Nativity Cathedral : Sermons & Such

The 3rd Sunday of Pentecost

2009-06-21T15:23:00.005-04:00

The Ven. Richard I Cluett

June 21, 2009

It is my observation that one of the favorite occupations of human beings is to think back fondly on the “good old days”, those days way back when, when things seemed so much better. To remember things that way, especially when we get to a certain age and are confirmed in our certainty that things were really so much, much better “way back when…”

This week I was reminding myself of how it really was “back then” in the good old 1900’s. I remembered there was the First World War, followed by the Great Depression, followed by the Second World War, followed by the Korean War, followed by the Vietnam War, which was followed immediately by a deep, deep recession, followed by a period of extraordinary greed, consumption, experimentation and personal excess, and then finally we moved into the 21^st century.

People were so beaten down or exhausted or confused or anxious that a new theology arose in the second half of the last century. The main tenet of this theology was that God was so fed up with us and the life, the world, we had made for ourselves; fed up with what we hade done with the goodness of creation; so fed up with us, that God had left.

The evidence was clear that God was bored, absent, asleep, or dead. The theology became known was “the Death of God” movement. And make no mistake, it was a very serious attempt to understand what was going on in the world, to understand why things were the way they were.

The power of God, the presence of God, the security of God, the comfort of God were nowhere to be found. So, God was nowhere to be found.

Very many folks, I think, feel some of that today. Things are so bad, so bad with wars and recession, so bad with the greed of individuals and corporations and institutions, so bad with man’s inhumanity to man, so bad with the demands and stresses of daily living, things are so bad that the question begs to be asked, “Where is God in all this?” Where are the signs of God’s presence, power, purpose, design?

An ancient theological term might be useful here. The term is Tohu Bohu, which means topsy-turvy or Chaos. It was out of the tohu bohu, out of chaos, that God created.

It may also be helpful to remember that the nature of the kingdom of God is that it is up side down from what the world, what we would normally expect. Jesus turned the nature of reality up side down.

And so we come to today’s gospel story. In a time of extreme, poverty, brutality, oppression and chaos comes Jesus of Nazareth proclaiming the presence of God, the reign of God, the power of God in the world and in the lives God’s people. And not only did he proclaim, but he also demonstrated the presence of God and the power of God in the here and now of people’s lives.

When Jesus quiets the forces that threaten chaos, when he makes the unclean clean, and when he restores the unacceptable to wholeness, these acts upend our cherished assumptions about order, security, autonomy, and fairness.

Jesus shows God at work in the world and in the lives of people, and he says over and over again, “Do not be afraid.” But the disciples were, and we are, too, so often afraid.

This story that was important enough to be included in all four Gospels is at the heart of the Good News for us, today and every day, and in every storm that makes us anxious.

One writer put it this way: “Time and time again in Scripture the word is, 'Do not be afraid.' It is, you might say, the first and the last word of the gospel. It is the word the angels speak to the terrified shepherds and the word spoken at the tomb when the women discover it empty: ‘Do not be afraid.’

Do not be afraid, “not because there are not fearsome things on the sea of our days, not because there are no storms, fierce winds, or waves, but rather, (do not be afraid) because God is with us… even though there are real and fearsome things in this life, they need not paralyze us; they need not have dominion over us; they need not own us, because we are not alone in the boat.”

A small boat in a stormy sea is a good metaphor for life, a good metaphor for faith. There’s nothing like a good, perfect storm to put our personal and human power into perspective. Perhaps I should say, to put the puny nature of our personal and human power into perspective.

I have been on a lake about the size of the Sea of Galilee when a storm came up with a mighty and erratic wind and capsized my small sailing boat and threw me into the chaotic, raging waters more than a mile from shore.

There is good reason for the Sailor’s Prayer to be, “O Lord, watch over me for the sea is so great and my boat is so small.

