The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Philosopher Nietzsche said, “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
In a previous life in my vocation, having left the Diocese of Bethlehem as a missionary to the Diocese of Virginia, serving on the Bishop’s staff there, I was the Bishop’s assistant for Congregational and Ministry Development. It was my job to assist congregations with the tools that they felt they needed to better their mission. Traveling around that diocese and particularly spending a great deal of time in smaller congregations, there was a consistent question. And, the question was – “Show us the way to do it. Show us the way to grow our church. Show us the way to balance our budget. Show us the way to do evangelism. Show us the way to have a dynamic Sunday school. Show us the way to do group ministry. Tell us how to do it. Reveal to us the way.”
I spent much of my time in conversations like that and, because I was fortunate to be in a diocese that had some resources, I was fortunate to gather experts in their fields from all around the church, bringing them into the diocese to do workshops. Some of those experts came touting the way. They had the way. Some of the more humble came sharing some things that they have experienced along the way. What I realized and came to know, and knew intuitively, of course, from the beginning is there isn’t one way. There isn’t one thing that might work in one place that will work in another place.
I found myself ending all of my conversations with those I was with inviting them into a “yes and” world. It’s a “yes and” world I would say. It’s not an “either or” world. In other words, there’s more than one right answer. There’s more than one possibility.
I’m about to venture into a world that I shouldn’t venture into. But, quantum physics has something to teach us a bit about the fundamental nature of the world. How it’s ordered. How it operates. I promise I’ll be here briefly, particularly to those of you who know anything about physics. I apologize. What my neophyte understanding of quantum physics teaches us about the fundamental nature of energy is that energy is small and discreet in its units and that the elementary particles of that energy behaves like particles and like waves.
Where’s Tom Stone when I need him? The movement of these particles in quantum theory is inherently random. That is to say that as energy moves about us and in us and about the world we know that it operates randomly, but in relationship with one another. We don’t always know nor can we predict how energy will move, but quantum theory does teach us that in the end, energy is in relationship. In other words, it’s a “yes and” world. Energy does behave this way and that way. How am I doing, Tom? Just shake your head, please. Thank you.
This, of course, is in dialogue with plutonium physics, which is a cause and effect physics. This is the cause of that. It’s a “yes and” world. Quantum physics teaches us, not an “either or” world. And here comes the big leap.
There is a theme in the scriptures today. And it seems like our primary player in both the Old Testament and the Gospel lesson today seem to be stuck in a world view that is “either or,” as opposed to “yes and.”
For Moses, he is surrounded by the disgruntled. He is surrounded by those who have followed a vision that he has proclaimed on behalf of the God who anointed and called him, that is that their lives should be lived free. Following that dream, they find themselves out in the wilderness, pangs of hunger coming upon them, and growing quite bored with the menu of the day...manna.
The “either or” of the world in which they seem to be stuck is either we stay here in the wilderness and eat this boring manna every day and have our stomachs cringing with hunger, or we return to slavery in Egypt where we at least tasted some meat and some sweet melon. There is a profound limitation with this worldview for those in the wilderness. They cannot and do not see the options. And, they cannot and do not see the limitless nature of the God who has called them to freedom.
Even Moses himself seems limited in his worldview, and I myself am horribly sympathetic to Moses in this particular passage. Moses himself, never sure really of his call, questioning his call all the way along, now finds himself in the wilderness surrounded by a bunch of complainers. Surely, God, this isn’t the way you planned it he says.
He is stuck in this moment in an “either or” worldview. Either God you have brought us out here and promised us something new or I can’t possibly stand one more day with this clamoring. His very own worldview seems limited and small. Even having experienced the broadness of God. Both Moses and his people seem to be stuck in that “either or” worldview and God, it seems, once again is called upon to offer the “yes and.” “Yes, people of Israel, I have liberated you and you will not die and you will grow into a new nation and you will live and once again you will taste meat and sweet melon.” And, by the way, look up at the stars and be reminded. “Moses,” he says, “yes, you will continue to lead.” And here’s the punch line Moses, “you cannot do that alone.” “And, there will be one, no two, no three, no four, no five, no seventy...seventy elders who will gather around you and will help you do that and, by the way, there’s these other two who will also anoint in order to aid you. “Yes, Moses and.”
Our good friends the disciples in today’s gospel also seem to be rooted strongly in that “either or” worldview. They come across a man who, believe it or not, is casting out demons, quickly recognizing that he is not a follower of Jesus; he’s not in their group. They quickly do what they think they should do and that is to stop him. No evil spirits cast out today...sorry, say the disciples.
It seems they cannot fathom that God’s kingdom might be spread outside of their domain. It seems that Jesus’ response to them reminds them of the yes and the and. Jesus reminds them that if one casts out in his name that he cannot continue his life without understanding that he is acting on behalf of the principals of the kingdom of God. And then, of course, Jesus goes on with all of that other stuff. You know, the pluck out your eye stuff, the cut off your hand stuff. You see here’s what I think about that. I think Jesus is hacked. I think he is hacked off. I think as is the theme in Mark’s gospel the disciples once again aren’t getting it. They stopped someone from doing a kingdom thing. And, therefore, they’re not getting it again. And Jesus reminds them though he grabs their attention and reminds them of the most prolific imagery he can find and reminds them that God’s a yes and the Kingdom of God is expansive and that the very last and very least they cannot be a stumbling block to that. Get out of the way when it’s important and part of the plan. And if that means plucking out your eye or cutting off your hand then do it. He doesn’t mean literally. There is it seems a yes and way to the Kingdom of God being spread. So the question for you today is the question I live with this week and that is...is it either or...or is it yes and? Is your rule to the way you approach life the way you see the challenges and opportunities of life one that is either or? Or yes and?
When we’re trapped in an either or worldview and I sometimes, indeed, am trapped in that either or worldview, we come to a place where we are closed off. We are incapable of being expansive and creative. We lack the perception to see the options that are around us. And we may even miss one more opportunity to grow. Now we know why we get there, you and me. We get there because we’re tired. We get there because as psychologists now call it the cumulative stress in our lives is high. Cumulative stress is now the psychology for burnout. We get to that place because we’re stressed. We get to that place because our relationships are taxed. If I have to find one more part of my heart that allows me to forgive my father one more time I’m just going to spit. If my father has to come to one more place in his life where he has to find one more part of his heart to forgive me in our relationship he’s just going to spit. That’s on the cumulatively stressed high part of that relationship. We know that we live in difficult financial times, and if we ourselves are not financially taxed, many who we love and know are. That, of course, puts us sometimes in places that we believe is either or. And, sometimes we’re in those places where we are not appropriately seeking the stimulation that we need...that stimulation in our mind and our body and our spirit. Perhaps we have forgotten what brings us joy in what we read. Or, depth to our experience in our work place by what we discover. Perhaps we’ve forgotten how important that mile walk we take every morning is. Or perhaps we’ve lost the way to the gym all together. And perhaps we’re taxed in our spiritual lives. Perhaps we’ve come to that place where we’ve forgotten how to pray. Or, where we’ve forgotten whom it is and where those places those touchstone places are in our lives that bring a step to our spirit. And, as in the disciples’ case sometimes we get there because of our arrogance or of our own control needs.
I invite you to consider the yes and worldview for you and I in our vocations. Can we lead and discover, and love and be compassionate? In our relationships, can we really live in a way that we give more of ourselves only to discover that and we will find more about ourselves?
In our finances, can we really spend less and give more? In our spiritual lives can we really let go and discover a safe place to be? We’ve been having Stewardship desserts. If you’ve not been able to get to the one you’ve been invited to or if you have no idea what I’m talking about call the office.
Recently, as recently as last night in our small group, having dessert and enjoying it, we talked about together the power of the yes. What it is just to say “yes”. Yes. Say “yes and” to the way we approach our every day work. Say “yes and” to the way we approach our relationships. Say “yes and” to the way we approach our spiritual lives. And say “yes and” to the way God may be working through us as individuals and as a community of faith. Amen.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Pentecost 16 - Proper 20
The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
This has been a hard week to be a Christian! Throughout our nation this week we have seen some startling behavior. A number of individuals that we hold up as icons, even role models in fields ranging from sports to entertainment to politics, have engaged in behavior we can only describe as rude, boorish, even angry outbursts and disgraceful, childish reactions, leading an associate from my old law firm to email me, asking if I was interested in starting a consulting business with her – we could market ourselves as behavioral consultants for celebrities and public figures, she said, with the motto, “We will teach you how not to show your behind in public.”
But this rash of bad behavior, crossing all lines – gender, race, creed, sportsmanship, professionalism – and the national reaction and discussion of the value of civility, have been yet another reminder to people of faith that we are truly pilgrims, singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.
We have also seen behavior this week that was more brutish, more deeply troubling, though I’m not sure we have connected the two in our national debate – a young woman, brutally murdered, her body stuffed into a wall, with the only apparent explanation being anger boiling over into rage, unchecked emotion giving rise to unspeakable violence. Truly, we Christians are strangers in this land, where a fellow human being can be killed so thoughtlessly, and disposed of so easily, as if she were garbage to be tossed in a dumpster.
These have been sad days, disappointing days, but what we have seen, unfortunately, is nothing new in our history as humans. James describes it in the passage from the Epistle today: “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”
And what was the offered solution, in the time of James?
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you…[for] Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom…
For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
That’s the solution: Gentleness, born of wisdom.
James speaks of ambition, calling it wicked and evil. This isn’t a value that we hold today; ambition is something that is admired and praised, and rightly so. And ambition is not a bad thing, but ambition without regard to others is unspiritual, devilish, and ambition at all cost is truly evil.
In Judaism, there is a concept called, in Hebrew, tikkun olum, which roughly translates to “repairing the world through personal action.” Jews are taught to strive towards tikkun olum in every action, every interaction, so that in making every exchange with another person holy, the division between God and the world will be worn away.
