The Third Sunday in Lent

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

In today's reading from Exodus, we hear for the very first time that God is with us; that God is concerned about and involved in the life God has created. This is the first time we hear the promise of God to be “with you.” This promise is at the heart of our relationship with God. That God is with us and will be with us always and ever, now and forever. That is why we remind ourselves before we pray; The Lord be with you. And also with you. Then Let us pray.

You heard the words spoken to Moses, and through Moses to all of Israel, “I have seen the misery of my people; I have heard their cry. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”

God tells Moses that all he needs to do is to look at their history together. God was with Abraham. God was with Isaac. God was with Jacob. All of history testifies to the presence of God with God’s people. Now Moses and we are assured anew that God is not only a God of history, but God of the present and the future, too.

The nature of God is compassion, being with – in ways that involve intimacy and vulnerability born out of love. That is the na­ture of God, that is the nature of the divine relationship with the human creation, that is the nature of the Incarnation, that is the nature of discipleship – being with.

My friend David Jones tells how “Late one night in April of 1968, Newark, NJ, was in flames. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been murdered and there was rage in the streets. In the midst of it all a little girl was in her bed trying to go to sleep, but the noises out­side here home — shouts, flashing lights, gunfire, po­lice cars fire engines — kept her awake. She was afraid and she was crying. ‘Hush, child, God is with you,’ her mother called from the bedroom across the hall. The frightened little girl answered in her small voice, ‘I know he is, Mama, but could you come and get into bed with me? I need someone who has skin.’”

The second point made by the lessons is that after we have been brought into relationship with God, we are sent by God back to God’s people. Moses was not allowed to stay by the burning bush. The immediate response of this chosen one, this Moses, was to deny his ability and worthiness to go for God. Moses objected no less than 5 times. But God reassured this reluctant ser­vant by promising him that he will be with him in all times.

The parable of the fig tree has been called the parable of the sec­ond chance. The gardener asks that the tree be given another year to bear fruit. We always live in the hope and mercy of God who keeps giving us second chances to rise from the difficulties of our lives to rebuild and reform our lives. God’s love knows no limit, no condition, no finality.

There are many people who look at the world today and see the suffering that life and human beings inflict on themselves and on other human beings. One person is Bill Countryman, a teacher, believes that we are in a “time of trial.” We pray in the modern language translation of the Lord's Prayer, “Our Father in heaven...Save us from the time of trial. Deliver us from evil.” We are in the midst of a trial in the sense of seeing what we are made of.

What is the nature and substance of our faith? How is it being lived out? Is it of God? It doesn't make any difference how we got into the time of trial, but as Jesus was tried in the desert and on Calvary, so are we tried and tested. And as Jesus tells us in the gospel lesson, our souls hang in the balance.

If our response is one of compassion, then the works of God will be revealed in the trial. Our souls will be safe. God's people will be comforted in their spirits, and hopefully healed in body, if they need to be; and we will live in a reconciled community of faith, witness, and ministry that is in the image of the loving, compassion­ate, powerful presence of God in the here-and-now.

Paul Brand is a world renowned surgeon who devoted much of his life to reconstructing clawed fingers, twisted hands, and de­formed feet at a leprosy hospital in India. One Christmas he was guest of honor at a party in the dormitory where the lepers lived while they waited for surgery. After a long day in the operating room, Dr. Brand came to the party and was immediately asked to speak. Exhausted and empty of ideas, he breathed a prayer for the winds of God’s spirit to speak through him. As he rose he was struck by the sight of the lepers’ hands ­– some half-hidden in concealment, most grotesque in their disfigurement.

“How I would love,” he began, “to have had the chance to meet Jesus and study his hands! But, knowing what he was like, I can almost picture them … The car­penter’s hands rough, tough, gnarled; the healer’s hands sensitive, com­passionate; the crucified hands marred, even clawed. And then there were his resurrected hands … Why did he want to keep the wounds of his humanity? I think he carried the marks of his suffering to be forever with us.”

