The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
How to follow that Gospel? What more is there to say?
Palm Sunday is an oddity in our calendar and in our general idea of how things are supposed to go. A few weeks ago we heard the parable of the Prodigal Son, and it played to type: it began with discord, a son demanded his inheritance early, then left to spend it all in profligate living, found himself starving and headed back home, broken, repentant, to work as a slave and instead there was celebration, rejoicing, a son lost as if dead was returned, resurrected.
Today we have the opposite, we began in celebration and end heartbroken, standing beside the disciples, staring at our Lord dead on a cross. We end this Lent and pass into Holy Week, the rising dread of Good Friday, the liminal time of Holy Saturday, without quite knowing what has hit us.
I’ve spoken before about the practice from Ignatian spirituality where one reads a passage from the gospels and then meditates upon the word by imagining yourself in the story, in the place of different characters, perhaps Jesus, or a disciple, or a shepherd passing by, or maybe even a child attracted by the crowd that followed Jesus around by the end of his ministry.
It is easy to do in today’s passage; perhaps you pictured what it might have looked like as the passion was read so dramatically just now. We can all see the crowds gathered around the street in Jerusalem as a scraggly, bearded man enters, riding a donkey, draped with cloaks, his friends shouting Hosanna. Not everyone would know exactly what was going on, who Jesus was, but times were hard, the city was occupied by the Romans, and some folks probably welcomed the disruption to their lives. The crowds grew and palm fronds were thrown into the street for this oddball King, entering in a humble procession, on a lowly steed, with a ragtag band of fisherman, thieves, and women.
Jesus made it clear to his disciples that he was heading toward his death but as so often happened, they didn’t understand, didn’t believe that the strife he was warning of would ever come to pass. And so we can imagine, a few short days later, their confusion to be standing at Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, staring up at their rabbi, their friend, their teacher, their King, hanging dead from a cross.
We might also be asking ourselves, at this moment, quite how we got to this place where we’ve ended up, how these 40 days of Lent have run so quickly, how our lives can be so different, perhaps, than they were on Ash Wednesday. Much has happened in our life as a community. Employment has been lost, or found, the season has changed from winter to spring. Babies have been conceived, and are growing, quietly and quickly. Lives have ended, and families mourn.
Time sneaks up on us, unexpected, shocking us as it passes so quickly. We are often in the place of the disciples, barely recovered from the celebration, with the sorrow overtaking us, not even fully understanding what has happened, what is happening and without a real clue as to what is coming next.
When we find ourselves in these moments of loss, these Good Friday moments, bereft at the feet of our crucified Lord, we have the promise of Easter, at least, the surety of the resurrection, but that day at Golgotha, the disciples weren’t so sure about that part, wanted desperately to believe that their Lord would rise again but were face to face with his body, lifeless, the undeniable evidence of his death, and their convictions shaken. Many of us have also found ourselves, in the midst of tragedy, lost, without hope that our world will ever be quite the same again, and in fact: it won’t. The promise of the resurrection is not that time will be wound backwards and that Good Friday won’t ever have happened, the promise is that Christ will rise, death will be conquered, and the world will become something entirely different.
And we, like the disciples, like Mary, the mother of Jesus, like every parent who has lost a child, like any one of us who has lost someone we love, dearly, will weep, and tear our hair, and beat our breasts, until we learn how to live in the new reality in which we find ourselves.
And so, as Holy Week begins today, we will walk this short path together, to the devastation of Good Friday and the in-between, unknowing time of Holy Saturday, always with a glimmer of the light of Easter morning leading us on, giving us the strength to keep moving forward, into the blazing glory of our resurrected Christ.
AMEN.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Fifth Sunday of Lent
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
John 12:1-8
On this fifth Sunday of our Lenten journey we stand poised to make our transition to Holy Week. We are preparing to move toward Jerusalem with Jesus. In the gospel of John, Jesus is spending time with his friends in Bethany. In John’s account, Jesus has executed seven dramatic miracles among the people up to this time. These signs point to the truth of God’s saving action in the person of Jesus.
Jesus has already turned water into wine at Cana; healed the official’s son in Capernaum; made a crippled man walk and a blind man see; fed the five-thousand by the Sea of Galilee; and walked on water.
The “sign” symphony, if you will, comes to a poignant crescendo when Jesus raises his friend, Lazarus, from the dead. This action, of course, stirs the hopes and imaginations of those who follow Jesus thirsting for new life, and also further stirs the insecurities and defenses of those who see a threat to the religious and political status establishment in peoples’ reactions to Jesus. In fact, so threatening is this Jesus that there are whispers on the street that those who are threatened by this “Jesus movement” are lying in wait for Jesus as he enters Jerusalem for Passover.
This is the context as we enter our Gospel story today. In today’s text, Jesus is having supper in the house of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. These three are certainly aware of the charged situation in which they find themselves. These three certainly have heard the whispers of threats to their friend Jesus on the street. These three are most certainly ones who can best judge why Jesus poses such a threat. If anybody were categorically convinced of the truth of Jesus, these three are. All three have witnessed the truth of Jesus with their own eyes and with their own hearts. For this family the truth is, most certainly, that Jesus restores life to the dead. If anyone perceived the truth of promise in Isaiah’s prophecy we read today, that God is about to do a new thing, it was those sitting at table with him in this story.
The existence of Lazarus, whose name means “God is my help,” is the testimony to this new thing God is doing. All of Jesus’ followers, including Lazarus, Martha and Mary, know best who Jesus is, what he is capable of and, perhaps, the price he is about to pay for being such a threat to the status quo.
In John’s Gospel we are poised for the Passover Celebration, the Jewish Celebration of God’s dramatic saving action of his people, moving them from a life of literal, physical, and spiritual bondage, through the waters of the Red Sea, to a new life of freedom. Generations later, held in literal, physical and spiritual bondage, God again seems to be acting in dramatic fashion in the person of this Jesus. Jesus, in John’s Gospel account, will play the role of paschal lamb in this drama.
Jesus sits at table with these three friends in Bethany on his way into Jerusalem for the Passover before the “final” sign of John’s Gospel will be enacted—that is Jesus’ suffering as sacrifice and God’s most dramatic action of raising Jesus from the dead; life will conquer death.
What to do then if you are Mary? What to do with all that is in her as her friend sits at table? Surely now we gain insight into Mary’s movement to take the finest of oil, the most expensive and perfumed oil, and to pour it over Jesus feet. Pistos is the Greek word conjugated to describe this oil. It means refined, pure, derived perhaps from pistachio nut. It will become the oil of anointing for this Jesus who is Messiah, “anointed one” and it will simultaneously become the foreshadowing of the preparation of his body for death. Jesus, anointed as Messiah and prepared for death, will enter Jerusalem where he will soon hear the ecstatic cry of the people for a Messiah King, one who will restore Israel to political and religious independence. What they will get instead will be the suffering servant who will invite God’s final “sign” of resurrection. Those who have followed Jesus and who put their trust in God will enter a whole new way of believing…
living…and acting. Those seated with Jesus at table this night know there is a holy and sacred moment upon them. It seems Mary’s response of pouring the finest perfume is a response to the complex beauty seated before her.
Having been invited into this story, in the tradition of our youngest children who live in God’s story each week in our Godly play curriculum, I invite you now to wonder. Wonder with me as we make this transition to Holy Week and into the deepest mystery of our life and faith.
I wonder what new thing is now springing forth in your life that you might perceive?
I wonder where you see holy, sacred complex beauty in your life over which you may wish to pour the finest of oil?
I wonder how your perception might lead you to a new way of believing…living… acting?
John 12:1-8
On this fifth Sunday of our Lenten journey we stand poised to make our transition to Holy Week. We are preparing to move toward Jerusalem with Jesus. In the gospel of John, Jesus is spending time with his friends in Bethany. In John’s account, Jesus has executed seven dramatic miracles among the people up to this time. These signs point to the truth of God’s saving action in the person of Jesus.
Jesus has already turned water into wine at Cana; healed the official’s son in Capernaum; made a crippled man walk and a blind man see; fed the five-thousand by the Sea of Galilee; and walked on water.
The “sign” symphony, if you will, comes to a poignant crescendo when Jesus raises his friend, Lazarus, from the dead. This action, of course, stirs the hopes and imaginations of those who follow Jesus thirsting for new life, and also further stirs the insecurities and defenses of those who see a threat to the religious and political status establishment in peoples’ reactions to Jesus. In fact, so threatening is this Jesus that there are whispers on the street that those who are threatened by this “Jesus movement” are lying in wait for Jesus as he enters Jerusalem for Passover.
This is the context as we enter our Gospel story today. In today’s text, Jesus is having supper in the house of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. These three are certainly aware of the charged situation in which they find themselves. These three certainly have heard the whispers of threats to their friend Jesus on the street. These three are most certainly ones who can best judge why Jesus poses such a threat. If anybody were categorically convinced of the truth of Jesus, these three are. All three have witnessed the truth of Jesus with their own eyes and with their own hearts. For this family the truth is, most certainly, that Jesus restores life to the dead. If anyone perceived the truth of promise in Isaiah’s prophecy we read today, that God is about to do a new thing, it was those sitting at table with him in this story.
The existence of Lazarus, whose name means “God is my help,” is the testimony to this new thing God is doing. All of Jesus’ followers, including Lazarus, Martha and Mary, know best who Jesus is, what he is capable of and, perhaps, the price he is about to pay for being such a threat to the status quo.
In John’s Gospel we are poised for the Passover Celebration, the Jewish Celebration of God’s dramatic saving action of his people, moving them from a life of literal, physical, and spiritual bondage, through the waters of the Red Sea, to a new life of freedom. Generations later, held in literal, physical and spiritual bondage, God again seems to be acting in dramatic fashion in the person of this Jesus. Jesus, in John’s Gospel account, will play the role of paschal lamb in this drama.
Jesus sits at table with these three friends in Bethany on his way into Jerusalem for the Passover before the “final” sign of John’s Gospel will be enacted—that is Jesus’ suffering as sacrifice and God’s most dramatic action of raising Jesus from the dead; life will conquer death.
What to do then if you are Mary? What to do with all that is in her as her friend sits at table? Surely now we gain insight into Mary’s movement to take the finest of oil, the most expensive and perfumed oil, and to pour it over Jesus feet. Pistos is the Greek word conjugated to describe this oil. It means refined, pure, derived perhaps from pistachio nut. It will become the oil of anointing for this Jesus who is Messiah, “anointed one” and it will simultaneously become the foreshadowing of the preparation of his body for death. Jesus, anointed as Messiah and prepared for death, will enter Jerusalem where he will soon hear the ecstatic cry of the people for a Messiah King, one who will restore Israel to political and religious independence. What they will get instead will be the suffering servant who will invite God’s final “sign” of resurrection. Those who have followed Jesus and who put their trust in God will enter a whole new way of believing…
living…and acting. Those seated with Jesus at table this night know there is a holy and sacred moment upon them. It seems Mary’s response of pouring the finest perfume is a response to the complex beauty seated before her.
Having been invited into this story, in the tradition of our youngest children who live in God’s story each week in our Godly play curriculum, I invite you now to wonder. Wonder with me as we make this transition to Holy Week and into the deepest mystery of our life and faith.
I wonder what new thing is now springing forth in your life that you might perceive?
I wonder where you see holy, sacred complex beauty in your life over which you may wish to pour the finest of oil?
I wonder how your perception might lead you to a new way of believing…living… acting?
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
The Third Sunday of Lent
March 7, 2010
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
There’s this guy. He lives down there in Virginia Beach. He is a preacher who has a TV program. He fancies himself God’s voice, God’s truth. He believes that he has a unique insight into the mind, heart, will, intentions and actions of God.
One time he said that he prayed to God that a storm would be diverted from Virginia Beach and God did it and sent the storm to some other less righteous place. Another time he said that the devastation of New Orleans in the hurricane and storm surge of Katrina was God’s judgment on the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah that is New Orleans. Recently he said that God destroyed Haiti with the earthquake because more than 100 years ago the people of Haiti had made a pact with the devil when they founded their country.