Frederick Buechner writes, “Christ sleeps in the deepest selves of all of us, and we can call on him, as the fishermen did in their boat, to come awake within us and to give us courage, to give us hope, to show us our way through. May he be with us especially when the winds go mad and the waves run wild, as they will for all of us before we're done, so that even in their midst we may find peace, we may find him.”

The mysterious reality is that God’s love and presence and power are with us in every circumstance of life. We can have faith that this power at the heart of the universe, at the heart of all reality, at the very heart of creation, this power that dwells within each of us, in the end will allow all things to unfold in justice and in peace, making all things right, including our own small, but, in the eyes of God, immeasurably precious lives.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

2009-06-15T09:50:00.003-04:00

The 2nd Sunday of Pentecost

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

I have planted a small vegetable garden this year. After three years of city life and two years after that with no yard to speak of, I was very excited when I found my house here in Bethlehem with its small backyard, and started planning out my beds and flowers in January, all on paper since I wasn’t even sure exactly what my yard would look like once the snow melted!

I joined the throngs of folks nationwide, inspired by the gardening efforts of our first lady, and bought all sorts of seeds. Heirloom, Old fashioned, hybrid- you name it, I bought it, even some seeds for vegetables I’d never seen before, like neon colored swiss chard, and radishes that were purple on the inside and white on the outside. I started clearing a patch of grass as soon as I moved in in late-March, and chomping at the bit I started seeds in baking dishes inside, so I could plant them as soon as the last frost passed (around late-May in these parts). Patience isn’t a virtue I was blessed with.

Finally the time came to plant seedlings and some seeds in the actual ground, and now, a month or so later, I have a pleasant little patch of sunflowers and green beans and tomatoes and those inside-out radishes and lots of other things, all squeezed into a corner of my yard. I’ve even started thinking about what I’m going to do with my bounty when it comes, and have been watching instructional videos on canning and pickling on YouTube, though I guess I shouldn’t count my green beans before they have hatched, as it were.

Gardening for me is more than a hobby and a fun way to put food on my table. It is a way of encountering Do in my life. When I was growing up, every year I would help my mom dig her big garden. She always had a large garden and grew corn and squash, peas, and zuchinni, and she actually made it to the canning and freezing part, so that my family would eat green beans and stuffed peppers all winter that Mom and Dad had harvested from our own backyard. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I got to grow my own little row of crops. I was given cherry tomatoes to plant.

My mom knew that it is almost impossible to fail with cherry tomatoes, and so she shook out the shrivelled tiny seeds into my hands, helped me space them evenly in my row, and patted the dirt back over them. Within a week or two, tiny sprouts appeared, and after that the sprouts developed ragged leaves, and in the blink of an eye, it seemed, those tiny seeds had turned into bushes, absolutely covered in small round red fruit. I did not know how this was possible, but I knew God was present in the miracle of growing things, and I felt joy in him.

My cherry tomato bounty of that summer is a family legend, as there are only so many things one can do with these tiny tomatoes, and after a few weeks we were giving them away by the bucketful to neighbors and relatives and anyone who would have them. It actually took me about ten years to eat tomatoes again, but the lesson that I learned was that, from the tiniest, least likely beginning, God brings forth miracles. Now, as I remember digging my bare toes into the rich dirt of that garden, looking on the wonders God had created with my help, “[my] Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul”, to borrow the words of Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and poet.

All of the readings today seem to share in this experience, as they are filled with images of growing things, cedars and mustard plants, things green and succulent, cradling birds and all manner of living things in wide branches, offering shelter and shade to the world.

Is it any wonder that the writers of these texts, trying thousands of years ago to explain the mystery of God’s relationship with each one of us, could only use language of the mightiness of nature?

A cedar tree was not only a source of wood and fuel in ancient times, but the tallest thing most people would encounter in their lives, reaching far into the sky, beyond a person’s imagining- mighty, like our God.

And grain or seed, scattered on the ground, became wheat- a staple of a family’s diet, and the mystery of its growth was a sort of magic that kept that family alive, secure in its daily bread, for one more season- sustaining, like our God.

