The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

This is not an easy scripture lesson to hear, and it is not an easy one to get, to understand what it meant to Jesus and what it might mean for us.

Let me start by saying that it is the 4^th in a series of parables placed together in Luke. We have the story of a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son and then this story of a rich man and his manager. But what have they lost?

The rich man has lost his property and the good will of his people, and the manager has lost his own money and the good will of both boss and farmers. The rich man did not have safeguards in place and the manager seems to have squandered the money. It doesn’t say he did anything illegal, by the way. When he realized his plight he went to each of the tenants and gave them a reduced amount to repay, so they could pay it back as soon as possible, so that he could pay the owner. Basically, what was deleted was his commission.

What did each gain? The landowner gained more of what he was owed than he ever received before, he gained the good will of the tenants (which he never had because of what he charged them) for reducing their debt, and he gained a grudging respect for the manager. The manager gained the good will of the farmers and the commendation of his employer.

Does this ring true for the world economy we live in? Does it relate to the economy of God’s kingdom? Luke is unrelenting and adamant throughout his gospel that the kingdom view of property is that it exists for the benefit of all.

Today’s economists tell us that in the world’s economy, money that sits idly by is not a resource at all. Money is useful, they tell us, only when it is in motion. It is the movement of money that brings prosperity to those through whom it moves.

And the divine economists, we call them prophets and saints – and we call one of them by the name of Jesus – they tell us that wealth and property in the economy of God are for the wellbeing of all God’s creation, and when the kingdom is fully realized money and property will not belong to anyone, it will be a resource for all. There will be no debtors.

And if he did nothing else, this manager did relieve people from their debts, and he dedicated his personal profit to that end.

It is significant for us to remember to whom Jesus is giving this teaching. It is not to the tax collectors and other sinners. It is not to white-collar criminals, not to the Pharisees, Sadducees, or Scribes. It is not to the rich merchants of Galilee. He is teaching his disciples. He is preaching to the faithful about their faith and their life. The teaching is about how the faith of the disciples of Jesus, then and now, informs our values, ethics, behavior and relationships with God, people, and money.

Some have said that this parable is not as much about morality as it is about apathy.

“And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

There's a story about Henry Ford, the inventor of the automobile, who was visiting his family's ancestral village in Ireland. Two trustees of the local hospital found out he was there, and managed to get in to see him. They talked Ford into giving the hospital five thousand dollars (this was the 1930's, so five thousand dollars was a great deal of money).

The next morning, at breakfast, he opened his daily newspaper to read the banner headline: "American Millionaire Gives Fifty Thousand to Local Hospital." Ford wasted no time in summoning the two hospital trustees.  He waved the newspaper in their faces.  "What does this mean?" he demanded. The trustees apologized profusely.  "Dreadful error," they said.  They promised to get the editor to print a retraction the very next day, declaring that the great Henry Ford had given not fifty thousand, but only five. Hearing this, Ford offered them another forty-five thousand, under one condition: that the trustees would erect a marble arch at the new hospital entrance, and place upon it a plaque that read, "I walked among you and you took me in."

C. S. Lewis wrote about Christians, “Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us…”

So, what is it that the steward has done here?

The steward forgives. The steward forgives debts. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, he forgives for personal gain, he forgives to compensate for past misconduct. It is this decisive action that he undertakes to redeem himself to be restored in his relationship with the farmers and with the landlord. He forgives.

So what's the moral of this story, one of the stories unique to Luke’s Gospel? It's a moral of great emphasis for Luke and for Jesus – forgive.

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…" That comes from Luke (11:4-5). Forgive us our debts, forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our sins… as we forgive. 

One theologian put it this way: “Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all. Why forgive the debts of debtor nations… Why forgive someone who's sinned against us, or against our sense of what is obviously right? We don't have to do it out of love for the other person, if we're not there yet.

We could forgive the other person because of what we pray in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, and because we know we'd like forgiveness ourselves. We could forgive because we've experienced what we're like as unforgiving people… We could forgive because we are, or we want to be, deeply in touch with a sense of Jesus' power to forgive and free sinners like us. Or we could forgive because we think it will improve our odds of winning the lottery.

Pick one of the above or pick none of the above. It doesn’t make any difference.”

So, in the words of the Nike ad, why not “Just do it”? And if we do, I believe that you and I will find ourselves living a little more in line with the kingdom way that God showed us in Jesus.

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

This morning I want to tell you about my brother and his wife. They are blessed, or my brother was smart enough to marry who he married, with acres of land just north of that little town we all grew up, in Jim Thorpe, on top of what is called Kattner’s Mountain. My brother was smart enough to marry a Kattner and, therefore, they are blessed. About two miles deep into the woods of the land which is theirs, they built a very humble cabin that has been there for 20-some years. Over the last 20 years or so, for their family, for our family, and for any who they invite, (the key word is invite), this has been a refuge. It has been a place accessible only by terrain vehicles. It is graced with beautiful hills and valleys, deep woods and brush, and two beautiful streams that, for those who fish, are a delight. They, themselves, have a routine, particularly when the weather is nice on Sunday afternoons, of disappearing into the woods, set upon a day to enjoy God’s grace and nature, to build a fire as the darkness comes on, over which to roast marshmallows and whatever might be caught in one of those streams. It is a delight and it is a blessing.

Some 10 years ago or so, when Felicia and I were still living in Virginia, my phone rang one Sunday evening. As the prayer goes, as the darkness of the day was coming upon us and the fever of the world was coming to a hush. My phone rang, and it was my brother on his cell phone asking me to pray because my sister-in-law’s niece, who was down at the cabin with them that day, had violated commandment #1 of going to the cabin. “Do not ever disappear into the woods by yourself.” Well, their niece, Keri, 11 years old, took a familiar path, a path she had been on many, many times as a child. In the delight of what was around her, she lost track of time and lost her way. She could not figure out how to get back.

If you ever visit that land, and it does come by invitation only so chances are slim, you will know that it is filled with laurel and deep brush, particularly around the streams. There are little walking paths that our Native American brothers and sisters once walked. In the midst of the summer, those walking paths become slimmer and darker. Keri kept going up, we learned, different paths, thinking she was on the right path, but then recognizing the path she was on went only into darkness. As the story goes, the search party was called, literally the State Police, the rangers, and any family member or friend who was willing, and they set out about the task to find Keri as darkness set in. We know, because you know how the story ends, from Keri that she became disoriented and the darker that it got, the more panicked she got. The more panicked she got, the more fearful she got. The more fearful she got, the more desperate she got, trying each and every path that she could find. She finally gave up and this young, 11-year-old just sat down next to what was becoming a very cold, cold stream under the darkness of the mountain laurel brush. She sat there, waiting, crying, and wondering, “Is anybody looking for me? Is anybody looking for me?”