What do you think?
Jesus said, there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?... Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you…
We human beings are always looking to see what or who is to blame for the bad stuff that happens. “Whose fault is it? What did they do to bring this on?” A mother blames herself because her child is born with some condition or is afflicted later with some disease. She says, “It must be my fault?”
But, it just is. It just happened. Towers fall, buildings fall down, earthquakes shatter, storms hit, disease strikes and people die. Sometimes it just happens.
It is not surprising to me that in the midst of crisis or chaos, when our resources are low and we are running on empty, that we begin to search around, flail around, for some reason, some cause, some purpose, someone or something to blame. It is human nature. We want to know why. “Why?! Why did this happen? I don’t understand! Tell me why? What did I do? What did they do to deserve this?”
In the midst of things we cannot control, we crave control over the chaos of our lives.
The answer to the questions is most often “Nothing”. They did nothing. No one did anything. It just happened. Towers fall, buildings crash down, earthquakes shatter, storms hit, disease strikes and people die.
But we all know, too, that some people do do bad things. People do suffer at the hands of others, because of the decisions of others, because of the willful violence of others, because of the politics of others, because of the policies of others, because of the power needs of others – people do suffer, through no fault of their own. Indeed some suffer horribly at the hands of others.
As but one example, think of our brothers and sisters and the church in Southern Sudan; what they have suffered in the last 50 years at the hands of the government of Sudan: rape, war, pillage, destruction, death and exile. They deserved none of it.
As one commentator said, eventually we have to come to the point “where we have to recognize bastardry for what it is and stop attributing everything to God.” People do bad things that do harm to others.
In the fig tree example Jesus reminds us that there are consequences for our actions, for our behavior. If we break the law, eventually we will be caught and punished according to the law. If we abuse our bodies, if we don’t care for our bodies, our health, disease and death are more likely to happen sooner rather than later. There are consequences for our behavior.
For those of us in a relationship with God in Christ, it is not enough just to be, just to exist, simply to loll around, to take up space, we are called to do something.
In the lesson from Exodus, we hear that God is with us; that God is concerned about and involved in life and in the lives that God has created. It is the promise that is at the heart of our relationship with God. That God is with us and will be with us always and ever, now and forever.
We hear God’s words spoken to Moses, and through Moses to all of Israel and to us their descendants, “I have seen the misery of my people; I have heard their cry. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them… Moses, I am sending you to my people.”
God with… God was with Abraham, God was with Isaac. God was with Jacob. All of history testifies to the presence of God with the people even when we don’t know it, even when we can’t see it, even when we don’t feel it, in all circumstances of our lives… God knows, God sees, God hears, God comes to be with us, often embodied in another human being.
A friend tells about a friend, a single mother and her small daughter. “Late one night their city was in flames. In the midst of it all a little girl was in her bed trying to go to sleep, but the noises out¬side her home — shouts, flashing lights, gunfire, po¬lice cars, fire engines — kept her awake. She was afraid and she was crying. ‘Hush, child, God is with you,’ her mother called from the bedroom across the hall. The frightened little girl answered in her small voice, ‘I know he is, but could you come and get into bed with me. I need someone with skin.’”
If our response is one of compassion, then the presence of God will be revealed in the chaos or misery, in the midst of people’s lives whatever their circumstances. God's people will be comforted and we will live in a community of faith, witness, and ministry that is an image of the loving, compassion¬ate, powerful presence of God in the here-and-now. It will be like it is in heaven and is meant to be here on earth.
When Jesus teaches, he almost always says "The kingdom of heaven is like...the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, like a pearl; like a net full of fish.
Well, The kingdom of heaven is like – you and me, whenever we soothe, feed, build, clothe, advocate for, pray for, be with one another. Whenever we become indignant on behalf of the poor and suffering; whenever we bring resources to help make the world more just, whenever we hear someone's cry, and we go to them, and we be with them.
We stand on holy ground, in the presence of the Living God who has “seen the misery of the people; has heard their cry; who knows their sufferings, and has come to deliver them.” and who sends us to be his compassionate, comforting presence in the world; and who will come to judge us, not on our rate of suc¬cess, but on our faithfulness. This is the God who calls us.
The Ven. Richard I Cluett
There’s this guy. He lives down there in Virginia Beach. He is a preacher who has a TV program. He fancies himself God’s voice, God’s truth. He believes that he has a unique insight into the mind, heart, will, intentions and actions of God.
One time he said that he prayed to God that a storm would be diverted from Virginia Beach and God did it and sent the storm to some other less righteous place. Another time he said that the devastation of New Orleans in the hurricane and storm surge of Katrina was God’s judgment on the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah that is New Orleans. Recently he said that God destroyed Haiti with the earthquake because more than 100 years ago the people of Haiti had made a pact with the devil when they founded their country.
What do you think?
Jesus said, there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?... Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you…
We human beings are always looking to see what or who is to blame for the bad stuff that happens. “Whose fault is it? What did they do to bring this on?” A mother blames herself because her child is born with some condition or is afflicted later with some disease. She says, “It must be my fault?”
But, it just is. It just happened. Towers fall, buildings fall down, earthquakes shatter, storms hit, disease strikes and people die. Sometimes it just happens.
It is not surprising to me that in the midst of crisis or chaos, when our resources are low and we are running on empty, that we begin to search around, flail around, for some reason, some cause, some purpose, someone or something to blame. It is human nature. We want to know why. “Why?! Why did this happen? I don’t understand! Tell me why? What did I do? What did they do to deserve this?”
In the midst of things we cannot control, we crave control over the chaos of our lives.
The answer to the questions is most often “Nothing”. They did nothing. No one did anything. It just happened. Towers fall, buildings crash down, earthquakes shatter, storms hit, disease strikes and people die.
But we all know, too, that some people do do bad things. People do suffer at the hands of others, because of the decisions of others, because of the willful violence of others, because of the politics of others, because of the policies of others, because of the power needs of others – people do suffer, through no fault of their own. Indeed some suffer horribly at the hands of others.
As but one example, think of our brothers and sisters and the church in Southern Sudan; what they have suffered in the last 50 years at the hands of the government of Sudan: rape, war, pillage, destruction, death and exile. They deserved none of it.
As one commentator said, eventually we have to come to the point “where we have to recognize bastardry for what it is and stop attributing everything to God.” People do bad things that do harm to others.
In the fig tree example Jesus reminds us that there are consequences for our actions, for our behavior. If we break the law, eventually we will be caught and punished according to the law. If we abuse our bodies, if we don’t care for our bodies, our health, disease and death are more likely to happen sooner rather than later. There are consequences for our behavior.
For those of us in a relationship with God in Christ, it is not enough just to be, just to exist, simply to loll around, to take up space, we are called to do something.
In the lesson from Exodus, we hear that God is with us; that God is concerned about and involved in life and in the lives that God has created. It is the promise that is at the heart of our relationship with God. That God is with us and will be with us always and ever, now and forever.
We hear God’s words spoken to Moses, and through Moses to all of Israel and to us their descendants, “I have seen the misery of my people; I have heard their cry. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them… Moses, I am sending you to my people.”
God with… God was with Abraham, God was with Isaac. God was with Jacob. All of history testifies to the presence of God with the people even when we don’t know it, even when we can’t see it, even when we don’t feel it, in all circumstances of our lives… God knows, God sees, God hears, God comes to be with us, often embodied in another human being.
A friend tells about a friend, a single mother and her small daughter. “Late one night their city was in flames. In the midst of it all a little girl was in her bed trying to go to sleep, but the noises out¬side her home — shouts, flashing lights, gunfire, po¬lice cars, fire engines — kept her awake. She was afraid and she was crying. ‘Hush, child, God is with you,’ her mother called from the bedroom across the hall. The frightened little girl answered in her small voice, ‘I know he is, but could you come and get into bed with me. I need someone with skin.’”
If our response is one of compassion, then the presence of God will be revealed in the chaos or misery, in the midst of people’s lives whatever their circumstances. God's people will be comforted and we will live in a community of faith, witness, and ministry that is an image of the loving, compassion¬ate, powerful presence of God in the here-and-now. It will be like it is in heaven and is meant to be here on earth.
When Jesus teaches, he almost always says "The kingdom of heaven is like...the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, like a pearl; like a net full of fish.
Well, The kingdom of heaven is like – you and me, whenever we soothe, feed, build, clothe, advocate for, pray for, be with one another. Whenever we become indignant on behalf of the poor and suffering; whenever we bring resources to help make the world more just, whenever we hear someone's cry, and we go to them, and we be with them.
We stand on holy ground, in the presence of the Living God who has “seen the misery of the people; has heard their cry; who knows their sufferings, and has come to deliver them.” and who sends us to be his compassionate, comforting presence in the world; and who will come to judge us, not on our rate of suc¬cess, but on our faithfulness. This is the God who calls us.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
The Second Sunday of Lent
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 ~ Philippians 3:17-4:1 ~ Luke 13:31-35
Frederick Buechner, in his work entitled A Longing for Home, offers us a metaphor for home. It is a spiritual, emotional and sometimes physical place. It is a stirring up of rich and complex emotions – the notion of home. The idea of home, he suggests, is a place to which we have a sense of belonging and what we feel when we are in that place. It is a state of being that all will be well even when things are not going particularly well. Home!
Buechner suggests that to reflect on the idea of home often begs each of us to think back to our childhood, where an experience that was real or one that we dreamed about conjures up a state of being, that sees home as a place where we are safe, nurtured, cared for, where we can grow in stature and freedom. However, he says, that is not always the reality for everyone. Indeed, the idea of home, he suggests, is of that safety, of care, of nurture, of growth, of freedom in all of us.
Home is that state of being planted deep inside of us that he feels most of us spend our days longing for. That state of being that places us as belonging, as accepted, as secure with a certain level of hope and a level of certainty that all things are good, even when things are difficult. I believe this plays in our Old Testament story today. Abram, as the leader of a nomadic people, seems to be in negotiations with the God who created him and has claimed his people as his own.
Abram is seeking and searching for a place called home—a place where his descendants would taste life. In this particular case, a fixed place, a physical place. This comes in a promise of things unseen for Abram because God has made a promise to him, not only that he will have a place—a land—but also that he will have descendants that would be as many as the stars. At this point, Abram has yet to lay eye on either of these things.
It is what is inside of Abram that the idea of home for these nomadic people in these important ancient times gave him. Indeed, Abram would find the granting of land and what is in it with the promise of the stars, the potential for life for his people. It would be a place to grow, to be, to live and learn, to laugh, to eat of the fruits of the earth, to be sustained by the waters of life that flowed from it. It would be a place where his people would be safe and secure; a place where they could be. This is a big deal for nomadic people where Abram and his people were at this time. This would be a place to settle, to be a community to raise and care for their children, the sick and the aged, to find industry in the fruits of the earth. It is a big deal that is going on in the story. It is a place that Abraham could find home, his descendants would find purpose and the covenant they will make. Abraham would trust in God, he would be their God, and they would belong to God. That belonging would call them to their side of the covenant that would be to be God’s people in the world, to live and love in a radical way that they had never imagined or dreamed of. God would pitch a tent with them and they with God. They would indeed come home!
Lent—this is the second Sunday of Lent, by the way, for those of you who are keeping the calendar. Lent is a time to explore home, a time to explore the covenant that we have made and that God has made with us, to explore the home of our hearts where we long for God. We ask God once again, what is the purpose of our lives? How are we to be God’s people?
How many of you, if you could raise your hand, have lived and moved and had your being all of your days in the Lehigh Valley? Raise your hands high. Yes. Most of us, in the world in which we live today, find ourselves as a nomadic people. Few of us these days live and move and have our being in one place throughout all of our lives. Certainly we are connected, even in that nomadic lifestyle, in an unprecedented way. Although we do not live in community, the same community all of our lives, we do find ourselves now connected in a global community in unprecedented ways. Within minutes, we now read and see images of our connections to one another.
