The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
March 11, 2007
Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Saint Luke 13:1-9
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Once again, I am delighted to be with you. If in the days ahead someone asks you whether Daylight Savings Time causes us to lose sleep, please remember today and say Yes. My prayer for you is that you are observing a holy and costly Lent for the love of Christ alone.
I want to convey the sincerely heartfelt greetings of Bishop Manasseh and all the people of Kajo-Keji whom I visited in January and who told me over and over again how deeply proud they are to be brothers and sisters of the people in the Diocese of Bethlehem. You cannot fully imagine the circumstances in which they live. I know I couldn’t imagine them before I went.
I would like to read something to you from the diary I kept when I was there.
“But I want now to make some notes about the term ‘subsistence economy.’ Features of it seem to be a lack of electricity and running water, very crude housing, the requirement that each person subsist on his own agricultural produce, usually farming, chickens, and goats, and the utter demand on time of the above. Thus work in the church is almost completely voluntary. The men apparently leave the domestic and agricultural work to their wives. Women remain thus chained to necessary and primary responsibilities while men are free to work on development and managing. There are times of course when the men find the primary responsibilities so demanding that they too join the women to complete them. I have not seen any men carrying water.”
“Though I noticed it first, the economic and infrastructural situation, however, fails to be the chief characteristic of the people. That honor belongs to their deep and yet (in every positive way) superficial faith in Jesus Christ. Every meeting begins with earnest spontaneous prayer, and every small speech and word of welcome begins with “Praise the Lord!” They mean it: they have been saved by Jesus Christ from so many things other than merely existential ones. They have been saved from war and the remnants of war, brief incursions and hostilities from their enemies, and land mines that are still being decommissioned by the United Nations. Every day’s activities conclude with a Scriptural reflection which invariably sews a credible connection between God's revelation and the dusty duties each person cannot but undertake to survive.
“The people of Kajo-Keji proudly identify themselves as your and my brothers and sisters, united as one family, as Canon Henry Leju said in greeting us, “by the sacred blood of Jesus Christ.” He and others could find, if they wished, so many things to distinguish us. Instead, he chose the Thing that unites us for time and for eternity.” It was a privilege to visit Southern Sudan, even as it is a privilege to extend their greetings to you.
For those of you who think that Jesus is meek and mild, a sort of nice guy who lives next door and who never ruffles any feathers, the parable in today’s Gospel is for you. This parable ruffles a lot of feathers. It disturbs the peace of everyone who thinks that things are fine just they way they are. The point of the parable is that everyone is given plenty of opportunity to put things right, to do the will of God, or to put his or her priorities in order. But that opportunity doesn’t last forever. After plenty of opportunity, people will be called in to give an account, to give the explanation for what they’ve done or left undone, in the words of the General Confession.
You remember the parable. It concerns a fig tree whose purpose in life is to produce figs. It concerns a gardener whose purpose in life is to see that the tree has what it needs to produce figs. It concerns an owner who has the reasonable expectation that his tree will produce figs. After three years of no produce that owner raises the obvious question, and the gardener intercedes—one more year for the tree. But after that year, after four years of expectation, well…
You can apply this little but pointed parable to almost any phase of your lives: your service to the community, your giving to your parish; your participation in its life and its plans—you can see almost any phase of your life in this parable, so long as you see yourself as that tree whose purpose is to yield fruit. “If it bears fruit next year, well and good.” Very well and very good.
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
2 Lent : Love Answered
The Ven Richard I Cluett
March 4, 2007
Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 + Philippians 3:17-4:1 + Luke 13:31-35
One of the great gifts of time that I have received was a three-week visit in Israel and Palestine. I had the pleasure of traveling with Dean Lane on a fact-finding mission given to us by Bishop Paul. It was my first visit there. For Dean Lane, Jerusalem is almost like a second home, he has been there so many times. Bishop Paul wanted a report on the condition of the Christian church there. How was it doing in these dark days?
And so we went. While there we spent an entire day on the Mount of Olives. For me, one of the most moving places was on the western slope where there is a small chapel named Dominus Flevit, which is Latin for “The Lord Wept”. It is the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem.
When you face the altar you look through a window, out over the Kidron Valley to the city of Jerusalem – both old and new. I have a photograph in my office that I took looking through that window.
On the front of the altar is a hen with her chicks, and the inscription, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
One cannot stand or kneel there without being moved in the depths of heart, soul, mind and body by the power of God’s love for his people. Moved by the extent God would go to reconcile with his creation.
One other thing you need to know about that scene is that the hen pictured on the altar is not some sweet old biddy of a mother hen. Instead it is a rendition of the fiercest kind of mother love. One that says, “Do not dare to hurt even one of these my beloved.” Perhaps you have experienced a mother hen or a mother of another kind who is in full-blown “protection-of-her-young” mode. “Do not dare to threaten…”
And even so, the city rejected him and the love offered of God. And Jesus weeps for Jerusalem and for all who were not then, and are not today, willing to be gathered into God’s love. And one can do no other than to weep with him.
It must also be noted that he not only wept over Jerusalem, he went to the cross for Jerusalem. Could one do that with him?
That is the kind of love that would enfold us. That is the kind of protection being offered us.
Every parent knows what it is to love a child whom finally you can no longer protect. All you can do from time to time is to open your arms wide when needed. The arms of love spread wide. A stance of love, of welcome, of offering; and a stance of vulnerability with body exposed.
One morning collect reads, Lord Jesus Christ you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace…
This is the nature of the God who seeks us because he loves us and seeks an answering love in return.
Another image of this God who loves us is found in the poem The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson. It begins and ends with this:
What is it that makes us turn and run? Why is it we hesitate to fully commit ourselves in heart, body, mind and spirit to this God who craves a relationship with us?
Even Abram found it difficult to trust, to commit to a new relationship with God. We heard it in the first lesson this morning. He finds all kinds of problems with what he perceives as the lack of God’s ability to follow through, to keep his side of the covenant. He complains, he whines. He is scared. He is without child. He is without a home. God has provided none of what he wants, and he is ready to walk away, when God engages him one more time.
I don’t know what it is with us. Maybe it is an unwillingness to give up the illusion of control over our lives. Maybe it is a fear of disappointment. I don’t know.
I do know that I have never been able to walk straight and continually in a God-ward direction. I know that in this Lent I will not be able to walk straight toward the cross, I have never been able to do that. Jesus did, but I can’t. And that’s all right. All that is being asked is my willingness to try. All that is being sought is my desire to know and be known, to trust and be trusted, to love and be loved.
We were reminded this week in a NY Times op-ed piece that “God writes straight with crooked lines,” I take comfort in that.
And I also know that any time we are ready to turn to those open arms they will be there to receive us. Jesus has shown us that in his life and death and resurrection.
That morning collect in its entirety reads, Lord Jesus Christ you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace; so clothe us in your spirit that we reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your name.
So, along with our own turning to God, we have some Lenten work to do on behalf of others as well, don’t we? Amen.
March 4, 2007
Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 + Philippians 3:17-4:1 + Luke 13:31-35
One of the great gifts of time that I have received was a three-week visit in Israel and Palestine. I had the pleasure of traveling with Dean Lane on a fact-finding mission given to us by Bishop Paul. It was my first visit there. For Dean Lane, Jerusalem is almost like a second home, he has been there so many times. Bishop Paul wanted a report on the condition of the Christian church there. How was it doing in these dark days?
And so we went. While there we spent an entire day on the Mount of Olives. For me, one of the most moving places was on the western slope where there is a small chapel named Dominus Flevit, which is Latin for “The Lord Wept”. It is the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem.
When you face the altar you look through a window, out over the Kidron Valley to the city of Jerusalem – both old and new. I have a photograph in my office that I took looking through that window.
On the front of the altar is a hen with her chicks, and the inscription, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
One cannot stand or kneel there without being moved in the depths of heart, soul, mind and body by the power of God’s love for his people. Moved by the extent God would go to reconcile with his creation.
One other thing you need to know about that scene is that the hen pictured on the altar is not some sweet old biddy of a mother hen. Instead it is a rendition of the fiercest kind of mother love. One that says, “Do not dare to hurt even one of these my beloved.” Perhaps you have experienced a mother hen or a mother of another kind who is in full-blown “protection-of-her-young” mode. “Do not dare to threaten…”
And even so, the city rejected him and the love offered of God. And Jesus weeps for Jerusalem and for all who were not then, and are not today, willing to be gathered into God’s love. And one can do no other than to weep with him.
It must also be noted that he not only wept over Jerusalem, he went to the cross for Jerusalem. Could one do that with him?
That is the kind of love that would enfold us. That is the kind of protection being offered us.
Every parent knows what it is to love a child whom finally you can no longer protect. All you can do from time to time is to open your arms wide when needed. The arms of love spread wide. A stance of love, of welcome, of offering; and a stance of vulnerability with body exposed.
One morning collect reads, Lord Jesus Christ you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace…
This is the nature of the God who seeks us because he loves us and seeks an answering love in return.
Another image of this God who loves us is found in the poem The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson. It begins and ends with this:
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
What is it that makes us turn and run? Why is it we hesitate to fully commit ourselves in heart, body, mind and spirit to this God who craves a relationship with us?
Even Abram found it difficult to trust, to commit to a new relationship with God. We heard it in the first lesson this morning. He finds all kinds of problems with what he perceives as the lack of God’s ability to follow through, to keep his side of the covenant. He complains, he whines. He is scared. He is without child. He is without a home. God has provided none of what he wants, and he is ready to walk away, when God engages him one more time.
I don’t know what it is with us. Maybe it is an unwillingness to give up the illusion of control over our lives. Maybe it is a fear of disappointment. I don’t know.
I do know that I have never been able to walk straight and continually in a God-ward direction. I know that in this Lent I will not be able to walk straight toward the cross, I have never been able to do that. Jesus did, but I can’t. And that’s all right. All that is being asked is my willingness to try. All that is being sought is my desire to know and be known, to trust and be trusted, to love and be loved.
We were reminded this week in a NY Times op-ed piece that “God writes straight with crooked lines,” I take comfort in that.
And I also know that any time we are ready to turn to those open arms they will be there to receive us. Jesus has shown us that in his life and death and resurrection.
That morning collect in its entirety reads, Lord Jesus Christ you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace; so clothe us in your spirit that we reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your name.
So, along with our own turning to God, we have some Lenten work to do on behalf of others as well, don’t we? Amen.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
1 Lent: Good Lord Deliver Us
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Deuteronomy 25:1-11 + Romans 10:8-13 + Luke 4:1-13
Welcome to Lent! If the purple vestments and veiled crosses aren’t enough to mark the change of the liturgical season, to further set the mood today we pray the Great Litany. Originally the word “litany” just meant prayer or supplication. But it has come to mean a specific kind of prayer: a series of short petitions followed by set responses. The basis of the Great Litany can be traced back to the time of Henry VIII. It was one of the first prayers published in English (rather than Latin) and was intended to be said in procession. In our Book of Common Prayer it is called the “Great” Litany to distinguish it from other litanies in the BCP (of course, it is also really long).
It begins with an invocation of the Trinity. Next follow biddings addressed to our Lord Christ. We pray first for deliverance from all kinds of evil—spiritual evil, physical evil, and social evil. Next come a series of petitions in which, like our prayers of the people, we ask God to hear our prayers for all sorts of people and conditions. Perhaps one or more of these biddings or petitions captures your attention today. But I want to focus on one of the biddings for deliverance—or rather one that reminds us by what we are delivered: “By the mystery of they holy Incarnation; by the holy Nativity and submission to the Law; by thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation, Good Lord deliver us.”
This petition reminds us that Christ’s saving power was manifest not only on the cross, but in his earthly life as well. Just what specifically did Christ’s baptism, fasting, and temptation do for us? When Jesus came to be baptized by John in the Jordan river, he was just one of a large crowd of people. Like everyone else that came, he too was drawn to John’s call to this baptism of repentance. It is a moment of revelation when he shows his solidarity with the people and as the Spirit descends on him his identity as the Son of God is proclaimed. How will he reconcile the two? We have difficulty understanding and explaining just how Jesus is both human and divine. How do you think he felt? Episcopal priest and spiritual writer Martin Smith suggests it was an issue for Jesus as well, “Everything depends on whether Jesus can reconcile his sense of uniqueness as Son of God with his vocation as Son of Man to compassion and solidarity with needy, failed humanity.”
Immediately after his baptism, that same sprit takes him into the wilderness. It is a testing ground, a place of learning. In the wilderness he fasts in response to his baptism. In order to understand and assimilate this revelation of self, Jesus employs spiritual discipline. He engages in a self-emptying spiritual cleansing. Throughout his ministry, Jesus takes the time to pray and worship and attend to his spiritual life. Even Jesus needs the discipline.
Jesus’ fast in the wilderness is a serious one—he eats nothing for forty days. And he is famished! He felt the lack of food. It cost him something to fast. He hungered as we do. In the wake of his revelation as Son of God he did not leave his humanity behind. This becomes the focus of his temptation: can he reconcile the tension of knowledge of self? Can he remain God and human? Can he follow his vocation? The temptations are real. He is not am impervious God, but a human being who gets famished.
Satan appeals first to these needs. Relieve your human hunger—but by using super power. If Jesus does this, then he loses his humanity. He will feed his mortal hunger by supernatural means and thus not be hungry. Jesus refuses. Satan next appeals to the desire for authority. Be an earthly king, under the divine rule of Satan! But if Jesus chooses this, loses his divine authority by limiting his rule to an earthly kingdom. Again he holds steady, remains in the tension of human and divine. For the final temptation, Satan takes him to the temple, to the place that will be the site of his betrayal and final death-march. The third temptation is not to die. Jump now and the angels will catch you. You don’t need to die. More to the point, you don’t need to die on the cross. You can skip all that. But if Jesus skips death, then death is not conquered. Without the cross….
See each temptation tries to draw Jesus away from who he is by denying his humanity, or giving up his divinity, or forsaking his vocation and most difficult task. We too are tempted not to be who we are. We are tempted to deny our humanity and believe we are not frail, that we can be perfect or control all things. We are tempted to deny that we are made in the image of God, and to believe that we are worthless. We are tempted to assume we have nothing more to learn about who we are, or what we have to offer. We are tempted to remain disconnected from self and assume that since we are functioning, all must be well. We are tempted to skip the wilderness journey and ignore Lent.
When the devil leaves Jesus in the desert, we are told that he departed until an opportune time. Jesus was not done with Satan. Jesus was not done being tempted to be less than who he was. Jesus was not done discovering all he could be, was not done living into his vocation. Neither are we. By thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation, Good Lord deliver us. From temptation to be less than we are, Good Lord deliver us. From our desire to skip the wilderness journey, Good Lord deliver us.
Amen.
Copyright © 2007 by Anne E. Kitch
(Martin Smith, A Season for the Spirit p. 11)
Deuteronomy 25:1-11 + Romans 10:8-13 + Luke 4:1-13
Welcome to Lent! If the purple vestments and veiled crosses aren’t enough to mark the change of the liturgical season, to further set the mood today we pray the Great Litany. Originally the word “litany” just meant prayer or supplication. But it has come to mean a specific kind of prayer: a series of short petitions followed by set responses. The basis of the Great Litany can be traced back to the time of Henry VIII. It was one of the first prayers published in English (rather than Latin) and was intended to be said in procession. In our Book of Common Prayer it is called the “Great” Litany to distinguish it from other litanies in the BCP (of course, it is also really long).
It begins with an invocation of the Trinity. Next follow biddings addressed to our Lord Christ. We pray first for deliverance from all kinds of evil—spiritual evil, physical evil, and social evil. Next come a series of petitions in which, like our prayers of the people, we ask God to hear our prayers for all sorts of people and conditions. Perhaps one or more of these biddings or petitions captures your attention today. But I want to focus on one of the biddings for deliverance—or rather one that reminds us by what we are delivered: “By the mystery of they holy Incarnation; by the holy Nativity and submission to the Law; by thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation, Good Lord deliver us.”
This petition reminds us that Christ’s saving power was manifest not only on the cross, but in his earthly life as well. Just what specifically did Christ’s baptism, fasting, and temptation do for us? When Jesus came to be baptized by John in the Jordan river, he was just one of a large crowd of people. Like everyone else that came, he too was drawn to John’s call to this baptism of repentance. It is a moment of revelation when he shows his solidarity with the people and as the Spirit descends on him his identity as the Son of God is proclaimed. How will he reconcile the two? We have difficulty understanding and explaining just how Jesus is both human and divine. How do you think he felt? Episcopal priest and spiritual writer Martin Smith suggests it was an issue for Jesus as well, “Everything depends on whether Jesus can reconcile his sense of uniqueness as Son of God with his vocation as Son of Man to compassion and solidarity with needy, failed humanity.”