Well, we learn from this story a bit about human nature. On Keri’s side, we learn (if we see this a bit as a metaphor), that we do sometimes get off on the wrong path. We do sometimes set forth in our journey in life assured that we know the way back. We do sometimes, on that journey, get confused and misguided, and we lose our way. We do sometimes get filled with anxiety and panic, and in Keri’s case, what sometimes happens to us happens when we violate the law. Don’t ever go off on your own. On the other side, for those who were desperate and filled with anxiety for Keri that day, for those who loved her, who were worried about her, who were angry at her, who were desperate in their anxiety --  we learned about human nature, didn’t we? 

This is the context that I lay out as we enter today’s Gospel lesson, a familiar one, I am sure, as Jesus indeed teaches us again and speaks in the midst of our human nature to reveal to us something about God’s divine nature.

There are three things we need to know about our context this day, three dynamics at play in this story. There is grumbling, there is searching and seeking, and there is rejoicing. The context today is that Jesus has been sitting down with tax collectors and sinners, those who, in the eyes of those looking through human nature, particularly the religious authority of the day, those who had broken the law, those who had set themselves apart, and those who had distanced themselves through their beliefs and their behaviors. Those who, at the very best or least, were unworthy of those in authority at this time and certainly, in their limited view of God’s divine nature, unworthy of God’s time. They are grumbling. They are unhappy. Who is this Jesus to sit down with these unworthy tax collectors and sinners? Jesus tells them, teaches them, through parables known to you and to me. Hear them, if you can, with the immediacy of the day.

In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus looks at those in the day, giving them a parable of what they would know. Which one among you, if you were a shepherd, wouldn’t take the time to go and do all that you can to find one lost sheep? Because you know, better than I know, that is what you would do if you were a shepherd. You would go after that one lost sheep. You would take that staff, the tool that you have been given, and you would cut through the woods and the forest and the trees. You would kick out the debris from the roads. You would try to find the path that sheep has taken. Then when you saw that sheep, sitting there waiting, you would take the end of the staff and you would pull it in. You know that because just one of your flock escaped means that your very life, and your very way of life, is threatened.

Which one of you wouldn’t, if you were a woman who is keeping her house, count your pennies to make the mortgage, to pay the rent, to keep the lights lit, and to keep food on the table? Which one of you wouldn’t get the brightest lamp that you could find, put it in the best position in the house, and take the tool of the day – your broom – and sweep away every nook and cranny of dirt and debris so that you might see that shining coin again? Which one of you wouldn’t do that, grumbling, searching and seeking?

Jesus reveals to us, in our human nature, the divine nature. Would not our Father in heaven seek and search that piece that is lost, that piece of us that has wandered away? When he found you, would that not be cause for celebration? Would that not be cause for great celebration? Would that not be just the way our God is – the divine nature? You know the story goes like this. What is God like? God seeks and searches for the very least, seeks and searches for those who have gone astray, seeks and searches for you and me when we are lost, seeks and searches for those who we think are unworthy of our time or God’s time.

What is God’s character like when such a finding has been found? It is like a member of a search party who finds a little girl, sitting along the side of a cold stream, now in the darkness of night, afraid, crying, shivering, and wondering if anybody is looking for her. That’s what it’s like. It is like ushering that young child back up the side of that mountain to safety, to warmth, and to the embrace of her parents and family and friends. Oh, what a celebration! Oh, what a celebration for one who has been lost and now is found. Human and divine intersect.

So our question today, the question we ask as we engage the Gospel – where can I ask God’s grace to help me see past my human nature, to see where I have given up on another who is lost, one who I have judged as unworthy of my time and even God’s, one who I may be grumbling about, even on this very morning, even if it’s I? When I am found by God, or when that person we think of is found by God, can we imagine throwing a party for the sole reason of finding something that had been lost? What would that be, that thing, that person, that dream that had been lost? What would that celebration look like? Certainly, I hope, not a burning of books (couldn’t help that one). Perhaps a fatted calf, the finest wine; a relationship broken is now restored. A dream that has been dashed has been rediscovered and uplifted. A sense of newness in our own spirit and being has been reassured and reclaimed. A new-found hope for a broken world, reaching out across all faiths that might, indeed, build on God’s peaceable kingdom -- something

worth celebration.

Amen.

The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 5, 2010

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

Recently I spent some time at my parents’ house in Marietta, GA. For various reasons this was my first trip “home,” to the house I grew up in, in a little over a year. I think, because of that (for me) unusually long interval, I was able to look at this very familiar place with fresh eyes, and notice things that, though they may have been in place for decades, I simply had been too used to to note. It also helped that my visit, as my mother characterized it, was a lot like that of a college kid home for the summer, meaning most days I slept in, spent hours reading, watched more than my fair share of television, and probably wore pajama pants more than one should. This is my favorite sort of vacation, one with absolutely no schedule.

Anyway, as I was lounging around being lazy, I noticed that the mantel in my parents’ living room displays a series of misshapen, lumpy little bowls, and then I remembered the pottery classes I took as a little kid, of which these fine specimens were the fruit.

Starting at about 8, I was enrolled in a class at our local art museum, down in the basement in a little studio, given by a woman who adored children and was also a bit of a holdover from the late sixties/early seventies arts and crafts movement. She taught us how to use clay to make everything from coil pots to scenes from fairy tales to gifts for our parents. (My mom still has the teapot I made for her in the shape of a pig, despite the fact that it leaks water from the feet and is completely unusable for the purpose for which it was designed.)

Eventually we advanced enough in our clay skills to learn how to use pottery wheels, and I was flooded with these memories in reading the passage from Jeremiah today. I think that I was too young at the time to fully understand it, but I got something special from the experience of starting with a lump of clay and watching as a bowl emerged with the help of my hands and fingers. In that moment of creating something out of nothing, in a way, I was closest perhaps to the feeling God had, when he crafted this world, when he crafted us, at the beginning of time. I was surprised every time I was successful. The key to successfully making a pot is centering the clay exactly on the middle of the spinning pottery wheel, and this was quite a difficult skill to learn. Often it would seem that the clay was centered until the bowl or pot was almost done, its walls brought high and thin, only to see a slight wobble start and then watch as the whole thing spun out of control and destroyed itself. And then you just had to scrape up the scraps and start all over again. It was a little heartbreaking to a young child, to see my work self destruct after such a promising start, an experience that, I think, also brings one close to the mind of God, perhaps, as he watches his creation, his beloved creations, and muddle through, sometimes unsuccessfully.

In the passage we read from Jeremiah today, we see God in one of these moments, when the house of Israel has gained the upper hand in its never-ending struggles against persecution, and has turned into the persecutor. God explains, through the prophet Jeremiah, to the wayward tribe of Israel the fragility of its existence. Like a potter reworking a spoiled vessel, so could God destroy the House of Israel, and start fresh.