This past week, within minutes, I was connected with the pain and suffering and brought back home as my life-long best friend, childhood friend, lost his 22-year old son to a drug overdose. Within minutes I was connected by telephone to the person I could not touch, I could not embrace, and in whose heart I knew I needed to break with. Within minutes I was connected by, yes, dare I say it, Facebook, as I read his wife’s posting on her Facebook page declaring how brokenhearted she was. Within minutes I was connected to all of those from home as they reached out from across the country with prayers and heartfelt expressions of support.
Within minutes we witnessed the devastation of yet one more earthquake. (And I’m getting to the point where I might just be thinking God may be telling us something.) One earthquake was off the coast of Japan that did, indeed, affect the small islands of Japan and quickly went off the radar screen to the bigger earthquake that was in Chile yesterday. Within minutes we were seeing images, either on the Internet or on the news, of the brokenness and the devastation of our brothers and sisters in another time and in another place. Within minutes we heard and read about the possibility of a tsunami coming and hitting Hawaii, and within minutes I was reaching out to friends who live there, asking them if they were okay. Within minutes I was relieved as I watched and saw that, indeed, the surge was not one that would devastate. Within minutes, we are connected to one another. We stand not all that far from the distance of Ash Wednesday. In the midst of uncertainty and tragedy, as our bishop reminded us in a prayer he sent to us by email yesterday, we are reminded of the fragile nature of humankind. Yet in that fragile nature, we are called home. We are called home to find the spiritual promise that results in our purpose. When we go home, we are met in our longing for care and nurture, for grace and freedom. We are met by a God who stands firm with us, even when things are not going all that well—
especially when things are not going all that well. Somehow in that spiritual union—in our setting up tents and inviting God into our homes, we find the gumption to reach out and reach into the brokenness of others. It is what makes us God’s people. We find a God who makes a covenant with us, a covenant of presence and promise. We are called to work through the ashes of life. We are called to have the courage to dirty our hands and faces as we reach out and lift one another up. This is the sacred space of home. It is not a place we long for to hide or to retire, but a place that calls us to discover who it is that God made us to be—that is, desperate lovers of one another.
Amen.
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18 ~ Philippians 3:17-4:1 ~ Luke 13:31-35
Frederick Buechner, in his work entitled A Longing for Home, offers us a metaphor for home. It is a spiritual, emotional and sometimes physical place. It is a stirring up of rich and complex emotions – the notion of home. The idea of home, he suggests, is a place to which we have a sense of belonging and what we feel when we are in that place. It is a state of being that all will be well even when things are not going particularly well. Home!
Buechner suggests that to reflect on the idea of home often begs each of us to think back to our childhood, where an experience that was real or one that we dreamed about conjures up a state of being, that sees home as a place where we are safe, nurtured, cared for, where we can grow in stature and freedom. However, he says, that is not always the reality for everyone. Indeed, the idea of home, he suggests, is of that safety, of care, of nurture, of growth, of freedom in all of us.
Home is that state of being planted deep inside of us that he feels most of us spend our days longing for. That state of being that places us as belonging, as accepted, as secure with a certain level of hope and a level of certainty that all things are good, even when things are difficult. I believe this plays in our Old Testament story today. Abram, as the leader of a nomadic people, seems to be in negotiations with the God who created him and has claimed his people as his own.
Abram is seeking and searching for a place called home—a place where his descendants would taste life. In this particular case, a fixed place, a physical place. This comes in a promise of things unseen for Abram because God has made a promise to him, not only that he will have a place—a land—but also that he will have descendants that would be as many as the stars. At this point, Abram has yet to lay eye on either of these things.
It is what is inside of Abram that the idea of home for these nomadic people in these important ancient times gave him. Indeed, Abram would find the granting of land and what is in it with the promise of the stars, the potential for life for his people. It would be a place to grow, to be, to live and learn, to laugh, to eat of the fruits of the earth, to be sustained by the waters of life that flowed from it. It would be a place where his people would be safe and secure; a place where they could be. This is a big deal for nomadic people where Abram and his people were at this time. This would be a place to settle, to be a community to raise and care for their children, the sick and the aged, to find industry in the fruits of the earth. It is a big deal that is going on in the story. It is a place that Abraham could find home, his descendants would find purpose and the covenant they will make. Abraham would trust in God, he would be their God, and they would belong to God. That belonging would call them to their side of the covenant that would be to be God’s people in the world, to live and love in a radical way that they had never imagined or dreamed of. God would pitch a tent with them and they with God. They would indeed come home!
Lent—this is the second Sunday of Lent, by the way, for those of you who are keeping the calendar. Lent is a time to explore home, a time to explore the covenant that we have made and that God has made with us, to explore the home of our hearts where we long for God. We ask God once again, what is the purpose of our lives? How are we to be God’s people?
How many of you, if you could raise your hand, have lived and moved and had your being all of your days in the Lehigh Valley? Raise your hands high. Yes. Most of us, in the world in which we live today, find ourselves as a nomadic people. Few of us these days live and move and have our being in one place throughout all of our lives. Certainly we are connected, even in that nomadic lifestyle, in an unprecedented way. Although we do not live in community, the same community all of our lives, we do find ourselves now connected in a global community in unprecedented ways. Within minutes, we now read and see images of our connections to one another.
This past week, within minutes, I was connected with the pain and suffering and brought back home as my life-long best friend, childhood friend, lost his 22-year old son to a drug overdose. Within minutes I was connected by telephone to the person I could not touch, I could not embrace, and in whose heart I knew I needed to break with. Within minutes I was connected by, yes, dare I say it, Facebook, as I read his wife’s posting on her Facebook page declaring how brokenhearted she was. Within minutes I was connected to all of those from home as they reached out from across the country with prayers and heartfelt expressions of support.
Within minutes we witnessed the devastation of yet one more earthquake. (And I’m getting to the point where I might just be thinking God may be telling us something.) One earthquake was off the coast of Japan that did, indeed, affect the small islands of Japan and quickly went off the radar screen to the bigger earthquake that was in Chile yesterday. Within minutes we were seeing images, either on the Internet or on the news, of the brokenness and the devastation of our brothers and sisters in another time and in another place. Within minutes we heard and read about the possibility of a tsunami coming and hitting Hawaii, and within minutes I was reaching out to friends who live there, asking them if they were okay. Within minutes I was relieved as I watched and saw that, indeed, the surge was not one that would devastate. Within minutes, we are connected to one another. We stand not all that far from the distance of Ash Wednesday. In the midst of uncertainty and tragedy, as our bishop reminded us in a prayer he sent to us by email yesterday, we are reminded of the fragile nature of humankind. Yet in that fragile nature, we are called home. We are called home to find the spiritual promise that results in our purpose. When we go home, we are met in our longing for care and nurture, for grace and freedom. We are met by a God who stands firm with us, even when things are not going all that well—
especially when things are not going all that well. Somehow in that spiritual union—in our setting up tents and inviting God into our homes, we find the gumption to reach out and reach into the brokenness of others. It is what makes us God’s people. We find a God who makes a covenant with us, a covenant of presence and promise. We are called to work through the ashes of life. We are called to have the courage to dirty our hands and faces as we reach out and lift one another up. This is the sacred space of home. It is not a place we long for to hide or to retire, but a place that calls us to discover who it is that God made us to be—that is, desperate lovers of one another.
Amen.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The First Sunday of Lent
The Very Rev. Robert V. Taylor
I invite you to imagine this scene. It is Ash Wednesday in a large urban church. In the tradition of that place one of the clergy is available throughout the day to impose ashes for anyone who wants to receive them. The lines form early in the morning with people on their way to work; the line snakes through the church all day. Most of those who come are unfamiliar faces to the clergy.
My friend, who is rector of that congregation, was sitting in the pew meditating as he watched the expectant faces, the attentive body language, of those waiting to receive ashes. He was startled, surprised and unprepared for what he saw. He noticed a woman in line wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women. After receiving the ashes she stopped to say “thank you” to him. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked. “For the ashes. I come every year for them” she said. My friend was a little perplexed and said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking you this, but you are Muslim and yet you are thanking me for the ashes that you come each year to receive. I’m not sure I understand.” She smiled broadly at him; one of those wise smiles from deep within. Thinking for a moment she said, “The ashes remind me to be grounded, to pay attention to my life, to become the person of love I try to be. Coming here to receive them makes me think of being welcomed by God.” She added, “Thank you for this gift. And now, I have to go to work.” My friend watched her leave, marveling at the sight of this woman leaving a church, wearing a hajib with ashes on her forehead. Although he’d been a priest for 29 years he felt as though he had just had an insight into the Ashes of Lent unlike any other. The unexpected love and generosity of God has been experienced in a surprising way through this visitor.
When I first heard his story I thought about the Holy One always breaking through the enclosures of what we think we know. I wondered if the ashes are as compelling and inviting to many of us as they are to that occasional visitor. I wonder what the ashes of Lent mean for you? Do we share the yearning of that occasional visitor? The story is a window in to the generosity of God; the generosity that Lent invites us to rediscover, the generosity of Jesus who always invites people in, never excluding. Are the ashes an invitation to pay attention to your life, to draw closer into the love that Jesus bears? To go beyond the quick fixes that we’re tempted by in our own lives and go deeper.
In today’s Gospel we encounter Jesus faced with the choice of easy solutions; to be an instant rock star meeting the worlds needs and remaking it as he might see fit. The temptations were designed to keep him from trusting his voice, denying his imagination and manipulating his generous compassion by setting him off course. Instead, Jesus trusts his own voice and imagination. This story invites us to trust our own voice and imagination as well.
The gift of Lent is modeled after the spacious forty days that Jesus spent wrestling with all that conspired to keep him from his life’s purpose. As he wrestled with the ashes of the world and those of his own life he was able to trust his own imagination. Look at his tempter! He was offering a menu of ago old cheap illusions, of ways to avoid being fully alive. The tempters enticements were rancid, old news, devoid of any imagination. The tempter did not understand that getting mussed up in the ashes and the muddiness of life had allowed Jesus to know the truth that we are made in God’s imagination.
Jesus was preparing to invite people into a dance, or a walk to the center of a labyrinth; a way of going deeper into the heart of generous love that must have seemed insane to the Tempter.
Joseph Campbell says that each of us must have a place that we go to every day where no one knows you and where you owe no one anything; a place where you do not know who you work for, who you are married to; a place that is for our own self. Jesus’ time in the desert was such a place. Lent invites us to return to or create those spaces to listen to our voice, to trust our imagination.
Do the ashes invite us to return to that which grounds us on our spiritual journey? I had an unexpected and amusing reminder of that grounding in my own life a few years ago. I was on a short list of candidates being considered for nomination as a Bishop in California. The time arrived to interview with a team representing the Search Committee. The came to Seattle for interviews with a variety of people and used the offices of a rabbi friend at a neighboring synagogue. The Temple was a familiar place to me. I had attended and participated in services there. It was a fairly typical, wet, grey January morning in Seattle.
After parking the car I suddenly realized that I couldn’t find the correct door to enter through. I felt a tinge of panic. This was not a time to be lost! As I went from the front doors, headed towards the north side of the buildings, I took a massive slide! There I was dressed for the interview, wearing a suit, looking fairly formal, sliding on the moss and mud, and finally landing on the ground. My hands were grazed and covered with dirt. There was mud on my trousers. The materials I had inside a folder were splattered with mud and dirt. As I fell, I was surprised by my reaction. As I braced for the fall and the dirt I was laughing at myself and my impeccable timing!
It was a great moment! It felt messy. It made me think about the root word for humility, of humus which means “earth” and which is related to the word for “low” and “humble”. They are words which reflect our dependence on the Divine One and on one another. The interview went well and afterwards I wondered if that had something to do with falling in the mud. Any potential for self-importance in the interview was tempered by the foibles and imperfections of my own steps and missteps. The unexpected gift of landing in the mud was the reminder to take myself lightly.