And a mustard seed, like my cherry tomato seeds, grew from a tiny speck into a giant shrub, offering a bounty so out of scale with its beginnings and what is put into it thatit confounds reason- transforming, like Jesus Christ.

And so, we are told, these wonders of the created world were given to us as a gift, by God, so that we might delight in God’s love for us, and in creation. For we can always find shelter in God’s expansive embrace, and solace in God’s branches. Comfort is offered to us, and delight, from a tiny speck of a mustard seed, which can grow into a whole world.

Trinity Sunday

2009-06-07T12:59:00.000-04:00

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

There is a standing “inside skinny” to days such as these, that is days in which we celebrate Trinity. Trinity Sunday is the day that senior pastors or rectors often invite a guest to preach, perhaps someone with more academic acumen, or if such a person cannot be secured, a guest preacher from another discipline or even denomination. If this fails, perhaps the newest minted priest would be in line, or if one is fortunate enough to grab one, how about a seminarian? This, of course, is more in the camp of tongue and cheek humor about a day on the church calendar when we explore the fullness of God’s expression in that very familiar, but often confounding, concept of the Trinity.

Today I promise I won’t try to deliver an exposition on an ancient doctrine agreed upon some 300 or more years ago into the experience of the Christian church, an agreement of faith, if you will, designed for proclamation and unity of communities of faith scattered around the Roman World, a world of varied cultures, tongues, practices, and experiences. Instead perhaps you and I can explore the path of our delightful invitation to discover the fullness of God’s presence in our lives, as we explore a bit of the tangled dance of Nicodemus.

We stand today in the shadow of the Pentecost experience, the experience of varied tongues and cultures gathered in a holy waiting as the promised ADVOCATE of power came rushing like wind and fire. A holy moment was fashioned when lives were lit up and languages and cultures joined in one perfect union with God, each understanding fully those they could not understand before.

When I was young, my cousin and I played together daily. We were fortunate to have joined each others’ families for vacations or trips. We especially enjoyed trips to Philadelphia and Washington, DC. On those trips to more metropolitan areas we discovered that people were diverse in colors, creeds, and languages. We took to making adventures of our own, pretending we were from other places, countries, pretending to speak a foreign language with one another so that others would think we were different. One day, while strolling through the Smithsonian Institution, we were speaking our made-up tongue, of course not understanding a bit of what we were saying to each other, but giving one another direction. When in the fluid tongue my cousin responded to a direction and leaned over into an exhibit, touching a piece of it, an alarm suddenly sounded. We looked at each other surprised, confounded, and suddenly realized it was us – the alarm was about us. Our dialogue of misunderstanding had led us into unchartered waters.

Nicodemus stands today in an engagement of opportunity to explore and experience the fullness of what is standing before him which is God’s fullness of love and mercy. The problem in this interaction, of course, is that he and Jesus are speaking different languages. The educated “professor” and teacher of holy things has come near to try to grasp who and what this Jesus person is, and he seems to be struggling. Jesus tells this curious professor that to grasp the fullness of God’s revelation, one must be “born from above.” This is a metaphor for an invitation into the deep mystery of God’s person, the mystery that changes human lives, that shows old men and women they can still dance and dream, that invites beings whose eyes have grown tired and dark that new possibilities for sight are at the end of their noses. The mystery of God’s person that invites the human heart to change in such a powerful way that prisoners, repentant and changed, are teaching Sunday school, alcoholics and drug-addicted humans are extending a hand of hope for sobriety to others, warriors are sitting at tables of peace. All of this is because their being has entered into the fullness of God’s hopeful experience for their lives.

Instead of hearing a metaphor of invitation into this mystery, Nicodemus hears an improbable mechanism of biology. The Greek translation “one must be born from above” also translates “one must be born again.” For Nicodemus, an old man who has seen much, to be born again, to be born over again, just doesn’t make sense and it just can’t happen. Nicodemus cannot proof text what it is that Jesus invites him into; it just doesn’t add up. But the truth of the matter for Nicodemus and for you and me is that WE are invited into the fullness of God.