Immediately after his baptism, that same sprit takes him into the wilderness. It is a testing ground, a place of learning. In the wilderness he fasts in response to his baptism. In order to understand and assimilate this revelation of self, Jesus employs spiritual discipline. He engages in a self-emptying spiritual cleansing. Throughout his ministry, Jesus takes the time to pray and worship and attend to his spiritual life. Even Jesus needs the discipline.
Jesus’ fast in the wilderness is a serious one—he eats nothing for forty days. And he is famished! He felt the lack of food. It cost him something to fast. He hungered as we do. In the wake of his revelation as Son of God he did not leave his humanity behind. This becomes the focus of his temptation: can he reconcile the tension of knowledge of self? Can he remain God and human? Can he follow his vocation? The temptations are real. He is not am impervious God, but a human being who gets famished.
Satan appeals first to these needs. Relieve your human hunger—but by using super power. If Jesus does this, then he loses his humanity. He will feed his mortal hunger by supernatural means and thus not be hungry. Jesus refuses. Satan next appeals to the desire for authority. Be an earthly king, under the divine rule of Satan! But if Jesus chooses this, loses his divine authority by limiting his rule to an earthly kingdom. Again he holds steady, remains in the tension of human and divine. For the final temptation, Satan takes him to the temple, to the place that will be the site of his betrayal and final death-march. The third temptation is not to die. Jump now and the angels will catch you. You don’t need to die. More to the point, you don’t need to die on the cross. You can skip all that. But if Jesus skips death, then death is not conquered. Without the cross….
See each temptation tries to draw Jesus away from who he is by denying his humanity, or giving up his divinity, or forsaking his vocation and most difficult task. We too are tempted not to be who we are. We are tempted to deny our humanity and believe we are not frail, that we can be perfect or control all things. We are tempted to deny that we are made in the image of God, and to believe that we are worthless. We are tempted to assume we have nothing more to learn about who we are, or what we have to offer. We are tempted to remain disconnected from self and assume that since we are functioning, all must be well. We are tempted to skip the wilderness journey and ignore Lent.
When the devil leaves Jesus in the desert, we are told that he departed until an opportune time. Jesus was not done with Satan. Jesus was not done being tempted to be less than who he was. Jesus was not done discovering all he could be, was not done living into his vocation. Neither are we. By thy Baptism, Fasting and Temptation, Good Lord deliver us. From temptation to be less than we are, Good Lord deliver us. From our desire to skip the wilderness journey, Good Lord deliver us.
Amen.
Copyright © 2007 by Anne E. Kitch
(Martin Smith, A Season for the Spirit p. 11)
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Ash Wednesday: God's Dust
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Clearly, we do not remember that we are dust. I would suspect that few if any of us begin our day saying, “Thank you God for this day…and that I am dust.” We may not remember that we are dust, but apparently God does. As the psalmist prays, “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust (Psalm 103:14). Fortunately we do have this yearly liturgy to remind us. This is a good thing because I think in our culture we can use all the help we can get to remember our mortality. We fend off death with extreme medical procedures. We keep death out of sight and as much out of mind as we can. We don’t want to talk about death and dying, as if they are distasteful subjects. We whisper words like “cancer” as if having a disease means we are going to die and we wouldn’t want to admit that. But as Hospice Chaplain Anne Huey states, “Actually, being alive means we're going to die.”
And although “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is a well known mantra used in many funeral services, our culture is bent on preventing just that. As local author Mark Harris describes in his new book Grave Matters, many modern burial practices aim to prevent our bodies from returning to the earth. High-end modern coffins are built out of bronze and copper and can be sealed to prevent the elements from reaching the body. Most cemeteries pour three thousand pounds of concrete into each grave to create a vault so that coffins won’t collapse as quickly and even when they eventually do, the ground above them will stay nice and smooth. Which does make mowing easier.
Just what are we protecting? We don’t die well in our culture. And I believe when we don’t die well, we don’t live well either. I am not talking simply about living each day to the fullest, although that is not a bad practice. Certainly people who have had near death experiences often re-examine their priorities and commit to living a better life by spending time on what is important. Certainly, to remember that we are dust is to remember our mortality. But to remember our mortality is not just about acknowledging that we will die; it is also about recalling that we are mortal, that God created us and we are God’s creatures. I think as Christians there is more to living well than just living each day to the fullest, and that is striving for the things eternal.
What are the things that endure? What lasts beyond death? And as a people whose faith is most fully known at the foot of the cross, in the face of death itself, perhaps the better question is, what conquers death? St. Paul reminds us of the greater things when he writes, “Faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” It is after all love that hangs on the cross and reaches to the tomb and beyond. I cannot escape the command that Jesus holds up for us, to love my neighbor as myself. To remember that we are dust and that we will return to dust compels us toward works of mercy in the world that will add to the goodness of the world. It is not we who will continue. So do we want a legacy of monuments and money—or of adding to the balance of love? Loving my neighbor as myself can in fact make the world is a better place.
The Matthew passage is clear about certain kinds of piety that are dangerous to our souls—the kind that is about drawing attention to ourselves. But notice that Jesus still commands us to give alms, pray and fast. These spiritual practices are important. They help to move us beyond ourselves and connect us to the world. It is these spiritual practices that make a difference in the world, that produce the kind of treasure that is worth having. As Isaiah says, “Is this not the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice…to let the oppressed go free? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?” If we live lives that are always about giving away to others, then we are adding to the world.
According to Mark Harris, it was in the mid 19th century in our country that coffins began to be called caskets—a word that at that time referred specifically to jewelry boxes. This renaming heightened the sense of the body as precious. But our body is not the treasure. Our treasure is Christ. God remembers that we are dust, and when we remember it as well, we can focus on the practices which conquer death, the practices of love. We can be as ubiquitous as the dust in the air, but dust motes of love adding to the balance of what is redemptive in the world.
Episcopal priest and author Suzanne Guthrie writes, “Because I am earthbound and made of dust, I am deathbound and will return to dust, my time will end in dying.” She goes on to pray, “I may be dust, O Blessed, Holy One. But I know I am your dust.” Remember that you are dust. Remember whose dust you are. Amen.
Copyright 2007 © by Anne E. Kitch
(Anne Huey quoted from an article in the Morning Call, Feb 9, 2007. Mark Harris, Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Suzanne Guthrie, Praying the Hours pp. 30, 36)
Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Clearly, we do not remember that we are dust. I would suspect that few if any of us begin our day saying, “Thank you God for this day…and that I am dust.” We may not remember that we are dust, but apparently God does. As the psalmist prays, “For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust (Psalm 103:14). Fortunately we do have this yearly liturgy to remind us. This is a good thing because I think in our culture we can use all the help we can get to remember our mortality. We fend off death with extreme medical procedures. We keep death out of sight and as much out of mind as we can. We don’t want to talk about death and dying, as if they are distasteful subjects. We whisper words like “cancer” as if having a disease means we are going to die and we wouldn’t want to admit that. But as Hospice Chaplain Anne Huey states, “Actually, being alive means we're going to die.”
And although “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is a well known mantra used in many funeral services, our culture is bent on preventing just that. As local author Mark Harris describes in his new book Grave Matters, many modern burial practices aim to prevent our bodies from returning to the earth. High-end modern coffins are built out of bronze and copper and can be sealed to prevent the elements from reaching the body. Most cemeteries pour three thousand pounds of concrete into each grave to create a vault so that coffins won’t collapse as quickly and even when they eventually do, the ground above them will stay nice and smooth. Which does make mowing easier.
Just what are we protecting? We don’t die well in our culture. And I believe when we don’t die well, we don’t live well either. I am not talking simply about living each day to the fullest, although that is not a bad practice. Certainly people who have had near death experiences often re-examine their priorities and commit to living a better life by spending time on what is important. Certainly, to remember that we are dust is to remember our mortality. But to remember our mortality is not just about acknowledging that we will die; it is also about recalling that we are mortal, that God created us and we are God’s creatures. I think as Christians there is more to living well than just living each day to the fullest, and that is striving for the things eternal.
What are the things that endure? What lasts beyond death? And as a people whose faith is most fully known at the foot of the cross, in the face of death itself, perhaps the better question is, what conquers death? St. Paul reminds us of the greater things when he writes, “Faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” It is after all love that hangs on the cross and reaches to the tomb and beyond. I cannot escape the command that Jesus holds up for us, to love my neighbor as myself. To remember that we are dust and that we will return to dust compels us toward works of mercy in the world that will add to the goodness of the world. It is not we who will continue. So do we want a legacy of monuments and money—or of adding to the balance of love? Loving my neighbor as myself can in fact make the world is a better place.
The Matthew passage is clear about certain kinds of piety that are dangerous to our souls—the kind that is about drawing attention to ourselves. But notice that Jesus still commands us to give alms, pray and fast. These spiritual practices are important. They help to move us beyond ourselves and connect us to the world. It is these spiritual practices that make a difference in the world, that produce the kind of treasure that is worth having. As Isaiah says, “Is this not the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice…to let the oppressed go free? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house?” If we live lives that are always about giving away to others, then we are adding to the world.
According to Mark Harris, it was in the mid 19th century in our country that coffins began to be called caskets—a word that at that time referred specifically to jewelry boxes. This renaming heightened the sense of the body as precious. But our body is not the treasure. Our treasure is Christ. God remembers that we are dust, and when we remember it as well, we can focus on the practices which conquer death, the practices of love. We can be as ubiquitous as the dust in the air, but dust motes of love adding to the balance of what is redemptive in the world.
Episcopal priest and author Suzanne Guthrie writes, “Because I am earthbound and made of dust, I am deathbound and will return to dust, my time will end in dying.” She goes on to pray, “I may be dust, O Blessed, Holy One. But I know I am your dust.” Remember that you are dust. Remember whose dust you are. Amen.
Copyright 2007 © by Anne E. Kitch
(Anne Huey quoted from an article in the Morning Call, Feb 9, 2007. Mark Harris, Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial. Suzanne Guthrie, Praying the Hours pp. 30, 36)
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Last Sunday after Epiphany: Being There
The Ven Richard I Cluett
February 18, 2007
Exodus 34:29-35 + 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 + Luke 9:28-36
I would like you to take a minute and range over the events and moments of your life, and focus on an event or a moment, when everything came together, when it was perfection, when it was bliss, when you felt blessed.
Perhaps it was when the whole family, all the available generations, were gathered in the same room or around the same dinner table, and it suddenly comes to you how absolutely perfect the moment is; how incredibly wonderful it is; how miraculously blessed you are to experience it.
It is a mercy. It is ecstasy. It is perfection. It is the essence. It is bliss. It is a blessing. It is an epiphany.
Or perhaps it is a different kind of moment when you have discovered in an instant who the Thou is who completes your I.
Or perhaps it is a different kind of moment when after years of sweat and labor in working on your prayer life, you suddenly feel in the core of your being that God is present with you, around you, and within you. A blessing.
Or perhaps it is a different kind of moment when the project you have been creating, the thing you have been making, the work you have been building is finally and wonderfully and complete,
Or perhaps it is something totally differently, uniquely, utterly other; having nothing to do with my suggestions, but something yours, your blessing, your epiphany… to savour, forever.
If you have experienced this somehow, someway… then you can begin to know something of what Peter and James and John experienced. Theirs was uniquely theirs, but we have ours. And if we don’t, “Why not?” is a good question. The answer may just be a “Not yet”. Or it may be that there is a veil.
To be on the mountain top – of whatever mountain – is to receive a gift that lives forever in memory and in the future persons we live to become. It will sustain even when down in the deepest valleys, even when mired in the deepest mud, even when enmeshed in the most complicated complexities of life. It is a mercy, a gift, pure gift, a blessing and it lives forever in us. We never forget.
For Peter, James and John it was to see Jesus as he truly is. It was to be present at an Epiphany much the same as when Jesus saw himself as he really is for the very first time. It was at his baptism when the same voice uttered the words, “You are my Son, the beloved.” Today we hear, “This is my Son, my Chosen”.
You have heard the phrase, “See God and die.” The glory of God was reflected in the face of Moses, and except when he spoke the word of God he covered his face. He stood and lived and moved in the midst of the people, his face radiant, radiating the presence of God in the midst of the people, and they could not see it.
On the mountain, Peter, James and John, these three, and we, see God in the face of Jesus and live. The face of Jesus is for us the face of God. The only and true face of God.
The Apostle Paul says that in Jesus we “with unveiled faces, see the glory of the Lord… and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”
To see it, to know that, is the gift of life, of new life, of true life. It is the insight that makes all the connections. It is the Great Aha. It is the meaning of life. It brings all things together. It is foreknowledge of the heavenly kingdom. It is God’s mercy for all creation to know this truth. It is a blessing.
Who would not want to share that? Who would not want those we love most to have that? To what lengths would you go to make that available to your loved ones, even to those you do not know, because of the profound influence and affect it can make on the life of each person and on the life of all, the very life of the world?
Many of you know that one of my joys is leading a wellness conference for clergy called CREDO. At that conference we lavish, and I mean that literally, we lavish care on these clergy who give their lives for others and for the church.
In that conference I use a short film, which I also use with vestries sometimes, that is produced by a National Geographic photographer who talks about his trade, and at that same time shows his photos of the incredible beauty of this world.
There are a number of learnings in the film, but I tend to keep coming back to two:
• There is more than one right answer
• To find one, to find the right answer, you have to put yourself in the place of greatest opportunity
To experience, to get a hint, a whiff, of what the scripture offers today, we have to make ourselves available to it. We have to put ourselves, and those we love, and those whom we may not love or may not know, but for whom we bear some responsibility… put us in the places of greatest opportunity.
No booths or tents or monuments need to be erected when these moments happen, but when the veil is lifted we need to be there.
It is what the parents of these children being baptized today are doing. Bringing their dearest, their children into relationship with God; beginning what they hope will be a growing and life-long relationship that will be a mercy to their children; that will be a blessing to their children; that will provide them with a pathway to the right answers in this life; that will be a light in the dark valleys of this life; and that will be an occasional occasion for their children to know a moment, every now and then, of bliss, an epiphany.
It is their, and our, gift from God. It is the gift each of us has to give to another.
February 18, 2007
Exodus 34:29-35 + 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 + Luke 9:28-36
I would like you to take a minute and range over the events and moments of your life, and focus on an event or a moment, when everything came together, when it was perfection, when it was bliss, when you felt blessed.
Perhaps it was when the whole family, all the available generations, were gathered in the same room or around the same dinner table, and it suddenly comes to you how absolutely perfect the moment is; how incredibly wonderful it is; how miraculously blessed you are to experience it.
It is a mercy. It is ecstasy. It is perfection. It is the essence. It is bliss. It is a blessing. It is an epiphany.
Or perhaps it is a different kind of moment when you have discovered in an instant who the Thou is who completes your I.
Or perhaps it is a different kind of moment when after years of sweat and labor in working on your prayer life, you suddenly feel in the core of your being that God is present with you, around you, and within you. A blessing.
Or perhaps it is a different kind of moment when the project you have been creating, the thing you have been making, the work you have been building is finally and wonderfully and complete,
Or perhaps it is something totally differently, uniquely, utterly other; having nothing to do with my suggestions, but something yours, your blessing, your epiphany… to savour, forever.
If you have experienced this somehow, someway… then you can begin to know something of what Peter and James and John experienced. Theirs was uniquely theirs, but we have ours. And if we don’t, “Why not?” is a good question. The answer may just be a “Not yet”. Or it may be that there is a veil.
To be on the mountain top – of whatever mountain – is to receive a gift that lives forever in memory and in the future persons we live to become. It will sustain even when down in the deepest valleys, even when mired in the deepest mud, even when enmeshed in the most complicated complexities of life. It is a mercy, a gift, pure gift, a blessing and it lives forever in us. We never forget.
For Peter, James and John it was to see Jesus as he truly is. It was to be present at an Epiphany much the same as when Jesus saw himself as he really is for the very first time. It was at his baptism when the same voice uttered the words, “You are my Son, the beloved.” Today we hear, “This is my Son, my Chosen”.
You have heard the phrase, “See God and die.” The glory of God was reflected in the face of Moses, and except when he spoke the word of God he covered his face. He stood and lived and moved in the midst of the people, his face radiant, radiating the presence of God in the midst of the people, and they could not see it.
On the mountain, Peter, James and John, these three, and we, see God in the face of Jesus and live. The face of Jesus is for us the face of God. The only and true face of God.