Whatever the mud or ashes are experienced as in your own life, it is usually an invitation to walk lightly into what beckons us. The ashes of Lent invite a return to the grounding of your life. Our own journey to the heart of Divine Love is usually discovered in getting mussed up in the dirt and ashes. It’s there that we re-discover our oneness with God. Through the ashes you discover or re-discover that you are loved for no reason than that of your existence. Emerging from the ashes we are able to open some of our self-fulfilling enclosures which keep us from loving with abandonment.
The ashes, the mud, are not about gloomy glumness. As Jesus emerged from his forty days, with clarity about his person, his life and his work, so we are invited to become fully alive in new ways through the work we do in Lent. We’re invited to be re-grounded in the truth that the only message of Jesus is one of generous love. God says to us, “Please know that you are loved for nothing other than your existence. Please know you are loved and beloved of God. And so is every single person. Please, I need you to be my helpers in making that love known. Please!”
Robert V. Taylor invites you to visit www.robertvtaylor.com
I invite you to imagine this scene. It is Ash Wednesday in a large urban church. In the tradition of that place one of the clergy is available throughout the day to impose ashes for anyone who wants to receive them. The lines form early in the morning with people on their way to work; the line snakes through the church all day. Most of those who come are unfamiliar faces to the clergy.
My friend, who is rector of that congregation, was sitting in the pew meditating as he watched the expectant faces, the attentive body language, of those waiting to receive ashes. He was startled, surprised and unprepared for what he saw. He noticed a woman in line wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women. After receiving the ashes she stopped to say “thank you” to him. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked. “For the ashes. I come every year for them” she said. My friend was a little perplexed and said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking you this, but you are Muslim and yet you are thanking me for the ashes that you come each year to receive. I’m not sure I understand.” She smiled broadly at him; one of those wise smiles from deep within. Thinking for a moment she said, “The ashes remind me to be grounded, to pay attention to my life, to become the person of love I try to be. Coming here to receive them makes me think of being welcomed by God.” She added, “Thank you for this gift. And now, I have to go to work.” My friend watched her leave, marveling at the sight of this woman leaving a church, wearing a hajib with ashes on her forehead. Although he’d been a priest for 29 years he felt as though he had just had an insight into the Ashes of Lent unlike any other. The unexpected love and generosity of God has been experienced in a surprising way through this visitor.
When I first heard his story I thought about the Holy One always breaking through the enclosures of what we think we know. I wondered if the ashes are as compelling and inviting to many of us as they are to that occasional visitor. I wonder what the ashes of Lent mean for you? Do we share the yearning of that occasional visitor? The story is a window in to the generosity of God; the generosity that Lent invites us to rediscover, the generosity of Jesus who always invites people in, never excluding. Are the ashes an invitation to pay attention to your life, to draw closer into the love that Jesus bears? To go beyond the quick fixes that we’re tempted by in our own lives and go deeper.
In today’s Gospel we encounter Jesus faced with the choice of easy solutions; to be an instant rock star meeting the worlds needs and remaking it as he might see fit. The temptations were designed to keep him from trusting his voice, denying his imagination and manipulating his generous compassion by setting him off course. Instead, Jesus trusts his own voice and imagination. This story invites us to trust our own voice and imagination as well.
The gift of Lent is modeled after the spacious forty days that Jesus spent wrestling with all that conspired to keep him from his life’s purpose. As he wrestled with the ashes of the world and those of his own life he was able to trust his own imagination. Look at his tempter! He was offering a menu of ago old cheap illusions, of ways to avoid being fully alive. The tempters enticements were rancid, old news, devoid of any imagination. The tempter did not understand that getting mussed up in the ashes and the muddiness of life had allowed Jesus to know the truth that we are made in God’s imagination.
Jesus was preparing to invite people into a dance, or a walk to the center of a labyrinth; a way of going deeper into the heart of generous love that must have seemed insane to the Tempter.
Joseph Campbell says that each of us must have a place that we go to every day where no one knows you and where you owe no one anything; a place where you do not know who you work for, who you are married to; a place that is for our own self. Jesus’ time in the desert was such a place. Lent invites us to return to or create those spaces to listen to our voice, to trust our imagination.
Do the ashes invite us to return to that which grounds us on our spiritual journey? I had an unexpected and amusing reminder of that grounding in my own life a few years ago. I was on a short list of candidates being considered for nomination as a Bishop in California. The time arrived to interview with a team representing the Search Committee. The came to Seattle for interviews with a variety of people and used the offices of a rabbi friend at a neighboring synagogue. The Temple was a familiar place to me. I had attended and participated in services there. It was a fairly typical, wet, grey January morning in Seattle.
After parking the car I suddenly realized that I couldn’t find the correct door to enter through. I felt a tinge of panic. This was not a time to be lost! As I went from the front doors, headed towards the north side of the buildings, I took a massive slide! There I was dressed for the interview, wearing a suit, looking fairly formal, sliding on the moss and mud, and finally landing on the ground. My hands were grazed and covered with dirt. There was mud on my trousers. The materials I had inside a folder were splattered with mud and dirt. As I fell, I was surprised by my reaction. As I braced for the fall and the dirt I was laughing at myself and my impeccable timing!
It was a great moment! It felt messy. It made me think about the root word for humility, of humus which means “earth” and which is related to the word for “low” and “humble”. They are words which reflect our dependence on the Divine One and on one another. The interview went well and afterwards I wondered if that had something to do with falling in the mud. Any potential for self-importance in the interview was tempered by the foibles and imperfections of my own steps and missteps. The unexpected gift of landing in the mud was the reminder to take myself lightly.
Whatever the mud or ashes are experienced as in your own life, it is usually an invitation to walk lightly into what beckons us. The ashes of Lent invite a return to the grounding of your life. Our own journey to the heart of Divine Love is usually discovered in getting mussed up in the dirt and ashes. It’s there that we re-discover our oneness with God. Through the ashes you discover or re-discover that you are loved for no reason than that of your existence. Emerging from the ashes we are able to open some of our self-fulfilling enclosures which keep us from loving with abandonment.
The ashes, the mud, are not about gloomy glumness. As Jesus emerged from his forty days, with clarity about his person, his life and his work, so we are invited to become fully alive in new ways through the work we do in Lent. We’re invited to be re-grounded in the truth that the only message of Jesus is one of generous love. God says to us, “Please know that you are loved for nothing other than your existence. Please know you are loved and beloved of God. And so is every single person. Please, I need you to be my helpers in making that love known. Please!”
Robert V. Taylor invites you to visit www.robertvtaylor.com
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Epiphany 4C
A Sermon by The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Jeremiah 1:4-10 ~
Corinthians 13:1-13 ~
Luke 4:21-30
You can read the bible time and time again, and you can still come across a little time-bomb that God has placed there especially for you on that day, and you find yourself exposed to a whole new perspective about God, the world or, most often, yourself.
The time bomb this week was planted in Jeremiah. “Jeremiah I have need of thee. I need you. I formed you in the womb – for a purpose. I have something for you to do.”
Perhaps the amazing miracle that Scripture reveals to us this week is not that God created everything in the cosmos, or even that God came into human life in Jesus. Maybe even more remarkable than all that is the realization ‘God, the Lord has need of us!” You. Me. Imagine that. And immediately like Jeremiah we think, “Oh Lord, I can’t. I am only – a boy.”
That’s a most terrible phrase, “I am only...” Isn’t that what the world tries so hard to teach us? “You are only… You are only a kid; – a woman; – a teenager; – a secretary; – a clerk; – a freshman; – a mechanic, or for me, you are only – a geezer. But, do fill in your own blank. I know you can. And so we begin to think, “I am - only…”
When I was a very young boy I decided to make my father a Christmas present, a leather wallet. Now I wasn’t going to do that from scratch, There are kits for making wallets. My mother and I went one day to the craft store and bought a wallet kit.
The kit contained several pieces of leather precut for a wallet and pre-punched for binding, with several feet of plastic binding. Making the wallet consisted of knitting the pieces of leather together in the right places in the right sequence with the plastic binding.
I spent hours and hours and hours and hours binding those floppy, slippery leather pieces together – and unbinding the mistakes – and rebinding and rebinding and rebinding. Finally, I had made a wallet.
It was pretty crude. It was lumpy in places. The binding was uneven in places. When it was folded over to go into a pocket, it was about an inch thick – empty! It was pretty crude.
I wrapped it up, put it under the Christmas tree and on Christmas morning with great seriousness and expectation – as well as a good bit of anxiety because I knew that it was crude, not perfect – I handed it to my father, “Merry Christmas, Dad”.
He opened the package and took out the wallet and with only a nano-second of hesitation, his face broke into a huge smile and he uttered words of awe and wonder that his son could have produced such a fine wallet, and how much work it must have taken, and how wonderful it was.
The message was given and the message was received. My crude gift announced to him my love for him and by his response I knew that he had gotten the message, and I got one, too. Love doesn’t have anything to do with perfection. It is pure gift.
Have you ever been invited to a home for dinner and arrived to find exquisite perfection in the decorating of the house, and precise formality of manners in the hosting of the dinner? How about going to a home where the hosting was warm and welcoming and the people and conversation engaging and you knew they were glad that you were there? And you never noticed the décor.
I had a clergy friend who wore baggy suits, needed a better barber, drove an old car - and loved his flock. I remember another who wore fine suits, had impeccable hair, drove a luxury car - and enjoyed looking great.
I remember a college professor I had who was brilliant, but judgmental about which of us were of his attention. I remember another who saw beyond my crude efforts and encouraged my curiosity.
I know of a parish church whose buildings are immaculate, only the loveliest of furnishings and finest of art in its windows. People speak in quiet, hushed tones. I know another parish where there are books and papers on tables and chairs and kids running around and their drawings on the walls to display their unique and wonderful talents and insights – even when they are crude.
I want to show you one of my favorite works of art in the whole world. It has hung on the wall of my office for more than 30 years. It is a mixture of media – some might say, a mess of media – pen and ink, crayon, and watercolor. It demonstrates a free and happy spirit. It’s also a bit crude. But it is a priceless work of art. My son Tyler made it when he was 5 years old.
Jeremiah the prophet was a crude affair. John the Baptist was a crude affair: both men of the wilderness, living off the land, rough in their preaching, treated roughly by the people. The crudeness of their appearance and the roughness of their prophecies provided excuses to marginalize each of them - as we often use appearance to marginalize people in our own day and time.
They served God by doing their answering their call, no matter how crude their efforts. They spoke God’s word to the people with whom they lived, regardless of lumps and uneven bindings.
Believers forever have wanted to see Jesus as perfect, beyond reproach, beyond any normal human failings, his every word a gem, his every step thoroughly planned. But what if Jesus was just a guy who said Yes to God, Yes to God’s purpose for him?
Think about it. What if Jesus really was tempted by Satan at the start? What if he was a bit grandiose in his teaching at Nazareth and stunned by their rejection? What if he learned messiah-ship while living into his Yes? What if he figured out the “suffering servant” role at the end in Gethsemane, and his glory was not in having known everything all along, but in his seeing the cross and saying Yes, responding to God’s love ready or not?
Jeremiah the prophet spoke these words (9:23-24): Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom, do not let the mighty boast in their might, do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they know and love me, that I am the Lord; that I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord.
What if God sees us as works in progress, too? What if that’s the miracle and our hope? What if this Christian adventure is about crude and imperfect affairs like Jeremiah, John and Jesus – and us, being embraced by a loving God?
What if the center of this Gospel enterprise is indeed the wounded caring for the wounded, the "least of these" loving the "least of these," the fallen raising themselves and others up, not the perfect bowing down to lift up losers, not the experts pretending perfect craftsmanship while scorning the uneven lumpy work of others?
The Incarnation is preceded by crude prophet after crude prophet. It began with birth in a crude stable to marginalized parents, followed by the crude figure of John announcing a miracle by the name of Jesus. It climaxed in the rough wood of the cross amidst the chaotic nattering of crude and confused disciples.
