: Lent III
March 15, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Richard Swenson in his book “Overload, Learning to Live with Limits” describes his experience with patients in his medical practice. He describes a time when he recognized he was seeing more and more patients who were younger and younger who did not have easily identified issues for diagnosis but were demonstrating physical difficulties. The more time he spent with patients he recognized what you and I will hear as an obvious conclusion; all of them were living lives where the demand on their lives was more than they could possibly handle.
His experience led him to prescribe for his patients that they be about creating Margin in our lives. He defines the concept of Margin as “The space that once existed between ourselves and our limits.” The equation he created is as follows:
Power-Load = Margin
Power= the things that give us energy, our skills, our time, our training, our emotional and physical strength, our faith, our finances, our social support, our relationship, our creativity.
Load= the things which demand things from us. Our work, problems, obligations, commitments, expectations (internal and external), debt, deadlines, interpersonal conflict, our health issues.
He suggests that the complex world and culture we live in presents an unprecedented complexity and challenge to the limitations we have as human beings. This complexity and challenge to our limits is what he calls the Sabotaging of Margin.
The Sabotaging of Margin
• 1.Progress differentiates our environment-giving us more and more of everything faster and faster
• 2. Spontaneous flow of progress is toward increasing stress, change, complexity. Speed, intensity and overload.
• 3. All humans have physical, mental, and financial limits that are relatively fixed.
• 4. The profusion of progress is on a collision course with human limits. Once the threshold of these limits is exceeded, overload displaces margin.
• 5. On unsaturated side of their limits, humans can be open and expansive. On the saturated side, however, the rules of life totally change.
One example he states for us to consider how our margin is being sabotaged is the difficulty of living in an age of information Overload. He suggests that there is more information in one edition of the Sunday New York Times than a person living in the 17th century would have encountered in a lifetime. I have not idea how he or anyone would really know that, but that sounded very cool to me.
We need not venture too far into this theory to realize some of the other ways the world we live in challenges our margin. We live in a time of Physical Overload. Technological advancements lead us to vocations and occupations where more and more, less and less is required of us physically.
When our relationships are strained with those we love, or with our colleagues, or even our brothers and sisters at church, the stress of this disruptions erodes our emotional and spiritual energy. Jesus stressing of forgiveness in his ethic clearly speaks to the disruption of what we would call sin. This erosion certainly isn’t unique in our time but is ever-present.


Many of us know that if we are to compete in a global economy the pressure on our time of productivity grows and grows. The work day has expanded with so many of us knowing what it is to rise in the morning in darkness and to return home at night in darkness with a long full day of “work”, only to go to bed and do the same thing the next day. Our time overloaded.
We know all to well these days the ramifications of financial overload. Consumerism is such a key component of our economy and its very premise is built upon creating a system where we need to buy and are tempted to extend. Some years ago I read a statistic that suggested that generation X on average was spending 120% of its annual household income. One need not be a mathematician to know how that equation works out. If you purchased a home in the past ten years it was probably not an uncommon experience to be invited into a “creative conversation” that included mortgage, second mortgage, packaged financing, that seemed more colluded to helping us believe we could buy a home we could not necessarily afford. We see now of course the difficulty in such a course of action and thought and many of us know all too well the stress of financial overload.
All of these things and others Dr. Swenson suggests contribute to the sabotaging of Margin! When Margin is sabotaged, he says, our limits are exceeded and the result is that we experience a decrease in perception. We cannot see the world and the choices we have in the world clearly, AND, because of this we perceive that we have lost options.
The antidote of course for Dr. Swenson, a Christian man, is that we intentionally seek to create margin in our lives. He suggests we pay careful attention to our Power-Load Equation and we seek to look at the areas in our lives where we can create the space for energy.
He suggests:

10% Margin in our Lives!!! (Reserves)
• 1. Margin in Emotional Energy
• 2. Margin in Physical Energy
• 3. Margin in Time
• 4. Margin in Finances


So the question of the day is,
HOW IS YOUR POWER-LOAD EQUATION?

If it is like those of the patients that Dr. Swenson began to encounter in his practice, chances are to begin a conversation when one is living an overloaded life means there may need to be come cleaning up of space on the hard drive. There is not better time for such examination and cleaning up then during Lent. One way to get there is through contraction.
Contraction is the popular word of the day being used currently to describe our economy’s response to our exceeding our limits on the financial side. I’d like to make use of this word today. First by reminding one another that at the root of this word is Contract.
In my wife’s line of work (a mother -baby nurse) contraction means an opportunity has arisen! New life, New Birth is about to take place