The Apostle Paul says that in Jesus we “with unveiled faces, see the glory of the Lord… and are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another”
To see it, to know that, is the gift of life, of new life, of true life. It is the insight that makes all the connections. It is the Great Aha. It is the meaning of life. It brings all things together. It is foreknowledge of the heavenly kingdom. It is God’s mercy for all creation to know this truth. It is a blessing.
Who would not want to share that? Who would not want those we love most to have that? To what lengths would you go to make that available to your loved ones, even to those you do not know, because of the profound influence and affect it can make on the life of each person and on the life of all, the very life of the world?
Many of you know that one of my joys is leading a wellness conference for clergy called CREDO. At that conference we lavish, and I mean that literally, we lavish care on these clergy who give their lives for others and for the church.
In that conference I use a short film, which I also use with vestries sometimes, that is produced by a National Geographic photographer who talks about his trade, and at that same time shows his photos of the incredible beauty of this world.
There are a number of learnings in the film, but I tend to keep coming back to two:
• There is more than one right answer
• To find one, to find the right answer, you have to put yourself in the place of greatest opportunity
To experience, to get a hint, a whiff, of what the scripture offers today, we have to make ourselves available to it. We have to put ourselves, and those we love, and those whom we may not love or may not know, but for whom we bear some responsibility… put us in the places of greatest opportunity.
No booths or tents or monuments need to be erected when these moments happen, but when the veil is lifted we need to be there.
It is what the parents of these children being baptized today are doing. Bringing their dearest, their children into relationship with God; beginning what they hope will be a growing and life-long relationship that will be a mercy to their children; that will be a blessing to their children; that will provide them with a pathway to the right answers in this life; that will be a light in the dark valleys of this life; and that will be an occasional occasion for their children to know a moment, every now and then, of bliss, an epiphany.
It is their, and our, gift from God. It is the gift each of us has to give to another.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Epiphany 6: Absolutely Absalom
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
February 11, 2007
Jeremiah 17:5-10 + 1Corinthian 15:12-20 + Luke 6:17-26
Well, here we go again with the hard sayings of Jesus. You’d think that the easy sayings of Jesus would pop up every now and then, maybe one Sunday out of the month. Of course, that is a big assumption that Jesus has easy sayings, that I am not sure we can make.
But here we have Jesus in Luke’s gospel fresh from his experience in Nazareth. After a couple of Sundays away, we have now come back to a time sequence, a time-line. Let me remind you that Jesus has been to synagogue in Nazareth, has read from the scroll of Isaiah, and has announced the beginning of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. He says he has been anointed to preach good news to the poor. And his opening words a few minutes later outside with the people are, “Blessed are you poor.” We are back with his central theme.
He unequivocally states that God’s kingdom is for the poor. Remember now that this is Jesus in Luke, not Matthew. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” Not in Luke. It is literally the poor of this world who are destined for a complete reversal in the completion of God’s kingdom. And here the poor are those who are absolutely destitute, the kingdom of God is for them.
The poor are the hungry, the homeless, the captive, the grief stricken, and the oppressed. For them the kingdom of God means a complete reversal of their condition, of their situation, of their fortune. They will be filled. They will be protected from the elements. They will be freed. They will rejoice.
Well that’s great, isn’t it? Would you want anything less for people who are in those abject conditions? I wouldn’t. I would love for them to receive those blessings, and to be blessed in knowing that the kingdom is promised for them.
But, what about us? What about you? What about me? What about my household, and my kindred?
I don’t think it is off the mark to say that according to Jesus, we are not in, except as we help the kingdom be present for these poor now, in this life. Only as we care for, work on behalf of these poor now, in this life, will we get to share with them in the kingdom God has promised.
That is the hard saying of Jesus.
Jesus said, “Today this scripture is being fulfilled…” Well, is it? What are you and I doing to bring this scripture in fulfillment, in to the real lives of God’s people? It is not enough to pray, “Thy kingdom come” if we don’t show that its begun by what we do.
This week the church sets aside February 13th to remember Absalom Jones, in the Black History Month of February. I have posted his portrait on the bulletin board in Sayre Hall.
Absalom Jones, the first African American priest of the Episcopal Church, was born in slavery on November 6, 1746, in Sussex, Delaware. At the age of sixteen, he was moved to Philadelphia, where he worked in his slaveholder's store. In the evenings, he attended school and did independent work for hire. By 1784, he was able to purchase his freedom and enter business for himself.
Jones became a lay preacher for the African American members of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church. One day in November 1787 Jones and other African American worshipers were pulled from their knees during prayers by a trustee of the church and were ordered to move to segregated pews in the balcony. Jones and the other black parishioners walked out of the church.
They began holding Sunday services. St. Thomas's Episcopal Church was accepted in the Pennsylvania Diocese of the Episcopal Church in 1794, with Absalom Jones as its licensed lay reader. He was ordained as deacon in 1794 and as priest in 1804.
In 1799, he drafted a petition, signed by seventy-three other African Americans, "to the President, Senate and House of Representatives" urging the immediate abolition of slavery.
In 1808 Absalom Jones preached on sermon on the occasion of the abolition of the Slave Trade in England and in the United States.
“The history of the world shows us that the deliverance of the children of Israel from their bondage is not the only instance in which it has pleased God to appear in behalf of oppressed and distressed nations, as the deliverer of the innocent, and of those who call upon his name. He is as unchangeable in his nature and character as he is in his wisdom and power. The great and blessed event, which we have this day met to celebrate, is a striking proof that the God of heaven and earth is the same, yesterday, and today, and forever. Yes, my brethren, the nations from which most of us have descended, and the country in which some of us were born, have been visited by the tender mercy of the Common Father of the human race. He has seen the affliction of our countrymen, with an eye of pity. He has seen the wicked arts, by which wars have been fomented among the different tribes of the Africans, in order to procure captives, for the purpose of selling them for slaves. He has seen ships fitted out from different ports in Europe and America, and freighted with trinkets to be exchanged for the bodies and souls of men. He has seen the anguish which has taken place when parents have been torn from their children, and children from their parents, and conveyed, with their hands and feet bound in fetters, on board of ships prepared to receive them.
“… Let the history of the sufferings of our brethren, and of their deliverance, descend …to our children to the remotest generations; and when they shall ask, in time to come, saying, What mean the lessons, the psalms, the prayers and the praises in the worship of this day? let us answer them, by saying, the Lord, on the day of which this is the anniversary, abolished the trade which dragged your fathers from their native country, and sold them as bondmen in the United States of America.”
“The God of heaven and earth is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
But today, children, women, and men are still sold into slavery today in every part of the world, including our own country. Today the average Anglican today is a 35-year-old black African woman living on $2 a day. Today millions are held in the bondage of poverty throughout the world and in this city of Bethlehem and it’s surroundings. The promise is for them. The blessing is for them.
Our blessedness and our release from woe – perhaps even our own entrance into heaven – come in our solidarity with the poor and the captive, our labor on their behalf, our being vessels which pour upon them God’s compassion and care.
One of the recent saints in this work is Mother Theresa. It is also the work of Joel Atkinson and Bob Wilkins and all the other New Bethany volunteers and so many others. It was the work of the cathedral youth last weekend in their retreat to learn about and do something about hunger. It is the work that God intends us all to engage.
The powers that be – those who are in power – often prefer an order that strengthens the status quo and their comfort, and leaves some things for the world to come.
Jesus has announced that the kingdom is now begun. Blessed are those who hear. Woe to those who don’t.
February 11, 2007
Jeremiah 17:5-10 + 1Corinthian 15:12-20 + Luke 6:17-26
Well, here we go again with the hard sayings of Jesus. You’d think that the easy sayings of Jesus would pop up every now and then, maybe one Sunday out of the month. Of course, that is a big assumption that Jesus has easy sayings, that I am not sure we can make.
But here we have Jesus in Luke’s gospel fresh from his experience in Nazareth. After a couple of Sundays away, we have now come back to a time sequence, a time-line. Let me remind you that Jesus has been to synagogue in Nazareth, has read from the scroll of Isaiah, and has announced the beginning of the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. He says he has been anointed to preach good news to the poor. And his opening words a few minutes later outside with the people are, “Blessed are you poor.” We are back with his central theme.
He unequivocally states that God’s kingdom is for the poor. Remember now that this is Jesus in Luke, not Matthew. Matthew quotes Jesus as saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” Not in Luke. It is literally the poor of this world who are destined for a complete reversal in the completion of God’s kingdom. And here the poor are those who are absolutely destitute, the kingdom of God is for them.
The poor are the hungry, the homeless, the captive, the grief stricken, and the oppressed. For them the kingdom of God means a complete reversal of their condition, of their situation, of their fortune. They will be filled. They will be protected from the elements. They will be freed. They will rejoice.
Well that’s great, isn’t it? Would you want anything less for people who are in those abject conditions? I wouldn’t. I would love for them to receive those blessings, and to be blessed in knowing that the kingdom is promised for them.
But, what about us? What about you? What about me? What about my household, and my kindred?
I don’t think it is off the mark to say that according to Jesus, we are not in, except as we help the kingdom be present for these poor now, in this life. Only as we care for, work on behalf of these poor now, in this life, will we get to share with them in the kingdom God has promised.
That is the hard saying of Jesus.
Jesus said, “Today this scripture is being fulfilled…” Well, is it? What are you and I doing to bring this scripture in fulfillment, in to the real lives of God’s people? It is not enough to pray, “Thy kingdom come” if we don’t show that its begun by what we do.
This week the church sets aside February 13th to remember Absalom Jones, in the Black History Month of February. I have posted his portrait on the bulletin board in Sayre Hall.
Absalom Jones, the first African American priest of the Episcopal Church, was born in slavery on November 6, 1746, in Sussex, Delaware. At the age of sixteen, he was moved to Philadelphia, where he worked in his slaveholder's store. In the evenings, he attended school and did independent work for hire. By 1784, he was able to purchase his freedom and enter business for himself.
Jones became a lay preacher for the African American members of St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church. One day in November 1787 Jones and other African American worshipers were pulled from their knees during prayers by a trustee of the church and were ordered to move to segregated pews in the balcony. Jones and the other black parishioners walked out of the church.
They began holding Sunday services. St. Thomas's Episcopal Church was accepted in the Pennsylvania Diocese of the Episcopal Church in 1794, with Absalom Jones as its licensed lay reader. He was ordained as deacon in 1794 and as priest in 1804.
In 1799, he drafted a petition, signed by seventy-three other African Americans, "to the President, Senate and House of Representatives" urging the immediate abolition of slavery.
In 1808 Absalom Jones preached on sermon on the occasion of the abolition of the Slave Trade in England and in the United States.
“The history of the world shows us that the deliverance of the children of Israel from their bondage is not the only instance in which it has pleased God to appear in behalf of oppressed and distressed nations, as the deliverer of the innocent, and of those who call upon his name. He is as unchangeable in his nature and character as he is in his wisdom and power. The great and blessed event, which we have this day met to celebrate, is a striking proof that the God of heaven and earth is the same, yesterday, and today, and forever. Yes, my brethren, the nations from which most of us have descended, and the country in which some of us were born, have been visited by the tender mercy of the Common Father of the human race. He has seen the affliction of our countrymen, with an eye of pity. He has seen the wicked arts, by which wars have been fomented among the different tribes of the Africans, in order to procure captives, for the purpose of selling them for slaves. He has seen ships fitted out from different ports in Europe and America, and freighted with trinkets to be exchanged for the bodies and souls of men. He has seen the anguish which has taken place when parents have been torn from their children, and children from their parents, and conveyed, with their hands and feet bound in fetters, on board of ships prepared to receive them.
“… Let the history of the sufferings of our brethren, and of their deliverance, descend …to our children to the remotest generations; and when they shall ask, in time to come, saying, What mean the lessons, the psalms, the prayers and the praises in the worship of this day? let us answer them, by saying, the Lord, on the day of which this is the anniversary, abolished the trade which dragged your fathers from their native country, and sold them as bondmen in the United States of America.”
“The God of heaven and earth is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
But today, children, women, and men are still sold into slavery today in every part of the world, including our own country. Today the average Anglican today is a 35-year-old black African woman living on $2 a day. Today millions are held in the bondage of poverty throughout the world and in this city of Bethlehem and it’s surroundings. The promise is for them. The blessing is for them.
Our blessedness and our release from woe – perhaps even our own entrance into heaven – come in our solidarity with the poor and the captive, our labor on their behalf, our being vessels which pour upon them God’s compassion and care.
One of the recent saints in this work is Mother Theresa. It is also the work of Joel Atkinson and Bob Wilkins and all the other New Bethany volunteers and so many others. It was the work of the cathedral youth last weekend in their retreat to learn about and do something about hunger. It is the work that God intends us all to engage.
The powers that be – those who are in power – often prefer an order that strengthens the status quo and their comfort, and leaves some things for the world to come.
Jesus has announced that the kingdom is now begun. Blessed are those who hear. Woe to those who don’t.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Epiphany 5: Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people
The Rev. Canon Bill Lewellis
Feb. 4, 2007
Isaiah 6:1-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 + Luke 5:1-11
May God’s word be in our minds and on our hearts … and on my lips. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. Amen.
Souper Day of Caring
Today is … both the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany and Super Bowl Sunday. Some of your teenage members have put the focus on a national “S-o-u-p-e-r Day of Caring” about hunger and poverty in local communities. They know we, too, care … and they will ask us to help. This morning, they will also have completed a 30-hour retreat during which they have been fasting . learning and praying about hunger.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
I suspect you’ve heard some great sermons. You may not recognize, however, that the greatest sermons you’ve heard have been those you preached to yourselves … while the preacher preached on … about something or other.
How do I know this? There was a time, whenever someone complimented my sermon, especially if it was one I thought was pretty good myself, I’d ask if there was something in particular that got their attention. (That’s called fishing for a second compliment … or, perhaps, betting double or nothing.) Inevitably, I’d hear something quite insightful that I didn’t say.
Since then, my intuition has been that, when anyone tells me they liked the sermon I preached, you’re likely telling me it was simply the occasion for the great sermon you, as active listeners, preached to yourselves. That’s good. It means you were working as hard as I was.
So, let’s get to work.
Isaiah “heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ And [Isaiah] said, ‘Here am I; send me’” Here am I. Here I am. Send me. Send me.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Put out into the deep water.” Deep water. Where is the deep water in your life? What does it mean to strike out into the deep? Where are those places you’d rather not go?
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Simon Peter answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. But, upon your word…”
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
“They caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break … When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken.”
All three readings this morning contain confessions of unworthiness. “Your sin is blotted out,” the angel told Isaiah. St. Paul tells us that he was unfit to be called an apostle. And Peter: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” It’s as though all three – Isaiah, Paul and Peter – felt threatened by the holy. But God won’t go away. Their sinfulness won’t keep God away.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Don’t be afraid.”
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “From now on you will be catching people.” That’s from Luke’s gospel. In Matthew and Mark, we hear this as “I will make you fishers of people.”
I’ve never been keen on either metaphor. Catching people. Becoming fishers of people. Though I don’t take the Bible literally – no one really takes the Bible literally – I’ve still heard both phrases as just too manipulative. Until I heard that the verb in the original Greek text came to mean “to restore to life and strength, to revive, to keep alive.” Don’t be afraid, Jesus said to Peter. “From now on, you will be restoring people to life and strength.” Captivated by God, attentive to God, swept off our feet by God, we will restore people to life and strength.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
“They left everything and followed him.” They followed Jesus … after having been in the boat with him. The area of the church building in which you worship is called the nave. “Ship,” in Latin. That’s not simply coincidental. Returning to land, having been captivated by Jesus on the lake, they return changed, freed from their sinfulness released from whatever may have gotten in their way of following Jesus.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Epiphanies
Do you know how an epiphany works? It’s not God occasionally showing up. It’s we occasionally noticing.
God is ever tapping on our heads – ever ready also to be heartfelt – trying to get our attention. Once in a while we look up and say, Huh??? – or Aha!!! That’s an epiphany!
Isn’t it one of life’s greatest mysteries that God has a hard time getting our attention … while allowing us to be free?
My favorite theologian, a long time ago, still, was an English Canadian Jesuit who taught in Rome. He was an academic. A theologian’s theologian. That’s what you say when you don’t understand what a theologian is saying. He never wrote anything one might find on WalMart rack. Nothing like The Purpose-Driven Life … or Church. Surely, nothing like the Left Behind apocalyptic trash. Not even anything like Taking the Plunge, Anne Kitch’s wonderful book of practical theology on baptism and parenting.
I think that almost everything Bernard Lonergan wrote related in some way to one of his early books, Insight, a philosophical work on the experience of understanding. It was an attempt to help readers experience what actually happens within us when we understand something for the first time. The Aha moment. Probably the most exciting, fulfilling and satisfying moment next to … well … whatever.