Psychologists have a similar concept, and it is called Transformational Change. The theory is that all anger, all aggression, finds its genesis in fear. When we find ourselves in an interaction that makes us afraid – whether it is fear for our physical body, fear of loneliness, fear of not being as important as we’d like to be, fear of not getting the respect that we need – that fear quickly resolves itself in anger, and aggression, and we lash out at whatever, whomever, is making us afraid.
In Transformational Change, the idea is that when we find ourselves in a situation where we are feeling fear, we hold onto it, we sit with it and let it resonate in ourselves until we figure out what is causing it, and then we decide how to respond appropriately, and make the conscious choice not to simply project our fear into the world as anger.
And so, as we enter out from this place today, as Christian pilgrims into a chaotic and sometimes harsh world, may we all have the courage to be the change we wish to see, may we repair the world in all of our actions, and may we be guided by gentleness, born of wisdom, all to the glory of God.
AMEN.
This has been a hard week to be a Christian! Throughout our nation this week we have seen some startling behavior. A number of individuals that we hold up as icons, even role models in fields ranging from sports to entertainment to politics, have engaged in behavior we can only describe as rude, boorish, even angry outbursts and disgraceful, childish reactions, leading an associate from my old law firm to email me, asking if I was interested in starting a consulting business with her – we could market ourselves as behavioral consultants for celebrities and public figures, she said, with the motto, “We will teach you how not to show your behind in public.”
But this rash of bad behavior, crossing all lines – gender, race, creed, sportsmanship, professionalism – and the national reaction and discussion of the value of civility, have been yet another reminder to people of faith that we are truly pilgrims, singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.
We have also seen behavior this week that was more brutish, more deeply troubling, though I’m not sure we have connected the two in our national debate – a young woman, brutally murdered, her body stuffed into a wall, with the only apparent explanation being anger boiling over into rage, unchecked emotion giving rise to unspeakable violence. Truly, we Christians are strangers in this land, where a fellow human being can be killed so thoughtlessly, and disposed of so easily, as if she were garbage to be tossed in a dumpster.
These have been sad days, disappointing days, but what we have seen, unfortunately, is nothing new in our history as humans. James describes it in the passage from the Epistle today: “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”
And what was the offered solution, in the time of James?
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you…[for] Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom…
For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
That’s the solution: Gentleness, born of wisdom.
James speaks of ambition, calling it wicked and evil. This isn’t a value that we hold today; ambition is something that is admired and praised, and rightly so. And ambition is not a bad thing, but ambition without regard to others is unspiritual, devilish, and ambition at all cost is truly evil.
In Judaism, there is a concept called, in Hebrew, tikkun olum, which roughly translates to “repairing the world through personal action.” Jews are taught to strive towards tikkun olum in every action, every interaction, so that in making every exchange with another person holy, the division between God and the world will be worn away.
Psychologists have a similar concept, and it is called Transformational Change. The theory is that all anger, all aggression, finds its genesis in fear. When we find ourselves in an interaction that makes us afraid – whether it is fear for our physical body, fear of loneliness, fear of not being as important as we’d like to be, fear of not getting the respect that we need – that fear quickly resolves itself in anger, and aggression, and we lash out at whatever, whomever, is making us afraid.
In Transformational Change, the idea is that when we find ourselves in a situation where we are feeling fear, we hold onto it, we sit with it and let it resonate in ourselves until we figure out what is causing it, and then we decide how to respond appropriately, and make the conscious choice not to simply project our fear into the world as anger.
And so, as we enter out from this place today, as Christian pilgrims into a chaotic and sometimes harsh world, may we all have the courage to be the change we wish to see, may we repair the world in all of our actions, and may we be guided by gentleness, born of wisdom, all to the glory of God.
AMEN.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Proverbs 22:1-2, 6-8, 22-23
Proper 18
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The evolution of a national observance of Labor Day grew out of the labor movement in North America in the midst of the Industrial Revolution of the 1880’s and 1890’s. In the continued struggle for expanding industry in a difficult economy, the seeking of jobs and fair wages, and the hope of building a strong sustaining economy, came observances of both recognizing officially the goodness of labor, AND at the same time as unions were beginning to form, finding a just workplace for the common laborer in a time when management clearly had most of the power in such relationships. President Grover Cleveland’s administration took the lead in establishing a national observance of labor in the aftermath of the deaths of workers at the hands of police and federal marshals during the infamous Pullman strike in 1893. The workers of the Pullman Palace Company had experienced significant wage cuts in a difficult economy. In addition, many working for the company lived in company-owned housing. Despite wage cuts, there was no relief in rent for housing. The railroad union across the country joined in a strike, and management appealed to the federal government for intervention. Attorney General Richard Olney invoked an injunction to end the strike, citing that the strike was illegal, as the disruption in train service impeded fair trade and secondly, the strike interfered with the delivery of mail. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act created in 1890 was aimed at breaking up monopolies. In this case, it was being used to break up a strike. Workers, of course, rebelled, the government sent in agents, and there was violence and death.
President Wilson, in the aftermath of such difficulty, was intentional in striking a reconciliatory spirit and, working closely with congress, rushed legislation through marking a day of observance and thanksgiving for labor. Since that time in 1894, there has been a national observance of labor.
A history such as this calls us to reflect on our work, our individual place and understanding of who we are as we offer ourselves to the world through our work and, of course, the ever present, always important role of justice in all we do and all we are as individuals and as a society. Wisdom, it seems, would go a long way in the historical context of those struggling in difficult times to discover a common goal and place for labor and industry, particularly in the case of the Pullman strike and its aftermath that leads us to a national day of observance of labor. Common sense, it seems, may lead us to a place of understanding who we are in our labor and how we offer ourselves to the common good.
The Book of Proverbs perhaps offers us some good old-fashioned common sense as we reflect on who we are and how we are connected to the common good.
A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches,
and favor is better than silver or gold.
The rich and the poor have this in common:
the Lord is the maker of them all.
Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity,
and the rod of anger will fail.
Those who are generous are blessed,
for they share their bread with the poor.
Do not rob the poor because they are poor,
or crush the afflicted at the gate;
for the Lord pleads their cause
and despoils of life those who despoil them.
The Book of Proverbs is considered by scholars to be wisdom literature. This book is a compilation of “wisdom” collected from centuries of sayings and writings, and offered to Jews in post-exilic Jewish history. This literature consists of two characteristics. First, contemplative and speculative writings aimed at the revelation of God’s spirit for the goodness of living life. Second, short and even pithy sayings that emphasize a moral guide of life, often appealing to lessons of experience rather than revelation.
Our scripture today comes from sayings passed down through generations in the history of Israel. It belongs to the second description of wisdom literature. Today we read straight up common sense sayings designed to be a moral guide to those striving to live a faithful life for the good of themselves and for the common good.
First, to strive for a faithful life, strive not after gold and silver, but be more cognizant about who you are and who you will be remembered to be. Generations will remember you for who you were and what you gave to the common good, rather than by what you accumulated in life. Rooted in this teaching is the rather obvious statement, we are all created by God, rich and poor. Humanity links us together, making us accountable to one another. A common sense teaching, one even found in the earliest of foundational truths of our society, but clearly as history has taught us, it is a difficult one to live faithfully.
Second, live just lives. That is, be fair. Work for your share and be mindful not to take your share at the expense of others; simple, but difficult. Clearly it is not unique in the 21st century that fortunes are, at times, built on the backs of those less fortunate. This seems to be true in ancient times as well. It is also not unique to ancient times that linked humanity also had the capacity for great generosity to the poor and downtrodden, something I see also in many of you, and it gives me great hope.
Finally, all our proverbs for this day seem to remind us that we are always folks connected to the needs of others. Simple again, I say, in principle, but our greatest challenge to live in reality as well.
This Labor Day calls us to reflect upon who we are as a faithful people. It calls us to consider to what end our labors exist. It calls us to reflect upon the fair and industrious practices with ourselves and individuals, and the fair and industrious practices that exist or need to be established within our own society. Even as many in our society struggle with unemployment and finding re-employment, we take with us the wisdom of the scriptures that reminds us that we are defined by who we are and what we offer to the common good, not by our jobs themselves, but rather by the God who links us together by our humanity. Even as we observe again this national observance of labor, we reflect on our opportunity to live lives for the common good.
I leave you with this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (BCP 261).
The Lord be with you:
Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The evolution of a national observance of Labor Day grew out of the labor movement in North America in the midst of the Industrial Revolution of the 1880’s and 1890’s. In the continued struggle for expanding industry in a difficult economy, the seeking of jobs and fair wages, and the hope of building a strong sustaining economy, came observances of both recognizing officially the goodness of labor, AND at the same time as unions were beginning to form, finding a just workplace for the common laborer in a time when management clearly had most of the power in such relationships. President Grover Cleveland’s administration took the lead in establishing a national observance of labor in the aftermath of the deaths of workers at the hands of police and federal marshals during the infamous Pullman strike in 1893. The workers of the Pullman Palace Company had experienced significant wage cuts in a difficult economy. In addition, many working for the company lived in company-owned housing. Despite wage cuts, there was no relief in rent for housing. The railroad union across the country joined in a strike, and management appealed to the federal government for intervention. Attorney General Richard Olney invoked an injunction to end the strike, citing that the strike was illegal, as the disruption in train service impeded fair trade and secondly, the strike interfered with the delivery of mail. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act created in 1890 was aimed at breaking up monopolies. In this case, it was being used to break up a strike. Workers, of course, rebelled, the government sent in agents, and there was violence and death.
President Wilson, in the aftermath of such difficulty, was intentional in striking a reconciliatory spirit and, working closely with congress, rushed legislation through marking a day of observance and thanksgiving for labor. Since that time in 1894, there has been a national observance of labor.