The Israelites knew of new life and new birth, being born into a new and unique relationship that would be defined by holy and faithful expectations of living in relationship to their God and to one another! A life-giving relationship would be guided for a nomadic people with new found freedom and promise with a contract that would define their Power-load equation.
This Power-load equation would be defined in covenant or in contract. Perhaps as we seek the 10% of Margin in our lives, and examine our Power-load limit, we can learn something new of the Ten Best Ways to Live as Jerome Berriman expressed them in Young Children and Worship.
For the Israelite people, the commandments that Moses delivered from Yahweh were a contract, a code of living. This code of living would be what is described by scholars as an apodictic contract as opposed to casuistic contract that were common in ancient times with other peoples living in proximity to the Israelites
A casuistic code or contract was common in these times and of course were defined as “if you do so and so, such and such will be the penalty”.
The contract of the Israelites with Yahweh is apodictic, reflecting the nature of an agreement based upon a “Suzerainty arrangement”. This arrangement was present among some people and nations as they came to peace agreements in ancient times. Such an agreement or contract is reflected in Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. The definition of this contract recognizes a relationship between one who is greater in power but not oppressive in that power, which is beneficial for all. This apodictic contract then is what will define the Power-Load equation for God and God’s people, and to live by it, would give life!
As we examine our Power-Load equation, perhaps a look at the contract again, will lead us to a place of power.
You know them and I couch my examination of the commandments as Jerome Berriman would, “The ten best ways to live”.
First: The Best ways to Love God
1. I am the one true God, this is very important, everything depends on this, and so have no others than me. This best way to love God recognizes a profound statement of monotheism in the midst of polytheistic people’s and cultures. Not only is Yahweh the God who brought Israel out of bondage, the source of their salvation, but Yahweh is the source of all life, of all being, of all things.
2. Make no Idols to serve: If you are serving them, you are forgetting me and therefore you, be careful about our idols. In our own Power-load equation we must ask what idols need be cleared out because they are sabotaging our margin. Wealth, success, alcohol, drugs, etc. . . .
3. I am God- do not speak lightly of me. In ancient times it was commonplace to appeal to deities for the support of curses on others or in support of magical causes. Among pagans this included evoking deities to bless weaponry. This is not consistent with the code of Yahweh’s character and disruptive to the Power-Load equation.
4. Keep the Sabbath; this is the day Yahweh tells us that delight is to be found. Yahweh creates in six, and delights in it all. We are invited to delight in it all as well and in one another. How can we possibly create margin if our Power-load equation is saturated to the point where we can not take delight.

Such are the best ways to Love God, now here are the best ways to Love each other.

5. Honor your Father and your Mother. In an ancient order of things this is not just a mandate to honor your own mother and father but honoring the place of parenting in tribal life
6. Do not Murder seems self-explanatory, though I admit we seem to struggle a bit with this.
7. Do not break your marriage but more value it, honor it, and give power to it by intention, time, and appreciation.
8. Do not steal. Having respect for others property including slaves not only creates an ethic of common respect, but in this ancient time having been just freed from slavery, it is a direct commandment to stay away from the common practice of owning slaves. Having been freed slaves; do not be even tempted to steal one’s freedom. An advocate for freedom is an advocate for a healthy Power-load equation.
9. Do not bear false witness. More than just being truthful, but being respectful of another’s dignity is life giving to all.
10. Do not even want what others have. This of course implies we are grateful and satisfied with what we have. Being grateful for what we have at the exclusion of wanting what others have speaks to an inner place of gratitude. This inner place of gratitude speaks volumes to the power side of our equation.


We began our exploration of Margin now through a lens of contract or covenant. A life-giving code that speaks to a holy way of living that bears power as we encounter our load.

Jesus made this contract even simpler: as he quoted Summary of the Law- Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself.

Sigmund Freud described the contraction of life in birth with the term Point of No return: That is the point in which in delivery contractions force that which is about to be born into the birth canal- it’s the in between place then where a decision must be made, out or in! Contractions give birth to something new yet even I the midst of the contraction we may need to push a bit as we seek to embrace new life.
Perhaps your contract this Lent is to explore your power-load equation, discovering how best to Love your God, love your neighbor and love yourself. Push.

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Sermon: Sunday March 1, 2009
I Lent Mark 1:9-15
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa



“God is not something people choose for themselves. (Being chosen by God) does not grant access to all the answers but means contending with hard questions, thankless tasks, and usually a harrowing journey.”

These words were written by an individual to set a context of their experience of being drawn into a community of faith and coming to a decision for the first time in her life to “join” or become part of a church. Kathleen Norris, author of “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace”, describes her journey that propelled her to overcome her fears of being part of a church, to be patient with the boundaries that churches sometimes unknowingly present to un-churched people, and to come to a point of making a decision to become part of a community of faith. Kathleen Norris describes the experience as not so much having made a choice, but of coming to an understanding that God has chosen her, AND everyone else she was about to join in this new journey in her life.
She writes, “All Christians are considered to have a call to what is commonly termed, ‘the priesthood of all believers’; all are expected to use their lives as to reveal the grace of the Holy Spirit working through them. It’s a tall order, to literally be a sacrament, and it helps to remember Jesus statement, “You did not choose me, I chose you”.
She continues,
St. Bonaventure wrote, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”