I’ve slightly adapted what I think of as his Aha mantra, though I suspect he would never have called it that. It goes like this: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love … and, if necessary, change. Had not one of my best friends, your interim dean, imposed a time restriction on me, I would attempt to explain how that could be a religious rule of life. But, let that be your job. Preach the great sermon to yourself: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love … and, if necessary, change.
Might our lives be transformed right where we are, with the people we know and love? What wonders, what miracles, what epiphanies challenge our expectations? Look around. Be attentive to God. God is showing up. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
[From the Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany] Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Feb. 4, 2007
Isaiah 6:1-8 + 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 + Luke 5:1-11
May God’s word be in our minds and on our hearts … and on my lips. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people. Amen.
Souper Day of Caring
Today is … both the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany and Super Bowl Sunday. Some of your teenage members have put the focus on a national “S-o-u-p-e-r Day of Caring” about hunger and poverty in local communities. They know we, too, care … and they will ask us to help. This morning, they will also have completed a 30-hour retreat during which they have been fasting . learning and praying about hunger.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
I suspect you’ve heard some great sermons. You may not recognize, however, that the greatest sermons you’ve heard have been those you preached to yourselves … while the preacher preached on … about something or other.
How do I know this? There was a time, whenever someone complimented my sermon, especially if it was one I thought was pretty good myself, I’d ask if there was something in particular that got their attention. (That’s called fishing for a second compliment … or, perhaps, betting double or nothing.) Inevitably, I’d hear something quite insightful that I didn’t say.
Since then, my intuition has been that, when anyone tells me they liked the sermon I preached, you’re likely telling me it was simply the occasion for the great sermon you, as active listeners, preached to yourselves. That’s good. It means you were working as hard as I was.
So, let’s get to work.
Isaiah “heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ And [Isaiah] said, ‘Here am I; send me’” Here am I. Here I am. Send me. Send me.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Put out into the deep water.” Deep water. Where is the deep water in your life? What does it mean to strike out into the deep? Where are those places you’d rather not go?
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Simon Peter answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. But, upon your word…”
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
“They caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break … When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken.”
All three readings this morning contain confessions of unworthiness. “Your sin is blotted out,” the angel told Isaiah. St. Paul tells us that he was unfit to be called an apostle. And Peter: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” It’s as though all three – Isaiah, Paul and Peter – felt threatened by the holy. But God won’t go away. Their sinfulness won’t keep God away.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Don’t be afraid.”
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
Jesus said to Simon Peter, “From now on you will be catching people.” That’s from Luke’s gospel. In Matthew and Mark, we hear this as “I will make you fishers of people.”
I’ve never been keen on either metaphor. Catching people. Becoming fishers of people. Though I don’t take the Bible literally – no one really takes the Bible literally – I’ve still heard both phrases as just too manipulative. Until I heard that the verb in the original Greek text came to mean “to restore to life and strength, to revive, to keep alive.” Don’t be afraid, Jesus said to Peter. “From now on, you will be restoring people to life and strength.” Captivated by God, attentive to God, swept off our feet by God, we will restore people to life and strength.
Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
“They left everything and followed him.” They followed Jesus … after having been in the boat with him. The area of the church building in which you worship is called the nave. “Ship,” in Latin. That’s not simply coincidental. Returning to land, having been captivated by Jesus on the lake, they return changed, freed from their sinfulness released from whatever may have gotten in their way of following Jesus.
Hear what the Spirit is saying …
Epiphanies
Do you know how an epiphany works? It’s not God occasionally showing up. It’s we occasionally noticing.
God is ever tapping on our heads – ever ready also to be heartfelt – trying to get our attention. Once in a while we look up and say, Huh??? – or Aha!!! That’s an epiphany!
Isn’t it one of life’s greatest mysteries that God has a hard time getting our attention … while allowing us to be free?
My favorite theologian, a long time ago, still, was an English Canadian Jesuit who taught in Rome. He was an academic. A theologian’s theologian. That’s what you say when you don’t understand what a theologian is saying. He never wrote anything one might find on WalMart rack. Nothing like The Purpose-Driven Life … or Church. Surely, nothing like the Left Behind apocalyptic trash. Not even anything like Taking the Plunge, Anne Kitch’s wonderful book of practical theology on baptism and parenting.
I think that almost everything Bernard Lonergan wrote related in some way to one of his early books, Insight, a philosophical work on the experience of understanding. It was an attempt to help readers experience what actually happens within us when we understand something for the first time. The Aha moment. Probably the most exciting, fulfilling and satisfying moment next to … well … whatever.
I’ve slightly adapted what I think of as his Aha mantra, though I suspect he would never have called it that. It goes like this: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love … and, if necessary, change. Had not one of my best friends, your interim dean, imposed a time restriction on me, I would attempt to explain how that could be a religious rule of life. But, let that be your job. Preach the great sermon to yourself: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love … and, if necessary, change.
Might our lives be transformed right where we are, with the people we know and love? What wonders, what miracles, what epiphanies challenge our expectations? Look around. Be attentive to God. God is showing up. Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.
[From the Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany] Set us free, O God, from the bondage of our sins, and give us the liberty of that abundant life which you have made known to us in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Epiphany 4: Calling All
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Jeremiah 1:4-10, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
I spend a lot of time wondering what God is calling me to do. You’d think I might have figured it out by now, but that is simply not the case. It’s not that I have no idea. I believe I have made many choices in my life in response to what God’s call. It’s just that the path ahead of me never seems to remain obvious for long. Let me be clear. I do not believe that God has a plan for each of us and that our life’s calling is to figure that plan out and make it so. I think God’s work of creation is much more active and exciting than that. I believe creation is going on all the time and that we are part of it--all the time. I believe that there is a place for us in creation. I just don’t believe that there is one set of steps we are each meant to dance.
It might be easier if that were true; then I wouldn’t spend so much of my time on the hard work of discernment. That is, figuring out what I am being called to do or be. Besides, if God really had it that specifically set out for us, and if God loves us, wouldn’t God just give us the map? What I do believe is that God calls each of us and sets us free within creation to make choices. God gives us gifts and wants us to use them. God delights in seeing what we can make of them.
The church teaches that these gifts are for the building up of the body of Christ. That’s what it says in our Catechism (p. 855 in the Book of Common Prayer, if you’re curious). Under the section titled The Ministry, the first question asked is, “Who are the ministers of the Church?” The answer: lay persons, bishops, priests and deacons. The next question: “What is the ministry of the laity?” The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church, to bear witness to him wherever they may be, and according to the gifts given to them to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.
So, according to church teaching, we are all ministers. We are all called. We are all given gifts. In the passage from Jeremiah we have a picture of what a call looks like. In fact, this passage is known as the Call of Jeremiah. It is pretty powerful stuff. “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet…’” When Jeremiah protests that this call is beyond him, God offers encouragement and support. Do not say, ‘I am only a boy,’ you will be able to do this. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. God gives Jeremiah the tools he needs, literally putting the words into his mouth. God knows, God consecrates, God appoints, God encourages, supports, and provides the necessary tools.
Now, let me remind you that this passage is the call of Jeremiah. It is not the call of Anne or Jean or Robert. As far as I know, not one of us called to be the prophet to Israel in the time of the fall of Jerusalem. In fact, it would be silly if not even dangerous for us to try to be Jeremiah. Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester in the 16th century and a well known preacher wrote, “We are not to follow the saints in their vocation. We are to follow God in our vocation. If we try to do what the saints did, we may miss our own calling.” (Bishop Latimer was martyred in 1555) We can admire the saints and be inspired by the saints, but we are meant to live our own vocations, not someone else’s. In fact, Bishop Latimer points out that if we try too hard to be someone else, we will miss who we are. God knows who we are is important, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Is there anyone that God does not know? God knows, God consecrates, God appoints, God encourages, supports, and provides the necessary tools for each of us.
We have been reminded of this the past few weeks as we have heard the words of St. Paul to the church in Corinth. St. Paul wrote to remind the folks in Corinth what it means to be the people of God, that God calls us all, but not for all the same work. There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit…to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good and—just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1st Corinthians 12:4, 7, 12, 27) and now—and I will show you an even more excellent way and Paul launches into one of the most quoted passages of scripture—all about love.
This passage from 1st Corinthians is a favorite passage to read at weddings. But I am here to tell you it has nothing to do with romance; it has everything to do with following our vocation—with being the body of Christ. Paul is not telling us only how to love the person we are in love with; Paul is telling us how we are to be with all people at all times. If we ignore it because we think it is sweet and romantic or because we’ve heard it before, then we will really miss the point. Paul, a man of great skill and ambition is ever there was one, is talking to us right here and right now.
We can follow our call. We can identify and use our spiritual gifts. We can take our place with the body of Christ. But… if we do any of this without love, it fails. Paul would look around the room and say, “Look at all these marvelous gifts! Some of you have gifts of musical expression, some of reading, some of leading others, and some of hospitality. Some of you are teachers while others have gifts of administration. Some of you are called to be architects, or parents, or mentors, or technicians. But no matter what you do, or how gifted you are in small ways or in great ways, if your gift is exercised without love, it falls flat as far as this community is concerned. Gifts without love have no power. But a gift plus love equals ministry.
Knowing how to love like this is not easy. Being able to love patiently and kindly, using our gifts without insisting on our own way, is not easy. Love is not simple. We cannot engage in loving action on automatic pilot. As beautiful and familiar as these words are, they are not the easy sentiment of a greeting card—they are the truth of the gospel. They carry the power of life in Christ. Jesus came into the world to witness God’s love to us. Jesus showed those around him what it looked like to love God and to love others. It was not a sentimental picture. His kind of loving almost got him thrown off a cliff in his hometown. His kind of loving did get him killed in the end. And his kind of loving was stronger than death. That love never ends.
Our striving will end. Our accomplishments will end. Our good deeds and acts of power and words of wisdom will end. Our governments and nations and world domination will end. What will be left is love. What would it look like to strive for love? What would it look like to strive to be loving, with all our ambition, with all our strength, with all our cunning and skill and intelligence? With all our heart and soul and mind and strength? It might look like following God in our vocation. It might look like being the body of Christ. It might look like God’s creation: redeemed and perfect.
Where is God calling you today? What will you strive for today?
Copyright © 2007 Anne E. Kitch
(Hugh Latimer quote is from Fruitful Sermons as quoted in Nearer to the Heart of God: Daily Readings with the Christian Mystics, edited by Bernard Bangly, Paraclete 2005)
Jeremiah 1:4-10, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30
I spend a lot of time wondering what God is calling me to do. You’d think I might have figured it out by now, but that is simply not the case. It’s not that I have no idea. I believe I have made many choices in my life in response to what God’s call. It’s just that the path ahead of me never seems to remain obvious for long. Let me be clear. I do not believe that God has a plan for each of us and that our life’s calling is to figure that plan out and make it so. I think God’s work of creation is much more active and exciting than that. I believe creation is going on all the time and that we are part of it--all the time. I believe that there is a place for us in creation. I just don’t believe that there is one set of steps we are each meant to dance.
It might be easier if that were true; then I wouldn’t spend so much of my time on the hard work of discernment. That is, figuring out what I am being called to do or be. Besides, if God really had it that specifically set out for us, and if God loves us, wouldn’t God just give us the map? What I do believe is that God calls each of us and sets us free within creation to make choices. God gives us gifts and wants us to use them. God delights in seeing what we can make of them.
The church teaches that these gifts are for the building up of the body of Christ. That’s what it says in our Catechism (p. 855 in the Book of Common Prayer, if you’re curious). Under the section titled The Ministry, the first question asked is, “Who are the ministers of the Church?” The answer: lay persons, bishops, priests and deacons. The next question: “What is the ministry of the laity?” The ministry of lay persons is to represent Christ and his Church, to bear witness to him wherever they may be, and according to the gifts given to them to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.
So, according to church teaching, we are all ministers. We are all called. We are all given gifts. In the passage from Jeremiah we have a picture of what a call looks like. In fact, this passage is known as the Call of Jeremiah. It is pretty powerful stuff. “Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet…’” When Jeremiah protests that this call is beyond him, God offers encouragement and support. Do not say, ‘I am only a boy,’ you will be able to do this. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. God gives Jeremiah the tools he needs, literally putting the words into his mouth. God knows, God consecrates, God appoints, God encourages, supports, and provides the necessary tools.
Now, let me remind you that this passage is the call of Jeremiah. It is not the call of Anne or Jean or Robert. As far as I know, not one of us called to be the prophet to Israel in the time of the fall of Jerusalem. In fact, it would be silly if not even dangerous for us to try to be Jeremiah. Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester in the 16th century and a well known preacher wrote, “We are not to follow the saints in their vocation. We are to follow God in our vocation. If we try to do what the saints did, we may miss our own calling.” (Bishop Latimer was martyred in 1555) We can admire the saints and be inspired by the saints, but we are meant to live our own vocations, not someone else’s. In fact, Bishop Latimer points out that if we try too hard to be someone else, we will miss who we are. God knows who we are is important, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Is there anyone that God does not know? God knows, God consecrates, God appoints, God encourages, supports, and provides the necessary tools for each of us.
We have been reminded of this the past few weeks as we have heard the words of St. Paul to the church in Corinth. St. Paul wrote to remind the folks in Corinth what it means to be the people of God, that God calls us all, but not for all the same work. There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit…to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good and—just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ…Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it (1st Corinthians 12:4, 7, 12, 27) and now—and I will show you an even more excellent way and Paul launches into one of the most quoted passages of scripture—all about love.
This passage from 1st Corinthians is a favorite passage to read at weddings. But I am here to tell you it has nothing to do with romance; it has everything to do with following our vocation—with being the body of Christ. Paul is not telling us only how to love the person we are in love with; Paul is telling us how we are to be with all people at all times. If we ignore it because we think it is sweet and romantic or because we’ve heard it before, then we will really miss the point. Paul, a man of great skill and ambition is ever there was one, is talking to us right here and right now.
We can follow our call. We can identify and use our spiritual gifts. We can take our place with the body of Christ. But… if we do any of this without love, it fails. Paul would look around the room and say, “Look at all these marvelous gifts! Some of you have gifts of musical expression, some of reading, some of leading others, and some of hospitality. Some of you are teachers while others have gifts of administration. Some of you are called to be architects, or parents, or mentors, or technicians. But no matter what you do, or how gifted you are in small ways or in great ways, if your gift is exercised without love, it falls flat as far as this community is concerned. Gifts without love have no power. But a gift plus love equals ministry.
Knowing how to love like this is not easy. Being able to love patiently and kindly, using our gifts without insisting on our own way, is not easy. Love is not simple. We cannot engage in loving action on automatic pilot. As beautiful and familiar as these words are, they are not the easy sentiment of a greeting card—they are the truth of the gospel. They carry the power of life in Christ. Jesus came into the world to witness God’s love to us. Jesus showed those around him what it looked like to love God and to love others. It was not a sentimental picture. His kind of loving almost got him thrown off a cliff in his hometown. His kind of loving did get him killed in the end. And his kind of loving was stronger than death. That love never ends.
Our striving will end. Our accomplishments will end. Our good deeds and acts of power and words of wisdom will end. Our governments and nations and world domination will end. What will be left is love. What would it look like to strive for love? What would it look like to strive to be loving, with all our ambition, with all our strength, with all our cunning and skill and intelligence? With all our heart and soul and mind and strength? It might look like following God in our vocation. It might look like being the body of Christ. It might look like God’s creation: redeemed and perfect.
Where is God calling you today? What will you strive for today?
Copyright © 2007 Anne E. Kitch
(Hugh Latimer quote is from Fruitful Sermons as quoted in Nearer to the Heart of God: Daily Readings with the Christian Mystics, edited by Bernard Bangly, Paraclete 2005)
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Epiphany 3: It's not done yet
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
January 21, 2007
Nehemiah 8:1-10 + 1Cor 12:12-31a + Luke 4:14-21
"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
When you look around do you see it fulfilled? Do you see it done yet? Do you see those held captive by war, by poverty, by disease, by debt, by want and need – do you see them being released? I don’t. It’s not done yet.
Do you see the year of the Lord’s favor being lived out – at any time in your lifetime? Do you see an equitable distribution of the goods of this world – of food, of medicines, of water, of education? I don’t. It’s not done yet.
The BBC World Service reported a United Nations study in mid-December that stated, “The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth… the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth.”
The year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee year, was the most radical part of the Law, the Torah, the Covenant between God and the people. Every fifty years debts were to be forgiven, land redistributed fairly – in other words every fifty years we are to be giving each other the opportunity to start over, to do it better by helping each other.