Silently, one by one, the people lifted their hands high. They were the same stumps, scars and claws as before. Yet they were not the same. No one now tried to conceal them, for they had ac­quired a new dignity — the dignity of Christ.

The task of the church is to image/imagine the world whole, the community whole, each other whole, the kingdom of God in the here-and-now of this life, this world, whole.

When we live in the compassion of God, when we live out the com­passion of God, then God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. When Jesus teaches, he almost always says "The kingdom of heaven is like...the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, like a pearl; like a full fishnet.” The kingdom of heaven is like – you and me, whenever we soothe, feed, build, clothe, advocate for, pray for, be with. Whenever we become indignant on behalf of the poor and suffering; whenever we bring resources to help make the world more just; whenever we hear someone's cry and go to them to be with them.

We stand on holy ground, we live on holy ground, in the presence of the Living God who has “seen the misery of the people; has heard their cry; who knows their sufferings, and has come to deliver them.” and who sends us to be his compassionate, empowering presence in the world; and who will come to judge us, not on our rate of suc­cess, but on our faithfulness. This is the God who calls us.

Ash Wednesday

The Venerable Richard I. Cluett

This day, Ash Wednesday, may be for some of us the most important day, the most wonderful day in the Christian calendar. With the exception of Good Friday, all the other days are major feast days, days of remembrance, celebration, and contemplation on the acts of God – in the past. Even Good Friday is something like that; the day is totally focused on the acts of Jesus.

But today, today is about us. It is a very personal day that has solely to do with our relationship with God, and with ourselves.

Bishop Steven Charleston writes about today:

“Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, the cycle begins again, the ancient whisper of our own frailty, slipping the fine clothes from our shoulders, taking the crown from our heads, bringing us back to that humble place where it all began and where it will surely end.”

This is the day we can be released from whatever it is that has bound us for so long. This is the day we can be released from whatever it is that has separated us. We can be released from whatever it is that has isolated us. We can be released from whatever it is that wakes us and worries us or frightens us in the middle of the long night. This is the day we can be released from whatever it is about us that has condemned us in our own sight. We can finally lay these burdens down, all of them.

Garrison Keillor says that "Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving" - and we give it to ourselves. We bind it upon our own backs.

But this is Ash Wednesday. This is "Get out of Jail" day. This is "Get home free day". At the end of this day, at the end of this liturgy, we can be washed clean. At the end of this day, or at the end of this season of Lent, we can be made dazzling white, cleaner than any fullers bleach could make us. Fresh and clean as a newborn babe, as a newly baptized babe. You and I – a new creation.

Today is our Yom Kippur; today is the Christian Day of Atonement. It is the day that opens the way for clearing away all the stands between our truest, most honest selves and our God. A season of spring-cleaning lies before us, a chance to rid our lives of the detritus of life, the clutter of our consumption. It is the day to start a process of once again becoming “at one” with our God, living in harmony with our God and God’s Creation.

If we will repent and re-turn to the Lord, "our God will have compassion and he will richly pardon." St. Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” God was in Christ reconciling You to himself. And me. And so we can begin again in hope and in faith that God will make us a new creation – again, at one with God and in harmony with those among whom we live.

We can start anew. We can get over it - whatever it is. We can get over ourselves, and get right with our God, and begin to get right with those with whom we live, and among whom we live, and with the rest of God's creation.

Today is about us - about God and us. It is a day to get over ourselves, beyond ourselves, outside ourselves, and get on with life as God intends it to be. Get on with our life in the fullness God has prepared for us.

Today God says, "It is over. What is done is done. You are mone and I love you and you are now forgiven. I absolve you from all that has separated you from me. I absolve you from all that has separated you from your family or friends or neighbors. I absolve you from all that has separated you from yourself."