So, maybe the gospel is about love, and not perfection - and maybe, just maybe, we can trust there is room in it for us, for the likes of you and me, and even that God has need of thee and me.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Epiphany 3C
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 ~ Psalm 19 ~ 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a ~ Luke 4:14-21
I want to introduce you to Godwill. Godwill is a 10-year-old boy that I met in the Sudan, and I want you to hear Godwill’s voice. (Dean Pompa turns on recorder.) (Godwill sings.) “He’s in control all around the world. Master Jesus. He’s in control.” Meet Godwill, a 10-year-old boy whose father is a priest, one of the clergy of the Diocese of Kajo Keji, who has been living in exile since the civil war that has afflicted that people. His father is returning for the synod, the convention of the Diocese of Kajo Keji, considering his return to serve in that Diocese. Meet Godwill and meet the spirituality of a people returned from exile. He’s in control all around the world. Master Jesus. He’s in control. The people of Kajo Keji are like the people of Israel who have returned form Babylonian exile in the Old Testament lesson we read today. The people of Israel are returning from exile, the Babylonian exile, and they find in the Persian system of government a sympathetic system, one that has appointed Nehemiah the governor, Nehemiah being a faithful Israelite. Nehemiah, the governor, has been given permission by the Persian government to help rebuild the wall that surrounds the temple in Jerusalem.
The people who have been sent away in exile under the Babylonians now experience what they never imagined, but always hoped for–-that they could return to Jerusalem to the temple that they themselves would be bringing the materials and the stones that would rebuild that wall around the temple. But more so...many, of course, never imagined but always hoped that they would be in a place where they, too, would again be returned to their system of life, their rediscovery of the law that defined their relationship with God, a reconnection with that place of worship, a rediscovery of their spirituality, a spirituality that God is at the center of their lives, and that God himself is in control.
The people of Kajo Keji are among the 5% who are Christian in the Sudan, most of them being the South of the Sudan. They returned from the exile the civil war had forced upon them. You may have heard about this before from Archdeacon Cluett and others. It is hard for us to tell the story, hard even to comprehend unless you are there and see it. But short of chartering a number of jets, this is the best I can do.
A people who were forced into exile, fleeing from civil war, are returning home to their villages. Christian people are rediscovering that their humble infrastructure has been destroyed during that civil war. Their small churches, mostly made of mud and straw, have been empty for years and are now being repopulated and rediscovered.
Their bishop who was in exile now remains back in Kajo Keji and as they return and are slowly building again what most of us have taken for granted, that is their churches, literally the buildings of their churches and the structure to carry out the mission of the church. Actually their bishop in this geographic area that is their diocese is now leading that restructuring. Some churches are now being built out of cement block, and you know because we’ve partnered with them, that schools are now being built out of cement block as opposed to the schools that are made of mud and straw.
The bishop not only is leading that effort, but Bishop Poggo is now trying to build the very structures of what it means to be a church. He is building the Diocesan center where the leadership and the clergy can gather and be trained and educated, and sent to go and lead in the small villages around the Diocese. These villages are populated by the poor, and by the poor they are being built. We literally saw the beams being raised as we were there. Being built and raised are the beams of the Cathedral. At first Raymond Arcario, who was with me, and I looked at each other thinking–-it seems so counter-intuitive. Why not running water first? Why not a good system of food and transportation first? But why the beams of a Cathedral? As the week went on, we got it. Because the people there have to know, just like the people of Israel had to see the walls of the Temple being rebuilt, they had to know that the church was there, that the church was investing in them, and that they would have a place to worship, not only to worship, but to learn and to grow and to be taught and to be sent.
Indeed the Cathedral is being raised, a symbol and center for worship and education. Schools are being built to educate their children. Indeed, we attended more than one village gathering where, just like you, they attend PTA meetings. The parents of these children came with gratitude in their hearts that new schools were being built, and with a desire for their children to learn and grow and to become more than they had ever imagined.
Not only is infrastructure being built, but an economy is being built there–-places to train people, to teach them skills so that they might make things that can be traded or sold. Indeed, there is much being built in Kajo Keji after a return from exile. And like the people who stand at the water gate outside the Temple in Jerusalem, they return with an astounding hope, astounding hope. All of this rebuilding sits on a firm foundation of their understanding of spirituality. Jesus is in control.
Raymond Arcario, your Senior Warden, and I journeyed to Kajo Keji and we anointed ourselves ambassadors of joy. We’re ambassadors of joy.
I was there to represent the Bishop at their Diocesan convention and to teach a course on preaching in their leadership school. Raymond was there to be an ambassador of this Cathedral and to meet the people of Emmanuel Cathedral, our partner church. Our experience was that the firm foundation that we are building is, of course, built on relationships, and we were blessed to build relationships with a fiercely faithful, hopeful, resilient, and joyful people.
There we met Pianaleh, their Dean. We’ve been praying for him as Samuel. He prefers Pianaleh. (I’m going to change it in the prayers of the people and we’ll have a little crash course for all of the readers.) As a child Pianaleh, himself, chose to remain in his village during the civil war because his grandmother said to his family, “let us not flee to Uganda. We must remain here.” He now finds himself a spiritual leader in a rebuilding community.
Pianaleh is smart and sweet. He is compassionate and determined. These are gifts God has given him. There we met Anna Ponee and Peter Wanee, the other clergy of the Cathedral, joyous in spirit and committed to pastoral and educational ministries. There we met Seteracaw, an elder and a church teacher. His words were wise. His skin was weathered. His spirit was confident. There we met Longa Alex, the church warden, definitely a companion of Raymond Arcario. We met Jerry Joseph, the young worship leader who leads their Cathedral in youth ministry and leads their youth choir. Does this all sound familiar?
We met some of the women of the Cathedral: Rejoice Ponee, Roy Peta Adeta Colulee, Cecelia Wageia, who, by the way, we sang a little Simon & Garfunkel to--because that’s the only song I knew with Cecelia in it. I didn’t sing the whole thing, don’t worry. We met these committed women and we heard of their plans to expand their women's bible studies so that more women of the village of Romogi might have an opportunity to participate. Does this sound familiar?
And there we met Grace Taboo. Grace was the caretaker of all things, the coordinator of most things, the Bishop’s administrator, and a faithful member of the Cathedral’s women’s group. She offered us hospitality beyond measure. She laid scriptural foundation to our two Cathedrals’ budding relationship quoting Galatians 3:15 which, in summary, said that “when members of the Christian community come together in agreement on anything, no one can break it.”
There is a church, literally a church, being built before our very eyes, and how grateful I am that we can be part of that. This church is being built on faith and hope and a theological understanding that it is Jesus’ church and that Jesus is in control. It is a life attitude there. It has to be given all that they have experienced. They literally hand over their lives to God.
The physical structures that are coming to life because of our Diocesan partnership are important and vital-–a college, schools and churches. But the building up of the gospel is coming to life in the people there and our people here. The gifts that they have and what we have that we are willing to share with one another is where our relationship comes to life in the discovery of God’s wonder and gifts given and shared in one another.
In Corinthians today, St. Paul reminds the people of Corinth that there are many gifts that come from the same spirit. St. Paul knew, as Jesus knew, that to be the body of Christ, that is to be the hands and heart of Christ in the world, the people of the church must come to know their gifts and offer them to the world freely. St. Paul needed to remind the people of Corinth, and we need to be reminded that not one gift is greater than another, but the gifts woven together make a perfect tapestry that gives life and hope to the communities in which we live. This is the foundation in which our ministry and partnership comes to life on that side of the world and on this side.
The people of Kajo Keji asked one another in their synod, and by the way, if you’re wondering, their Diocesan convention is just like ours. Everybody is in a room, the bishop talks, gives an address, people offer not so much legislation, but things that need to be acted upon. It felt very much like any other church meeting of which I’ve been a part. And you know how much I love those. But in their Synod, these are the questions that they were asking of one another. How do we expand our ministry with youth? How do we become better evangelists? How do we become better stewards of what God has given us? Believe me, their understanding of what God has given them is amazing. How do we support the work of the church with our time and talent and our treasure? Does that sound familiar? Oh, and this one, I chuckled at this one. How do we understand ourselves as a Diocese? How do we move from an understanding of Diocese from that which a bishop and staff will do for us to an understanding of how we can support one another and our other churches in this Diocese with our gifts, our resources, and our talents shared?
There is a people, a church, returned from exile being born in the Sudan. The physical structures and support systems are coming to life before our very eyes, and our relationship is agreed upon. As it grows, I pray it will become strong. With that relationship, what it has to offer us is an authentic experience of what it literally means to be the body of Christ, a sharing of gifts to become the body of Christ. For now I recognize that we here in our own Cathedral face the same issues of being the church. We have our own issues of sustaining our physical presence in this place, a physical place where people can come and know that there is a Diocesan center, and a parish church where we can learn and grow and witness to the community in which we live. People need to know that we are here. They need to physically see us. We have challenges to keep the ship afloat, and we have ever-increasing opportunities for ministry. How do we expand our ministry with our youth? How do we live into a strategic and intentional ministry of evangelism, sharing the good news of Christ with the world and inviting others to come and join us to be part of this community? How do we continue to live as faithful stewards where we share our time, talents, and treasures, and support the work, the important work, of God’s church?
I pray we find our relationship with Emmanuel Cathedral. I pray that we discover a truth, a truth of spirituality that, in it all, we are not in control. God is in control. I pray that we can hand over our anxieties of how to keep the ship afloat, and accept and live out the gifts God has bestowed in each of us. Working together for the common purposes for which we have been called, I pray we may find yet another opportunity in this relationship with our brothers and sisters across the world to live into the questions of what it is to be the church, the body of Christ. I have a feeling that if we are faithful to that relationship with one another and with our brothers and sisters in Romogi, we will find ourselves affirmed that we, indeed, are the hands and hearts of Christ in the world.
Amen.
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 ~ Psalm 19 ~ 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a ~ Luke 4:14-21
I want to introduce you to Godwill. Godwill is a 10-year-old boy that I met in the Sudan, and I want you to hear Godwill’s voice. (Dean Pompa turns on recorder.) (Godwill sings.) “He’s in control all around the world. Master Jesus. He’s in control.” Meet Godwill, a 10-year-old boy whose father is a priest, one of the clergy of the Diocese of Kajo Keji, who has been living in exile since the civil war that has afflicted that people. His father is returning for the synod, the convention of the Diocese of Kajo Keji, considering his return to serve in that Diocese. Meet Godwill and meet the spirituality of a people returned from exile. He’s in control all around the world. Master Jesus. He’s in control. The people of Kajo Keji are like the people of Israel who have returned form Babylonian exile in the Old Testament lesson we read today. The people of Israel are returning from exile, the Babylonian exile, and they find in the Persian system of government a sympathetic system, one that has appointed Nehemiah the governor, Nehemiah being a faithful Israelite. Nehemiah, the governor, has been given permission by the Persian government to help rebuild the wall that surrounds the temple in Jerusalem.
The people who have been sent away in exile under the Babylonians now experience what they never imagined, but always hoped for–-that they could return to Jerusalem to the temple that they themselves would be bringing the materials and the stones that would rebuild that wall around the temple. But more so...many, of course, never imagined but always hoped that they would be in a place where they, too, would again be returned to their system of life, their rediscovery of the law that defined their relationship with God, a reconnection with that place of worship, a rediscovery of their spirituality, a spirituality that God is at the center of their lives, and that God himself is in control.
The people of Kajo Keji are among the 5% who are Christian in the Sudan, most of them being the South of the Sudan. They returned from the exile the civil war had forced upon them. You may have heard about this before from Archdeacon Cluett and others. It is hard for us to tell the story, hard even to comprehend unless you are there and see it. But short of chartering a number of jets, this is the best I can do.