It was in the Law of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and it was in the re-establishment of the Law given in the reading by Ezra the priest in the reign of Nehemiah. Israel had been released from captivity in Babylon and returned to rebuild the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem – to begin again, to start over. It was the basis for Ezra and Nehemiah’s call to rejoice. Captives were released. Land was redistributed. It was deemed to be a year of the Lord’s favor.
But, in our day and time? Fulfilled? I don’t see it. It’s not done yet.
When Jesus hands the scroll back to the minister and sits down, one of the translations of Luke reads that Jesus told the people “Today this scripture which you have heard is being brought to fulfillment.” …being brought to fulfillment. The fulfillment is begun in Jesus of Nazareth. But it is not done yet.
Would that all God’s people – which means – would that all people – could “eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those who have nothing.”
And find in their lives, in each life, that seed of joy planted by God in each person, and nurture it in themselves and in one another so that it grows and grows and bursts forth at any moment and in odd moments and spills out and spills over all those around them until eventually all the world is infected with that joy. Until each of us in any and every circumstance of life, in good season and bad, in abundant times and in times of deprivation can touch that place where God has planted joy.
In that day scripture will finally and completely be fulfilled. What was begun in Jesus will be completed, when all know that joy of being God’s own, and that joy of caring for God’s own. What a day that will be! It will be like unto the day when Ezra read the Law to the people of God and called them to joy.
Lest you are beginning to think so, let me state that this is not a “Be Happy” sermon. This is not me telling you that when you are in the midst of want – of whatever kind – you should be happy. I am not talking about “being happy”.
Have you ever been surprised by joy? You are just sitting there alone or with others, it makes no difference. And you begin to feel welling up in yourself from your very center, your core, in even a physical way, this feeling of overwhelming joy? You can’t account for it, you can’t explain why you have it, it is just there and it over flows – and you know it overflows because of the tears - and if you are with others they can see in your face this divine gift – this joy. And you have been surprised by joy.
I have seen that. I have experienced that. I have known that. And I have witnessed that. I pray God that you have as well. I have seen it in everyday life. I have seen it the oddest moments of life. I have seen it in the faces of some of the most deprived persons on the face of the earth. I have seen it in the midst of the liturgy, in the beauty of music. I have seen it in the face of one prepared to die. And on and on. Joy breaks out.
In this life, I am firmly convinced, God’s plan is for us to “eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those who have nothing.” That’s the nature of God’s kingdom. That is the nature of God’s reign. It is the work of Jesus. It is the work of the Church. That is, we are told in scripture, what heaven will be like – a banquet prepared for all people.
But, its not done yet. Scripture is being fulfilled, but it is not fulfilled yet. It has been a while since we have had, since we have made, a Jubilee Year. The work of Jesus is not done. The work of his people is not done.
When it is done, when it is fulfilled it will look and feel, I think, like the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr given that day on the mall in Washington:
“… all of God's children, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, (and I would add; rich and poor) will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”
It will be the Day of the Lord’s Favor. Then it will be done. Then we will see it. Then we will be done. Then we will know true joy. Then all will be fulfilled.
Thanks be to God.
January 21, 2007
Nehemiah 8:1-10 + 1Cor 12:12-31a + Luke 4:14-21
"Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
When you look around do you see it fulfilled? Do you see it done yet? Do you see those held captive by war, by poverty, by disease, by debt, by want and need – do you see them being released? I don’t. It’s not done yet.
Do you see the year of the Lord’s favor being lived out – at any time in your lifetime? Do you see an equitable distribution of the goods of this world – of food, of medicines, of water, of education? I don’t. It’s not done yet.
The BBC World Service reported a United Nations study in mid-December that stated, “The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth… the poorer half of the world's population own barely 1% of global wealth.”
The year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee year, was the most radical part of the Law, the Torah, the Covenant between God and the people. Every fifty years debts were to be forgiven, land redistributed fairly – in other words every fifty years we are to be giving each other the opportunity to start over, to do it better by helping each other.
It was in the Law of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and it was in the re-establishment of the Law given in the reading by Ezra the priest in the reign of Nehemiah. Israel had been released from captivity in Babylon and returned to rebuild the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem – to begin again, to start over. It was the basis for Ezra and Nehemiah’s call to rejoice. Captives were released. Land was redistributed. It was deemed to be a year of the Lord’s favor.
But, in our day and time? Fulfilled? I don’t see it. It’s not done yet.
When Jesus hands the scroll back to the minister and sits down, one of the translations of Luke reads that Jesus told the people “Today this scripture which you have heard is being brought to fulfillment.” …being brought to fulfillment. The fulfillment is begun in Jesus of Nazareth. But it is not done yet.
Would that all God’s people – which means – would that all people – could “eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those who have nothing.”
And find in their lives, in each life, that seed of joy planted by God in each person, and nurture it in themselves and in one another so that it grows and grows and bursts forth at any moment and in odd moments and spills out and spills over all those around them until eventually all the world is infected with that joy. Until each of us in any and every circumstance of life, in good season and bad, in abundant times and in times of deprivation can touch that place where God has planted joy.
In that day scripture will finally and completely be fulfilled. What was begun in Jesus will be completed, when all know that joy of being God’s own, and that joy of caring for God’s own. What a day that will be! It will be like unto the day when Ezra read the Law to the people of God and called them to joy.
Lest you are beginning to think so, let me state that this is not a “Be Happy” sermon. This is not me telling you that when you are in the midst of want – of whatever kind – you should be happy. I am not talking about “being happy”.
Have you ever been surprised by joy? You are just sitting there alone or with others, it makes no difference. And you begin to feel welling up in yourself from your very center, your core, in even a physical way, this feeling of overwhelming joy? You can’t account for it, you can’t explain why you have it, it is just there and it over flows – and you know it overflows because of the tears - and if you are with others they can see in your face this divine gift – this joy. And you have been surprised by joy.
I have seen that. I have experienced that. I have known that. And I have witnessed that. I pray God that you have as well. I have seen it in everyday life. I have seen it the oddest moments of life. I have seen it in the faces of some of the most deprived persons on the face of the earth. I have seen it in the midst of the liturgy, in the beauty of music. I have seen it in the face of one prepared to die. And on and on. Joy breaks out.
In this life, I am firmly convinced, God’s plan is for us to “eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those who have nothing.” That’s the nature of God’s kingdom. That is the nature of God’s reign. It is the work of Jesus. It is the work of the Church. That is, we are told in scripture, what heaven will be like – a banquet prepared for all people.
But, its not done yet. Scripture is being fulfilled, but it is not fulfilled yet. It has been a while since we have had, since we have made, a Jubilee Year. The work of Jesus is not done. The work of his people is not done.
When it is done, when it is fulfilled it will look and feel, I think, like the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr given that day on the mall in Washington:
“… all of God's children, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, (and I would add; rich and poor) will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”
It will be the Day of the Lord’s Favor. Then it will be done. Then we will see it. Then we will be done. Then we will know true joy. Then all will be fulfilled.
Thanks be to God.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Epiphany 2C: Got Faith?
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Isaiah 62:1-5 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 John 2:1-11
Have you seen the “Got Faith” billboards? They show an open spigot with water pouring out and by the time the water reaches the glass held beneath it, it has turned to wine. Got Faith? I love these billboards. I love the connection to the “Got Milk” ads. The idea that faith is as wholesome and healthy and perhaps as everyday as milk appeals to me. The dairy commission began the “Got Milk” ads to boast an industry that was faltering because people weren’t drinking milk. Kids were drinking soda and juice and even health conscious adults were avoiding what they perceived of as a fattening drink. The brilliance of the “Got Milk” ads is their portrayal of milk as something fun and cool. Something that athletes and celebrities enjoy. Something everyone can and should have. Something good for you and good to drink. If you were cool, you too would drink milk.
I love to think all the same things about faith--that it is fun and “sweet.” That it is good for you and tastes good too. That it is something everyday and accessible. And what if it is something that athletes and celebrities enjoy? I wonder what a “faith” mustache would look like!
The “Got Faith” ads play on something else as well--the miracle of water turned into wine, the miracle of the Wedding at Cana. If you didn’t remember where the water-turned-into-wine story happened, here it is. It is told only in John’s Gospel where it occurs early in Jesus’ ministry. We are told that it was the first of his signs, works that he would perform that revealed his glory and indicated that he was not just any rabbi. We preserve that tradition in our marriage liturgy in this church where the opening lines of the service state that “our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” (BCP p. 423)
But while the image of marriage is highlighted in the Gospel and in the reading from Isaiah this morning, I want to tell you that this story is not about how wonderful marriage is, nor is it a testimony for the state of marriage suggesting that we should all be in it. It is about faith. Now faith is an integral part of marriage. No doubt you know this whether marriage is part of your life or not. But more than that, faith is an integral part of what it means to be a community and marriage is really a microcosm of a community of faith. It is one example of how two people can live in covenant with one another and choose to love their neighbor as self. We are not all called to marriage. We are all called to love our neighbor. We are all called to community and to faith. Just what does that mean? Let’s look at this miracle.
The wedding takes place on “the third day” a clear foreshadowing of the resurrection. So its celebration might perhaps give us a taste of the Kingdom of God to come. Jesus and his disciples, his followers, had been invited. We, as Jesus followers, are invited to the Great Feast--the eternal banquet in the Kingdom of God. But in the Cana celebration on this side of the resurrection, the feast is about to falter. The wine runs out. There is no more. This is not just a matter of a host running out of food. It is a matter of a celebration coming to an end. Yet, Jesus is present and the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection will never end. So what will Jesus do?
His mother, having faith in him and being the teacher that shows us the way, tells the servants (tells us) to “do whatever he tells you.” There are empty water jars nearby. Six huge stone water jars each holding 20-30 gallons (imagine a large garbage can is usually 30 gallons). They have nothing to do with the wedding, but Jesus tells those there to fill them. And they do--to the brim. Now in a desert country, 180 gallons of water is already an abundance. And I am sure that filling them was no small task. But there is more. And that is the truth about God working with us and in us--there is always more, much more. So Jesus tells them to take a cup of water to the chief steward.
It is in the tasting that the wine is discovered. The steward didn’t know the wine was out. He didn’t know that water had been drawn. He didn’t know that Jesus was behind the miracle. But we know. So what does this have to do with us? I think the “Got Faith” ads may mislead us just a bit. It is not our faith that turns the water into wine. It is not simply a matter of believing hard enough. In the miracle of Cana, faith fills empty water jars just because Jesus said so. Jesus turns the water into wine.
So…have you been filling any empty water jars lately? I can’t help but think of how this plays out in times of change and transition. The old wine is gone. It has been enjoyed. It has run its course. Now it is no more, and no amount of pining after it or forming committees to discuss why it ran out will bring it back. But that does not mean the party has to be over. We have another choice in times of transition and in times of change. We can be people of faith. We can listen to Jesus and get busy filling water jars.
From where I stand, the people of Nativity have been doing just that. People have stepped out in faith, stepped out in leadership, stepped out in care for others following Jesus’ instructions. People here have found new ways to feed the hungry, care for the downtrodden, speak wisdom and knowledge through the Spirit. And I can tell you that some have tasted from the water you have gathered and discovered it is new wine. The faith that we need is not a faith that makes things happen because we believe the right things strongly enough. Turning water into wine is an act of Christ, not a work of our belief. Our faith is about filling the empty jars with water, with what we have, and letting Jesus do the rest. Our faith is about sticking with the community, even when it seems the party is over, and holding on for the new wine that God will bring.
In this time of our mortal life, the wine does run out. In our relationships, in our jobs, in our households and communities, the wine does run out. Feasts on this side of the resurrection always end. But we don’t have to call it quits. We can fill empty jars with water, with hope, with joy. We can fill them to the brim with the expectation of abundance and then trust that God will turn it to wine. Taste and see!
Amen.
copyright Anne E. Kitch © 2007
Isaiah 62:1-5 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 John 2:1-11
Have you seen the “Got Faith” billboards? They show an open spigot with water pouring out and by the time the water reaches the glass held beneath it, it has turned to wine. Got Faith? I love these billboards. I love the connection to the “Got Milk” ads. The idea that faith is as wholesome and healthy and perhaps as everyday as milk appeals to me. The dairy commission began the “Got Milk” ads to boast an industry that was faltering because people weren’t drinking milk. Kids were drinking soda and juice and even health conscious adults were avoiding what they perceived of as a fattening drink. The brilliance of the “Got Milk” ads is their portrayal of milk as something fun and cool. Something that athletes and celebrities enjoy. Something everyone can and should have. Something good for you and good to drink. If you were cool, you too would drink milk.
I love to think all the same things about faith--that it is fun and “sweet.” That it is good for you and tastes good too. That it is something everyday and accessible. And what if it is something that athletes and celebrities enjoy? I wonder what a “faith” mustache would look like!
The “Got Faith” ads play on something else as well--the miracle of water turned into wine, the miracle of the Wedding at Cana. If you didn’t remember where the water-turned-into-wine story happened, here it is. It is told only in John’s Gospel where it occurs early in Jesus’ ministry. We are told that it was the first of his signs, works that he would perform that revealed his glory and indicated that he was not just any rabbi. We preserve that tradition in our marriage liturgy in this church where the opening lines of the service state that “our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” (BCP p. 423)
But while the image of marriage is highlighted in the Gospel and in the reading from Isaiah this morning, I want to tell you that this story is not about how wonderful marriage is, nor is it a testimony for the state of marriage suggesting that we should all be in it. It is about faith. Now faith is an integral part of marriage. No doubt you know this whether marriage is part of your life or not. But more than that, faith is an integral part of what it means to be a community and marriage is really a microcosm of a community of faith. It is one example of how two people can live in covenant with one another and choose to love their neighbor as self. We are not all called to marriage. We are all called to love our neighbor. We are all called to community and to faith. Just what does that mean? Let’s look at this miracle.
The wedding takes place on “the third day” a clear foreshadowing of the resurrection. So its celebration might perhaps give us a taste of the Kingdom of God to come. Jesus and his disciples, his followers, had been invited. We, as Jesus followers, are invited to the Great Feast--the eternal banquet in the Kingdom of God. But in the Cana celebration on this side of the resurrection, the feast is about to falter. The wine runs out. There is no more. This is not just a matter of a host running out of food. It is a matter of a celebration coming to an end. Yet, Jesus is present and the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection will never end. So what will Jesus do?
His mother, having faith in him and being the teacher that shows us the way, tells the servants (tells us) to “do whatever he tells you.” There are empty water jars nearby. Six huge stone water jars each holding 20-30 gallons (imagine a large garbage can is usually 30 gallons). They have nothing to do with the wedding, but Jesus tells those there to fill them. And they do--to the brim. Now in a desert country, 180 gallons of water is already an abundance. And I am sure that filling them was no small task. But there is more. And that is the truth about God working with us and in us--there is always more, much more. So Jesus tells them to take a cup of water to the chief steward.
It is in the tasting that the wine is discovered. The steward didn’t know the wine was out. He didn’t know that water had been drawn. He didn’t know that Jesus was behind the miracle. But we know. So what does this have to do with us? I think the “Got Faith” ads may mislead us just a bit. It is not our faith that turns the water into wine. It is not simply a matter of believing hard enough. In the miracle of Cana, faith fills empty water jars just because Jesus said so. Jesus turns the water into wine.
So…have you been filling any empty water jars lately? I can’t help but think of how this plays out in times of change and transition. The old wine is gone. It has been enjoyed. It has run its course. Now it is no more, and no amount of pining after it or forming committees to discuss why it ran out will bring it back. But that does not mean the party has to be over. We have another choice in times of transition and in times of change. We can be people of faith. We can listen to Jesus and get busy filling water jars.
From where I stand, the people of Nativity have been doing just that. People have stepped out in faith, stepped out in leadership, stepped out in care for others following Jesus’ instructions. People here have found new ways to feed the hungry, care for the downtrodden, speak wisdom and knowledge through the Spirit. And I can tell you that some have tasted from the water you have gathered and discovered it is new wine. The faith that we need is not a faith that makes things happen because we believe the right things strongly enough. Turning water into wine is an act of Christ, not a work of our belief. Our faith is about filling the empty jars with water, with what we have, and letting Jesus do the rest. Our faith is about sticking with the community, even when it seems the party is over, and holding on for the new wine that God will bring.
In this time of our mortal life, the wine does run out. In our relationships, in our jobs, in our households and communities, the wine does run out. Feasts on this side of the resurrection always end. But we don’t have to call it quits. We can fill empty jars with water, with hope, with joy. We can fill them to the brim with the expectation of abundance and then trust that God will turn it to wine. Taste and see!