William Countryman is a wonderful teacher and theologian. He writes about it this way:

"The message of forgiveness says to us, Get over yourself! Get over your goodness and your righteousness, if they threaten to keep you from full participation in your humanity. Get over your faults, your inadequacy, if they're what hold you back. Get over whatever it is that makes you self-obsessed, whatever makes you reject God's wooing of you, whatever makes you feel that you would rather not go in to the party, whatever makes you feel like you belong to some separate and superior race of beings, whatever makes you feel like an eternal victim, whatever makes you imagine that there's something in this world more important and more fundamental than love."

If we repent and turn to the Lord, we "may obtain of the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness". Do you hear that? "Perfect remission and forgiveness." Made worthy to stand in the presence of God. Washed through and through from our wickedness and cleansed from our sin. 

Freed from all that binds us. Freed from all that separates us. Freed from all that isolates us. Freed from all that condemns us. Free at last. Free to take our rightful place at the table. Free to get on with life. Free to get about the work of building the kingdom. Free to help release others from whatever binds them or diminishes their God-given humanity. Free at last! Today. It’s Ash Wednesday. And new life can begin today.

Thanks be to God.

The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Jesus offers wonderful and gracious words of God’s promise being fulfilled. Those who heard them joyfully receive it. And then Jesus tells the people that he is being sent, not to his hometown, but to others to bring God’s Good News. The people are enraged that Jesus has, in effect, rejected them and they try to do him harm. But he is not able to work with them because they think they know him so well. He cannot help them because he is “only Joseph’s son”. We might call it, The Curse of Familiarity.

All is not right with the world. Jesus knows that. You know that. I know that. All is not right with the world.

The people among whom we live believe we are known quantities. They think they know us from way back when; they know what we did; they know the mistakes we have made; they know some of the not-very-nice things that we have done. So, therefore, how could we have anything of merit to offer? How could we have powers or gifts or ideas that could be put to use for their benefit and well-being. “After all, you are only Ricky Cluett. Dick and Jane’s son.’ Or “You are only my brother. I know you and you can’t.” So they think. 

And eventually sometimes we might even begin to believe it, too. And so we make no offering, we do no deeds of power in our own homes, among our own people, in our own hometown. We keep what we have to offer to ourselves.

All is not right with the world, and so the world does not teach what Jesus teaches about God and about the nature of worth and power. How do we help Jesus bring the reign of God closer in our own day and time to those the world sees “as only this or only that,” people stripped of merit, stripped of ability, stripped of gifts, stripped of power?

How can we share what we know of Jesus so that people are empowered for fullness of life in God’s kingdom, rather being stripped of possibility? How can we help them know the Jesus who has the power to heal and to redeem and to make whole. And that beginning to know, they might begin to believe, and to be healed, and to become whole and holy, and to know themselves as living signs of Jesus? 

How do we build a heritage for our children worthy of Jesus who calls them and empowers them for life? How do we build a church to equip them? How important it is for them to know and for every one, for all God’s children, to know that God has opened the kingdom to every race and nation and tribe and clan and family and condition and person! 

It is true how important it is for us and for the homeless and the hungry and the imprisoned and the disenfranchised and the elderly, and the young. All those whom our society, the world, would separate or exclude because “they are only”; and therefore they cannot, or may not or should not… All are included by Jesus in God's kingdom now, today and forever.

We are reminded by Jeremiah today that God has need of each one of us. We each have something to offer. We each have a unique offering that if kept inside makes the world a poorer place.

All is not right with the world and so too many do not know this Good News. They can't prove it by their experience. Real life has taught them something else. 

Let me give you an example of why I think this is so important. Some of you may remember a time several years ago when the diocese was exploring an alternative model of ministry and lifestyle for faith communities, focusing on small congregations, particularly in Schuylkill County. The model calls for the gifts and ministry of every person in the community.

The principle upon which the model is based comes from Roland Allen, an Anglican Missionary, and states, “The mission of the Kingdom of God in a particular place depends upon the people of God in that place and that God supplies all necessary gifts.”