A people who were forced into exile, fleeing from civil war, are returning home to their villages. Christian people are rediscovering that their humble infrastructure has been destroyed during that civil war. Their small churches, mostly made of mud and straw, have been empty for years and are now being repopulated and rediscovered.
Their bishop who was in exile now remains back in Kajo Keji and as they return and are slowly building again what most of us have taken for granted, that is their churches, literally the buildings of their churches and the structure to carry out the mission of the church. Actually their bishop in this geographic area that is their diocese is now leading that restructuring. Some churches are now being built out of cement block, and you know because we’ve partnered with them, that schools are now being built out of cement block as opposed to the schools that are made of mud and straw.
The bishop not only is leading that effort, but Bishop Poggo is now trying to build the very structures of what it means to be a church. He is building the Diocesan center where the leadership and the clergy can gather and be trained and educated, and sent to go and lead in the small villages around the Diocese. These villages are populated by the poor, and by the poor they are being built. We literally saw the beams being raised as we were there. Being built and raised are the beams of the Cathedral. At first Raymond Arcario, who was with me, and I looked at each other thinking–-it seems so counter-intuitive. Why not running water first? Why not a good system of food and transportation first? But why the beams of a Cathedral? As the week went on, we got it. Because the people there have to know, just like the people of Israel had to see the walls of the Temple being rebuilt, they had to know that the church was there, that the church was investing in them, and that they would have a place to worship, not only to worship, but to learn and to grow and to be taught and to be sent.
Indeed the Cathedral is being raised, a symbol and center for worship and education. Schools are being built to educate their children. Indeed, we attended more than one village gathering where, just like you, they attend PTA meetings. The parents of these children came with gratitude in their hearts that new schools were being built, and with a desire for their children to learn and grow and to become more than they had ever imagined.
Not only is infrastructure being built, but an economy is being built there–-places to train people, to teach them skills so that they might make things that can be traded or sold. Indeed, there is much being built in Kajo Keji after a return from exile. And like the people who stand at the water gate outside the Temple in Jerusalem, they return with an astounding hope, astounding hope. All of this rebuilding sits on a firm foundation of their understanding of spirituality. Jesus is in control.
Raymond Arcario, your Senior Warden, and I journeyed to Kajo Keji and we anointed ourselves ambassadors of joy. We’re ambassadors of joy.
I was there to represent the Bishop at their Diocesan convention and to teach a course on preaching in their leadership school. Raymond was there to be an ambassador of this Cathedral and to meet the people of Emmanuel Cathedral, our partner church. Our experience was that the firm foundation that we are building is, of course, built on relationships, and we were blessed to build relationships with a fiercely faithful, hopeful, resilient, and joyful people.
There we met Pianaleh, their Dean. We’ve been praying for him as Samuel. He prefers Pianaleh. (I’m going to change it in the prayers of the people and we’ll have a little crash course for all of the readers.) As a child Pianaleh, himself, chose to remain in his village during the civil war because his grandmother said to his family, “let us not flee to Uganda. We must remain here.” He now finds himself a spiritual leader in a rebuilding community.
Pianaleh is smart and sweet. He is compassionate and determined. These are gifts God has given him. There we met Anna Ponee and Peter Wanee, the other clergy of the Cathedral, joyous in spirit and committed to pastoral and educational ministries. There we met Seteracaw, an elder and a church teacher. His words were wise. His skin was weathered. His spirit was confident. There we met Longa Alex, the church warden, definitely a companion of Raymond Arcario. We met Jerry Joseph, the young worship leader who leads their Cathedral in youth ministry and leads their youth choir. Does this all sound familiar?
We met some of the women of the Cathedral: Rejoice Ponee, Roy Peta Adeta Colulee, Cecelia Wageia, who, by the way, we sang a little Simon & Garfunkel to--because that’s the only song I knew with Cecelia in it. I didn’t sing the whole thing, don’t worry. We met these committed women and we heard of their plans to expand their women's bible studies so that more women of the village of Romogi might have an opportunity to participate. Does this sound familiar?
And there we met Grace Taboo. Grace was the caretaker of all things, the coordinator of most things, the Bishop’s administrator, and a faithful member of the Cathedral’s women’s group. She offered us hospitality beyond measure. She laid scriptural foundation to our two Cathedrals’ budding relationship quoting Galatians 3:15 which, in summary, said that “when members of the Christian community come together in agreement on anything, no one can break it.”
There is a church, literally a church, being built before our very eyes, and how grateful I am that we can be part of that. This church is being built on faith and hope and a theological understanding that it is Jesus’ church and that Jesus is in control. It is a life attitude there. It has to be given all that they have experienced. They literally hand over their lives to God.
The physical structures that are coming to life because of our Diocesan partnership are important and vital-–a college, schools and churches. But the building up of the gospel is coming to life in the people there and our people here. The gifts that they have and what we have that we are willing to share with one another is where our relationship comes to life in the discovery of God’s wonder and gifts given and shared in one another.
In Corinthians today, St. Paul reminds the people of Corinth that there are many gifts that come from the same spirit. St. Paul knew, as Jesus knew, that to be the body of Christ, that is to be the hands and heart of Christ in the world, the people of the church must come to know their gifts and offer them to the world freely. St. Paul needed to remind the people of Corinth, and we need to be reminded that not one gift is greater than another, but the gifts woven together make a perfect tapestry that gives life and hope to the communities in which we live. This is the foundation in which our ministry and partnership comes to life on that side of the world and on this side.
The people of Kajo Keji asked one another in their synod, and by the way, if you’re wondering, their Diocesan convention is just like ours. Everybody is in a room, the bishop talks, gives an address, people offer not so much legislation, but things that need to be acted upon. It felt very much like any other church meeting of which I’ve been a part. And you know how much I love those. But in their Synod, these are the questions that they were asking of one another. How do we expand our ministry with youth? How do we become better evangelists? How do we become better stewards of what God has given us? Believe me, their understanding of what God has given them is amazing. How do we support the work of the church with our time and talent and our treasure? Does that sound familiar? Oh, and this one, I chuckled at this one. How do we understand ourselves as a Diocese? How do we move from an understanding of Diocese from that which a bishop and staff will do for us to an understanding of how we can support one another and our other churches in this Diocese with our gifts, our resources, and our talents shared?
There is a people, a church, returned from exile being born in the Sudan. The physical structures and support systems are coming to life before our very eyes, and our relationship is agreed upon. As it grows, I pray it will become strong. With that relationship, what it has to offer us is an authentic experience of what it literally means to be the body of Christ, a sharing of gifts to become the body of Christ. For now I recognize that we here in our own Cathedral face the same issues of being the church. We have our own issues of sustaining our physical presence in this place, a physical place where people can come and know that there is a Diocesan center, and a parish church where we can learn and grow and witness to the community in which we live. People need to know that we are here. They need to physically see us. We have challenges to keep the ship afloat, and we have ever-increasing opportunities for ministry. How do we expand our ministry with our youth? How do we live into a strategic and intentional ministry of evangelism, sharing the good news of Christ with the world and inviting others to come and join us to be part of this community? How do we continue to live as faithful stewards where we share our time, talents, and treasures, and support the work, the important work, of God’s church?
I pray we find our relationship with Emmanuel Cathedral. I pray that we discover a truth, a truth of spirituality that, in it all, we are not in control. God is in control. I pray that we can hand over our anxieties of how to keep the ship afloat, and accept and live out the gifts God has bestowed in each of us. Working together for the common purposes for which we have been called, I pray we may find yet another opportunity in this relationship with our brothers and sisters across the world to live into the questions of what it is to be the church, the body of Christ. I have a feeling that if we are faithful to that relationship with one another and with our brothers and sisters in Romogi, we will find ourselves affirmed that we, indeed, are the hands and hearts of Christ in the world.
Amen.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
What can one really say, this day, about wedding feasts, and wine, about the Gospel, without acknowledging the catastrophe that is occurring in Haiti right now?
Haiti is the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church, and is the home of a Cathedral, a seminary, parishes and priests and thousands of faithful Episcopalians, in addition to missionaries from other dioceses throughout the United States. As lines of communication begin to open, we have learned that the seminary was perhaps destroyed, the cathedral damaged, at least four people were killed as they worshipped in a local parish, the bishop’s wife was injured, and many, many more people are still not accounted for, families are separated, and those who are not injured are trying to do what they can with limited supplies and resources to help the millions left homeless, hospital-less, lost.
More and more gruesome photographs and heartbreaking reports are emerging each day, and so we, here, must pray, as we weep with our brothers and sisters, with all in Haiti, as that already desperate nation tries to find sure footing in the midst of this tragedy.
Before coming to the Cathedral I served in a parish which sponsored a missioner in Port Au Prince. This woman, whose name is Kyle Evans, had been the church’s youth minister for many years and I was not surprised at all when she chose to answer God’s call and become a missioner for the national Church, and she packed up a few belongings and moved into a small dormitory with no hot water in a poverty stricken city half a world away which had recently made the news because the people were rioting because of food shortages. During her year of service she worked with students in the Episcopal seminary in Port au Prince, led art classes for children of the slums in that huge city, and through Kyle I came to know some of her students who finished their ordination preparation at Virginia Seminary. Some friends and I even went on a shopping trip for one student before he arrived one January, buying a winter coat, boots, gloves, scarves, sweaters- all the things a Haitian would need to live through his first Virginia winter. Upon arrival he immediately sent pictures to us and to home of himself, ankle deep in white snow on the seminary lawn, modeling I think all of his new wardrobe, layered against the cold. I imagine his family was aghast that he would travel to a place so frigid and so foreign, all on behalf of God, were afraid for his safety, much as we were afraid the first time Kyle told us she was going to Port Au Prince for a year. Kyle came back from Haiti late last November, shining like the sun with the power and joy of her time there, with the friendships she had made and the testimony to God’s love and grace she had experienced in the incredibly poor community she had been a part of, determined to go back as soon as possible.
As our Presiding Bishop noted in a statement earlier this week about the earthquake, the nation of Haiti was already in a desperate place economically, sometimes politically, well before this natural disaster struck. It has been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for generations. But Kyle’s experience, and that of many others who have had the chance to live there, serve there, or minister to Haitians in the US, is that faith was something the people of Haiti had in abundance. In the midst of all of this suffering, we can be sure that God is with the people of Haiti, and they continue to praise him in the midst of their pain and fear and anger. Several news reports from the most ravaged areas quote an often heard Creole phrase: Beni Swa L’eternal- which translates to Blessed Be the Lord.
Inevitably, this week, before the dust had even settled, before the first supply convoy landed, a small chorus of voices appeared in our own media, claiming to speak for God, and proclaiming this horrible tragedy a judgment on the people of Haiti for supposed sins of their forefathers and mothers. I admit that I was enraged at this, and appalled at this co-opting of the faith that I have chosen to devote my life to, and my response did not show much Christian charity. Cynically, I was sure that this was a simple bid for attention or viewers, born of the worst judgment imaginable, or perhaps an outright intentional manipulation of those seeking answers for political and personal gain. Luckily I have surrounded myself with good friends who are even better theologians (and the best of Christians), and one of these suggested a less cynical view. She thought that what we were seeing writ large across the national screen was a battle of Gospel-views. On the one hand, she pointed out, we had the perspective of the many missionaries drawn to Haiti before this tragedy and the hundreds of relief workers on their way there now:
“So many folks are transformed by the good news that God chose to be born into a world when there was no room for Him that they'll give up all our cozy American conveniences and move to the poorest country on this side of the globe. They'll risk their lives to serve people that maybe the world likes to think we just don't have room for- The Gospel is God's good news, God's glad tidings. People in comfortable lives give up everything to come serve [others] when [the]ir world falls apart? Sounds like good news to me. A (very) rich…guy with a cable TV show proclaims God's curse on a now homeless nation? Not so much.”*
Her explanation helped me to see through my anger and my shame at being lumped into some monolithic “Christianity” with folks who could not see the good in God’s message to us, and ultimately I was able to gain perspective, and that charity I had lacked.