Amen.
copyright Anne E. Kitch © 2007
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Epiphany 1: The Baptism of Jesus ~ Truth be told
The Ven Richard I Cluett
January 7, 2007
Isaiah 43:1-7 + Acts 8:14-17 + Luke 3:15-17,21-22
Today I want to tell you a truth. You don’t have to be baptized to be a child of God. Each child, every child born of the flesh of a human mother and father is created by God, created in the image of God, is God’s child – son or daughter of God, simply by virtue of being God’s creation. All people are God’s people, every person is God’s person.
Jesus is God’s son in a unique and wonderfully mysterious way. That is shown to one and all on the banks of the Jordan River and to one and to all who hear of his baptism in the words of scripture. It must be important, it is reported in all four gospels.
Each of us here is God’s child in a unique and wonderfully mysterious way.
What is new in the Baptism of Jesus is the affirmation, the confirmation that this gift is for all people - 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. As we all know, there is ample opportunity to repent, and repent, and repent, and repent... as we live out our lives and live in this relationship with God. The Good News is that no matter what, no matter whom, we can be baptized in the name of God, and know we are the beloved of God, and that Jesus is our truth and can empower our lives.
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. And we claim it for ourselves and for our children. And so we baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
To be the Beloved of God. What an awesome Gift. What an incredible knowledge. What a welcome call - to live out our lives as the Beloved of God. If you want to really work at getting inside what it means to be the Beloved of the God, there is no better way to spend some time than with Henri Nouwen in his book, The Life of the Beloved.
It is true that the baptism of Jesus is for us. It is for us to know that Jesus is the child of God, that Jesus is the beloved of God, and that Jesus would stand with us in the muddy waters of the Jordan River, as he will stand with each of us in the muddy waters of life.
Do you remember that Advent 1 Collect that speaks and prays "Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us…"
That’s what baptism is about -- putting on the armor of Light -- the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of you and me and the baptism of little Ella later this morning.
God in Jesus of Nazareth has come to join us in this mortal life that you and I, each of us, live, plod through, slog through, and walk through everyday. He who is without sin has come to stand with those who do... sin. He is the one who deems each of us worthy to be baptized with the baptism by which he has been baptized and to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and to be marked as God’s own forever.
Some of you may remember that our diocese had some association for a while with the Russian Orthodox Church through the ministry of Bishop Mark and a partner relationship between St. Nikolai Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and this cathedral. Many will remember that Bishop Mark's ministry took him to Russia at the invitation of the Patriarch to help support the Rus-sian Christians and the Orthodox Church in re-establishing and spreading their faith in the context of their new freedom.
When Bishop Mark returned from one of his visits he told me a baptism story that I want to share with you. It took place in St. Petersburg – which during the communist era was named Leningrad.
The priest emerged onto the street outside the church where the long Orthodox liturgy that had just taken place. As he did he met a young man who looked like one of the Hell’s Angel’s, although there was no motor-cycle in evidence - leather jacket, jeans, boots, and a bandanna on his head. He was carrying a bundle close to his chest. “Father,” he said, “I want you to baptize my child.” The priest was a bit surprised, and asked, “Are you a believer?” “No, I can't believe,” said the man, “But I want her to” nodding toward the bundle in his arms. The priest took them in and baptized the baby girl.
The priest told Bishop Mark that’s how it was all over Russia. People felt that they had been robbed of faith for the past 75 years. They had been robbed of security. They had been robbed of the power of faith. They realized they couldn't reclaim it just by willing it, but they did want it, and they wanted it for their children most of all.
They saw purpose in the lives of people who believe; they saw hope when they no longer had hope. A new world had been opened up to them and they wanted to come in and be part of that wonder and mystery and to have that power at work in their lives and in the lives of their children.
We just heard God’s vision from Isaiah:
Thus says the Lord,
he who created you,
he who formed you,
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by 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…
you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,…
everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made."
Everyone. Everyone. Everyone.
What God revealed in Jesus is the passionate longing of God for humanity and for every human being. There is no limit to God's longing. There is no limit to the time of God's endurance or to God's forbearance. There is no limit to the lengths God will go to claim or reclaim one of God's own.
In the person of Jesus of Nazareth we see this God most clearly. It was what Jesus saw and heard when he came up out of the waters of baptism.
In our own baptism and in the baptism of those we love, we say Amen. Thanks be to God.
January 7, 2007
Isaiah 43:1-7 + Acts 8:14-17 + Luke 3:15-17,21-22
Today I want to tell you a truth. You don’t have to be baptized to be a child of God. Each child, every child born of the flesh of a human mother and father is created by God, created in the image of God, is God’s child – son or daughter of God, simply by virtue of being God’s creation. All people are God’s people, every person is God’s person.
Jesus is God’s son in a unique and wonderfully mysterious way. That is shown to one and all on the banks of the Jordan River and to one and to all who hear of his baptism in the words of scripture. It must be important, it is reported in all four gospels.
Each of us here is God’s child in a unique and wonderfully mysterious way.
What is new in the Baptism of Jesus is the affirmation, the confirmation that this gift is for all people - 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. As we all know, there is ample opportunity to repent, and repent, and repent, and repent... as we live out our lives and live in this relationship with God. The Good News is that no matter what, no matter whom, we can be baptized in the name of God, and know we are the beloved of God, and that Jesus is our truth and can empower our lives.
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. And we claim it for ourselves and for our children. And so we baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
To be the Beloved of God. What an awesome Gift. What an incredible knowledge. What a welcome call - to live out our lives as the Beloved of God. If you want to really work at getting inside what it means to be the Beloved of the God, there is no better way to spend some time than with Henri Nouwen in his book, The Life of the Beloved.
It is true that the baptism of Jesus is for us. It is for us to know that Jesus is the child of God, that Jesus is the beloved of God, and that Jesus would stand with us in the muddy waters of the Jordan River, as he will stand with each of us in the muddy waters of life.
Do you remember that Advent 1 Collect that speaks and prays "Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us…"
That’s what baptism is about -- putting on the armor of Light -- the baptism of Jesus and the baptism of you and me and the baptism of little Ella later this morning.
God in Jesus of Nazareth has come to join us in this mortal life that you and I, each of us, live, plod through, slog through, and walk through everyday. He who is without sin has come to stand with those who do... sin. He is the one who deems each of us worthy to be baptized with the baptism by which he has been baptized and to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and to be marked as God’s own forever.
Some of you may remember that our diocese had some association for a while with the Russian Orthodox Church through the ministry of Bishop Mark and a partner relationship between St. Nikolai Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow and this cathedral. Many will remember that Bishop Mark's ministry took him to Russia at the invitation of the Patriarch to help support the Rus-sian Christians and the Orthodox Church in re-establishing and spreading their faith in the context of their new freedom.
When Bishop Mark returned from one of his visits he told me a baptism story that I want to share with you. It took place in St. Petersburg – which during the communist era was named Leningrad.
The priest emerged onto the street outside the church where the long Orthodox liturgy that had just taken place. As he did he met a young man who looked like one of the Hell’s Angel’s, although there was no motor-cycle in evidence - leather jacket, jeans, boots, and a bandanna on his head. He was carrying a bundle close to his chest. “Father,” he said, “I want you to baptize my child.” The priest was a bit surprised, and asked, “Are you a believer?” “No, I can't believe,” said the man, “But I want her to” nodding toward the bundle in his arms. The priest took them in and baptized the baby girl.
The priest told Bishop Mark that’s how it was all over Russia. People felt that they had been robbed of faith for the past 75 years. They had been robbed of security. They had been robbed of the power of faith. They realized they couldn't reclaim it just by willing it, but they did want it, and they wanted it for their children most of all.
They saw purpose in the lives of people who believe; they saw hope when they no longer had hope. A new world had been opened up to them and they wanted to come in and be part of that wonder and mystery and to have that power at work in their lives and in the lives of their children.
We just heard God’s vision from Isaiah:
Thus says the Lord,
he who created you,
he who formed you,
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by 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…
you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,…
everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made."
Everyone. Everyone. Everyone.
What God revealed in Jesus is the passionate longing of God for humanity and for every human being. There is no limit to God's longing. There is no limit to the time of God's endurance or to God's forbearance. There is no limit to the lengths God will go to claim or reclaim one of God's own.
In the person of Jesus of Nazareth we see this God most clearly. It was what Jesus saw and heard when he came up out of the waters of baptism.
In our own baptism and in the baptism of those we love, we say Amen. Thanks be to God.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Christmas Day 2006
December 25, 2006
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Isaiah 52:7-10 + Hebrews 1:1-12 + John 1:1-14
In the name of God, Immanuel. Merry Christmas.
Immanuel. God with us. Thanks be to God, that is what we celebrate this day. At the darkest time of the year, at a time of darkness in the world and for our own country, at a period of darkness in the lives of too many people, we pause to remember, we pause to celebrate that God is with us. One of the names for God is Immanuel.
There was an eon – an age – when God was thought of in another way. God was believed to be kind of a Deus ex Machina. That is a dramatic term for a play’s plot twists and improbable endings. A god who acts, willy-nilly, in improbable ways. A capricious god. A god removed from his creation and the lives of his people. An absentee god. An uncaring god. A god at whose mercy is all of creation. An unfeeling god. A god who was not a caring father. A god who was not a loving mother.
God was believed to be complete, omni-sufficient, no needs of any kind, omni-everything. It was thought that if God has needs, if God has feelings, if God is not “the un-moved mover”, then God would be as vulnerable as any human being – and that is not good.
But if that is the nature of God, then why did God utter that Word, the Word, the word that creates… that creates everything? "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be…' And the Word became flesh and lived among us." (Genesis 1:1-3)
Our God, the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of David, the God of Mary and Joseph, our God is a God who creates so that there will be an other to love, who seeks to be in relationship. A God who yearns that God’s love will be answered with a love of another. The beloved.
Stephen Bayne, a wise bishop and saint of this church believed in this God. He wrote: God put freedom into his created universe in order that the universe could respond to his love with an answering love of its own...He put into the created universe a principle of choice; and He paid a two-fold price for that. First, He limited his own freedom to have things his own way. Second, he committed himself to having to win out of freedom what he could easily have commanded as a right (– the right to be loved). Why did he do this? He did it because God is love and because love needs an answering love of its own.
The Beloved Apostle, John, wrote in a dark time from his refuge on Patmos long, long ago, Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God… God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.
The extent to which God will go to seek the beloved is what we celebrate today. Becoming flesh of the Virgin Mary. Coming in the vulnerable guise of a baby, named Jesus, completely at the mercy of others. Willing to live and die at the mercy of the powers of the world. It is because of the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus born of Mary in Bethlehem that we know the true name of God, Immanuel, God with us.
The highest and best of our humanity is when we are with one another, when we love one another, when we care for one another, when we respect the inherent dignity and worth of one another. This is the true image in which we have been created.
We are most like God when we love. We, too, are created for relationship.
So this morning, what answer do we make to this God who loves so much? What is my answer to God’s love of me? Where is God calling me to love, to care, to work, to bless, and to pray? What is the Word of Love God speaks? In whom will that Word be enfleshed today, embodied today, incarnated today?
God seeks an answering love to the love that comes in the birth of Jesus we celebrate this Christmas Day. What will we answer?
In the name of Immanuel, amen and Merry Christmas.
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Isaiah 52:7-10 + Hebrews 1:1-12 + John 1:1-14
In the name of God, Immanuel. Merry Christmas.
Immanuel. God with us. Thanks be to God, that is what we celebrate this day. At the darkest time of the year, at a time of darkness in the world and for our own country, at a period of darkness in the lives of too many people, we pause to remember, we pause to celebrate that God is with us. One of the names for God is Immanuel.
There was an eon – an age – when God was thought of in another way. God was believed to be kind of a Deus ex Machina. That is a dramatic term for a play’s plot twists and improbable endings. A god who acts, willy-nilly, in improbable ways. A capricious god. A god removed from his creation and the lives of his people. An absentee god. An uncaring god. A god at whose mercy is all of creation. An unfeeling god. A god who was not a caring father. A god who was not a loving mother.
God was believed to be complete, omni-sufficient, no needs of any kind, omni-everything. It was thought that if God has needs, if God has feelings, if God is not “the un-moved mover”, then God would be as vulnerable as any human being – and that is not good.
But if that is the nature of God, then why did God utter that Word, the Word, the word that creates… that creates everything? "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be…' And the Word became flesh and lived among us." (Genesis 1:1-3)
Our God, the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of David, the God of Mary and Joseph, our God is a God who creates so that there will be an other to love, who seeks to be in relationship. A God who yearns that God’s love will be answered with a love of another. The beloved.
Stephen Bayne, a wise bishop and saint of this church believed in this God. He wrote: God put freedom into his created universe in order that the universe could respond to his love with an answering love of its own...He put into the created universe a principle of choice; and He paid a two-fold price for that. First, He limited his own freedom to have things his own way. Second, he committed himself to having to win out of freedom what he could easily have commanded as a right (– the right to be loved). Why did he do this? He did it because God is love and because love needs an answering love of its own.
The Beloved Apostle, John, wrote in a dark time from his refuge on Patmos long, long ago, Beloved, let us love one another because love is from God… God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.
The extent to which God will go to seek the beloved is what we celebrate today. Becoming flesh of the Virgin Mary. Coming in the vulnerable guise of a baby, named Jesus, completely at the mercy of others. Willing to live and die at the mercy of the powers of the world. It is because of the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus born of Mary in Bethlehem that we know the true name of God, Immanuel, God with us.
The highest and best of our humanity is when we are with one another, when we love one another, when we care for one another, when we respect the inherent dignity and worth of one another. This is the true image in which we have been created.
We are most like God when we love. We, too, are created for relationship.
So this morning, what answer do we make to this God who loves so much? What is my answer to God’s love of me? Where is God calling me to love, to care, to work, to bless, and to pray? What is the Word of Love God speaks? In whom will that Word be enfleshed today, embodied today, incarnated today?
God seeks an answering love to the love that comes in the birth of Jesus we celebrate this Christmas Day. What will we answer?
In the name of Immanuel, amen and Merry Christmas.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Advent 4C: Fill the Hungry with Good Things
The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Micah 5:2-5 Canticle 15 (Luke 1:46-55) Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45
Fill the hungry with good things. My nephew Owen, who is six, recently asked his dad, “Daddy, how are you doing?”
“I’m good, buddy.”
“What do you mean? Happy healthy good, or humanality good?”
“What does humanality mean?”
“You know, like when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.”
Fill the hungry with good things. When I became a mother there were many surprises. I swear, no one told me how awe-inspiring, sleep-depriving, life-overwhelming it was going to be. It seems there was so much more to it than I could ever have anticipated. For instance, I would never have predicted my fear of newspapers. Actually, my downright manic aversion to news. It seemed I could not pick up the paper that arrived on my doorstep each morning without being confronted by headlines or pictures of children in danger. Children in need. Children dismissed and abused by hunger, war, racism and poverty. It overwhelmed me. It was as if in becoming a mother I had a new umbilical chord that connected me to all mothers. As those children suffered I felt for those mothers, those parents, who suffered with them. Do any of those parents love their child any less than I love mine? As I felt overwhelmed and exhausted trying to care for my infant in my comfortable warm home supported by my incredibly loving husband and provided with excellent medical care, I wondered about all those other mothers who has less--much less. I cried for them. It was months before I could face the news.
But I emerged from that time with a certainty that I could not act for my child alone. I knew I needed to car for and act for but for other children as well. Fill the hungry with good things Mary, the mother of Jesus, responds to the announcement of her upcoming motherhood by seeking out others. Perhaps she was much less burdened by the cares of the world as a teenager than I was as an older adult. Perhaps the angel brought her wisdom along with the astounding announcement. She is not paralyzed by fear but able to reach out to others immediately. When the angel Gabriel disrupts Mary’s entire world with the news that she will bear God’s son, he also tells her of another wonderful pregnancy, that of her cousin Elizabeth.
Now Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah were childless and really too old to be having children. Nevertheless, an angel had visited them and promised them a son who would be John the Baptist. So, having received her great news, Mary leaves immediately and sets out to visit Elizabeth who is now six months pregnant. Mary, so young to be pregnant, and Elizabeth, too old, meet. When they do, Elizabeth feels the child bounce within her and knows in her heart before Mary tells her that Mary also caries new life within her and this life is for the life of the world. Elizabeth praises and blesses Mary. Mary responds with a glorious hymn we know as the Magnificat the one we just prayed together:
My soul proclaims the greatness the Lord,
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant…
These are the first words Mary utters to another about God’s revelation to her. It is a hymn of praise and it is a song that glorifies a God who cares about those in need. She sings of a God who is merciful and strong, one who lifts up the downtrodden, fills the hungry with good things.
Fill the hungry with good things. There is much waiting to be filled with good things this day: stockings carefully hung, plates beautifully set, hearts and homes open for friends and family. But what kind of good things are we waiting for? With what good things will we fill ourselves this day? The happy, healthy kind? Will we also fill them with humanality goodness? You know, the kind when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.