“At one moment,” God says, “I may declare concerning a nation or kingdom that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation…turns from its evil I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it…And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I intended to do to it…Turn now, all of you from your evil ways, and amend your ways and your doing.” This is a harsh warning from a loving God to a people who had lost their way, once again. Judah and Jerusalem were living in anxious times, uncertain, scared, fearing their neighbors, bracing for invasion or displacement, plagued by famines and economic hardships, looking for someone to blame.

We are living in anxious times, ourselves. Many of us are uncertain economically, with many still worried about keeping themselves housed, employed, fed, clothed. We are at war on many fronts. We are unsure, I think, as a country, of our place in the world, and that uncertainty and confusion can too easily turn into fear.

While home I watched a little more television than I normally do, and was surprised at the panic and the anger and the fear and cynicism I heard trumpeted by commentators of all flavors, from all points along the political spectrum- the language of doom and destruction and apocalypse tossed out easily, and it was terrifying. Historically, during times of economic downturn we as a people, as a human race, have given in to blaming the other, tightening borders and closing ranks in an attempt to create some sense of safety, of control. We have created scapegoats, have vilified members of other races, or religions, or nationalities. Cynicism leads to detachment, which leads the denial of the shared humanity that unites us all which leads to inaction. The bowl of our creation begins to wobble, ever so slightly, threatening to spin out of control.

But all is not lost; the pot can still be saved. We must remind ourselves that God’s hands are embracing us from all sides, continuing our formation even as we try to shake free.

And, we are reminded, if we hold tight to the Gospel, to the good news of Christ and to the new covenant he gave us: if we love our neighbors as ourselves, and above all else, love God- we have nothing to fear.

AMEN.

The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

My, wasn’t that a comforting Word from the Lord Jesus? I have always wondered what was the origin of that saying about the job of the preacher being “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” I think we have found it in today’s gospel passage.

Wherever happened to the Jesus who said in Matthew; “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Is this the same Jesus? The simple answer is, Yes.

So, what do you think is going on with Jesus here? Did he get out on the wrong side of the bed? Is he just having a bad day? Perhaps his biorhythms are off. Maybe like the flight attendant who jumped down the emergency chute and out of his job, perhaps he had just had enough with how things are, and was ready now for some radical change. Was there some specific event or circumstance around Jesus that occasioned this outburst? Or maybe if not Jesus, then maybe around Luke, that would cause him to highlight this dimension of Jesus and the world?

Do you remember what John the Baptist said about Jesus way back before the beginning of Jesus’ ministry? In Matthew 3:11 we hear John say, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Is it possible that the world is such – that the human condition is such – that the breaking in of the reign of God will cause radical change, will demand radical change? Is it possible that the kingdom of God looks little like the world we inhabit, looks nothing like some of the uglier aspects of the world? Is it possible that the best of human community is but a veiled shadow of what God has in store for creation?

God has declared through his prophet Isaiah that “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

If that is the case, then it would not be surprising that the breaking in of the reign of God will cause some breaking of old habits, some rejection of ingrained patterns of living, some necessity to separate, to divide oneself from the evil powers of the world and from people whose behavior or mission is to hurt or destroy.

We affirm that truth whenever we baptize someone and welcome him or her into the household of God. “Do you renounce the evil powers of the world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” “I renounce them,” we say. I remove myself from them, we say. I place a divide between who I am and what they do, we say.

We may need to go even further than that. We may need to separate ourselves, to purify ourselves from some dimensions of our selves. What are my behaviors, my habits that are hurtful to others? Can I renounce them? Truly renounce them? What do I do that tears down, rather than builds up? Can I renounce them? What in my life keeps other people at a distance, keeps God at a distance, separates me from knowing the fullness of God’s love, God’s presence in my life, God’s power? Can I renounce them? What lives in the darkness in me that needs to be brought into the light? Can I renounce them?

What are “the false hopes, bad dreams, and reckless lies” that I love to love? Don Clendenin has come up with his partial list.

“* I deserve perfect health and the medicine to get me there, especially given how hard I work out.


* I'm entitled to all the passionate sex that the tabloids describe and the movies depict.


* There's a solution to every problem if I pray hard enough.


* I'd be happier in a bigger house in a better location, or in a smaller house with less upkeep. 


* I'd be happier in a newer house with fewer repairs, or in an older house with more charm.


* I wouldn't be such a mess if not for my family of origin.


* I'd find more fulfillment in a different job.


* My kids deserve straight teeth, the best universities, challenging jobs, financial success, and model marriages. And they should make me proud. 


* I will give a little more when I get a little more. Just a little more, enough to be secure.”

* … I expect "a front row seat in a life of miracles."


These are his, what might yours be? These are all false prophecies about how life is to be, about what one can expect, about what is of value. Jeremiah calls those who tout these false visions, those who sell these false visions of life, “false prophets”. Their words are not God’s Word. They promise what cannot be delivered. We read in Jeremiah, “Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?”

What the false prophets hold out to the world is gossamer; it blows away in the wind, as in “It ain’t ever going to happen like that for you.” Or sometimes what they hold out can capture us and blind us to any other way of thinking or living or being.

And yet, Jesus tells us that there is another way. In last Sunday’s NY Times Business section there was a column titled, “But will it make you happy?” The opening paragraph went this way: “She had so much. A two-bedroom apartment. Two cars. Enough wedding china to serve two dozen people. Yet Tammy Strobel wasn’t happy. … she was, as she put it, caught in the “work-spend treadmill.” So one day she stepped off.”

She just stepped off. She broke away. That’s something like what Jesus was talking about. Sometimes living fully, living truthfully, living deeply into the reign and life of God requires us to move away from, to break asunder, to be refined in the fire of repentance.

And the good news is that it is possible at any time, it is possible at every time to make the break that is necessary to find healing and wholeness. The human story is the story of God’s redeeming work at any time and every time throughout history, and for each of us that redeeming work will be completed in God’s time.

As Dylan Breuer has written, “(The human story) is a story of pain and tears and brokenness, but it is a story of love, joy, and hope that ends in wholeness, in the world coming to know, and you and I coming to know, just how high and broad and deep God's love and blessings for Creation are,” including the part of creation that bears your name.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

So- how about these readings today? A little depressing, right? We have vanity (and vanity, and vanity) and greed and dying unaware, all in spades.

We are warned again and again in Ecclesiastes and the psalm of the sin of greed, of the risk of prizing things over relationships with each other and with God. We are shown, in the teacher character form Ecclesiastes, exactly how gloomy and fixated and anxious one can become when getting is all that we think about. Everything else loses meaning, and we find ourselves, bitter and jealous, sitting alone on a pile of money, terrified of who might get it once we die. That, truly, is vanity!