A history such as this calls us to reflect on our work, our individual place and understanding of who we are as we offer ourselves to the world through our work and, of course, the ever present, always important role of justice in all we do and all we are as individuals and as a society. Wisdom, it seems, would go a long way in the historical context of those struggling in difficult times to discover a common goal and place for labor and industry, particularly in the case of the Pullman strike and its aftermath that leads us to a national day of observance of labor. Common sense, it seems, may lead us to a place of understanding who we are in our labor and how we offer ourselves to the common good.
The Book of Proverbs perhaps offers us some good old-fashioned common sense as we reflect on who we are and how we are connected to the common good.
A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches,
and favor is better than silver or gold.
The rich and the poor have this in common:
the Lord is the maker of them all.
Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity,
and the rod of anger will fail.
Those who are generous are blessed,
for they share their bread with the poor.
Do not rob the poor because they are poor,
or crush the afflicted at the gate;
for the Lord pleads their cause
and despoils of life those who despoil them.
The Book of Proverbs is considered by scholars to be wisdom literature. This book is a compilation of “wisdom” collected from centuries of sayings and writings, and offered to Jews in post-exilic Jewish history. This literature consists of two characteristics. First, contemplative and speculative writings aimed at the revelation of God’s spirit for the goodness of living life. Second, short and even pithy sayings that emphasize a moral guide of life, often appealing to lessons of experience rather than revelation.
Our scripture today comes from sayings passed down through generations in the history of Israel. It belongs to the second description of wisdom literature. Today we read straight up common sense sayings designed to be a moral guide to those striving to live a faithful life for the good of themselves and for the common good.
First, to strive for a faithful life, strive not after gold and silver, but be more cognizant about who you are and who you will be remembered to be. Generations will remember you for who you were and what you gave to the common good, rather than by what you accumulated in life. Rooted in this teaching is the rather obvious statement, we are all created by God, rich and poor. Humanity links us together, making us accountable to one another. A common sense teaching, one even found in the earliest of foundational truths of our society, but clearly as history has taught us, it is a difficult one to live faithfully.
Second, live just lives. That is, be fair. Work for your share and be mindful not to take your share at the expense of others; simple, but difficult. Clearly it is not unique in the 21st century that fortunes are, at times, built on the backs of those less fortunate. This seems to be true in ancient times as well. It is also not unique to ancient times that linked humanity also had the capacity for great generosity to the poor and downtrodden, something I see also in many of you, and it gives me great hope.
Finally, all our proverbs for this day seem to remind us that we are always folks connected to the needs of others. Simple again, I say, in principle, but our greatest challenge to live in reality as well.
This Labor Day calls us to reflect upon who we are as a faithful people. It calls us to consider to what end our labors exist. It calls us to reflect upon the fair and industrious practices with ourselves and individuals, and the fair and industrious practices that exist or need to be established within our own society. Even as many in our society struggle with unemployment and finding re-employment, we take with us the wisdom of the scriptures that reminds us that we are defined by who we are and what we offer to the common good, not by our jobs themselves, but rather by the God who links us together by our humanity. Even as we observe again this national observance of labor, we reflect on our opportunity to live lives for the common good.
I leave you with this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (BCP 261).
The Lord be with you:
Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Pentecost 13
The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
God loves us. Each and every one of us.
The readings today tell us this in a multitude of ways.
In James we are told that we are “a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures.”
“First fruits” was a term of art in ancient times – the first fruits were the finest, most perfect specimens of the harvest. The first born lambs, free of blemish, the first vegetables and fruits of the trees and vines, the first, most pure pressing of the olive oil – all of these were the first fruits that were presented at the temple as a sacrifice to God – the finest of creation for the creator of them all. And we people, says the author of James, are the first fruits, we are the most perfect of creation, presented back to God for his appreciation.
God created not only us in his image, but he created this world full of beautiful, wondrous things as our home, as our place to delight and be glad, and really, we shouldn’t need any more proof of God’s love for us than this world!
But, God also gave us free will and the ability to think for ourselves, and as soon as we were created, we started to out distance between ourselves and God, and in that space, evil grew.
We began to honor God with our lips, but not our hearts. We began to worship in vain, teaching human precepts as doctrine, and separate ourselves from God’s love through theft, murder, adultery, avarice, through wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, and slander, through the folly of pride.
We began to set up barriers between ourselves and our fellows, arguing over who was closer to God, who was more beloved, while insuring in our very arguments and judgments that we were each, in fact, farther out of reach of God’s healing embrace, and eventually we mastered that state of evil, of pride, of folly that we were warned against when ignored the command to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger…to rid ourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and instead to be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves…”
And yet, while we still continue with our striving and our judging, our slander, our pride our evil – all the while, God watches over us, and God calls to us still, like a lover, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come…Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
God loves us. Each and every one of us.
The readings today tell us this in a multitude of ways.
In James we are told that we are “a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures.”
“First fruits” was a term of art in ancient times – the first fruits were the finest, most perfect specimens of the harvest. The first born lambs, free of blemish, the first vegetables and fruits of the trees and vines, the first, most pure pressing of the olive oil – all of these were the first fruits that were presented at the temple as a sacrifice to God – the finest of creation for the creator of them all. And we people, says the author of James, are the first fruits, we are the most perfect of creation, presented back to God for his appreciation.
God created not only us in his image, but he created this world full of beautiful, wondrous things as our home, as our place to delight and be glad, and really, we shouldn’t need any more proof of God’s love for us than this world!
But, God also gave us free will and the ability to think for ourselves, and as soon as we were created, we started to out distance between ourselves and God, and in that space, evil grew.
We began to honor God with our lips, but not our hearts. We began to worship in vain, teaching human precepts as doctrine, and separate ourselves from God’s love through theft, murder, adultery, avarice, through wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, and slander, through the folly of pride.
We began to set up barriers between ourselves and our fellows, arguing over who was closer to God, who was more beloved, while insuring in our very arguments and judgments that we were each, in fact, farther out of reach of God’s healing embrace, and eventually we mastered that state of evil, of pride, of folly that we were warned against when ignored the command to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger…to rid ourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and instead to be doers of the word, not merely hearers who deceive themselves…”
And yet, while we still continue with our striving and our judging, our slander, our pride our evil – all the while, God watches over us, and God calls to us still, like a lover, “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come…Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The11th Sunday after Pentecost
11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 16, 2009
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
Those of you who have been in church the last two Sundays will easily recognize today’s Gospel reading. It is almost exactly the same one from each of the past two Sundays. Each week expands it a little, but they all have to do with Jesus as the Bread of Life.
I haven’t been able to be here the last two Sundays, but I have read the sermons from the last two Sundays and both the dean and the canon have wonderfully unpacked this passage as they, to quote our dean, “Mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, broken and shared…” the Bread of Life which is to be known and found in Jesus the Christ.
And we have it again today. I am wondering if you have had your fill of bread readings from the Gospel of John. You’d think the church would spread them out a bit over the year rather than have them Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, bread and more bread and more bread. We get it, right? Enough with the bread!
Well, gospel truth to tell, there may be a good reason why we have this passage three Sundays in a row. I want to see if we can find it. It’s probably important.
There is an old proverb about preaching a sermon that is learned on day one in seminary. It goes like this: “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Then tell them what you told them.” The point being, it takes a lot to get through the busyness that occupies the human attention and mind before you can get to the human heart.
Reflect for a minute on all the things that occupied your mind, heart, and attention as you came through the doors of the cathedral this morning. If you are like me it is a cacophony of competing wants, needs, demands, priorities, voices, details of life. And that’s not just this morning. That’s life, as Frank Sinatra would sing. That’s how most of us go through life. That’s how most of us live life.
There is so much that calls us, grabs at us, yells at us demanding our attention… So much, that it is possible to lose one’s sense of self, to lose one’s orientation, to get lost in all of it.
Robert Kysar suggests that what Jesus was getting at, and the reason why we have this passage – again, is that Jesus is saying that we need literally to take Jesus into ourselves, to make him part of our essence, part of our very being, to have him at the very core of our lives, the center point from which all our life flows.
Back in the 1950’s there was a TV quiz show with Groucho Marx. It was called “You Bet Your Life”. Contestants were asked questions such as, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” The point of the show was to have fun. It never approached a serious question about betting one’s life.
But the Gospel of Jesus Christ does. “On what do you bet your life?”
In my work around the church, I often start with asking questions that help me and those I am working with get in touch with those principles upon which they base their communal life. We call them Core Values. Core Values aren’t chosen, they aren’t decided upon intellectually, they just are. And they are non-negotiable. They are what define us. They guide everything else. All else flows from them – concerns, priorities, plans, strategies, tactics, and actions. And when a plan does not work out, we still know who we are at our very core. Everything comes from that center.
Let’s look at the scripture from 1Kings. Solomon has just ascended to the throne of his father David, that beloved king of Israel. It is a succession marked by court intrigue and competition between rival factions.
After all the intrigue and struggle, now Solomon is king, and he goes to Gibeon to offer sacrifices to the Lord. The Lord appears to him in a dream there and says, "Ask what I should give you." It is a remarkable offer for this young king; "Ask what you will," says God. One can imagine what he might request: long life, riches, power, and victory in battle.
Solomon asks for none of that. Instead, he praises God for God's faithfulness to his father David, and he describes his own situation. He is a young man. He has to govern a very numerous people; and not just any people, but a nation of God's own choosing.
He has a lot on his plate, his mind and his heart. He has bet his life on the Lord. And everything else flows from that. Therefore, he asks of God a "listening heart" or in our translation this morning, an “understanding mind" in order to judge God's people, and "to discern between good and evil."
A listening heart, an understanding mind, the ability to discern what is right and good — qualities essential to good governance, qualities we should pray to find in all our leaders. Actually these are qualities we would hope and pray for our children and ourselves – qualities that would give them – and us – a way to walk through this life with purpose, with integrity, with confidence and security that we are on the right path.