As part of our exploration, the steering committee asked Margaret Sipple and me to visit each congregation in Schuylkill County to discuss these ideas and to try to help people see how this might work in their community.

As we met with parishes, and introduced the new possibilities, you could see in the faces of the people that “this would never work here because the gifts are not here.” It was obvious that too many felt they had no gifts to discern, nothing to offer, no power over their lives.

In one parish, Margaret asked one elderly woman to trust her and to come forward to be interviewed. She came, reluctantly, shuffling forward, stooped down, face kind of pinched tight. It turned out that she had been a widow for more than 40 years, her husband having died in the mine. She was in her mid-70’s. She had raised four children by herself. She had worked for decades as an aide in a nursing home taking care of the sick and elderly. When forced to retire due to her age, she opened up two rooms in her home to take of people who were too sick or elderly to care for themselves. She had taught Sunday School for decades, served on the altar guild, too. One child was a doctor. One was a teacher. One was back in college training to be a nurse. One was employed in a trade. But in her mind, she had no gifts, no skills, no successes, nothing to offer. And we had brought her into the center of the community.

We asked the people who had listened to her story to tell her what gifts and skills and powers they had heard her using. They spoke of her gifts as love, caring, courage, perseverance, teaching, nursing, sharing... and on and on and on. When they were finished, her face was wreathed in smiles. She sat tall, she walked tall, and she knew she had been wonderfully gifted by God and had been faithfully using those gifts her whole life. And so did her community know of her gifts, too.

Every family, every community, every man, every woman, every child needs to know that they were created in God's image and had been given priceless gifts by God, unique gifts, and that God was with them in every moment of their waking, sleeping, celebrating, suffering, caring, and being cared for. And they need to know that the Lord needs them and what they have to offer – and so do we all need them, everyone.

When we are open to receive what they have to offer, the world will be more all right than it ever was before. Amen.

January 20, 2013 Second Sunday after Epiphany

A Sermon preached by Canon Anne E. Kitch

Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, PA

Second Sunday after Epiphany  C

January 20, 2013

Isaiah 62:1-5, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11

Expansiveness of Heart

Did you know the light increases at both ends of the day, but not at first?  We are in that time of year (at least in this part of the world) when the days are getting longer. For the first time in my life, I was made aware of a difference as the time of daylight expands. It doesn’t do so evenly—at least not at first. Through late December and into early January, the sun rises at about the same time, but sets a little later each day. At first, only seconds are added to the amount of daylight we experience. Then gradually, the sun also begins to rise a bit earlier, so that now our day is expanding at both ends adding about 1 ½ minutes to the day.  Even as we experience the winter more deeply, we are in a season of increasing light.

We are also experiencing a delightful juxtaposition, because in our church year we are likewise in a time of increasing light.  This season after the Feast of the Epiphany is a time of increasing brightness and revelation, a time during which we read scripture stories that uncover for us more and more about just who Jesus is. We begin with the Feast of Epiphany itself, when the magi followed a star to discover the Christ child—the light of the world. We hear about the Baptism of Jesus and the voice from heaven saying, “This is my son, my beloved.” We hear about the first miracle of Jesus at the Wedding at Cana.

Like any of the seasons of our church year, Epiphany can echo a certain season in our spiritual lives as well.  Our spiritual lives are not static anymore than the rest of our lives. We have our spiritual ups and downs, our spiritual scrapped knees and moments of comfort, intervals of despair and periods of hope, seasons of the mundane and times of great celebration. Thus there are times in our spiritual lives when we experience epiphanies, moment of sudden revelation or insight.

Our spiritual lives do not always match up with the church season. What I mean by this is you can feel like you are spiritually in the desert of Lent, while the church is celebrating Advent.  But just for a moment, in this time and in this place, I want you to imagine with me that it all lines up. Our spiritual lives are in sync with the church season which itself reflects the increasing light of this time of year. And in this moment, become aware of the light of Christ expanding within you.