But then in Colossians, we are reminded that behind the sin of greed, there is an even greater sin- the sin of self-sufficiency, of believing that we can ever have so much stuff that we no longer need each other. In Jesus, we are reminded, God offers us another way.

I have a confession to make. I am a saver. For me, saving money is like a sport- when most of my friends were buying their first new cars, I was starting an IRA, I buy things for full price so rarely that I can pretty much remember each occasion in the last five years, and I get a thrill when I find a bargain online. Even as a little girl, when I came into money, whether a dollar from the Tooth Fairy or $5 in a birthday card or a quarter I found in the sofa, I squirreled it away somewhere, and saved it. My mother tells stories of finding little pockets of change and dollar bills folded ever smaller around my room, and my older brother constantly coming to me with “investment opportunities.”

All of that back story is to explain why, when I got a statement from the Social Security office in the mail earlier this week, it had the impact on me that it did. I was pretty excited to find out that I’ve finally worked enough units or whatever they call it to be a part of the program. I felt good about that, I liked the idea of having some security in that murky, hazy future, still so many decades off, when I am told I get to retire.

And then I read the sheet called: What young workers should know about social security. After detailing all the reasons the program will be vital in my eventual old age, it posed the question so many folks in my generation have been asking for a while now: will social security be around when I retire? I don’t think I will spoil it for you when I tell you the official answer was somewhere between probably and maybe.

Anxiety took hold as I looked at the graphs of how saving x amount of dollars now at y % would mean z in savings in forty years, and my chest got a little tight and I eventually had to just go do something else altogether because I was getting a little freaked out.

We all carry our false gods with us in life, and I realized, once again, that I had made something of an idol out of financial security. I know that I am not alone when I identify with the man in today’s Gospel who has worked hard and focused on the future and pinched and planned to insure his comfort and security, and in the process has lost sight, a little, of all those other important aspects of life.

We have felt the false peace of the farmer in Luke, relaxing, finally, with the feeling that we have saved enough, we have done enough, we have made the right decisions, and now we are assured of happiness and security. Except, like the farmer, we can too easily lose sight of the bigger picture. Because just as we say to our souls, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, [now] relax, eat, drink and be merry!”, we realize that life is unpredictable, and none of us knows when its final day might come, and if we’ve staked our entire being on having enough, we have very little support when we find that we are lacking.

To quote Walter Brueggeman, theologian, we have been caught in the foolish destructiveness of self-sufficiency. Luke’s parable, Brueggeman says, portrays a fool who is a great accumulator and who imagines that his vast possessiveness adds to his well being. In the end he is talking only to himself, he is isolated, and his self-satisfaction is interrupted by death.

The message, as always, is that balance is key. Of course we should all live with an eye towards the future, we should all save and practice sound financial stewardship, but we cannot let that future security become an obsession- we must also live in the present moment, not become so attached to things and money that we squirrel them away, like my young self with my tiny folded bills, without enjoying them - we have to come to a place where we recognize that those bills are a means to an end, and that end is a life that includes the joy of charity, the pleasure of pleasures, and keeping ourselves open to the community we live in.

We know that greed is a way of worshipping the wrong gods, but it is easier to forget that security itself can be a false god, an attempt to wrest control from the hands of the God who made us.

To quote Brueggeman once more, this teaching is urgent in our society, not only because of the perennial seduction of greed, but because we live in an era in which credit and tax law and advertisements all seek to make greed into a civic virtue. We know better! We may choose against preoccupation with getting and having, and instead choose a life centered on compassion, on kindness, on humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness- we can choose a life centered on a new self, the one baptized into Christ.

Let us pray:

Lord, help us to relax.
Take from us the tension that makes peace impossible,
Take from us the fears that do not allow us to venture,
Take from us the worries that blind our sight,
Take from us the distress that hides our joy,
Help us to know that we are with you,
That we are in your care,
That we are in your love,
That you and we are one.
AMEN.

The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

In Thanksgiving for The Rev. Cn. Charles Shreve 
and "Ralph Davis"

Luke 10:38-42

As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

On this hot Sunday in late July of the hottest summer on record, I thought I would tell you a couple of parables and along with trying to engage you, at the same time try to entice you into a little personal reflection later on, not about what you do, but about how you do what you do.

The first parable.

Almost 40 years ago, I went to Christ Church, Corning N.Y. as the Associate Rector. Christ Church is a very large church, about like this cathedral in building and in membership. I had a very big job, and I became very busy doing God's work. As clergy do when we come to a new parish, I spent a lot of time visiting with my new parishioners. And I really had to hustle from visit to visit.

Finally I was getting down to the less active members and it came time for me to visit a man I will call Ralph Davis. He was about 85 years old. Been retired from railroading for some 20 years. He lived in the house he grew up in, and it looked as if it hadn't had a coat of paint since the day he was born.

I knocked on his door and the door swung slowly open. I called out, “Hello, Mr. Davis?” A muffled reply came back, “In here.” I proceeded to the parlor. I walked into the darkest, dingiest, dankest, dirtiest, dustiest, disgusting-est living room I had ever seen. And there was Ralph seated in his chair...his foul smelling chair...in the middle of it all.

“Who the (expletive deleted) are you?” “I'm Rick Cluett from Christ Church.” “You must be new. I always get the new one. Well, you needn't bother. I got along fine before you, and I will after you.” A great beginning. I said, “Mr. Davis, I'm very busy. I have people to see, places to go, and work to do, now if you don't want me here, I will be glad to leave.” (Hoping against hope, he would end this unpleasantness.)

“Well, all right you might as well sit down seeing as you’re here, but be quiet so I can finish my show.” Ten minutes of his show, and I was gone. Back to work; on to another parishioner for a visit. I did go back to Ralph, but only on the highest holy days to take him the sacrament, for which I turned off the TV, and immediately afterward turned it back on again, so that I wouldn't have to talk to him and I would leave.

Another parable.

You long time members of Nativity will remember Canon Charles Shreve who served this cathedral faithfully for a number of years, when he and his beloved wife, Patti Pickens, retired to Bethlehem. For those who didn’t know him, Charles’ ministry had taken him into the company of the powerful, the elite, the luminary and famous, corporate and political leaders, talented artists and artisans, and to the great cathedrals in Paris and San Francisco.

One day in this cathedral pulpit many years ago he told this story from his time as canon and bishop’s chaplain, an important and powerful post, at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.

He was very busy in his office when his secretary called him to come out to help her "deal with" this man who had come to ask for mon­ey.

Charles saw a man who was an obvious street drunk – his body was dirty, he was unkempt, wearing filthy clothes. Charles invited him into his office, anyway. The man told him a well-rehearsed story of his descent into his pre­sent condition. He just wanted money for food, he said. Charles asked him, "Isn't there anyone in this world who you could look to for help."