Fill the hungry with good things. As we turn the corner from Advent to Christmas (and a very sharp corner it is this year), I offer a meditation from the Loma Tribesmen of Liberia which a friend here at the Cathedral shared with me:
Christmas Promise
Whoever on the night of the
Celebration of the Birth of Christ
Carries warm water and a sleeping mat
To a weary stranger,
Provides wood from his own fire
For a helpless neighbor,
Takes medicine to one
Sick with malaria,
Gives food to children
Who are thin and hungry,
Provides a torch for a traveler
In the dark forest,
Visits a timid friend
Who would like to know about Christ,
Whoever does these things
Will receive gifts of happiness
Greater than that of welcoming a son
Returning after a long absence,
And through he live to be so old
That he must be helped into his hammock,
And though his family and friends all die
So that he stands as a trunk stripped of branches,
Yet life will be sweet for him,
And he will have great peace,
As one whose rice harvest is great,
And who hears his neighbors
Praise the exploits of is youth.
So will you receive happiness
If you do these acts of love and service
On the night of the celebration of Christmas,
The Birth of Christ.
Amen.
Anne E. Kitch © 2006
Micah 5:2-5 Canticle 15 (Luke 1:46-55) Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45
Fill the hungry with good things. My nephew Owen, who is six, recently asked his dad, “Daddy, how are you doing?”
“I’m good, buddy.”
“What do you mean? Happy healthy good, or humanality good?”
“What does humanality mean?”
“You know, like when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.”
Fill the hungry with good things. When I became a mother there were many surprises. I swear, no one told me how awe-inspiring, sleep-depriving, life-overwhelming it was going to be. It seems there was so much more to it than I could ever have anticipated. For instance, I would never have predicted my fear of newspapers. Actually, my downright manic aversion to news. It seemed I could not pick up the paper that arrived on my doorstep each morning without being confronted by headlines or pictures of children in danger. Children in need. Children dismissed and abused by hunger, war, racism and poverty. It overwhelmed me. It was as if in becoming a mother I had a new umbilical chord that connected me to all mothers. As those children suffered I felt for those mothers, those parents, who suffered with them. Do any of those parents love their child any less than I love mine? As I felt overwhelmed and exhausted trying to care for my infant in my comfortable warm home supported by my incredibly loving husband and provided with excellent medical care, I wondered about all those other mothers who has less--much less. I cried for them. It was months before I could face the news.
But I emerged from that time with a certainty that I could not act for my child alone. I knew I needed to car for and act for but for other children as well. Fill the hungry with good things Mary, the mother of Jesus, responds to the announcement of her upcoming motherhood by seeking out others. Perhaps she was much less burdened by the cares of the world as a teenager than I was as an older adult. Perhaps the angel brought her wisdom along with the astounding announcement. She is not paralyzed by fear but able to reach out to others immediately. When the angel Gabriel disrupts Mary’s entire world with the news that she will bear God’s son, he also tells her of another wonderful pregnancy, that of her cousin Elizabeth.
Now Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah were childless and really too old to be having children. Nevertheless, an angel had visited them and promised them a son who would be John the Baptist. So, having received her great news, Mary leaves immediately and sets out to visit Elizabeth who is now six months pregnant. Mary, so young to be pregnant, and Elizabeth, too old, meet. When they do, Elizabeth feels the child bounce within her and knows in her heart before Mary tells her that Mary also caries new life within her and this life is for the life of the world. Elizabeth praises and blesses Mary. Mary responds with a glorious hymn we know as the Magnificat the one we just prayed together:
My soul proclaims the greatness the Lord,
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant…
These are the first words Mary utters to another about God’s revelation to her. It is a hymn of praise and it is a song that glorifies a God who cares about those in need. She sings of a God who is merciful and strong, one who lifts up the downtrodden, fills the hungry with good things.
Fill the hungry with good things. There is much waiting to be filled with good things this day: stockings carefully hung, plates beautifully set, hearts and homes open for friends and family. But what kind of good things are we waiting for? With what good things will we fill ourselves this day? The happy, healthy kind? Will we also fill them with humanality goodness? You know, the kind when you do nice things for people and do your best to help them.
Fill the hungry with good things. As we turn the corner from Advent to Christmas (and a very sharp corner it is this year), I offer a meditation from the Loma Tribesmen of Liberia which a friend here at the Cathedral shared with me:
Christmas Promise
Whoever on the night of the
Celebration of the Birth of Christ
Carries warm water and a sleeping mat
To a weary stranger,
Provides wood from his own fire
For a helpless neighbor,
Takes medicine to one
Sick with malaria,
Gives food to children
Who are thin and hungry,
Provides a torch for a traveler
In the dark forest,
Visits a timid friend
Who would like to know about Christ,
Whoever does these things
Will receive gifts of happiness
Greater than that of welcoming a son
Returning after a long absence,
And through he live to be so old
That he must be helped into his hammock,
And though his family and friends all die
So that he stands as a trunk stripped of branches,
Yet life will be sweet for him,
And he will have great peace,
As one whose rice harvest is great,
And who hears his neighbors
Praise the exploits of is youth.
So will you receive happiness
If you do these acts of love and service
On the night of the celebration of Christmas,
The Birth of Christ.
Amen.
Anne E. Kitch © 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Advent 3: What then should we do?
December 17, 2006
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Zephaniah 3:14-20 + Philippians 4:4-7 + Luke 3:7-18
“You brood of vipers!
Boy, is John cranky?! Perhaps one too many days on locusts and wild honey, you think? Perhaps John had never heard that proverb, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Did those opening lines make them eager to hear what he had to say that day? I doubt it, but I think he got their attention, and he got ours as well.
But when you do that homiletically, prophetically, or even conversationally, you run the risk of so disorienting or alienating your hearers that they may miss the word that you, and – one hopes, humbly – God, have in store for them.
That could also be said for the gospel from Luke this morning. The gospel isn’t about some cranky oddball down by some riverside on the edge of some wilderness who could so easily claim our attention and distract us from what is truly important. It is not about John. It is not about indictment. It is about what God is about to do, and indeed has started doing.
It is about God’s intention for humankind and all creation, and it’s about what God is doing through Jesus Christ. It is about Good News. It is about the opportunity for Repentance, Renewal and Restoration.
Repentance, Renewal and Restoration. In other words, it is about how to get in on what God is doing, not what or who will keep you out of it.
For Luke, the One John is pointing to, the one who is coming into the world, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire, that’s Jesus, that’s the Good in the News. Jesus is the point, or as we say these days, Jesus is the reason for the season.
And lest you be concerned about that baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire, it has already happened. It is not what is to come for you and me. It’s already happened. We call it Pentecost. And the baptism by which we baptize is a hearkening back not only to the baptism of John with water in the River Jordan, but also to the baptism he prophesied and which came to pass on Pentecost when all the believers were baptized in the Holy Spirit signified by tongues of fire.
You see? It’s all connected. It’s all part of the plan. And it is all Good News because it is about how much God wants us to know how beloved we are of God and to know that there is a way to live more and more deeply in that love, in that kingdom, under that reign – the reign of God in our hearts and in our lives and in our world. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the Good News that John has come to point to. The new opportunity for repentance renewal, and restoration – of you, me, them, the whole megillah.
John is clear. We need to be clear.
Would that we all could be as self-aware and self-defined as John; knowing precisely what our place in the scheme of thing is; knowing precisely who we are created and called to be; knowing precisely what we are to do and what we are not to do. I think that most of us most of the time don’t live there; don’t have that much certitude about ourselves or much else.
And so the crowds ask John, “What then should we do?” And the sinful tax collectors ask him, “Teacher, what should we do?” And the soldiers ask him, “And we, what should we do?”
Repentance is more than being sorry, it is a call to action, to do something. And we ask, “What are we to do?”
What are we to do as a sign that we have turned our lives in a God-ward direction? What are we to do to find a renewed spirit, to find a renewed meaning in our lives? What are we to do to help in our own restoration, the restoration of others, and the restoration of the world? “What are we to do?
And how does John answer? "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
Know what you have. Be satisfied with what you have. Share what you have. The necessities of life are to be apportioned to all, to each and everyone, do your part in that distribution.
“Do not let your hands grow weak.” “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name; Make his deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember that his Name is exalted.” “Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone… Do not worry about anything… in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Repentance, renewal, and restoration. The incarnational enterprise. The divine initiative.
And eventually in God’s time, each one, one-by-one, will be renewed and restored – one-by-one, until in God’s time the prophecies of Zephaniah and Isaiah and John the Baptizer shall come to pass for all people, for the whole of God’s creation.
All will be renewed in God’s love,
Disaster will be removed
There will be no reproach
No one will bear the weight of oppression
The lame will be saved,
The outcast will be gathered,
Shame will be turned into praise,
And we will all be brought safely home.
Thanks be to God.
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Zephaniah 3:14-20 + Philippians 4:4-7 + Luke 3:7-18
“You brood of vipers!
Boy, is John cranky?! Perhaps one too many days on locusts and wild honey, you think? Perhaps John had never heard that proverb, “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
Did those opening lines make them eager to hear what he had to say that day? I doubt it, but I think he got their attention, and he got ours as well.
But when you do that homiletically, prophetically, or even conversationally, you run the risk of so disorienting or alienating your hearers that they may miss the word that you, and – one hopes, humbly – God, have in store for them.
That could also be said for the gospel from Luke this morning. The gospel isn’t about some cranky oddball down by some riverside on the edge of some wilderness who could so easily claim our attention and distract us from what is truly important. It is not about John. It is not about indictment. It is about what God is about to do, and indeed has started doing.
It is about God’s intention for humankind and all creation, and it’s about what God is doing through Jesus Christ. It is about Good News. It is about the opportunity for Repentance, Renewal and Restoration.
Repentance, Renewal and Restoration. In other words, it is about how to get in on what God is doing, not what or who will keep you out of it.
For Luke, the One John is pointing to, the one who is coming into the world, the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire, that’s Jesus, that’s the Good in the News. Jesus is the point, or as we say these days, Jesus is the reason for the season.
And lest you be concerned about that baptism of the Holy Spirit and Fire, it has already happened. It is not what is to come for you and me. It’s already happened. We call it Pentecost. And the baptism by which we baptize is a hearkening back not only to the baptism of John with water in the River Jordan, but also to the baptism he prophesied and which came to pass on Pentecost when all the believers were baptized in the Holy Spirit signified by tongues of fire.
You see? It’s all connected. It’s all part of the plan. And it is all Good News because it is about how much God wants us to know how beloved we are of God and to know that there is a way to live more and more deeply in that love, in that kingdom, under that reign – the reign of God in our hearts and in our lives and in our world. That’s what it’s all about. That’s the Good News that John has come to point to. The new opportunity for repentance renewal, and restoration – of you, me, them, the whole megillah.
John is clear. We need to be clear.
Would that we all could be as self-aware and self-defined as John; knowing precisely what our place in the scheme of thing is; knowing precisely who we are created and called to be; knowing precisely what we are to do and what we are not to do. I think that most of us most of the time don’t live there; don’t have that much certitude about ourselves or much else.
And so the crowds ask John, “What then should we do?” And the sinful tax collectors ask him, “Teacher, what should we do?” And the soldiers ask him, “And we, what should we do?”
Repentance is more than being sorry, it is a call to action, to do something. And we ask, “What are we to do?”
What are we to do as a sign that we have turned our lives in a God-ward direction? What are we to do to find a renewed spirit, to find a renewed meaning in our lives? What are we to do to help in our own restoration, the restoration of others, and the restoration of the world? “What are we to do?
And how does John answer? "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."
Know what you have. Be satisfied with what you have. Share what you have. The necessities of life are to be apportioned to all, to each and everyone, do your part in that distribution.
“Do not let your hands grow weak.” “Give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name; Make his deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember that his Name is exalted.” “Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone… Do not worry about anything… in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Repentance, renewal, and restoration. The incarnational enterprise. The divine initiative.
And eventually in God’s time, each one, one-by-one, will be renewed and restored – one-by-one, until in God’s time the prophecies of Zephaniah and Isaiah and John the Baptizer shall come to pass for all people, for the whole of God’s creation.
All will be renewed in God’s love,
Disaster will be removed
There will be no reproach
No one will bear the weight of oppression
The lame will be saved,
The outcast will be gathered,
Shame will be turned into praise,
And we will all be brought safely home.
Thanks be to God.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Advent 2: Repentance, what is it?
December 10, 2006 at 10:30
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I am delighted to be with you once again. And on Friday I received the ultimate compliment: Rick asked for another date for me to visit you in the winter. If that isn’t the triumph of hope over experience, I don’t know what is. I am glad to be with you, to be part of your fellowship, whenever it is possible.
Two weeks ago, on the Feast of Christ the King, when Pilate questioned Jesus, I thought about the coming of Christ bringing with it light, perfect, flawless light; and how anyone unable or unwilling to face or to meet that light will instinctively put himself or herself in opposition to it. Opposition to that light, opposition to Christ, cries for repentance.
And last week, when the Gospel spoke of Christ’s return, in power and great glory, I thought about repentance now rather than later, now before Christ returns to be our Judge. I thought about it in terms like these: you and I can face divine judgment now, today: confessing to God our sins, repenting of those sins, and having those sins wiped away by divine forgiveness. If all our wrongs have been removed by daily repentance and forgiveness, there will be nothing left to judge on Judgment Day.
And today, John the Baptist strides across the stage “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” From Pilate’s encounter with Jesus, to the second coming, to John’s preaching, the Gospel cries for our repentance, repentance which is necessary to stand before him when he comes again.
Repentance, what is it? What is it to us? In St. Luke’s Gospel, the word for repentance is used more than in any other Gospel. For St. Luke, perhaps, the foremost characteristic of Christians is repentance, a word whose Greek root means after-thought, or change, or change in one’s mind or thinking.
What is it about our thinking that needs changing? Simply stated, I think it is our idea that we can do it by ourselves. We are justified before God by our good lives and our good works. We, after all, are ruggedly independent and self-reliant Americans. Our lack of needing help lies deep in our national consciousness. We think we know what we and the world need to do. We are pretty good people because we obey the commandments. We aren’t as bad as those sinners who stand somewhere beyond the tip of my pointing finger. And, if we should find we are coming up short in some of areas, we might reflect on our misdeeds only to discover ways that we can stop doing the bad things and start doing good things. We ourselves can change ourselves through self-help, self-actualization, and self-direction.
The problem with this type of repentance is that it doesn’t seek outside help. The Savior has no part in it. The mind still thinks, “I can do it by myself.” The mind hasn’t been changed; it hasn’t repented. It has not turned.
I think the reason Jesus had so much trouble with the scribes and the Pharisees was that they were doing pretty well by themselves, or so they thought. They were living, as we are, good, moral, obedient lives before God and neighbor. By contrast, the sinners and tax collectors were quite aware that they didn’t measure up to God’s or even society’s demands. They knew they couldn’t do it by themselves. They needed help. Repentance certainly involves declaring to yourself and to God, “I can’t do it alone.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but along with the scribes and Pharisees’ self-righteousness went the idea that a little, I mean a very little, generosity goes a long way. I don’t think they were big givers. From their questions to Jesus, I’d guess they were minimal givers, the least the law requires. A change of heart, a change of mind, might be just what they need. This is the season, the time, for it.
Your generosity, your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program, and the substantial benefits are becoming legendary through the Diocese. I know this is so, because I have begun to mention both of them every time I visit a parish. You know first hand what it is to make a significant turning, and you are leading the way. But each of us, deep inside, needs to make a turn or two. In fact, I’d say, the road to Bethlehem and the road to Christmas Eve has at least a couple of turns we each need to make in order to celebrate with fullness the Nativity of the Lord, to greet our new-born Savior with humility and with a purity of heart guilelessly to adore him.
Before we let the whirl of the season spin us around and around and around, let us turn to greet him, let us turn our heads to face him, who came once and will come again just to claim us.
As the prophet Baruch wrote, put off sorrow and affliction, and put on the robe of God’s righteousness. We have been called to a new way of living. We have been called to be born again, and again, in ever closer approximation to the Lord. Put off sorrow. Put on the robe of righteousness and obedience. With Baruch, Isaiah, and John encouraging us, why not follow their lead in the way prepared, in the way that leads to life everlasting?
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I am delighted to be with you once again. And on Friday I received the ultimate compliment: Rick asked for another date for me to visit you in the winter. If that isn’t the triumph of hope over experience, I don’t know what is. I am glad to be with you, to be part of your fellowship, whenever it is possible.