The bread that is being offered by Jesus Christ these weeks is himself. He offers to be so intimately part of who we are, that we can bet our life on him – at the very center of our life, at the very core of our being, the guiding light that shines on our path in good season and bad. The center from which all else flows… plans, strategies, tactics, actions, responses to all those voices that call us, those seductive songs that would lead us in their way, rather than ours.
The Poet Mary Oliver has a poem, “The Journey”, that speaks of these things.
One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice—
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations,
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life that you could save.
The Bread of Life Jesus offers is himself and it is life giving indeed. It can give us, not just life, but our life – our life to live with purpose, with integrity, with security, and with confidence that we are on the right path, today and forever.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
The 10th Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
Lately, I have been reading several books by James Martin, a member of the Society of Jesus and a popular author on the topic of faith. He describes a distinctly Jesuit method of contemplative prayer, a way of reading scripture that involves putting one's self in the story. It relies quite heavily on the imagination, as the reader places him or herself into the role of disciple, prophet, Jesus, or fellow villager, and when effective, it can lead to a new level of insight and revelation. When not so effective, it can just leave one feeling silly. I have a friend, himself a Benedictine monastic of some 25 years, who said to me that he could never be a Jesuit, because he wasn't creative enough. So it was with some trepidation that I tried this method on today's Gospel.
Jesus said to the people, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
I cannot imagine what my reaction would have been, had I been standing there that day, some 2000 years ago, and heard Jesus utter these words. I would hope that I would have been a perfect disciple, would have understood instantly, would have accepted his words without question and looked on, secure, maybe smug in my all-trusting knowledge, as the other villagers questioned and sneered.
However, I think it is much more likely, knowing how my brain works toward rational explanation, that I would have been one of the villagers who, looking upon this man whom I had known since birth, with whom I had played in the fields as a child, whose parents were Mary, the sweet gentle woman with the sad eyes, and Joseph, the hardworking carpenter who loved all his sons equally, despite the murmurings about betrothal dates and births that surrounded talk of this oldest one, Jesus- I think that daily familiarity with all of this , I would have been among the grumblers, the ones who suspected that this Jesus was putting on airs, or, worse, fully off his rocker.
It is so much easier, after all, from the perspective of lazy intellect, to assume that the thing which cannot be comprehended easily, or at all, is the product of a mistake on the part of the one who said it, rather than a radical shifting of the world.
At the end of the second World War, looking out over a world that had been a witness to evil on a scale never before considered, whole populations decimated by hatred, generations of young men lost to battle, a German theologian said, “What this world needs is liturgy and community.”
By liturgy, I think that theologian meant reverence such as that experienced in holy worship, a sense of the holy in otherwise everyday actions, a manifestation of God and our love of God in the physical.
By community, I think he meant a means by which we could reflect God’s love in the faces of each other. We have, in our readings today, in graceful simplicity, both.
Liturgy- St. Athanasius said that God became man so that man might become a god, and we experience this most literally in our Eucharistic feast. With the statement “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus transformed the eating and drinking of physical food for nourishment of our bodies into a spiritual communion with him, and a nourishing of our souls.
As for community, well, Paul’s words to the Ephesians are an instruction manual of how men can be Godlike to one another.
“Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors," Paul said, "for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
To extract the essence of this would be to say: Be Christlike to one another, make every thought, every action, an act of worship.
These words are so easy to hear, in this gorgeous, holy place, surrounded by the familiar trappings and faces of our faith, but something happens when we cross the threshold, and go out into the world. Somehow, in the (admittedly rather long) distance between this altar and the cathedral door, the values of our secular world creep back into the most well meaning heart. Individual struggle takes over, fear of not having enough to take care of ourselves and our families takes hold, concern about mortgages and 401(k)s and health insurance – not that these things aren’t important, they are, but we cannot let them take the place of God, become idols to us, so that the face of our fellow man is obscured by fear of scarcity. Because Jesus offers us abundance, simply, almost unbelievably, when he says to us: I am the bread of life.
With this bread, none shall hunger, and none shall thirst.
Lately, I have been reading several books by James Martin, a member of the Society of Jesus and a popular author on the topic of faith. He describes a distinctly Jesuit method of contemplative prayer, a way of reading scripture that involves putting one's self in the story. It relies quite heavily on the imagination, as the reader places him or herself into the role of disciple, prophet, Jesus, or fellow villager, and when effective, it can lead to a new level of insight and revelation. When not so effective, it can just leave one feeling silly. I have a friend, himself a Benedictine monastic of some 25 years, who said to me that he could never be a Jesuit, because he wasn't creative enough. So it was with some trepidation that I tried this method on today's Gospel.
Jesus said to the people, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
I cannot imagine what my reaction would have been, had I been standing there that day, some 2000 years ago, and heard Jesus utter these words. I would hope that I would have been a perfect disciple, would have understood instantly, would have accepted his words without question and looked on, secure, maybe smug in my all-trusting knowledge, as the other villagers questioned and sneered.
However, I think it is much more likely, knowing how my brain works toward rational explanation, that I would have been one of the villagers who, looking upon this man whom I had known since birth, with whom I had played in the fields as a child, whose parents were Mary, the sweet gentle woman with the sad eyes, and Joseph, the hardworking carpenter who loved all his sons equally, despite the murmurings about betrothal dates and births that surrounded talk of this oldest one, Jesus- I think that daily familiarity with all of this , I would have been among the grumblers, the ones who suspected that this Jesus was putting on airs, or, worse, fully off his rocker.
It is so much easier, after all, from the perspective of lazy intellect, to assume that the thing which cannot be comprehended easily, or at all, is the product of a mistake on the part of the one who said it, rather than a radical shifting of the world.
At the end of the second World War, looking out over a world that had been a witness to evil on a scale never before considered, whole populations decimated by hatred, generations of young men lost to battle, a German theologian said, “What this world needs is liturgy and community.”
By liturgy, I think that theologian meant reverence such as that experienced in holy worship, a sense of the holy in otherwise everyday actions, a manifestation of God and our love of God in the physical.
By community, I think he meant a means by which we could reflect God’s love in the faces of each other. We have, in our readings today, in graceful simplicity, both.
Liturgy- St. Athanasius said that God became man so that man might become a god, and we experience this most literally in our Eucharistic feast. With the statement “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus transformed the eating and drinking of physical food for nourishment of our bodies into a spiritual communion with him, and a nourishing of our souls.
As for community, well, Paul’s words to the Ephesians are an instruction manual of how men can be Godlike to one another.
“Let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors," Paul said, "for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
To extract the essence of this would be to say: Be Christlike to one another, make every thought, every action, an act of worship.
These words are so easy to hear, in this gorgeous, holy place, surrounded by the familiar trappings and faces of our faith, but something happens when we cross the threshold, and go out into the world. Somehow, in the (admittedly rather long) distance between this altar and the cathedral door, the values of our secular world creep back into the most well meaning heart. Individual struggle takes over, fear of not having enough to take care of ourselves and our families takes hold, concern about mortgages and 401(k)s and health insurance – not that these things aren’t important, they are, but we cannot let them take the place of God, become idols to us, so that the face of our fellow man is obscured by fear of scarcity. Because Jesus offers us abundance, simply, almost unbelievably, when he says to us: I am the bread of life.
With this bread, none shall hunger, and none shall thirst.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Proper 13 - John 6:24-35
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
There was a man who was just not feeling right. His energy was waning and he felt himself a bit lethargic. Setting himself up with a homespun plan of attack, he visited an upscale grocery store that promised to wow the consumer with the purest, healthiest and brightest organic vegetables. He purchased beautiful vibrant cucumbers, colorful and rich carrots, and the juiciest looking dark green beans he had ever seen. A few days later, still feeling the same lethargy as before, he visited his doctor, his new remedy in hand. Strange as it may seem, he entered the doctor’s office with beautiful cucumbers, one in each ear, a bright orange carrot in one nostril, and the deepest green, juiciest string bean in the other. He told the doctor of his issues and asked, “What do you think is wrong?” The doctor responded, “Well, for one thing you just don’t seem to be eating right!”
Our Old Testament and gospel readings for today seem to present to us the question of just what will satisfy the needs we have. How do we find the right “diet,” if you will, that leads us into a place of wholeness? The need in the case of these scriptures, it seems, is the real need for daily sustenance using the well-known commodity of the ancient world – bread. The need also stated is the need to know of God’s faithful presence in the yearnings of life, everyday life, even when there is nothing wowing that life. For in the Old Testament lesson, the Israelites, coming off a spectacular and wowing experience of liberation to freedom who are now experiencing firsthand that freedom comes at a cost, no longer have bread provided for them as they did as slaves. How will they eat? Will this God they have followed be with them now, faithful to them now? The relationships with one another and with God is being re-defined now as a free people, what will it be, how will it be?
The Gospel story picks up where Jesus left off last week. A crowd of folks coming off the “wow” of the feeding of 5,000 chase Jesus down and want to know “was that for real?” and “could you do that ‘wow’ thing again, so we know this God you speak of will be faithful?” In both cases, the relationship of God and God’s people is being re-shaped, re-imagined. In both cases the transition from the experience of God through the wow moves into the invitation to a deeper experience of the holy through the hard work of a daily relationship. The sustenance of life, it seems, really does come through the ingredients of a daily faith life; “give us this day our daily bread” the prayer reads, after all.
How complex are we? We are spiritual beings, having our human experience as we rightly yearn for stability and safety, for the basic provisions of food, water, and shelter. We live our complexity as we simultaneously seek to be wowed by life and, I suggest, by the holy. Jesus’ response to the listener, who is looking to be wowed with literal bread as their ancestors were in the wilderness, is that “bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus goes on to say that he himself is that bread. I think what this means is that the real ingredients to a sustained and holy life are not found in the “wow,” but are instead found in the hard work of everyday living into a deeper understanding of God and God’s desire for a just world. A world where faithful living is striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, a world where we seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Bread is the image Jesus uses, the simple ingredients of flour, water, yeast, and maybe a little salt for taste. Literal bread is the difference between life and death for the listener. The simple ingredients for the followers of Jesus are prayer, humility, forgiveness, and living for the good of the others. These are the simple ingredients for a life in Christ.