He said that there was no one; except his son whom he had not seen for several years, since his graduation from Stanford, and he had no idea where to find him, or even if it was worth find­ing him, given his present condition. When he mentioned that the son had graduated from Stanford, a possible way to trace the son crossed Charles’ mind. He asked the man the name of his son.

The name he gave was the name of a young man Charles knew. This young man was a kind of golden boy, a rising star in the corporate world, active in cathedral life and ministry. He was young, handsome, well educated, well employed, had a winning personali­ty and made a good buck.

Charles asked the man if he would come back the next day at 12:00 noon, and said he would try to locate his son. Reluctantly he agreed. Charles then called the son and told him the story of his father. The man said that he hadn't seen his father since his graduation. His mother had divorced his father because of his alcoholism. He had lost track of him. But with a rather reluctant “yes”, he said he would come to the cathedral at noon.

The old man arrived first and Charles invited him to wait in his office. Shortly afterward the son came in. Dressed in a beautiful, double-breasted Cashmere overcoat. The old man stood up and said, Hello Son. The young man said, Hello Dad. And he went over to him: this dirty, grubby, disheveled, drunk who was his father. He took off his coat and placed it around the shoulders of his father - wrapped him up in it - and drew him into a warm embrace of love. Tears began streaming from three pairs of eyes. It was a moment of reconciliation and the beginning of the redemption of a human soul.

To finish the first parable.

One day I brought the sacrament to Ralph, and for the first time, somehow it truly became the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Afterward Ralph asked me not to turn the TV on again. Instead, he said, “Sit down,” and asked, “How are things going down at the Church? Where'd you grow up? Tell me about your family.” And so on. He also told me details and anecdotes about his amazing life.

After two years of visiting him in which I never really visited with him, he made me sit down and engage him – relate to him. And he was tenacious. I would get up to go, and he would ask me a new question. I would say what I thought, he would ar­gue, and he would probe, and probe and probe -- deeply. I felt a lit­tle like Jacob wrestling with the angel. We wrestled, we wrangled, and in the end we both won.

For when it finally came time for him to go to the hospital for the last time, he told me he wanted me to take him. So I cleaned him up, dressed him, took him to the hospital in my car, sat with him, helped him die, buried him, and mourned his loss ...and gave thanks to God for him and for what he taught me about dignity and courage and faith and patience, and compassion -- and something about what the good part really is, where it is found, and that it is of God.

Now what was it that Jesus was saying in this gospel story of Mary and Martha?

Becoming whole persons, holy persons, depends not so much upon changing what we do but in doing for God and those around us what we or­dinarily do for ourselves. This Gospel doesn't deal with com­petition between action or contemplation, faith or work. It has every­thing to do with living deliberately, intentionally and attentively in relationship by God's grace.

God didn't create us to fill some role, do some job. God made us for relationship and for love -- to be loved by God, and to express with our life and our welcome of others how we see God loving the world.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

The dramatic events from today’s Gospel reading have provided material for innumerable artists- a dinner party at the lavish home of a Pharisee, a member of the Jewish upper class, Jesus, and a woman driven by devotion to wash his feet with her tears, anoint them with perfume, and wipe them clean with her hair, all while the host stands over her in judgment. That’s pretty exciting stuff and the paintings that have resulted are equally dynamic. My favorite is “Feast at the House of Simon the Pharisee,” painted by Peter Paul Rubens in 1618, now part of the collection of The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. I have not seen it in person, but even in reproduction its monumental size and rich colors make quite an impact. The painting is about 9 feet long by 6 feet tall, and is a tight focus on the dinner table at Simon’s house, the people slightly larger than life size. No fewer than fifteen figures crowd the scene, including multiple servants and a snarling dog, searching for crumbs under the corner of the table. The white tablecloth divides the painting into top and bottom halves. Above the horizontal expanse of the cloth one sees the servants at work in the background, passing baskets of food and dishes and bread. Below the line of servants’ faces one finds the various dinner guests, their faces painted to show their reactions to the actions of this unclean woman, in the lower middle of the scene. At Jesus’ left, Simon, the host, covers his face partially with a dinner napkin, presumably appalled at how wrong his party has gone. Next to him a tight group of five men argue, some looking repulsed at this rabbi who allows his feet to be touched by such a woman as this, others simply bewildered. The final two dinner guests, both heavily bearded, are casting their gaze into the lower half of the painting, rapt with judgment or bewilderment it is not clear, watching the woman as she washes the feet of her Lord.

In typical Rubens’ style, she is a large, full-bodied woman, dressed in sumptuous fabrics of plum and silver and peach, in the Renaissance style, and her hair is, for 1st century Palestine, improbably golden blonde. Of all the figures, only she and Jesus are shown in their entirety, not blocked by furniture or other people. Jesus is wearing a blue robe, draped with a red cloak, and he is silhouetted against a dark architectural background. In the midst of the confusion of bodies in this massive painting, Jesus and the woman seem alone in the right half, their skin radiating light. The woman caresses Jesus’ feet, an ointment bottle in the foreground, and seems lost in the actions of physical worship, her eyes half closed, her face transcendent. Jesus looks not at her, but at the group around the table, and gestures to the example she is setting in her willingness to cross lines of social boundary to express her devotion to her Lord. In the background a single servant casts her eyes toward Jesus, as if some new world has been opened for her at that moment.

In my mind, this painting shows the exact instance of Jesus’ telling of the parable we have just heard, the parable of the weight of debts and the relative lightness of those debts forgiven. As understanding dawns on the men at the table of the meaning of his words, the tight group pulls away to argue among themselves about the law and the scriptural basis for forgiveness of debts, the host, Simon, is aghast at his own oversights in hospitality, his failure to provide his guest with the comforts due a stranger and his own sharp judgment when he was so lacking, and the two bearded men at the far end of the table are questioning, perhaps, the social order they have grown old in, and are looking at the woman at Jesus’ feet with wonder and awe.

My eye continues to be drawn back to the servant girl, the fringe figure whose eyes provide a counterpoint to the action of Jesus and the woman, and in her gaze I found my own understanding of the parable Jesus told that day. This parable of forgiven debts and equivalent love seems, at first hearing counter to other parables Jesus has told. In the parable of the vineyard, he chastened the workers who worked a full day and were paid the regular wage for their displeasure that those who came later worked less, were paid the same. Be happy when you have been given what you are due, he seemed to say, and do not worry yourself with the fairness of other’s charity. Does this not then call into question the premise that one who has a greater debt will be more pleased with that debt’s forgiveness than one whose debt was less? Shouldn’t we all be equally pleased that our debts were forgiven at all, love equally, and not cast our thoughts to the debts of others?