Suddenly I could see these vocal critics as angry, frightened, living in a world where God’s love was finite, and since there simply wasn’t enough of God’s love to go around, when bad things happened, there must be fault, there must be blame, or else anyone might be at risk.
And at that moment I realized the gift that I have been given by God in my faith, in my unshakeable belief that his Grace and love are without limit. The God I serve made a covenant with Noah, after the flood, to never wreak such destruction on the world again, and he sealed it with a rainbow, and said that humankind would never have to fear Him. God made a promise to all of us of his love, and he sealed that covenant with his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
What can one really preach, this day, except the abundant nature of God’s love for us? It flows like wine at that wedding feast in Cana, and there will always be enough for us all.
*Quoting from a post of Jan. 15, 2010 on www.moamy.org
What can one really say, this day, about wedding feasts, and wine, about the Gospel, without acknowledging the catastrophe that is occurring in Haiti right now?
Haiti is the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church, and is the home of a Cathedral, a seminary, parishes and priests and thousands of faithful Episcopalians, in addition to missionaries from other dioceses throughout the United States. As lines of communication begin to open, we have learned that the seminary was perhaps destroyed, the cathedral damaged, at least four people were killed as they worshipped in a local parish, the bishop’s wife was injured, and many, many more people are still not accounted for, families are separated, and those who are not injured are trying to do what they can with limited supplies and resources to help the millions left homeless, hospital-less, lost.
More and more gruesome photographs and heartbreaking reports are emerging each day, and so we, here, must pray, as we weep with our brothers and sisters, with all in Haiti, as that already desperate nation tries to find sure footing in the midst of this tragedy.
Before coming to the Cathedral I served in a parish which sponsored a missioner in Port Au Prince. This woman, whose name is Kyle Evans, had been the church’s youth minister for many years and I was not surprised at all when she chose to answer God’s call and become a missioner for the national Church, and she packed up a few belongings and moved into a small dormitory with no hot water in a poverty stricken city half a world away which had recently made the news because the people were rioting because of food shortages. During her year of service she worked with students in the Episcopal seminary in Port au Prince, led art classes for children of the slums in that huge city, and through Kyle I came to know some of her students who finished their ordination preparation at Virginia Seminary. Some friends and I even went on a shopping trip for one student before he arrived one January, buying a winter coat, boots, gloves, scarves, sweaters- all the things a Haitian would need to live through his first Virginia winter. Upon arrival he immediately sent pictures to us and to home of himself, ankle deep in white snow on the seminary lawn, modeling I think all of his new wardrobe, layered against the cold. I imagine his family was aghast that he would travel to a place so frigid and so foreign, all on behalf of God, were afraid for his safety, much as we were afraid the first time Kyle told us she was going to Port Au Prince for a year. Kyle came back from Haiti late last November, shining like the sun with the power and joy of her time there, with the friendships she had made and the testimony to God’s love and grace she had experienced in the incredibly poor community she had been a part of, determined to go back as soon as possible.
As our Presiding Bishop noted in a statement earlier this week about the earthquake, the nation of Haiti was already in a desperate place economically, sometimes politically, well before this natural disaster struck. It has been the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for generations. But Kyle’s experience, and that of many others who have had the chance to live there, serve there, or minister to Haitians in the US, is that faith was something the people of Haiti had in abundance. In the midst of all of this suffering, we can be sure that God is with the people of Haiti, and they continue to praise him in the midst of their pain and fear and anger. Several news reports from the most ravaged areas quote an often heard Creole phrase: Beni Swa L’eternal- which translates to Blessed Be the Lord.
Inevitably, this week, before the dust had even settled, before the first supply convoy landed, a small chorus of voices appeared in our own media, claiming to speak for God, and proclaiming this horrible tragedy a judgment on the people of Haiti for supposed sins of their forefathers and mothers. I admit that I was enraged at this, and appalled at this co-opting of the faith that I have chosen to devote my life to, and my response did not show much Christian charity. Cynically, I was sure that this was a simple bid for attention or viewers, born of the worst judgment imaginable, or perhaps an outright intentional manipulation of those seeking answers for political and personal gain. Luckily I have surrounded myself with good friends who are even better theologians (and the best of Christians), and one of these suggested a less cynical view. She thought that what we were seeing writ large across the national screen was a battle of Gospel-views. On the one hand, she pointed out, we had the perspective of the many missionaries drawn to Haiti before this tragedy and the hundreds of relief workers on their way there now:
“So many folks are transformed by the good news that God chose to be born into a world when there was no room for Him that they'll give up all our cozy American conveniences and move to the poorest country on this side of the globe. They'll risk their lives to serve people that maybe the world likes to think we just don't have room for- The Gospel is God's good news, God's glad tidings. People in comfortable lives give up everything to come serve [others] when [the]ir world falls apart? Sounds like good news to me. A (very) rich…guy with a cable TV show proclaims God's curse on a now homeless nation? Not so much.”*
Her explanation helped me to see through my anger and my shame at being lumped into some monolithic “Christianity” with folks who could not see the good in God’s message to us, and ultimately I was able to gain perspective, and that charity I had lacked.
Suddenly I could see these vocal critics as angry, frightened, living in a world where God’s love was finite, and since there simply wasn’t enough of God’s love to go around, when bad things happened, there must be fault, there must be blame, or else anyone might be at risk.
And at that moment I realized the gift that I have been given by God in my faith, in my unshakeable belief that his Grace and love are without limit. The God I serve made a covenant with Noah, after the flood, to never wreak such destruction on the world again, and he sealed it with a rainbow, and said that humankind would never have to fear Him. God made a promise to all of us of his love, and he sealed that covenant with his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
What can one really preach, this day, except the abundant nature of God’s love for us? It flows like wine at that wedding feast in Cana, and there will always be enough for us all.
*Quoting from a post of Jan. 15, 2010 on www.moamy.org
Sunday, January 03, 2010
The Second Sunday after Christmas
The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
Intro:
A lot has happened since we last were all at church together. Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a safe and joyous celebration and are enjoying this 10th day of Christmas. You may have noticed our Three Wise Men making their way across the rood screen behind me, headed for the manger and the Christ child within. We have two more days of this most wondrous of seasons, and then the trees come down, the decorations go back into storage, we celebrate Epiphany and the next stop is Ash Wednesday and Lent. So we should relish these two more days of Christmastide, and Epiphany tide that follows.
The office was closed on Friday and so I celebrated the new year by sleeping in, making breakfast, and settling in to read the New York Times with several cups of coffee. This august publication devoted considerable space to the most pressing issue of our new year, and I was surprised that that issue was not related to safe air travel or economic planning or unrest in Iran and other countries, but was apparently what we call this year. Some said Two thousand and ten, others, arguing for brevity, Twenty Ten. Whole articles were devoted to parsing these two options and though I began the day without any particular allegiance I ended my reading of these fiercely persuasive arguments convinced that this might be the hot new issue of our time! Other, lesser, options were proposed: two thousand ten, 2K10, two oh one oh, one neo-Luddite even suggested MMX, pronounced em em ecks, as a tribute to our Roman forebears. Passions ran high and I ultimately decided to leave the fight up to greater linguistic minds than mine as I refilled my coffee cup and realized that no matter what we call it, this New Year is special because it is a New Beginning. Few of us are pining for the year we’ve now left behind, and I think most of us are embracing the possibilities of a brand new year, a fresh start, another chance. In a new year, everything is made new again, old habits can be put aside, disappointments can be forgotten, lessons can be considered learned and steps forward can be taken.
Health clubs and diet emporiums all over the Lehigh Valley are counting on it! This is the time when we make resolutions, forgive ourselves for falling short in the past and pledge to ourselves that we can do better, this will be the year that we get the exercise we know we need, this year we will take time to be with our family and friends regularly, we will stop smoking or will give up self-destructive habits, or we will smarten up our resume and start looking for that new job, or we will be more disciplined in our prayer. We all know that some of these resolutions will be more successful than others, but there is something about this time of year, the flipping over of the calendar to a fresh January, that makes all things seem possible. We have another chance, if only we will take it. We can make a fresh beginning.
I think this was God’s plan as well, when he decided to meet humanity in the form of Jesus in the dark days of winter, to come into our being in the form of a child, to embrace a new beginning with us, his beloved creation. St. Athanasius said, “God became human so that humans might become divine”, and I think we see the correctness of this in our Gospel today.
In our readings today we have parallel messages: we have a STORY-of Jesus’ life-and a PROMISE made to us, right now, in him.
We have the story of Jesus’ life. We’ve heard of his humble birth on Christmas Eve, his parents’ flight to Egypt, and today we jump ahead to his twelfth year, when he visits Jerusalem with his family. He stays behind when the others leave, and it takes his mother and father a day or so to realize his absence. Travel was dangerous in those times and so large groups moved together, safety was in numbers, but it also made it hard to keep track of a boy. When Jesus’ absence was realized his parents returned to the city and searched, we are told, for three days. After four days sick with worry they found him, sitting in the Temple, arguing Torah with rabbis and students. His mother admonishes him and his father probably scolded him and I imagine he pouted a little as he was forced to leave the excitement and head home. And so Jesus is fully human-a boy mischievously running off from his parents, excited by the big city, risking his safety for adventure. But Jesus is also divine-he was in his father’s house, pondering points of law, amazed at his parents’ concern. We hear the story of Jesus growing into manhood, into his role as teacher and leader.
But we also have in these readings a promise: the promise of salvation. In Jesus Christ we are no longer separated form God, we have achieved our full inheritance. Our sins are pardoned, our debts are paid, and all things have been made new again. Happy are those people whose strength is in God, whose hearts are set on the Pilgrim’s Way! For they know what is the hope to which God has called them.
And so, as we start this New Year, let us be fully awake to God’s plan for us, and fully aware of our rebirth in him, through Christ, as heirs of his eternal kingdom. Let us rejoice, and be glad in the Lord, and in the hope that we have been given in him. And may all our resolutions be grounded in God’s love. Amen.
Intro:
A lot has happened since we last were all at church together. Happy New Year! I hope that you all had a safe and joyous celebration and are enjoying this 10th day of Christmas. You may have noticed our Three Wise Men making their way across the rood screen behind me, headed for the manger and the Christ child within. We have two more days of this most wondrous of seasons, and then the trees come down, the decorations go back into storage, we celebrate Epiphany and the next stop is Ash Wednesday and Lent. So we should relish these two more days of Christmastide, and Epiphany tide that follows.
The office was closed on Friday and so I celebrated the new year by sleeping in, making breakfast, and settling in to read the New York Times with several cups of coffee. This august publication devoted considerable space to the most pressing issue of our new year, and I was surprised that that issue was not related to safe air travel or economic planning or unrest in Iran and other countries, but was apparently what we call this year. Some said Two thousand and ten, others, arguing for brevity, Twenty Ten. Whole articles were devoted to parsing these two options and though I began the day without any particular allegiance I ended my reading of these fiercely persuasive arguments convinced that this might be the hot new issue of our time! Other, lesser, options were proposed: two thousand ten, 2K10, two oh one oh, one neo-Luddite even suggested MMX, pronounced em em ecks, as a tribute to our Roman forebears. Passions ran high and I ultimately decided to leave the fight up to greater linguistic minds than mine as I refilled my coffee cup and realized that no matter what we call it, this New Year is special because it is a New Beginning. Few of us are pining for the year we’ve now left behind, and I think most of us are embracing the possibilities of a brand new year, a fresh start, another chance. In a new year, everything is made new again, old habits can be put aside, disappointments can be forgotten, lessons can be considered learned and steps forward can be taken.
Health clubs and diet emporiums all over the Lehigh Valley are counting on it! This is the time when we make resolutions, forgive ourselves for falling short in the past and pledge to ourselves that we can do better, this will be the year that we get the exercise we know we need, this year we will take time to be with our family and friends regularly, we will stop smoking or will give up self-destructive habits, or we will smarten up our resume and start looking for that new job, or we will be more disciplined in our prayer. We all know that some of these resolutions will be more successful than others, but there is something about this time of year, the flipping over of the calendar to a fresh January, that makes all things seem possible. We have another chance, if only we will take it. We can make a fresh beginning.