Living in a culture, as we do, that is driven so fiercely by the concepts of commodities that are dressed and marketed to create a belief that we will be and should be wowed, I wonder how we hear such a simple image and message about our need for God and God’s desire for us. I wonder how we receive the bread of life, the daily bread we pray for in the prayer our Lord taught us to pray. I confess, as a product of our culture, I too look for the glitzy, the sexy, the salty, the sweet. Jamaican spice bread, Maine pumpkin raisin bread, jalapeno corn bread – these sound like they may have the ability to wow me, much more so than something called daily bread. Jesus, it seems to me, is saying to those who will listen, then and now, in response to the yearnings and hungers of our lives, that it is an everyday thing, this life in God that is fulfilling and sustaining. The ingredients are as simple as a daily loaf of bread, and there may not be anything glitzy about it, but it is life-giving, life-changing.
There is nothing new from my lips today that you have not heard before about these ingredients for a life in Christ, but as Robert Frost once said, “Everything deserves repeating until we answer from within. The thousandth time may prove the charm.”
Ingredients:
Two cups of scripture daily, stirred and salted for your own understanding and growth. A good measure of prayer daily to be still and be aware of God’s presence in your life. A pinch or two of forgiveness for your own shortcomings and for those who have offended you.
A large cup of fellowship, listening for and encountering the joys and sorrows of your neighbor.
Mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, broken and shared, Jesus said, “I am the bread of heaven.” Give us this day our daily bread.
There was a man who was just not feeling right. His energy was waning and he felt himself a bit lethargic. Setting himself up with a homespun plan of attack, he visited an upscale grocery store that promised to wow the consumer with the purest, healthiest and brightest organic vegetables. He purchased beautiful vibrant cucumbers, colorful and rich carrots, and the juiciest looking dark green beans he had ever seen. A few days later, still feeling the same lethargy as before, he visited his doctor, his new remedy in hand. Strange as it may seem, he entered the doctor’s office with beautiful cucumbers, one in each ear, a bright orange carrot in one nostril, and the deepest green, juiciest string bean in the other. He told the doctor of his issues and asked, “What do you think is wrong?” The doctor responded, “Well, for one thing you just don’t seem to be eating right!”
Our Old Testament and gospel readings for today seem to present to us the question of just what will satisfy the needs we have. How do we find the right “diet,” if you will, that leads us into a place of wholeness? The need in the case of these scriptures, it seems, is the real need for daily sustenance using the well-known commodity of the ancient world – bread. The need also stated is the need to know of God’s faithful presence in the yearnings of life, everyday life, even when there is nothing wowing that life. For in the Old Testament lesson, the Israelites, coming off a spectacular and wowing experience of liberation to freedom who are now experiencing firsthand that freedom comes at a cost, no longer have bread provided for them as they did as slaves. How will they eat? Will this God they have followed be with them now, faithful to them now? The relationships with one another and with God is being re-defined now as a free people, what will it be, how will it be?
The Gospel story picks up where Jesus left off last week. A crowd of folks coming off the “wow” of the feeding of 5,000 chase Jesus down and want to know “was that for real?” and “could you do that ‘wow’ thing again, so we know this God you speak of will be faithful?” In both cases, the relationship of God and God’s people is being re-shaped, re-imagined. In both cases the transition from the experience of God through the wow moves into the invitation to a deeper experience of the holy through the hard work of a daily relationship. The sustenance of life, it seems, really does come through the ingredients of a daily faith life; “give us this day our daily bread” the prayer reads, after all.
How complex are we? We are spiritual beings, having our human experience as we rightly yearn for stability and safety, for the basic provisions of food, water, and shelter. We live our complexity as we simultaneously seek to be wowed by life and, I suggest, by the holy. Jesus’ response to the listener, who is looking to be wowed with literal bread as their ancestors were in the wilderness, is that “bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Jesus goes on to say that he himself is that bread. I think what this means is that the real ingredients to a sustained and holy life are not found in the “wow,” but are instead found in the hard work of everyday living into a deeper understanding of God and God’s desire for a just world. A world where faithful living is striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being, a world where we seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Bread is the image Jesus uses, the simple ingredients of flour, water, yeast, and maybe a little salt for taste. Literal bread is the difference between life and death for the listener. The simple ingredients for the followers of Jesus are prayer, humility, forgiveness, and living for the good of the others. These are the simple ingredients for a life in Christ.
Living in a culture, as we do, that is driven so fiercely by the concepts of commodities that are dressed and marketed to create a belief that we will be and should be wowed, I wonder how we hear such a simple image and message about our need for God and God’s desire for us. I wonder how we receive the bread of life, the daily bread we pray for in the prayer our Lord taught us to pray. I confess, as a product of our culture, I too look for the glitzy, the sexy, the salty, the sweet. Jamaican spice bread, Maine pumpkin raisin bread, jalapeno corn bread – these sound like they may have the ability to wow me, much more so than something called daily bread. Jesus, it seems to me, is saying to those who will listen, then and now, in response to the yearnings and hungers of our lives, that it is an everyday thing, this life in God that is fulfilling and sustaining. The ingredients are as simple as a daily loaf of bread, and there may not be anything glitzy about it, but it is life-giving, life-changing.
There is nothing new from my lips today that you have not heard before about these ingredients for a life in Christ, but as Robert Frost once said, “Everything deserves repeating until we answer from within. The thousandth time may prove the charm.”
Ingredients:
Two cups of scripture daily, stirred and salted for your own understanding and growth. A good measure of prayer daily to be still and be aware of God’s presence in your life. A pinch or two of forgiveness for your own shortcomings and for those who have offended you.
A large cup of fellowship, listening for and encountering the joys and sorrows of your neighbor.
Mixed, kneaded, shaped, baked, broken and shared, Jesus said, “I am the bread of heaven.” Give us this day our daily bread.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
This weekend finds us just about at the mid-point of the summer season. That is a bit startling for me because I don’t feel that I have started summer yet having been traveling every week since the first of June. But I am home now and I am ready to get to it.
My idea of summer, which is informed by both experience and observation over low these many decades that constitute my life – summer is supposed to reflect the summer theme song by Nat King Cole, “Oh those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer”. The days are longer, more relaxed. There’s time for recreation, time for reading, time for conversation, occasionally time for a nap. The deck or the shade tree beckons irresistibly.
I hope your summer is well under way, and that you have achieved (and this may be an oxymoron)… I hope that you have achieved a state of rest, a more relaxed lifestyle. I hope that you have read something that is totally fun for you, that even while working you have managed to slow your life down to an appropriate summer pace, that you have been able to get outside to experience some of the wonders of creation.
There’s something else about summer. I remember when I was growing up that at some point during the summer, sometimes in the mid-point of a family vacation, my parents would sit down together for a heart-to-heart talk, or for a conversation that when on for a few days. It seemed to be a ritual of summer for them.
Then I noticed that Puddy and I did that as well. For us the heart-to-heart conversations usually took place on vacation in Maine, a week or two into the vacation. Plenty of time first for decompressing and slowing down, plenty of time for getting into a family vacation rhythm, plenty of time for lazing about and ruminating about life and stuff, plenty of time for dreaming.
And then we would just meet in this relational, temporal space when and where we were both ready to share the stuff of our heart with one another, in ways we had not been able to do for a while because of the schedules and demands of daily life in a family of five.
Thus would begin a time of opening our hearts anew to one another, sharing our concerns, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our needs, our hungers. We would talk about ourselves, we would talk about the two of us, we would talk about the kids.
At some point in the conversation we would begin to envision the future, or the next stage or phase of life for ourselves, for the two of us, for each of the kids. We would begin to formulate plans and directions that would flow from what we had learned in our heart-to-heart sharing.
It was kind of a ritual of our summer, perhaps you have experienced summer in similar ways or had similar experiences in other seasons. It seems that summer affords the luxury of slowing down, getting in touch – with ourselves and others, gaining clarity, acknowledging our hopes and dreams and needs.
And now you are wondering what in the world this has to do with the scripture appointed for today – miracles of feeding and water-walking? Well, I think the designers of the lectionary schedule of readings put this scripture in the middle of the summer for good reason. I don’t believe it was the luck of the draw or by default that we have these readings today, at the mid-point of summer. I think they know what goes on in the lives and hearts of people when they find space to spend time with themselves.
Listen again to how the psalmist summarizes what today’s readings are about:
The eyes of all wait upon you, O LORD, *
and you give them their food in due season.
You open wide your hand *
and satisfy the needs of every living creature. Ps 145:16-17
When I was in seminary the King James translation introduced the blessing over the noon meal most days. It goes like this:
The eyes of all wait upon Thee O Lord, * And Thou givest them their meat in due season.
Thou openest Thine hand, * And fillest all living things with plenteousness
That seems to me to be a pretty good summary of the scripture appointed for today. God fills all things with plenteousness.
In the first reading from 2 Kings and in the gospel reading we hear of the power of God being revealed in abundance; the abundance of food when there appeared to be not enough and in the abundance of God’s presence in the midst of people’s lives. The hunger of God’s people is acknowledged and responded to by God. In whatever ways are needed, people are fed out of the abundance found in God’s kingdom.
In the second miracle in today’s gospel, the abundance of God is revealed in the person of Jesus, as he says, “Don’t be afraid, it is I.” Or a better and more accurate translation, “I am, do not be afraid.” Remember that is what God said to Moses on the mountain as God was sending him to Israel, captive in Egypt. Moses asked God what he should say when people ask him who sent him. God says “Tell them, ‘I am has sent you’.”
And today we hear Jesus say to his followers, “I am, do not be afraid.” The power and the presence of God revealed in the person of Jesus coming to meet his disciples at the point of their need.