But this is not the point- these parables are not an even comparison. The debts forgiven- 500 denarii in one case, 50 in the other- were both crushingly large amounts. We are not told anything about the debtors themselves, but we must assume they were men of little wealth to have borrowed in the first place, and regardless, these sums are large- a single denarius was valued the same as 10 donkeys, and was well over a day’s wage. So for the creditor to have pardoned a debt of 50 denarii was munificent, and saved this man and his family years of saving and scrimping and going without, and for this the debtor was understandably pleased. However, for the man who owed 500 denarii, this was a sum that probably could not have been paid back in his lifetime, and would have weighed upon his family and subsequent generations of his family, perhaps caused one or two of them to be sold into slavery, and so when that debt was forgiven, the entire family was given its freedom.

The correlation of these Biblical sums to modern day equivalence can be misleading, though, in our day when credit is still readily available and relatively cheap, and so I think it makes more sense to think of this parable in terms of the forgiveness rather than the debts. We all have burdens that we carry with us, each day. We know that some are lighter than others, though we only truly know the weight of our own, and perhaps we know from personal experience that some are downright crushing and we aren’t sure we’ll be able to make another day under their weight. Regardless of the weight that we carry, in God we find a set of arms that can hold all we can load upon them, we find forgiveness that goes to our very souls, sees every ugly, embarrassing, shameful bit of us that might exist, and loves us anyway, loves us even more for being so imperfectly human. And so, rather than calculating the modern day value of a denarius, it is more helpful to imagine the burden that you carry suddenly lifted, your shoulders suddenly rising on their own from the lightness, feeling the loving embrace of God wrapped around us and supporting us. This is what we have in Jesus, this is what we were promised on the cross and are promised each time we approach this altar- that we are loved, and worth loving, no matter how great our debts. And in that love there is release, and freedom, and that newfound worth is enough to make a woman, cast out of society for whatever mistakes, fall down at her Savior’s feet, and bathe him with her tears and her kisses, and dry the dust of the road from those feet with her hair.

That forgiveness is enough to tear a hole in the fabric of a society neatly defined by law and power, and rearrange it into a new world where forgiveness is a promise, where there are no strangers but only family, all to be reflected, in a flash of understanding, in the eyes of a servant girl suddenly set free.

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

The Ven. Richard I Cluett

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Have you noticed as I have that there is not a lot of one another-ness around these days. There is a lot of me-ness, and we-ness, both usually offered in the cause of separation, not unity. There seems to be a definite dearth of “I and Thou”-ness in the world today

But, truth be told, we human beings have always been better at ex-clusion than at in-clusion. We are pretty good at assigning people to categories that separate them or some dimension of them from ourselves or from the category that we have assigned ourselves. We are good at it today and they were good at it back in the early days of becoming church.

The reading from Acts represents a cataclysmic shift in the early church. Until that trance and vision of Peter’s, the mission of the church was limited entirely to the House of Israel. It was to the Jews that God had come in Jesus of Nazareth – and only to the Jews. Indeed the gospel was intended only for “good” Jews, those who observed the Law and all the individual laws that made up the capital L Law.

Peter’s world is bound by all those laws that are found in Leviticus or in Deuteronomy …You shall not eat any abhorrent thing... Any animal that divides the hoof … and chews the cud, …you may eat… the camel, the hare, and the rock badger, because they chew the cud but do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you. And the pig, … is unclean for you. You shall not eat their meat, and you shall not touch their carcasses. Of all that live in water… whatever has fins and scales you may eat… You may eat any clean birds… And all winged insects are unclean for you; they shall not be eaten… You shall not eat anything that dies of itself; you may give it to aliens residing in your towns for them to eat, or you may sell it to a foreigner. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God…

The life of a Jew bound by the Law and their associations limited only to those whose lives were also bound by the Law. The redemption and salvation God wrought in Jesus limited to the House of Israel bound to God by the Law and Covenant.

But in his trance God gives to Peter a whole new understanding of the Incarnation and of Jesus commandment to love one another. Who constitutes the “one another” part takes a quantum leap. Peter enters a whole new world. It now includes all those whose ways are foreign and alien to a good Jew or a good disciple of Jesus. It is the world, it is the Good News that includes you and me, the world that let’s all God’s people in.

What God has made clean, you must not call profane. That covers just about everyone and everything. It’s all in; there is no out. You have heard the expression “beyond the pale”, well there is no pale, there is no boundary to place others beyond. Peter says, “Who am I that I could hinder God?”

We hear the voice of God in the vision received by John, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them… It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” – the beginning and the end of everything and everyone.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

So the question for us today is, how are you doing with that? How’s your loving of all God’s creation coming? Are you loving all God’s people? Working on it, or have you thrown up your hands because it seems impossible – seems to be a truly impossible way to live? What is the message the world is getting about your discipleship of Jesus Christ as they look at the testimony of your behavior? Could you be hindering God? If so, who are you that you should hinder God?

It can be pretty tough to “love your neighbor as yourself” given the neighbors we have been given. Some are just not all that loveable, are they? Some are just too different – their behavior different, their values different, their experience different, their looks different, their lifestyle different, their language different, their customs different, their culture different – just too different.

Walter Brueggemann suggests, We might consider our contemporary “purity codes” that find “impure” all those unlike us. In dominant culture that could include Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, illegal immigrants, gays and lesbians, poor people, aging people—all those who do not meet our expectations of “productivity.” In other words, any people who think, eat, or live differently from how we do, or with whom we just disagree.

Thomas Freidman wrote this week, Much of our politics today is designed to make people stupid, confused and afraid of change.* You know that it is pretty hard for a democrat to believe that a republican could have a good idea – and vice versa. Pretty hard for a red state person to have much good to say about those elitist liberal blue state folks. Pretty hard for blue-staters to have much good to say about those Tea Party red-staters.

It is true that those feelings exist, but it is also true that there are other feelings, other influences, other urges that work just as automatically, but for love. And it is here in the community of Jesus, in the common life, prayer, and work of the people of God. It is here that we are exposed to the possibility of being able to love the Jesus way. It is here that we will find others who also are willing to make the attempt with us - not in spite of who we are - but rather because of who we are and whose we are.

It is here that hostility, is unacceptable and declared to be sin. It is here that there is healing and forgiveness for the unwanted hostility that is in each of us. It is here where we find support and encouragement as we move out into the neighborhood, and the marketplace, and the home, and the workplace and the playground to seek and to do the will of God. Jesus has told us how important it is for the world to see and know the truth.

* Thomas Friedman, The NY Times, 4.28.2010

The Third Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

We are half way through the Easter season, and as time passes for us, we see time moving in the creation narrative of Christianity in our lectionary. We have lived through the shock and the awe of the Resurrection, of the empty tomb and all that it represents.