By now you may have figured that I would like to focus this sermon today on the idea of choice. Surely by now you are in full awareness that we have embarked on our journey into Lent. You know this because at the very least, there is a prediction of 3-6 inches of snow, the normal weather prediction at the beginning of every lent. You also can see of course that the liturgical colors have changed to purple. If you had the opportunity you bore on your head the ash that reminds you of God’s calling you into being out of the very dust of the earth and your inextricable connection to one another and to the God who made you. We began this morning in penitence, asking God’s forgiveness through corporate confession. You have been invited to a season of self-examination and prayer. You may also be well on your way to establishing and living into your Lenten discipline. This discipline conversation may involve these questions: “What shall I give up? Or what shall I take on? This endeavor of course comes with the memory that such efforts find their meaning in the purpose of becoming more intentional about removing the obstacles or providing a path toward growing closer to God and neighbor.
I said in the beginning this sermon would focus on choices. I am aware that often our Lenten disciplines lead to an exploration of choices. If you are a list maker often such exploration leads to a list far more robust on the side of bad choices rather than good ones. Today, this first Sunday of Lent, with deference to our inclination to make disciplines about delving morosely into the bad choices we have made, I instead want at least for us to consider a bit not so much the choices we have made, but rather what it means to be chosen.
St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes choices in one way, Christ another.” We live in a world and in a culture that values deeply choice. In fact, having the opportunity to make choices is a core value of who we are as a free people. I suggest however that the spirit of having choices has also grown into all aspects of our lives from consumerism to moral decision making. We have so many choices about us that I suggest we are sometimes numbed by the choices that are about us. I remember escorting a young African man who had just arrived in Austin Texas to begin study to the grocery store. I will never forget watching the incomprehension on his face as he considered the possibility of so much food in one place, and then the deeper mystery when he realized there were choices of the same kind of food. He was frozen in his place, numb, and unable to move forward to make any decisions about food.
In our Lenten journey you may be pondering the choices you have made, and sometimes making a list of things we “ought to be doing” or “ought to have done”. I suggest sometimes an exploration of such a list may lead to a level of “frozen incomprehension” as it did my African friend on his first visit to a grocery store. So I offer another way to look at this Lenten journey and the issue of choice. I suggest to you as you take this journey to remember as you consider those things that are in the way of a holy and faithful life that you remember not so much of your choosing and choices, but that God has already chosen you!
The account of Jesus’ Baptism in the Gospel of Mark depicts the moment of Jesus Baptism. A voice descends from heaven, “This is my beloved Son with you I am well pleased”, In other words, Jesus, I have chosen you! Jesus is blessed with an understanding of his being chosen and immediately propelled into the wilderness where he will face with temptation what it means to be chosen by God. He will emerge from that 40 days and 40 nights knowing the course ahead will have him contend with difficult questions, be full of thankless tasks, and often be harrowing. He will go however, and as Mark would have it, be about proclaiming the immediacy of the Kingdom of God.
I have a fantasy each time I preside at or participate in a baptism. In that fantasy I can see the face of the individual emerging from the waters of baptism and I can hear a voice crying from heaven Bill, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Mary, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Jane, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! In other words, whoever you are, child of God, I have chosen you! Now into the world with you, knowing I never said it would be an easy ride to be chosen, so face the demons in your life, and know that wild beasts will be your companion in this world, But go broken as you may be full of limitation and often not getting it right, but go knowing I have chosen you!
Kathleen Norris, quoting St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”
Some on this Lenten journey may ask of you; Have you chosen Jesus today? Some may ask what choices you have made instead of choosing Jesus? My grandfather was a lifelong Roman Catholic but not a churchgoer. Every Christmas Eve he celebrated Mass with the Pope on television and by his bed stand after his death sat a well worn crucifix that I prize to this very day. I can remember profoundly just a few days after my grandfather’s death being approached by a well meaning member of my community of faith knowing of my grandfather’s lack of church attendance, she stated, “I certainly hope your grandfather chose Jesus.” Working through the insensitivity of what I firmly believe was a statement not designed to offend, I knew inside of me what the response was to that statement. I do not know how my Grandfather chose Jesus, but one thing for sure I knew, I knew Jesus chose him!
I submit to you that our Lenten journey be an opportunity not so much to do an accounting of our disappointments and poor choices as a vehicle for understanding the depth of our faith, but rather to ponder the depth of what it means to be chosen by God. God chooses us with our limitations, our transgressions, our dirty little secrets, our imperfections and our brokenness. What God does with such weakness and vulnerability, well, is the whole point of the story isn’t it! It’s called Grace!
This Lent let us lay vulnerable before the God who has chosen us. Let us lay before God what he already knows: That we are too quick to judge and condemn rather than to forgive. That we are too quick to reject those who differ from us in opinion, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and even beliefs in God. That we give in to easily to apathy or selfishness when it comes to giving of ourselves for the healing of the world. That we too often hoard our resources, our money, our food, even our thoughts and feelings. That we too often allow our Eyore complex to have the day rather than go give Charlie Brown a say.
Lay all of this weakness before God, it will be familiar to him. He knows you already because he has chosen you! Because he has chosen you there is no time to let it weigh you down, instead, watch what happens as the God of our collect for the day does what God does, taking the weaknesses of each of us, and finding the might to save us! Amen.