This is a pretty timely reminder, I think. We are in a time when so many people are living out of a sense of scarcity and are using all the power at their disposal to acquire and accumulate and safeguard enough to meet their need. Some are seeking their fair share, others are after all they can lay their hands on, fair or unfair. The scriptures today remind us of another way to live.
Whenever it is that we get in touch with ourselves, whenever we re-member ourselves, whenever we open our hearts to ourselves and acknowledge our fears and needs and dreams, whenever it is time to chart a new direction in our lives – whether that is in summer, fall, winter or spring, God would have us know of the abundance of life available to us, and the power of God that is available to us for living such a life.
So… Are you taking the time at this mid-point of the summer season to listen to yourself, to get back in touch with your life, to open your heart? The abundance of God’s love, grace, mercy and power are waiting to lead you deeper into your life.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
An Idea
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Elizabeth Yale
Just reading that the Epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians gives me a funny feeling now. I was in Ephesus about two months ago, and the only people there now are advertised GENUINE FAKE WATCH sellers and souvenir shop owners. No one makes their home in Ephesus; they have all moved 6 km down the road to the much more modern town of Selcuk. There isn’t actually much left at Ephesus comparative of its hey-day size. From an archeologist’s standpoint, it is very well preserved, being one of the largest and best-preserved ruins in Turkey. But, unfortunately, the size of the former town cannot be determined today because the people, the ordinary day-to-day people, did not live in stone temples or civic buildings. But Paul gives us a glimpse of the people who were living in Ephesus in the first century. They were a divided people. They were a confused people. They were a people that struggled with who they were and what they were doing. (Does that sound familiar?) But despite their struggles, there are no signs of their struggles left in Ephesus. No signs of the drama that unfolded between people on the issue of circumcision. There are no statues, no reliefs depicting this almost theological deal-breaker between Paul and some of the other disciples in Jerusalem. But the people truly did struggle with who to include in their new community. That is what the circumcision issue is really about – who is in, and who is not. The people of Ephesus and other cities were building a community for God and they were not sure what material to use. Only Jews? Those who knew the old rules and promises? Or all people, regardless of any previous religious community? Paul instructs them to include all people because Jesus has broken the dividing wall between each group. From Paul’s point of view, God wants to try something new. God is trying to build a house for himself using people of all nations. God tried before to build a house for himself, once through the Israelites, the children of Jacob and Moses. Another time, through David and Solomon, again through Jesus and the fisher people of Galilee. God continues through Paul and the Christians in Ephesus, Iconium, and Cappadocia. This seems wonderful to me, that God should have a House dedicated to him that makes his presence known in the world, but I have to wonder, why is God using humans? I mean, I don’t know how often any of you have tried to build something using only humans, but they don’t hold up well under weather, they fall over, they get tired, they complain, they’re unpredictable, and sometimes their brains just go off to the store for some fresh strawberries without notifying their own bodies. Humans are not the easiest building material to work with in the world.
But God seems to love the challenge. It’s not like God stopped after the first few tries. God’s house of promise, of peace, of healing, still stands as an ideal in the minds of humans. We work toward our goal in any way we can, but sometimes it seems so hopeless. But if you look up and to your right, at the middle stained glass windows, you can see what the people of Nativity have done in the past. They started Lehigh University. They built ships and buildings through Bethlehem Steel. They started St. Luke’s Hospital. And today, people of Nativity are still slowly building the House of God. And while I don’t think the vision of an open House of God, filled with fresh linen, fresh fruit, fresh ideas, and fresh passion for the coming future is around the corner, we each need to have a vision, because otherwise the House of God ends up like the ruin of the Temple of Trajan in Ephesus where students go to discuss the futility of man. And so I wonder, what is the vision of the Cathedral Church of the Nativity? What will the people of Nativity build next?
Elizabeth Yale
Just reading that the Epistle reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians gives me a funny feeling now. I was in Ephesus about two months ago, and the only people there now are advertised GENUINE FAKE WATCH sellers and souvenir shop owners. No one makes their home in Ephesus; they have all moved 6 km down the road to the much more modern town of Selcuk. There isn’t actually much left at Ephesus comparative of its hey-day size. From an archeologist’s standpoint, it is very well preserved, being one of the largest and best-preserved ruins in Turkey. But, unfortunately, the size of the former town cannot be determined today because the people, the ordinary day-to-day people, did not live in stone temples or civic buildings. But Paul gives us a glimpse of the people who were living in Ephesus in the first century. They were a divided people. They were a confused people. They were a people that struggled with who they were and what they were doing. (Does that sound familiar?) But despite their struggles, there are no signs of their struggles left in Ephesus. No signs of the drama that unfolded between people on the issue of circumcision. There are no statues, no reliefs depicting this almost theological deal-breaker between Paul and some of the other disciples in Jerusalem. But the people truly did struggle with who to include in their new community. That is what the circumcision issue is really about – who is in, and who is not. The people of Ephesus and other cities were building a community for God and they were not sure what material to use. Only Jews? Those who knew the old rules and promises? Or all people, regardless of any previous religious community? Paul instructs them to include all people because Jesus has broken the dividing wall between each group. From Paul’s point of view, God wants to try something new. God is trying to build a house for himself using people of all nations. God tried before to build a house for himself, once through the Israelites, the children of Jacob and Moses. Another time, through David and Solomon, again through Jesus and the fisher people of Galilee. God continues through Paul and the Christians in Ephesus, Iconium, and Cappadocia. This seems wonderful to me, that God should have a House dedicated to him that makes his presence known in the world, but I have to wonder, why is God using humans? I mean, I don’t know how often any of you have tried to build something using only humans, but they don’t hold up well under weather, they fall over, they get tired, they complain, they’re unpredictable, and sometimes their brains just go off to the store for some fresh strawberries without notifying their own bodies. Humans are not the easiest building material to work with in the world.
But God seems to love the challenge. It’s not like God stopped after the first few tries. God’s house of promise, of peace, of healing, still stands as an ideal in the minds of humans. We work toward our goal in any way we can, but sometimes it seems so hopeless. But if you look up and to your right, at the middle stained glass windows, you can see what the people of Nativity have done in the past. They started Lehigh University. They built ships and buildings through Bethlehem Steel. They started St. Luke’s Hospital. And today, people of Nativity are still slowly building the House of God. And while I don’t think the vision of an open House of God, filled with fresh linen, fresh fruit, fresh ideas, and fresh passion for the coming future is around the corner, we each need to have a vision, because otherwise the House of God ends up like the ruin of the Temple of Trajan in Ephesus where students go to discuss the futility of man. And so I wonder, what is the vision of the Cathedral Church of the Nativity? What will the people of Nativity build next?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Mariclair Partee
Today, we have some familiar stories in the readings.
We have the story of Amos, a simple man, filled with the spirit of the Lord and driven to prophesy in the temple to the priests and elders. This man, a shepherd and “dresser of sycamore trees” – and I think that Old Testament scholars are still puzzling over what exactly a dresser of sycamore trees was or did, but whenever Amos’ name comes up, I immediately fill in “dresser of sycamore trees” – was sent a series of visions that shook him to his foundation and drove him to leave his flocks and his trees, go to the priests and the elders in the temple, and speak out against the actions of the king. For this he was run out of town, banished from the temple by leaders who refused to hear his message, who told him to take his message to Judah, to the Israelites, anywhere but in the temple, which the king supported. Amos spoke truth to power, and for that he lost his home.
The story of John the Baptist is even more familiar, I would imagine, though most know it as the story of Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils. But the central figure of the story is John, a prophet living in the wilderness, preaching the coming of the Lord and initiating believers, using a ritual of water and words that was pretty identical to the one we will be using here, today, to welcome a new Christian. John was content to live in the desert, subsisting off of locusts and wild honey, dressing in the hides of wild beasts, until he caught word of the scandal occurring at the royal court, of a king murdering his brother to marry his sister-in-law, and so committing triple offenses of murder, covetousness, and adultery. He spoke out against this behavior and found himself in chains in Herod’s dungeon, though even this did not stop him from insulting the king and queen. We all know what happened next – a dance, a wish granted – Salome in this story is renamed Herodias, but dances for her stepfather at the behest of her mother, and appears not as a wily and wicked temptress, but as a child caught up in a struggle for power she doesn’t fully comprehend, trapped between the pride of her father and the vengeance of her mother, and manipulated by both. It is John who loses his life, though, ultimately for the offense of speaking out against what he saw as dangerous folly on the part of the ruling classes, once again, speaking truth against power, and for this, he loses his head.
This week I have been thinking a great deal about those who have spoken up in the face of might, as I have been reading the writings of Dorothy Day. The former Roman Catholics in the congregation today are probably familiar with Dorothy Day, described by many as a saint of the 20th century, but for those who are not, a brief biography:
Day was a staunchly secular communist and pacifist, writing for communist party publications, marching for women’s suffrage, working for the rights of laborers and those suffering the degradations of poverty in Chicago and New York in the early decades of the last century. She was a force in the workers’ movement and anti-war efforts, and then, just shy of her 30th birthday, was suddenly overcome by love of God and confirmed as a Roman Catholic. She brought all of her views on the rights of the common worker to dignity and a living wage with her into her new church, though, saw in Jesus’ love for the poor and his directions to his disciples to care for the outcasts as a call to everything she had been working for in her own life before becoming a Christian, and soon she was an outcast within her new church home. She was a thorn in the side of the Church, and she was a very vocal thorn- in response to the complicity she saw in the leaders of the Church in the Second World War, the denial of civil rights, the subjugation of the poor in third world countries, she quoted Romano Guardini, a German theologian and professor at the University of Munich who had been dismissed under the Third Reich, saying “The Church is the cross upon which Christ was crucified.” However, Day also said of her life and faith: “We have all known the long loneliness, and we have all found that the answer is community.”