Two weeks ago, on the Feast of Christ the King, when Pilate questioned Jesus, I thought about the coming of Christ bringing with it light, perfect, flawless light; and how anyone unable or unwilling to face or to meet that light will instinctively put himself or herself in opposition to it. Opposition to that light, opposition to Christ, cries for repentance.
And last week, when the Gospel spoke of Christ’s return, in power and great glory, I thought about repentance now rather than later, now before Christ returns to be our Judge. I thought about it in terms like these: you and I can face divine judgment now, today: confessing to God our sins, repenting of those sins, and having those sins wiped away by divine forgiveness. If all our wrongs have been removed by daily repentance and forgiveness, there will be nothing left to judge on Judgment Day.
And today, John the Baptist strides across the stage “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” From Pilate’s encounter with Jesus, to the second coming, to John’s preaching, the Gospel cries for our repentance, repentance which is necessary to stand before him when he comes again.
Repentance, what is it? What is it to us? In St. Luke’s Gospel, the word for repentance is used more than in any other Gospel. For St. Luke, perhaps, the foremost characteristic of Christians is repentance, a word whose Greek root means after-thought, or change, or change in one’s mind or thinking.
What is it about our thinking that needs changing? Simply stated, I think it is our idea that we can do it by ourselves. We are justified before God by our good lives and our good works. We, after all, are ruggedly independent and self-reliant Americans. Our lack of needing help lies deep in our national consciousness. We think we know what we and the world need to do. We are pretty good people because we obey the commandments. We aren’t as bad as those sinners who stand somewhere beyond the tip of my pointing finger. And, if we should find we are coming up short in some of areas, we might reflect on our misdeeds only to discover ways that we can stop doing the bad things and start doing good things. We ourselves can change ourselves through self-help, self-actualization, and self-direction.
The problem with this type of repentance is that it doesn’t seek outside help. The Savior has no part in it. The mind still thinks, “I can do it by myself.” The mind hasn’t been changed; it hasn’t repented. It has not turned.
I think the reason Jesus had so much trouble with the scribes and the Pharisees was that they were doing pretty well by themselves, or so they thought. They were living, as we are, good, moral, obedient lives before God and neighbor. By contrast, the sinners and tax collectors were quite aware that they didn’t measure up to God’s or even society’s demands. They knew they couldn’t do it by themselves. They needed help. Repentance certainly involves declaring to yourself and to God, “I can’t do it alone.”
Maybe I’m wrong, but along with the scribes and Pharisees’ self-righteousness went the idea that a little, I mean a very little, generosity goes a long way. I don’t think they were big givers. From their questions to Jesus, I’d guess they were minimal givers, the least the law requires. A change of heart, a change of mind, might be just what they need. This is the season, the time, for it.
Your generosity, your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program, and the substantial benefits are becoming legendary through the Diocese. I know this is so, because I have begun to mention both of them every time I visit a parish. You know first hand what it is to make a significant turning, and you are leading the way. But each of us, deep inside, needs to make a turn or two. In fact, I’d say, the road to Bethlehem and the road to Christmas Eve has at least a couple of turns we each need to make in order to celebrate with fullness the Nativity of the Lord, to greet our new-born Savior with humility and with a purity of heart guilelessly to adore him.
Before we let the whirl of the season spin us around and around and around, let us turn to greet him, let us turn our heads to face him, who came once and will come again just to claim us.
As the prophet Baruch wrote, put off sorrow and affliction, and put on the robe of God’s righteousness. We have been called to a new way of living. We have been called to be born again, and again, in ever closer approximation to the Lord. Put off sorrow. Put on the robe of righteousness and obedience. With Baruch, Isaiah, and John encouraging us, why not follow their lead in the way prepared, in the way that leads to life everlasting?
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
Advent 2: Picture This
December 10, 2006 at 8 o'clock
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Once again, I am delighted to be with you. You should know that as I visit parishes around the Diocese, I have started mentioning the Cathedral very often. Your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program and your faith have yielded a harvest of many good results. So many increases in tangible signs of your commitment and stewardship, are blessings that other parishes cannot pretend do not result from the right approach. You are an example to us all.
Picture this. Someone wearing very strange clothes approaches you on a street corner, perhaps on West Fourth Street, and yells at you that your life is a mess and that your only hope is to put it in order. Picture that happening.
In a way, it just has happened. Through the Gospel, John the Baptist, with his strange clothes of camel’s hair, has yelled at you and me today. He’s told us that our sins weigh us down and that repentance is necessary for us to prepare the way of the Lord. Repentance is necessary for you and for me to celebrate Christmas with the fullness the Nativity of the Lord calls from each of us.
You can see why John wasn’t all that popular. You can see why he was living on the fringe. The message is so radical, so demanding, that the fringe was probably the only place he could plant his feet. But was he speaking for God? Was he telling us what we need to hear, as opposed to what we just do not want to hear? I believe he is. He is reminding us that our relationship with God depends largely on us. We have to make the move. God already has made the move to us in sending the prophets and John himself, and, most especially in sending Jesus to us. We may need what John has to say. We may need what we today jokingly call a “wake-up call.” This is a season for us to be awakened, perhaps even shaken, out of our complacency and out of our usual, everyday conversation with God. We need to put aside some of our behavior and some of our thoughts to serve God more nearly.
You and you alone best know what you need to do. No one knows better than you what you need to do. I heard it said the other day that everyone knows what he or she needs to do to be more faithful to God’s will and call for us. What we don’t know, often, is how to do it. I can suggest that you begin with a small thing. If the thing is noticeable, like drinking less or praying more or giving away more of your money, your friends and your family will notice, and they will resist. You have to be prepared for that. You have to put the will and call of God in the mix of your choices and make the choice which leads to your greater freedom and your greater spiritual health.
Listen to John, and take his words to heart. They speak to your deepest need and your deepest desire. He prophesies for God who knows you better than anyone else. As radical as he is, he is part of God’s redeeming love for you and your salvation. Listen to him.
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
The Ven. Howard Stringfellow III
Baruch 5:1-9 + Philippians 1:3-11 + Luke 3:1-16
In the Name of the True and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Once again, I am delighted to be with you. You should know that as I visit parishes around the Diocese, I have started mentioning the Cathedral very often. Your adherence to the Consecration Sunday program and your faith have yielded a harvest of many good results. So many increases in tangible signs of your commitment and stewardship, are blessings that other parishes cannot pretend do not result from the right approach. You are an example to us all.
Picture this. Someone wearing very strange clothes approaches you on a street corner, perhaps on West Fourth Street, and yells at you that your life is a mess and that your only hope is to put it in order. Picture that happening.
In a way, it just has happened. Through the Gospel, John the Baptist, with his strange clothes of camel’s hair, has yelled at you and me today. He’s told us that our sins weigh us down and that repentance is necessary for us to prepare the way of the Lord. Repentance is necessary for you and for me to celebrate Christmas with the fullness the Nativity of the Lord calls from each of us.
You can see why John wasn’t all that popular. You can see why he was living on the fringe. The message is so radical, so demanding, that the fringe was probably the only place he could plant his feet. But was he speaking for God? Was he telling us what we need to hear, as opposed to what we just do not want to hear? I believe he is. He is reminding us that our relationship with God depends largely on us. We have to make the move. God already has made the move to us in sending the prophets and John himself, and, most especially in sending Jesus to us. We may need what John has to say. We may need what we today jokingly call a “wake-up call.” This is a season for us to be awakened, perhaps even shaken, out of our complacency and out of our usual, everyday conversation with God. We need to put aside some of our behavior and some of our thoughts to serve God more nearly.
You and you alone best know what you need to do. No one knows better than you what you need to do. I heard it said the other day that everyone knows what he or she needs to do to be more faithful to God’s will and call for us. What we don’t know, often, is how to do it. I can suggest that you begin with a small thing. If the thing is noticeable, like drinking less or praying more or giving away more of your money, your friends and your family will notice, and they will resist. You have to be prepared for that. You have to put the will and call of God in the mix of your choices and make the choice which leads to your greater freedom and your greater spiritual health.
Listen to John, and take his words to heart. They speak to your deepest need and your deepest desire. He prophesies for God who knows you better than anyone else. As radical as he is, he is part of God’s redeeming love for you and your salvation. Listen to him.
In Christ’s Name. Amen.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Advent 1: The Power of One
December 3, 2006
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Jeremiah 33:14-16 + 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 + Luke 21:25-36
I was struck last Sunday by the phrase, “The Power of One”. Canon Kitch ended her wonderful reflection last week by reminding us about the difference ONE can make; be it one person, one family, one household, one clan, one tribe, one nation, one congregation, one denomination, one faith tradition, one God. The difference ONE can make, the Power of One.
We continue this week with that very important point, that very important theme, that very important truth. There is Power in One. There is power in each and every one. Power to be used in the work of creation, power to be used in the reweaving of the fabric of the world, power to be used in seeing to the well-being of the anawim, the poor of the land – this land, and the land across the seas. The Power of One. The power in one.
One person pushed back the veil that seems to separate the holy and mundane. One person repaired the breach that had existed between the Creator and the creation. One person began the process of redemption that continues through this very day and will never end until redemption is complete. One person began the work of reconciliation of one to another. One person inaugurated the reign of God. One person makes it possible to live in this world, to live through this life, with purpose, with integrity, with compassion, with love. One person, the Power of One.
Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Savior of the world, Jesus the Savior of each one of us, Jesus who was and is and is to come. Jesus who is One and equal in the Trinity we call God. Jesus, the Power of One.
We most often think of Jesus, I think, as the One who was and the One who is to come. Neglecting a very important truth, a very important Jesus, the One who is.
Theologian N. T. Wright suggests that the "reappearing" of Jesus might be a better phrase than “the second coming” -- and one that was used by some early Christians. Wright says "(Jesus) is, at the moment, present with us, but hidden behind that invisible veil which keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments, such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scriptures, and our work with the poor, when the veil seems particularly thin.
But one day the veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one: Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God's new world will at last be (fully) in place, full of new prospects and possibilities." (Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense p. 219)
Celtic spirituality speaks of the “thin places”, holy places like Iona and Lindesfarne and Clonmacnoise and Glendolaugh where our J2A pilgrims went last summer. Places where when you step onto the ground you know you should take off your shoes. Places where the veil between this world, our life, and its Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer is very thin indeed.
What does it take? Do we need to rehearse again the litany of work waiting to be done, waiting to be begun, waiting for some-One to begin? Do we need to reread, rename the accounts of the evil in the world that leads to suffering, conflict, violence, and death, such things as the holocausts of our time, the AIDS epidemic in Africa and now in India and China, nine-eleven and the constant threat of attack we know in this country as well as it is known around the world, or the untimely death of a friend or loved one by accident or disease.
The monthly news magazine from Trinity Church, Wall Street has on its cover the word, eschatology noun.
1. The theological study of end times.
2. A difficult word to pronounce.
3. Hope that really matters.
If the Eschaton looks to, promises an end to all, evil, what would living in such a world be like? How do we capture glimpses of that world today? What does Kingdom life look like? How do we relate to one another -- not just fellow cathedral members, but yes, fellow members of this cathedral household, how do we relate to one another? How do we relate to the children of God around the world?
I have read that it is highly unlikely that any individual or congregation will change the world. I don’t buy that. I don’t believe that. It is a crock and it is a copout.
There was a time during my tenure as the Archdeacon of Bethlehem when there was no mission outside of this diocese, No care expressed for the evangelization of the world or the living conditions of people in the slums of the world. There was nothing.
Then one day my telephone rang and on the other end was a woman by the name of Connie Fegley, who said, “Rick, do you know what’s going on in Sudan? We have to do something!” And My God, what has been done since surpasses one’s imagination.
One can make a difference in the lives of one or two or, perhaps, a dozen people, or perhaps a village, or perhaps a congregation of people, or perhaps a family of people, or perhaps a diocese of people. We can relieve some suffering. We can offer glimpses of the coming Kingdom.
Some examples right here and right now? The Thanksgiving baskets provided families by families of the cathedral and delivered by our teenagers; the Christmas presents being sought, assembled, and delivered by our teenagers; the ministry of one Joel Atkinson who simply be his presence on the street declares the presence and the compassion of the one named Jesus.
What we are to be about in this time, in our time, before the end-time, is making every place we touch a “thin place”, demonstrating to every person we encounter that the Reign of God is begun. We have been given the power to do that. Empowered by the One who was and is and is to come to exercise the Power of One. To bring Hope that really matters.
It is time to be about that business.
The Ven Richard I Cluett
Jeremiah 33:14-16 + 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 + Luke 21:25-36
I was struck last Sunday by the phrase, “The Power of One”. Canon Kitch ended her wonderful reflection last week by reminding us about the difference ONE can make; be it one person, one family, one household, one clan, one tribe, one nation, one congregation, one denomination, one faith tradition, one God. The difference ONE can make, the Power of One.
We continue this week with that very important point, that very important theme, that very important truth. There is Power in One. There is power in each and every one. Power to be used in the work of creation, power to be used in the reweaving of the fabric of the world, power to be used in seeing to the well-being of the anawim, the poor of the land – this land, and the land across the seas. The Power of One. The power in one.
One person pushed back the veil that seems to separate the holy and mundane. One person repaired the breach that had existed between the Creator and the creation. One person began the process of redemption that continues through this very day and will never end until redemption is complete. One person began the work of reconciliation of one to another. One person inaugurated the reign of God. One person makes it possible to live in this world, to live through this life, with purpose, with integrity, with compassion, with love. One person, the Power of One.
Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Son of God, Jesus the Savior of the world, Jesus the Savior of each one of us, Jesus who was and is and is to come. Jesus who is One and equal in the Trinity we call God. Jesus, the Power of One.
We most often think of Jesus, I think, as the One who was and the One who is to come. Neglecting a very important truth, a very important Jesus, the One who is.
Theologian N. T. Wright suggests that the "reappearing" of Jesus might be a better phrase than “the second coming” -- and one that was used by some early Christians. Wright says "(Jesus) is, at the moment, present with us, but hidden behind that invisible veil which keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments, such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scriptures, and our work with the poor, when the veil seems particularly thin.
But one day the veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one: Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God's new world will at last be (fully) in place, full of new prospects and possibilities." (Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense p. 219)
Celtic spirituality speaks of the “thin places”, holy places like Iona and Lindesfarne and Clonmacnoise and Glendolaugh where our J2A pilgrims went last summer. Places where when you step onto the ground you know you should take off your shoes. Places where the veil between this world, our life, and its Creator and Redeemer and Sustainer is very thin indeed.
What does it take? Do we need to rehearse again the litany of work waiting to be done, waiting to be begun, waiting for some-One to begin? Do we need to reread, rename the accounts of the evil in the world that leads to suffering, conflict, violence, and death, such things as the holocausts of our time, the AIDS epidemic in Africa and now in India and China, nine-eleven and the constant threat of attack we know in this country as well as it is known around the world, or the untimely death of a friend or loved one by accident or disease.
The monthly news magazine from Trinity Church, Wall Street has on its cover the word, eschatology noun.
1. The theological study of end times.
2. A difficult word to pronounce.
3. Hope that really matters.
If the Eschaton looks to, promises an end to all, evil, what would living in such a world be like? How do we capture glimpses of that world today? What does Kingdom life look like? How do we relate to one another -- not just fellow cathedral members, but yes, fellow members of this cathedral household, how do we relate to one another? How do we relate to the children of God around the world?
I have read that it is highly unlikely that any individual or congregation will change the world. I don’t buy that. I don’t believe that. It is a crock and it is a copout.
There was a time during my tenure as the Archdeacon of Bethlehem when there was no mission outside of this diocese, No care expressed for the evangelization of the world or the living conditions of people in the slums of the world. There was nothing.
Then one day my telephone rang and on the other end was a woman by the name of Connie Fegley, who said, “Rick, do you know what’s going on in Sudan? We have to do something!” And My God, what has been done since surpasses one’s imagination.
One can make a difference in the lives of one or two or, perhaps, a dozen people, or perhaps a village, or perhaps a congregation of people, or perhaps a family of people, or perhaps a diocese of people. We can relieve some suffering. We can offer glimpses of the coming Kingdom.
Some examples right here and right now? The Thanksgiving baskets provided families by families of the cathedral and delivered by our teenagers; the Christmas presents being sought, assembled, and delivered by our teenagers; the ministry of one Joel Atkinson who simply be his presence on the street declares the presence and the compassion of the one named Jesus.
What we are to be about in this time, in our time, before the end-time, is making every place we touch a “thin place”, demonstrating to every person we encounter that the Reign of God is begun. We have been given the power to do that. Empowered by the One who was and is and is to come to exercise the Power of One. To bring Hope that really matters.
It is time to be about that business.
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