I think this was God’s plan as well, when he decided to meet humanity in the form of Jesus in the dark days of winter, to come into our being in the form of a child, to embrace a new beginning with us, his beloved creation. St. Athanasius said, “God became human so that humans might become divine”, and I think we see the correctness of this in our Gospel today.
In our readings today we have parallel messages: we have a STORY-of Jesus’ life-and a PROMISE made to us, right now, in him.
We have the story of Jesus’ life. We’ve heard of his humble birth on Christmas Eve, his parents’ flight to Egypt, and today we jump ahead to his twelfth year, when he visits Jerusalem with his family. He stays behind when the others leave, and it takes his mother and father a day or so to realize his absence. Travel was dangerous in those times and so large groups moved together, safety was in numbers, but it also made it hard to keep track of a boy. When Jesus’ absence was realized his parents returned to the city and searched, we are told, for three days. After four days sick with worry they found him, sitting in the Temple, arguing Torah with rabbis and students. His mother admonishes him and his father probably scolded him and I imagine he pouted a little as he was forced to leave the excitement and head home. And so Jesus is fully human-a boy mischievously running off from his parents, excited by the big city, risking his safety for adventure. But Jesus is also divine-he was in his father’s house, pondering points of law, amazed at his parents’ concern. We hear the story of Jesus growing into manhood, into his role as teacher and leader.
But we also have in these readings a promise: the promise of salvation. In Jesus Christ we are no longer separated form God, we have achieved our full inheritance. Our sins are pardoned, our debts are paid, and all things have been made new again. Happy are those people whose strength is in God, whose hearts are set on the Pilgrim’s Way! For they know what is the hope to which God has called them.
And so, as we start this New Year, let us be fully awake to God’s plan for us, and fully aware of our rebirth in him, through Christ, as heirs of his eternal kingdom. Let us rejoice, and be glad in the Lord, and in the hope that we have been given in him. And may all our resolutions be grounded in God’s love. Amen.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Advent 2C
December 6, 2009
The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
Charles Dickens began his book, The Tale of Two Cities, with these words:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period…
Don’t those words have a ring of familiarity? He must have been reading this morning’s, NY Times. It does sound like a time not too dissimilar from our own time, our now. The lesson from Baruch is addressed to a people who also were living in such a time.
He was writing to people whose parents and grandparents had returned from exile in Babylon. They had come home to build futures for themselves and their people ... to find jobs, to build homes, to build new lives, new farms, new villages, a new Temple, a New Jerusalem.
But it had all turned sour. Some said, “The prophecies of Isaiah had been lies.” They were continually at war. The land was not giving forth her increase. Life was full of pain, unmet expectations, unfulfilled dreams, and hopes not realized. Life was full, but not of the fulfillment they had dreamed, hoped, worked, and prayed for. People were just trying to "hang in, hang on."
They were leaving the Promised Land in droves for the promise of work and security elsewhere. The chosen people were continuing to be dispersed, but now of their own accord, by their own will. The faith, the culture, the people themselves were blending into foreign faiths, foreign cultures, and foreign peoples. All was not right with the world, and the Lord seemed far distant from his people.
Into this setting came the words of Baruch. “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem ... look toward the east and see your children gathered from the west and east at the word of the Holy One, rejoicing that God has remembered them … For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.”
Baruch presented to the Israelites, at home and abroad, the reason for their distress, the source of their redemption, and the certainty of their salvation. The return from exile had been but a foreshadow of the kingdom to come, “although eye cannot see, nor ear hear…”
God remembers and gathers Israel. God's faithfulness guides their return. God's compassion and justice accompany the people into God’s future and their future.
A few hundred years later, people again lived in such a time. A foreign power ruled in their land through vassal kings, princes, and governors. The poor had never been poorer. It seemed as if people were waiting in line to separate the people from their possessions, their land, their security.
And Luke tells us that again God sent a messenger to his people. He came out of the desert, having lived through nights than which there are no colder...land more barren than any... no security other than God. Out of the desert came John, prophet of God, to claim the future for God ... to reclaim God’s people by repentance and forgiveness ... to proclaim that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Out of the desert experience, salvation will come. In the cold and dark of human experience, God will fashion a new humanity. Through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, what has been promised BECOMES. The kingdom is begun, a New Jerusalem is being built … and the promise is that all flesh will see it."
My experience tells me that it is in the "winter of our discontent" that our dissatisfaction with our lives opens us up to the possibility of new life. My experience tells me that it is in the "dark night of the soul" that the glimmer of faith within us is rediscovered. My experience tells me that it is when we have gone astray and are lost that we are willing to be found.
It is in Advent that we hear the Good News of the Light that is coming into the world, whom we are blessed, to know is Jesus.
As Advent points to the Good News, so we witness to this world that Jesus is Lord – of this life and the life to come, the future. It is he who restores all things, even the ones in the cold and dark of human experience. It is he who is that salvation of God proclaimed by John and pointed to by Baruch. It is he whom Advent announces, and announces not just to the covenant people, but announces to all people ... even to us ... once again.
Therefore we and all people who turn to God can live in hope and in expectation that the way through the hard things in life will be found, and that in the living and in the searching for that way, we are known, we are loved, we are empowered – and in time,
“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well” in the words of Dame Julian of Norwich.
Even in the hard times of life, “God’s glory will be revealed and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
And so we come back to the words of the Prophet Baruch,
Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem…
For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low
And the valleys filled up, to make level ground,
so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God…
For God will lead Israel with joy,
in the light of his glory,
with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.
We are the New Jerusalem, we are the new Israel, so listen to Baruch and to John and turn to our God in all seasons of your life, in “the best of times and the worst of times” and in all those everyday times in between, turn to God, made known to us in Jesus the Messiah, and live – live expectantly, live in hope, and receive the salvation and the mercy and the righteousness that come from God.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Christ the King Sunday
The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
Yes, that was the correct gospel reading for today! We have not pressed fast-forward and gone directly to Lent, we are instead taking a little bit of a tour of our liturgical seasons as we hear what is ordinarily a Lenten reading on this last Sunday of the season of Pentecost, the Feast of Christ the King, as preparation for Advent. Did you get all that? If you are visiting the Episcopal Church for the first time today, please, do not despair-we do not always speak in code!
Pentecost, longest season, today would have been the 30th Sunday in the season. Gail in the office, who posts my sermons to the blog, will be glad that it is the end of my very clever joke-46th Sunday in Pentecost, 73rd Sunday in Pentecost.
So we have finally come to the end of that longest of seasons, and here we are, the Sunday of Christ the King, the Sunday before Advent begins, with a bit of the Passion story-Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate. What is going on?
I think that we are given this low-point, this very un-kingly moment in Jesus’ life for two reasons. One is to balance the description of kingship we get in the reading from Daniel:
That Prophet says:
As I watched,
thrones were set in place,
and an Ancient One took his throne,
his clothing was white as snow…
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.”
That is the sort of language we are used to in the describing of kings, that is the sort of majesty and opulence we associate with royalty. Royalty were considered God’s chosen rulers on earth, and so they were worthy of gold and silver and jewels and thousands upon thousands of servants. And so how much more stark is the contrast between this fantastical description and what we hear in the Gospel:
Jesus, God’s true son on Earth, handed over to a local governor and judged like a common criminal, interrogated about his kingship in this common context.
And that, I believe, is the second reason we are reading this particular passage from John today-because Jesus was in fact a king, and he came to turn the notion of kingship on its head. He was a king like no other-his kingdom was in heaven not in his earthly life, and so in this scene with Pilate we see Jesus redefine the very nature of kingship. This is very in line with his teachings during his life-the meek shall inherit the earth, the last shall be first-and the king must meet death to enter his kingdom.
I think that the wise people who designed our lectionary had all of that in mind when they set the readings for this day, and I think they also took this chance to inject a bit of drama into our Sunday. I say this because today is in fact the last day of Pentecost, which means that next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, which in another oddity of church time v. secular time is the beginning of our new year. Advent is the season of holy waiting, of prayer, study, fasting all in anticipation of the birth of our Savior at Christmas.
And so I think the readings today were chosen as a sort of bookend of the season to come-we see Jesus at the end of his earthly life as a bit of foreshadowing of what is to come in the life of this child we eagerly await.
In the last line of the Gospel passage Jesus says to Pilate:
"You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
If this Gospel was a movie we were watching in the theater, there would have been dramatic music-
And the camera would have cut away from the torch lit audience room in the imperial palace, and we suddenly would have found ourselves in dusk in Jerusalem, following a carpenter and his heavily pregnant wife as they walked from inn to inn in the dying light, seeking lodging, though none was to be found.
And our little film would end deep in the night, looking down on a manger as animals placidly chewed and a single lamp flickered, and the cry of a newborn King echoed in the night.
AMEN.
Yes, that was the correct gospel reading for today! We have not pressed fast-forward and gone directly to Lent, we are instead taking a little bit of a tour of our liturgical seasons as we hear what is ordinarily a Lenten reading on this last Sunday of the season of Pentecost, the Feast of Christ the King, as preparation for Advent. Did you get all that? If you are visiting the Episcopal Church for the first time today, please, do not despair-we do not always speak in code!
Pentecost, longest season, today would have been the 30th Sunday in the season. Gail in the office, who posts my sermons to the blog, will be glad that it is the end of my very clever joke-46th Sunday in Pentecost, 73rd Sunday in Pentecost.
So we have finally come to the end of that longest of seasons, and here we are, the Sunday of Christ the King, the Sunday before Advent begins, with a bit of the Passion story-Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate. What is going on?
I think that we are given this low-point, this very un-kingly moment in Jesus’ life for two reasons. One is to balance the description of kingship we get in the reading from Daniel:
That Prophet says:
As I watched,
thrones were set in place,
and an Ancient One took his throne,
his clothing was white as snow…
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.”
That is the sort of language we are used to in the describing of kings, that is the sort of majesty and opulence we associate with royalty. Royalty were considered God’s chosen rulers on earth, and so they were worthy of gold and silver and jewels and thousands upon thousands of servants. And so how much more stark is the contrast between this fantastical description and what we hear in the Gospel:
Jesus, God’s true son on Earth, handed over to a local governor and judged like a common criminal, interrogated about his kingship in this common context.
And that, I believe, is the second reason we are reading this particular passage from John today-because Jesus was in fact a king, and he came to turn the notion of kingship on its head. He was a king like no other-his kingdom was in heaven not in his earthly life, and so in this scene with Pilate we see Jesus redefine the very nature of kingship. This is very in line with his teachings during his life-the meek shall inherit the earth, the last shall be first-and the king must meet death to enter his kingdom.
I think that the wise people who designed our lectionary had all of that in mind when they set the readings for this day, and I think they also took this chance to inject a bit of drama into our Sunday. I say this because today is in fact the last day of Pentecost, which means that next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, which in another oddity of church time v. secular time is the beginning of our new year. Advent is the season of holy waiting, of prayer, study, fasting all in anticipation of the birth of our Savior at Christmas.
And so I think the readings today were chosen as a sort of bookend of the season to come-we see Jesus at the end of his earthly life as a bit of foreshadowing of what is to come in the life of this child we eagerly await.
In the last line of the Gospel passage Jesus says to Pilate:
"You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
If this Gospel was a movie we were watching in the theater, there would have been dramatic music-
And the camera would have cut away from the torch lit audience room in the imperial palace, and we suddenly would have found ourselves in dusk in Jerusalem, following a carpenter and his heavily pregnant wife as they walked from inn to inn in the dying light, seeking lodging, though none was to be found.
And our little film would end deep in the night, looking down on a manger as animals placidly chewed and a single lamp flickered, and the cry of a newborn King echoed in the night.
AMEN.
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