Last Sunday we watched as Christ appeared to his disciples, initially all but Thomas, who expressed an inability or perhaps an unwillingness to believe that freed all of us, two thousand years later, to ask our own questions, express our own doubts, always with the reassurance of Christ’s presence in our lives even when our faith or our imagination is wanting.

Today we have two stories, running parallel, creation narratives in their own right-genesis stories of two apostles, and of the church.

In the reading from Acts, we meet Saul, who we know as Paul, on his way to Damascus. We are all familiar with this story, Saul setting off bloodthirsty to persecute followers of Jesus, struck blind on his way. He hears the voice of Jesus asking him why he was so set on persecution and destruction, and once he reaches Damascus he meets Ananias, a follower of the Lord who lays hands upon Saul’s eyes, and something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Saul is both literally restored to sight, and metaphorically so-he sees the error of his ways and ceases his persecutions, is baptized, takes a meal, and spends several days learning the story of Jesus from the disciples, and then sets out into the world, the most Christian of Christians, and in that moment the Church has her first evangelist. Paul travels far and wide, spreading the word of Christ, and we read his letters, or letters written in his name, still, encouraging and mediating between the distant churches founded in Christ’s name.

In the Gospel reading from John we encounter Simon Peter, setting out in a boat to fish with his fellow disciples. They don’t have any luck until the morning, when the Lord appears on the beach and tells them where to cast their nets. Over breakfast (notice the meals in both of these stories- always with the eating!) Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him, and each time when he replies “Yes, Lord,” he tells Peter to tend his lambs, feed his sheep, tend his sheep.

And in that moment, the church receives her first pastor.

And so in three short weeks we have moved from the foundation of the Christian faith, in the resurrection, to the foundation moments of the Christian Church in these two stories. It is important that we are familiar with our history, so that we understand who we are as a Christian people, and as Episcopalians.

Today between services I will talk with a group of newcomers about the history of our Episcopal Church in our Foundations Class. We will discuss how we first differentiated ourselves from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation in a dance of the theological and the political, the development a few years later of the first Book of Common Prayer-which transformed us from a breakaway group of rebels into a proper church-to a similar act of rebellion a couple of hundred years later, when a group of colonies chose self-rule-all the way to this day of a global communion that struggles but has managed, so far, to find room in the wideness of God’s love for all who call themselves Anglicans. It is a complex and beautiful history, and I think there is some proof of God’s love for us in the fact of our existence, as Episcopalians, as Anglicans, as Christians, for two thousand years.

During my brief career as a lawyer, I was often forwarded emails from well meaning family members, usually some sort of lawyer joke or inspiring quotation about justice-though many more of the former! One that has stuck with me to this day was a picture of two people standing in a vast law library, staring at the endless shelves of books, with one saying to the other: “And to think it all started with ten commandments!”

I didn’t appreciate it for more than the sight gag at the time, but today, as we pray together for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion in Japan, our companion cathedral in the Sudan, I find that I have a greater appreciation for the awe in that statement, because our vast global communion, our two thousand year Christian history, warts and all, started with the two stories we heard today in the lectionary, with two apostles, as human and as flawed as each one of us sitting in this cathedral today.

It is a little frightening, isn’t it, to know that any one of us could be the Peter or the Paul of the next two thousand years? Don’t think too much about it, it will keep you up nights!

It is said that the one Bible verse that is almost universally know is John 3:16. Even in this day when church educators and seminary professors decry mainstream biblical illiteracy, you see this verse sited on bumper stickers, billboards, posters at baseball games. I bet each of us could recite it- “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

It is a pity that John 3:17 is not as universally known. Can any of you recite it? Don’t worry, I had to look it up—“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

It is a very human instinct to judge, to condemn, to put our own judgment in the place of God’s. But in these foundational verses of scripture, and in the foundational stories we heard today of Peter and Paul, we are warned against persecution, not told to judge, but to nurture, to love, to care for our fellow sheep.

And so, on this third Sunday of Eastertide, and every day, let us yearn to follow those two commandments of Christ-to love our God, and love our neighbor as ourselves, to spread the word of God’s love far and wide, and to make sure that each and every sheep is tended, and is fed.

Once we have managed all of that, perhaps then we can begin on the business of condemning those we disagree with. But somehow I doubt we will have much of an appetite for it, after all.

AMEN.

The Sescond Sunday in Easter

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Good morning and happy Easter!