In this spirit, Dorothy Day brought forth the Catholic Workers Movement, published a newspaper of the same name for over 35 years exhorting her fellow believers to take to the streets and fight for those who could not fight for themselves, and set up a network of Hospitality Houses and working farms across the United States in which devoted Catholic laity and clergy lived and worked in community with the poor and abused, living on starvation wages and helping to create a social fabric from within the working classes to promote reform in the factories, teach skills, and liberate the poor from the crippling cycles of poverty. Many of these Hospitality Houses are still in existence today, and a whole generation of Catholic social and liturgical reform can be traced to the spark Day and her compatriots created in the institutional church.
These days Day is regarded as a saint-in-waiting, but in her life she suffered constant censure and denial by the church she loved and devoted herself to. She spoke truth to power, and because of it she was ostracized, written off by the leaders of the church and derided as possibly insane.
So we have three stories, spanning the millennia, of individuals filled with the spirit of God and moved, no, compelled to speak up against people and institutions so much bigger, so much more powerful than themselves, despite the risk this posed to their lives, their families, their happiness.
What does that mean for us, as Christians, as Episcopalians? Our own church is meeting this week in Anaheim for our triennial General Convention, and in that meeting there is bound to be a lot of truth spoken, and a lot of power challenged. When it is sitting, our General Convention is the largest legislative body in the Western world, with over 8000 lay and clerical deputies from all over the nation. There is an argument among historians about whether our twin houses of bishops and deputies was the model for the framers of the Constitution when they designed the House and the Senate, or if it was the other way around, but regardless, a meeting of General Convention is a wonder of administration and canonical procedure to behold. To be fair, for many, it also puts truth to that old saying about watching sausage being made.
That body is struggling this week with some very big issues, and all sides are presenting their arguments and bearing witness to the truth as they believe God is calling them to testify. We must pray that at the end of this time together, none lose the church they have called their home, and that everyone holds onto their heads.
Let us pray:
Almighty and everlasting Father, you have given the Holy Spirit to abide with us for ever: Bless, we pray, with his grace and presence, the bishops and other clergy and the laity assembled in your Name, that your Church, being preserved in true faith and godly discipline, may fulfill all the mind of him who loved it and gave himself for it, your son Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
Today, we have some familiar stories in the readings.
We have the story of Amos, a simple man, filled with the spirit of the Lord and driven to prophesy in the temple to the priests and elders. This man, a shepherd and “dresser of sycamore trees” – and I think that Old Testament scholars are still puzzling over what exactly a dresser of sycamore trees was or did, but whenever Amos’ name comes up, I immediately fill in “dresser of sycamore trees” – was sent a series of visions that shook him to his foundation and drove him to leave his flocks and his trees, go to the priests and the elders in the temple, and speak out against the actions of the king. For this he was run out of town, banished from the temple by leaders who refused to hear his message, who told him to take his message to Judah, to the Israelites, anywhere but in the temple, which the king supported. Amos spoke truth to power, and for that he lost his home.
The story of John the Baptist is even more familiar, I would imagine, though most know it as the story of Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils. But the central figure of the story is John, a prophet living in the wilderness, preaching the coming of the Lord and initiating believers, using a ritual of water and words that was pretty identical to the one we will be using here, today, to welcome a new Christian. John was content to live in the desert, subsisting off of locusts and wild honey, dressing in the hides of wild beasts, until he caught word of the scandal occurring at the royal court, of a king murdering his brother to marry his sister-in-law, and so committing triple offenses of murder, covetousness, and adultery. He spoke out against this behavior and found himself in chains in Herod’s dungeon, though even this did not stop him from insulting the king and queen. We all know what happened next – a dance, a wish granted – Salome in this story is renamed Herodias, but dances for her stepfather at the behest of her mother, and appears not as a wily and wicked temptress, but as a child caught up in a struggle for power she doesn’t fully comprehend, trapped between the pride of her father and the vengeance of her mother, and manipulated by both. It is John who loses his life, though, ultimately for the offense of speaking out against what he saw as dangerous folly on the part of the ruling classes, once again, speaking truth against power, and for this, he loses his head.
This week I have been thinking a great deal about those who have spoken up in the face of might, as I have been reading the writings of Dorothy Day. The former Roman Catholics in the congregation today are probably familiar with Dorothy Day, described by many as a saint of the 20th century, but for those who are not, a brief biography:
Day was a staunchly secular communist and pacifist, writing for communist party publications, marching for women’s suffrage, working for the rights of laborers and those suffering the degradations of poverty in Chicago and New York in the early decades of the last century. She was a force in the workers’ movement and anti-war efforts, and then, just shy of her 30th birthday, was suddenly overcome by love of God and confirmed as a Roman Catholic. She brought all of her views on the rights of the common worker to dignity and a living wage with her into her new church, though, saw in Jesus’ love for the poor and his directions to his disciples to care for the outcasts as a call to everything she had been working for in her own life before becoming a Christian, and soon she was an outcast within her new church home. She was a thorn in the side of the Church, and she was a very vocal thorn- in response to the complicity she saw in the leaders of the Church in the Second World War, the denial of civil rights, the subjugation of the poor in third world countries, she quoted Romano Guardini, a German theologian and professor at the University of Munich who had been dismissed under the Third Reich, saying “The Church is the cross upon which Christ was crucified.” However, Day also said of her life and faith: “We have all known the long loneliness, and we have all found that the answer is community.”
In this spirit, Dorothy Day brought forth the Catholic Workers Movement, published a newspaper of the same name for over 35 years exhorting her fellow believers to take to the streets and fight for those who could not fight for themselves, and set up a network of Hospitality Houses and working farms across the United States in which devoted Catholic laity and clergy lived and worked in community with the poor and abused, living on starvation wages and helping to create a social fabric from within the working classes to promote reform in the factories, teach skills, and liberate the poor from the crippling cycles of poverty. Many of these Hospitality Houses are still in existence today, and a whole generation of Catholic social and liturgical reform can be traced to the spark Day and her compatriots created in the institutional church.
These days Day is regarded as a saint-in-waiting, but in her life she suffered constant censure and denial by the church she loved and devoted herself to. She spoke truth to power, and because of it she was ostracized, written off by the leaders of the church and derided as possibly insane.
So we have three stories, spanning the millennia, of individuals filled with the spirit of God and moved, no, compelled to speak up against people and institutions so much bigger, so much more powerful than themselves, despite the risk this posed to their lives, their families, their happiness.
What does that mean for us, as Christians, as Episcopalians? Our own church is meeting this week in Anaheim for our triennial General Convention, and in that meeting there is bound to be a lot of truth spoken, and a lot of power challenged. When it is sitting, our General Convention is the largest legislative body in the Western world, with over 8000 lay and clerical deputies from all over the nation. There is an argument among historians about whether our twin houses of bishops and deputies was the model for the framers of the Constitution when they designed the House and the Senate, or if it was the other way around, but regardless, a meeting of General Convention is a wonder of administration and canonical procedure to behold. To be fair, for many, it also puts truth to that old saying about watching sausage being made.
That body is struggling this week with some very big issues, and all sides are presenting their arguments and bearing witness to the truth as they believe God is calling them to testify. We must pray that at the end of this time together, none lose the church they have called their home, and that everyone holds onto their heads.
Let us pray:
Almighty and everlasting Father, you have given the Holy Spirit to abide with us for ever: Bless, we pray, with his grace and presence, the bishops and other clergy and the laity assembled in your Name, that your Church, being preserved in true faith and godly discipline, may fulfill all the mind of him who loved it and gave himself for it, your son Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Pentecost 5 Year B
The Rev. Canon Joel Atkinson
“O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak to you.”
Gets your attention, doesn’t it?
Awe, wonder, a little bit of fear…am I losing my mind! These were a few of the feelings Ezekiel must have felt as he stood in that thunderstorm in Mesopotamia [modern day Iraq]. Ezekiel’s encounter with God was not enough to get him up. So God lifted him up.
More words came: “I am sending you to my people and your people.”
Who are the “my people” and the “your people” God calls Ezekiel to go to? Is it those we like? Is it those who are like us? NO! NO! “Everyone” is the only correct answer.
Advice was given: They are “a nation of rebels”…they “have transgressed”…they have not changed. “They are impudent and stubborn.” Listen to some synonyms for these two words: cheeky, insolent, rude, disrespectful, impolite, presumptuous, ill-mannered, sassy, mouthy – obstinate, immovable, willful, mulish, intractable.
Imagine with me the conversation between God and Ezekiel. Lord GOD, are you sure you have the right man? YES, I am sure! Ezekiel, you are going and you will say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD.” But Lord GOD, they’ll think I am a fool. They’ll make fun of me. They’ll ban me from their towns…huh, huh, I may lose everything. Yes, all this is, sadly, very true. Like I said, they are a rebellious bunch, but if you maintain the course they will know a prophet has been with them. Okay, okay, okay, but sticks and stones do break my bones. I’ll do it, but know I’ve got plenty of reservations.
If we say “yes” to God, God even takes us with our reservations!
From Ezekiel, standing in a thunderstorm and hearing God’s call, the scene moves forward more than 600 years to another prophet standing in his hometown of Nazareth. He has been rejected by his people, prefiguring his final rejection in Jerusalem. Being a prophet of God is still not an easy thing. Thus we hear a few words concerning the treatment of prophets. “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
Jesus’ words are bitter but so true, so true. Times have not changed very much.
Imagine with me a conversation between Jesus and God. Father, when I agreed with you to do this thing, I hoped those who knew me best would listen and might understand something of what you and I are about. Instead, voices are not raised in praise for a local boy making good. ‘Tis true, my Son, but you must live and reveal in your life the true nature of who I am.