In a life of Christian formation, in a life of prayer, we can learn to pay attention and become more aware of the ways God’s gifts increase in us. Sometimes insight comes in small ways—sometimes in moment of great epiphanies.

I had one such epiphany recently when I encountered the story of the Wedding at Cana.  It came up last week in the daily readings. I have to confess that this story is one of those familiar stories for me, so much so that I hardly know what to make of it when I hear it. You know how it goes: Jesus and his friend attend a wedding, the wine gives out, Jesus’ mother pulls him aside and there is this interesting mother-son moment. Then comes the miracle where Jesus turns water (gallons of water, by the way) into wine. And it turns out to be the best wine ever. And in case we miss any of the significance of this event, the writer of John’s gospel tells us it is the first sign Jesus did.

But when I encountered the story this time, I head something new. It was about the wine. Jesus’ wine was the best. And it came when it seemed there would be no more.

Jesus’ gifts are the best. And they can come at times when we think all good is gone.

This is the season of increasing light, when the days are getting longe,r and for the first time in my life I am more aware of how the daylight expands. The best gifts come with Jesus. A life in Christ is expansive.

“I've always loved the observation by the steward” writes Episcopal priest and author Suzanne Guthrie, “that this ‘best wine has been reserved for last.’ In a life of prayer, flavor, body, depth and refinement, strengthens more fully in the gradually deepening experience of Christ.” *

Like the light at this time of year, like the light of manifestation during Epiphany, a life with Jesus keeps expanding. Our gifts increase. Along with an increased awareness of how God is working in our lives and in the world, comes the opportunity to expand our hearts.

St. Paul reminds us that we all have gifts given to us by God. Spiritual gifts. We each have different gifts; there is a whole variety. Now note the reason we have these gifts-- “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Our gifts are to be used for the common good. To do something for the world. To be a part of increasing the light and love of Christ to those around us. Because not everyone is experiencing abundance. Our gifts, our abundance, our expansive knowledge of love is to be used for the common good.

When we think of inspired people who use their gifts, we often think of saints or heroes. On this day it is easy to point to Martin Luther King, Jr. as someone who used his gifts for the common good. But Dr. King would not have accomplished much of anything without all those others whose names we do not know who continue to work for justice and peace. There are those whose names we do not know who bring healing to someone who hurts, or spend the night away from home in order to offer shelter for those who are cold. And then there are those whose names we do know who minister to us when we are not experiencing abundance. In giving us wonderful gifts, Jesus invites us to exercise an expansiveness of heart.

Jesus was there at the wedding of Cana when the wine gave out. These words, “when the wine gave out,” writes Benedictine monk Bruno Barnhart “express something of the profound and manifold sorrow of the human condition. The wine is always giving out. And as the day wears on, we are more and more aware that we cannot replenish it from our own resources.” ** And we don’t have to.

When the wine gives out, Jesus is there. Jesus’s wine is the best. It comes when it seems like there will be no more. Jesus’ gifts are the best. They come at times when we think all good is gone. In a life of Christian formation, in a life of prayer, we can increase our attention to the expansiveness of God’s gifts within us.

The light of Christ continues to expand in our lives and in the world. Expect your gifts to increase. Share your abundance. Practice an expansiveness of heart.

* Suzanne Guthrie, from her blog Soulwork Toward Sunday: Epiphany 2 (Year C) www.edgeofenclosure.org

**Bruno Barnhart, The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center as quoted by Suzanne Guthrie in Soulwork Toward Sunday (see above).

Epiphany 1 - The Baptism of Our Lord

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Both the Isaiah passage and the story of Jesus’ baptism bring us Good News. And the good news is this: that a relationship with God, the blessing of God, the love of God, the mercy of God, the presence of God are ours from our very beginning, through whatever life brought us yesterday or is bringing us today, all the way into forever.

It is through Jesus that we claim our inheritance as a child of God. It is through Jesus that we too are named as God’s very own, as God’s beloved, and it is through Jesus that the promises of God to Israel told by Isaiah become God’s promises to us. And it is in the waters of baptism that we affirm our identity and we are named as God’s very own child, God’s very own girl, God’s very own boy, God’s very own man, God’s very own woman. And we are given God’s community as our own.

Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Memorial, explained why she thought the memorial seemed to have such a strong grip on the emotions of the American people. “It's the names,” she said, “the names are the memorial. No edifice or structure can bring people to mind as powerfully as their names.”

What is your name? Say it to yourself. God says through Isaiah, “I have called you by your name, you are mine.” It is a guarantee of so much. It reminds Israel of their creation and their creator, of being created and formed by God. It banishes fear and announces redemption. It offers God's protecting hand in fire and flood. God woos Israel with a declaration of love and confesses that Israel is “precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.”

What is new in the Baptism of Jesus is that this gift, this knowledge, this identity, this call are for all people – for everyone, without restriction, without merit, without limit, without requirement. Not even the requirement of John the Baptist that we repent.

In our tradition, we usually receive the baptism of Jesus as a child, before there is any need of repentance. We are the beloved of God before, during, and after repentance. The baptism of Jesus was God's Revelation of that Good News, and our baptism is the sign that Good News is for us, too.

As we all know, there is ample opportunity in one’s lifetime (at least there has been in mine) – ample opportunity to repent, and repent, and repent, and repent as we live out our lives and live in this relationship with God and with other people. The Good News is that no matter what, no matter whom, we can be baptized in the name of God: Father, Son, ad Holy Spirit, and know that we are the beloved of God.

It is in the waters of baptism that we receive our identity as we are named as God’s very own. And it is in the wild, raging waters of Life that our identity is tested and that God’s promises are tested as well.

I want to ask you this morning, “Where do you find the ability to hang in there in this world? Where do you find the ability to keep going when the going really gets tough? Where do you find the ability to continue to believe in love in a world that is filled with hate? Where do you find the ability to continue in a world that is addicted to violence? Where do you find the ability to continue in a world that is filled with so much suffering and pain? Where do you find the ability to continue to believe that ultimately God's kingdom will prevail and God's will, as revealed in Jesus, will be done in all of creation? Where do you find the ability to be a disciple of Jesus in this life?

It is possible to live this life missing the obvious; miss­ing the vision of God; missing the presence of God; missing the radiance of God's glory; missing the empower­ing, comforting Word of God's love.

What we can lose sight of is the powerful, available presence of God in Jesus, in us, and in this life. We are so in touch with the limitations of our selves, the reali­ties of life. We know, so well, the difficulties and the hills that we must climb that it is easy to miss what God is doing; to miss the truth that it is in all circumstances of life where Jesus is to be found.

As one writer put it, “Whether it is our own failures or illnesses, our economic uncertainty, academic struggles, family tensions or life’s precious moments of joy, God is with us… through it all.”

It is precisely into the confusing, anxious, chaotic, haunt­ed, sometimes amusing, comfortable, and occasionally boring lives such as the life that is yours and mine that God comes. God comes – power­fully, presently, per­sistently to change our lives, to give us our identity, to prescribe where home is, to express love, and to give us our calling, our vocation, our ministry, and our community. We are God’s People.

Some of what we symbolize in the sacrament of baptism is that Home is the Kingdom of the God whose love is limitless, whose power for life is eternally available and whose work we are to be about.  Theologian Hans Kung has said that "Christians live in the already and the not yet," but we who are called have to de­cide to move into the not yet, decide that God’s promise is true.

What we read of Jesus' baptism, what we observe in the bap­tism of an infant, what we dream of in the long night hours is true. God is in this life. His spirit is upon us. His love is consis­tent. His power is ours. And he has shown us His purpose and our purpose.

As Jesus was called to move out of Nazareth and to go deep into the waters, so we are called to move deep into God’s kingdom and God’s promise of Life.

What is your name?

Thus says the Lord…

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by your name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

I have called you by your name. You are mine.

Thus says the Lord.