If you are visiting with us today at the Cathedral, I want to welcome you and let you know that the construction tape over the back door is a prop. We are celebrating the kick-off Sunday of our Capital Campaign, which is “Carrying the Vision Forward.” So, I don’t want you to be afraid. To the best of my knowledge, nothing is going to fall today.
My favorite movie—actually I have a few—but one of my favorite movies and yes, I’m going to talk about it at Easter though it has a Christmastime setting. It is the classic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” How many of you know that movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Raise your hands high. (Yes, this predicts how much of the story I actually tell.)
In 1945, I think, or 1946, Frank Capra, produced a wonderful movie in its time. Of course, it got panned. Now it’s a sentimental favorite among many. (Frank Capra’s wife, by the way, was a native of Delaware. She is buried in the cemetery of the parish that I previously served—just a little bit of a tribute for those of you who care about those things.) But, you know the story of George Bailey, who is filled with life, hope and dreams, wanderlust. He envisions his entire upbringing in that small town, living in that house with his father who has that business—the savings and loan. He can’t wait until he’s old enough to get up and out, and begin to chase his dreams. You know how the story goes, of course. His father dies and he is faced with a decision of whether he will remain and carry on the business or whether he will go off and pursue his dream. The life as it goes, as you know, is that he makes a success of his father’s business as defined by all of those who come to find housing and income through the building savings and loan. This goes until one day, actually the happiest day of George’s life—his wedding day, when he discovers that there has been something tragic. Money has gone missing.
You know the scene when he spins into desperation. All of the happiness, the dreams of his life are dimmed and confused, and in his despair and hopelessness, he finds himself on the bridge asking this wish: Would it not have been better if I were not born at all? Well, you know what happens. Clarence, the angel, visits and George is treated to an experience of seeing what life would have been like if he had never been born. Of course, through seeing the flashed life, the interweaving of all the goodness that had occurred because of George’s life and faithfulness, he stands on that bridge again asking for his life back. George, in that moment, gets it. He gets it. He rushes home with what’s her face’s petals in his pocket—Zuzu, thank you Ron Heneghan—Zuzu’s petals in his pocket, surrounded by all those who, of course, were the witnesses to the goodness of his life. So, let me cut to the chase.
Thomas gets it. Doubting Thomas gets it. Thomas gets what’s going on. He’s just the only smart one to ask the right questions, but Thomas gets it. For centuries we’ve been giving Thomas a bad rap, but I’m here to tell you that Thomas gets it, like our good friend, George Bailey. Let’s face it; Thomas has had one heck of a week. He has seen the one in whom he has put his trust and his faith. He has followed him every step of the way and has watched him go to Jerusalem, be tortured, crucified, and murdered on a cross. Thomas has had a heck of a week. He has lost his dreams. He, like the other disciples, is clearly off-center, off-base. You have to believe that they are in deep, deep despair and, of course, they fear the worst.
I am here to tell you that Thomas gets it. He just wasn’t there when Jesus showed up. You have to remember that early in John’s gospel, when Jesus was prepared to go to Bethany, a place he had to leave under the threat of being stoned, it was Thomas who said to the other disciples, “We have to follow him there, even if we have to die with him.” That doesn’t sound very doubting to me. You see, Thomas was just the hands-on guy, the guy who needed the facts. He needed to know the skinny. Once he had the skinny, he would follow and go anywhere. It was Thomas who, later in the midst of Jesus’ farewell address not all that long ago, on a Maundy Thursday night, that we sat here and recreated and listened to. In the intimacy of that moment when Jesus took off the towel and washed their feet and left them with the poetic imagery that in my father’s house there will be many dwelling places and where I am, there you will be also. “You know the place where I’m going,” he said to them. It was Thomas who was the only brave one to speak up and say, “Wait a minute, Jesus, what exactly do you mean, because I have no idea where you’re going. In fact, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not sure of the way.” It is not because he didn’t want to know the way. He just didn’t understand. So he says, “Jesus, clarify.” You see, I believe Thomas gets it. Thomas gets what’s going on here. He just wasn’t in the room on that day when the disciples were locked in the room for fear. Who knows where he was—perhaps buying milk, buying bread, buying resources that would sustain them. Who knows where Thomas was. Maybe he was wandering the streets in despair, weeping over the one who he had lost. We don’t know where Thomas was.
The point of the story, the point of the good news that John is telling us in the end, is not that Thomas doubted. It is that Thomas got it. On the first day of the week, John tells us they gathered. What he is telling earliest readers of the story is that what you do as followers of Jesus is that you gather on the first day of the week. We get it. We’re here the first day of the week. What Thomas wanted to know quite simply, is this—is it he? Is it Jesus? Is it the same Jesus that I’ve been following around for the last few years? Is it indeed the same Jesus who I followed in trust and hope, believing and hoping for the kingdom he proclaimed? Is it the same Jesus whose dream I had bought into? That the lowly would be raised up? That those who suffer injustice would be stood up for? That the poor would have food in their stomachs? That the blind would be able to see again? That those who were held in bondage by whatever, whether it be Caesar or by their own spiritual sin, that they would find freedom? This is what I signed on for Thomas is saying. This is what I believe. Is it you, Jesus?
Okay, Thomas, Jesus says on his return. Poke your fingers, take a whiff...remember that night I washed your feet? It’s I, Thomas. I’m the guy who promised that I would abide with you, that I would be with you. I’m the guy who challenged you on that night to live the kingdom dream by issuing the command to love one another as I have loved you. This, you remember Thomas, is how the world will know me—that you will love one another as I have loved you. So surely Thomas, dazed and confused, grief-stricken and dimmed by Golgotha, you bet he wants to know it is Jesus. This, you see, is the message that John has for us in this gospel because the gospel is written for us. We are Thomas. It is he. It’s Jesus. He’s the one we follow. He’s the one we put our heart into and it is his kingdom in which we believe. Like Thomas and the rest of the disciples, unlock the door. Throw it open wide and get out there and start loving it as Jesus loved us. The issue you see, on this first Sunday after Easter, is who will carry the vision forward? Will the disciples become the resurrection community? Having seen the risen Christ, will they carry the vision of the kingdom forward like George Bailey? I wonder what the world would have been like if the church had never been born at all.
There are three questions the church is being asked, both at the time that they were reading the story in John’s gospel and in our time today. Who are you? What have you got? How do you do what you do? The early church were believers. They were people who gave their heart and soul to this Jesus, who dreamed the community that loves and cares and forgives and lifts up, who reached out to the sick, the poor, the persecuted and the hungry. What did they have? They had the experience of Jesus, the presence of Jesus. They shared the resources of their time and talent and treasure. How did they do it? They did it by unlocking the door, by simply unlocking the door, unlocking their fears, and living united, loving one another as Jesus loved them, and living like they had just seen the living Jesus. They believed it. Knowing who they were, what they had, and how to do it, they did it.
You and I know that we are launching a capital campaign. The words “capital campaign” often drive us to our rooms, asking us to lock the doors. Or is it the opportunity to hear the call of God as those who founded this parish a hundred and fifty years ago: To unlock the beauty, the resources and the talents of their lives so that a community here in south Bethlehem might know this dream that Jesus dreams. The people who founded this parish one hundred and fifty years ago built this parish. By looking at it, we know that they built it like they believed it. They built this foundation so that it would last. Nobody builds buildings that are going to last 150, 250, 350 years and in Europe, many, many, many, many, many years more unless they are believing it to reflect something in which they really believe. Our founders built this place, not as a testimony to their successes, but to their belief that who they were and what they had was a gift from God. They built it on this hill, I believe, for a reason: That it would be a manifestation of Christ’s kingdom here on earth and that those who would enter it would be challenged to spread the light from this hill in such a way that others would know Jesus. Just look up the hill that way and see St. Luke’s Hospital. Just look up the hill that way and see Lehigh University. Just look down the street to that corner and see New Bethany Ministries. Just look down to the basement of Sayre Hall and see the children who come here each day. Just look even to the Shawnee Building, which stores food to feed 400 people a day. Just look to the parish hall on any Thursday night in the winter and see the homeless being fed and housed.
This belief is Jesus’ dream, and I believe it was our ancestors’ dreams as they laid the foundations to this place because who they were and who we are are the people of God. What they had that they shared and what we’ve got are resources, physical and intellectual, spiritual and financial, built, shared, shared and built. And, of course, what they had and we have and Thomas and his friends had is the abiding presence of the risen Christ. How did they do it and how do we do it? We do it the way Jesus commanded us to do it, by loving one another as Jesus loved us, gathering on the first day of the week since 1864 or before. Those gatherings within these walls become the beacon of what those who would come here are called and sent to do. For generations in this place we have held one another’s children, baptized them in that baptismal font, celebrated with one another as love was consecrated in marriage and, as we have experienced even as recently as last week, embraced one another in the most despairing of times. Holding one another’s faith, comforting one another in our grief, and loving one another through difficult times, is how we do it. We do it coming together to serve the community and the world, loving one another as Jesus loved us. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if no one ever dreamed this cathedral church? Can you imagine your own lives without it? Can you imagine the south side of Bethlehem without it? Who we are, what we have, and how we do it—this is the way we carry the vision forward. Thanks be to God. Amen.