Jesus goes on. He is not deterred by all the nay sayers and unbelievers. In fact, as Moses did in the wilderness, he appoints some followers to assist him in his call. Go out two by two. Don’t burden yourself with either too many possessions or too many expectations, but keep on keeping on. Please don’t take all the rejections you will encounter personally. Please don’t hold on to all the pain those you encounter will seek to lay upon you. Rather proclaim the life I have been teaching you about and make real in the lives of those you encounter the healing redemptive love of God.
Once more the scene changes as we move forward a few years. Jesus has been violently executed. Paul has taken up the mantle of discipleship and been sent on his way, like those who were sent two by two from Jesus. Like Ezekiel, called by God to standup and speak, like Jesus, who we proclaim as God’s son, Paul met the Lord GOD on the road to Damascus and his life was changed forever.
Paul speaks of the pain he has faced in following God as a thorn that is a constant torment which keeps him from feeling fulfilled in his work. Following the Lord GOD is no easier for Paul than it was for Ezekiel and Jesus. What is the thorn which so upset Paul? I expect it was a thorn similar to the one Ezekiel and Jesus assumed in their calling, a common thorn shared by all three, a thorn existent when deep and profound rejection comes from those whom you love, a thorn that digs in ever more deeply when your own people refuse to hear, and then act to pass their pain on to you and your mission.
Paul expresses how he deals with the physical, mental and spiritual rejection of neighbor and family. Listen to what he says, “My grace [God’s grace] is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Then Paul responds, “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ for whenever I am weak then I am strong.”
It was Jesus’ weakness that led him to execution on the Cross at Calvary, and it was his weakness that won God’s victory over life and death for him and for all of us.
Three calls…three responses…three thorns to be dealt with…three witnesses expressing God’s healing redemptive love…three victories won and three lives we cannot forget.
How about our lives? How do we measure up?
“O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak to you.”
Gets your attention, doesn’t it?
“O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak to you.”
Gets your attention, doesn’t it?
Awe, wonder, a little bit of fear…am I losing my mind! These were a few of the feelings Ezekiel must have felt as he stood in that thunderstorm in Mesopotamia [modern day Iraq]. Ezekiel’s encounter with God was not enough to get him up. So God lifted him up.
More words came: “I am sending you to my people and your people.”
Who are the “my people” and the “your people” God calls Ezekiel to go to? Is it those we like? Is it those who are like us? NO! NO! “Everyone” is the only correct answer.
Advice was given: They are “a nation of rebels”…they “have transgressed”…they have not changed. “They are impudent and stubborn.” Listen to some synonyms for these two words: cheeky, insolent, rude, disrespectful, impolite, presumptuous, ill-mannered, sassy, mouthy – obstinate, immovable, willful, mulish, intractable.
Imagine with me the conversation between God and Ezekiel. Lord GOD, are you sure you have the right man? YES, I am sure! Ezekiel, you are going and you will say to them, “Thus says the Lord GOD.” But Lord GOD, they’ll think I am a fool. They’ll make fun of me. They’ll ban me from their towns…huh, huh, I may lose everything. Yes, all this is, sadly, very true. Like I said, they are a rebellious bunch, but if you maintain the course they will know a prophet has been with them. Okay, okay, okay, but sticks and stones do break my bones. I’ll do it, but know I’ve got plenty of reservations.
If we say “yes” to God, God even takes us with our reservations!
From Ezekiel, standing in a thunderstorm and hearing God’s call, the scene moves forward more than 600 years to another prophet standing in his hometown of Nazareth. He has been rejected by his people, prefiguring his final rejection in Jerusalem. Being a prophet of God is still not an easy thing. Thus we hear a few words concerning the treatment of prophets. “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
Jesus’ words are bitter but so true, so true. Times have not changed very much.
Imagine with me a conversation between Jesus and God. Father, when I agreed with you to do this thing, I hoped those who knew me best would listen and might understand something of what you and I are about. Instead, voices are not raised in praise for a local boy making good. ‘Tis true, my Son, but you must live and reveal in your life the true nature of who I am.
Jesus goes on. He is not deterred by all the nay sayers and unbelievers. In fact, as Moses did in the wilderness, he appoints some followers to assist him in his call. Go out two by two. Don’t burden yourself with either too many possessions or too many expectations, but keep on keeping on. Please don’t take all the rejections you will encounter personally. Please don’t hold on to all the pain those you encounter will seek to lay upon you. Rather proclaim the life I have been teaching you about and make real in the lives of those you encounter the healing redemptive love of God.
Once more the scene changes as we move forward a few years. Jesus has been violently executed. Paul has taken up the mantle of discipleship and been sent on his way, like those who were sent two by two from Jesus. Like Ezekiel, called by God to standup and speak, like Jesus, who we proclaim as God’s son, Paul met the Lord GOD on the road to Damascus and his life was changed forever.
Paul speaks of the pain he has faced in following God as a thorn that is a constant torment which keeps him from feeling fulfilled in his work. Following the Lord GOD is no easier for Paul than it was for Ezekiel and Jesus. What is the thorn which so upset Paul? I expect it was a thorn similar to the one Ezekiel and Jesus assumed in their calling, a common thorn shared by all three, a thorn existent when deep and profound rejection comes from those whom you love, a thorn that digs in ever more deeply when your own people refuse to hear, and then act to pass their pain on to you and your mission.
Paul expresses how he deals with the physical, mental and spiritual rejection of neighbor and family. Listen to what he says, “My grace [God’s grace] is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Then Paul responds, “So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ for whenever I am weak then I am strong.”
It was Jesus’ weakness that led him to execution on the Cross at Calvary, and it was his weakness that won God’s victory over life and death for him and for all of us.
Three calls…three responses…three thorns to be dealt with…three witnesses expressing God’s healing redemptive love…three victories won and three lives we cannot forget.
How about our lives? How do we measure up?
“O mortal, stand up on your feet, and I will speak to you.”
Gets your attention, doesn’t it?
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The 3rd Sunday of Pentecost
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
June 21, 2009
It is my observation that one of the favorite occupations of human beings is to think back fondly on the “good old days”, those days way back when, when things seemed so much better. To remember things that way, especially when we get to a certain age and are confirmed in our certainty that things were really so much, much better “way back when…”
This week I was reminding myself of how it really was “back then” in the good old 1900’s. I remembered there was the First World War, followed by the Great Depression, followed by the Second World War, followed by the Korean War, followed by the Vietnam War, which was followed immediately by a deep, deep recession, followed by a period of extraordinary greed, consumption, experimentation and personal excess, and then finally we moved into the 21st century.
People were so beaten down or exhausted or confused or anxious that a new theology arose in the second half of the last century. The main tenet of this theology was that God was so fed up with us and the life, the world, we had made for ourselves; fed up with what we hade done with the goodness of creation; so fed up with us, that God had left.
The evidence was clear that God was bored, absent, asleep, or dead. The theology became known was “the Death of God” movement. And make no mistake, it was a very serious attempt to understand what was going on in the world, to understand why things were the way they were.
The power of God, the presence of God, the security of God, the comfort of God were nowhere to be found. So, God was nowhere to be found.
Very many folks, I think, feel some of that today. Things are so bad, so bad with wars and recession, so bad with the greed of individuals and corporations and institutions, so bad with man’s inhumanity to man, so bad with the demands and stresses of daily living, things are so bad that the question begs to be asked, “Where is God in all this?” Where are the signs of God’s presence, power, purpose, design?
An ancient theological term might be useful here. The term is Tohu Bohu, which means topsy-turvy or Chaos. It was out of the tohu bohu, out of chaos, that God created.
It may also be helpful to remember that the nature of the kingdom of God is that it is up side down from what the world, what we would normally expect. Jesus turned the nature of reality up side down.
And so we come to today’s gospel story. In a time of extreme, poverty, brutality, oppression and chaos comes Jesus of Nazareth proclaiming the presence of God, the reign of God, the power of God in the world and in the lives God’s people. And not only did he proclaim, but he also demonstrated the presence of God and the power of God in the here and now of people’s lives.
When Jesus quiets the forces that threaten chaos, when he makes the unclean clean, and when he restores the unacceptable to wholeness, these acts upend our cherished assumptions about order, security, autonomy, and fairness.
Jesus shows God at work in the world and in the lives of people, and he says over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” But the disciples were, and we are, too, so often afraid.
This story that was important enough to be included in all four Gospels is at the heart of the Good News for us, today and every day, and in every storm that makes us anxious.
One writer put it this way: “Time and time again in Scripture the word is, 'Do not be afraid.' It is, you might say, the first and the last word of the gospel. It is the word the angels speak to the terrified shepherds and the word spoken at the tomb when the women discover it empty: ‘Do not be afraid.’
Do not be afraid, “not because there are not fearsome things on the sea of our days, not because there are no storms, fierce winds, or waves, but rather, (do not be afraid) because God is with us… even though there are real and fearsome things in this life, they need not paralyze us; they need not have dominion over us; they need not own us, because we are not alone in the boat.”
A small boat in a stormy sea is a good metaphor for life, a good metaphor for faith. There’s nothing like a good, perfect storm to put our personal and human power into perspective. Perhaps I should say, to put the puny nature of our personal and human power into perspective.
I have been on a lake about the size of the Sea of Galilee when a storm came up with a mighty and erratic wind and capsized my small sailing boat and threw me into the chaotic, raging waters more than a mile from shore.
There is good reason for the Sailor’s Prayer to be, “O Lord, watch over me for the sea is so great and my boat is so small.
Frederick Buechner writes, “Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us, and we can call on him, as the fishermen did in their boat, to come awake within us and to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us our way through. May he be with us especially when the winds go mad and the waves run wild, as they will for all of us before we're done, so that even in their midst we may find peace, we may find him.”
The mysterious reality is that God’s love and presence and power are with us in every circumstance of life. We can have faith that this power at the heart of the universe, at the heart of all reality, at the very heart of creation, this power that dwells within each of us, in the end will allow all things to unfold in justice and in peace, making all things right, including our own small, but, in the eyes of God, immeasurably precious lives.
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