We are invited to dance as the music calls us together to dance. We are invited to speak a language of love that unites us in our understanding of one another. We are invited to know a God who creates us to delight in us, who desires to live with us in a way that touches us, heals us, redeems us, who desires to live in us a life force that brings light to the dimmest of eyes and bounce to the slowest of steps.

This Trinity Sunday we join to speak the truth of the fullness of God in whom we live and move and have our being, as the Prayer Book is want to say. We speak a truth that is not a proof text of something that exists or a formula of something that “works,” but rather an experience of authenticity. God is speaking authentically to our lives, and our lives are answering back to one another in the same. It is a truth called “holy authenticity.” Born from above, we are one with the fullness of God and we dare to let our life speak! If our life oozes compassion, then compassion is the truth we speak. If our lives ooze justice, then justice is the truth we speak. If our lives ooze forgiveness, then forgiveness is the truth we speak. If gentleness, then we cannot help but live gently authentically. If healing, we cannot help but live authentically as a person of healing.

To enter the Kingdom of God, one must be born from above. Amen.

John 17:6-9

2009-05-24T09:47:00.001-04:00

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

In the year 1885 a meeting was called by Mrs. M. J. Franklin, a member of the Church of the Resurrection in New York City. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss with other women who the felt need to grow deeper in faith and prayer, and to ask God’s guidance. The spring of 1885 would bear fruit in the form of a bible class entitled “Daughters of the King.” This bible class at the Church of the Resurrection would grow into a communal experience for women built on the following premises: (1) To do God’s work, one must pray to God for the blessing of the Holy Spirit, and (2) Members of this communal experience would be devoted to prayer so that God’s Kingdom might be furthered. In other words, be devoted to prayer and service. These were the humble beginnings of what has grown today to be the “Order of the Daughters of the King,” an order of women throughout the Episcopal Church and beyond, dedicated to living in community with one another and with God, devoted to a discipline of prayer and service, a community of women devoted to prayer so that God’s Kingdom might be furthered. It is with gratitude that we institute a chapter of the Daughters of the King here in this Cathedral, this day.

How appropriate, too, it is that in today’s Gospel reading we find Jesus in the midst of a prayer of proclamation and thanksgiving at the conclusion of what we know as his “farewell address” to his disciples. In his prayer to his Father in heaven he makes the case for what he knows will be necessary for his disciples to “live in the world,” as the embodied presence of the Kingdom he proclaims. Above all things, if they are to further God’s Kingdom, this community must be united with one another and with Jesus and, therefore, with God. Prayer and service! Jesus in his prayer says, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” Jesus’ hope for the community of faith He leaves behind is complete joy. Whether living in community as a “daughter” committed to prayer and service, or living as the broader community of faith living our baptismal covenant, we seek joy made complete so that we may be the community of the Kingdom that Jesus prays for us to be. We are a people of faith whose life attitude is to expect joy, but what is this joy Jesus speaks of in his “farewell address” and in his prayer just before his disciples would witness his greatest agony?

Joy, it seems to me, as Jesus speaks of it, is not to be confused with happiness or even delight, but joy is an experience of complete unity with God, an integration of sorts. Joy is the “magic,” if you will, of knowing your connection to God and to one another in a way that brings your heart to a full awareness that each breath you take in life is a holy one. Joy is like taking a path covered with thistle and brush that gives way to the most beautiful view of God’s grandiose creation. Joy is like being in the thicket of relationship with a loved one and coming to an awareness that you are so blessed by what is in your life you feel paralyzed by the weight of it, and so thrilled you could fly. Joy is like being in the deepest, darkest forest and knowing that you are not lost, but on the brink of discovering something thrilling. Joy is like stepping on water expecting to skip to another shore. The “magic” of Christian community is that we expect joy. The alternative just may give us a sinking feeling.

A community of faith expecting joy, it seems, is worth our joining Jesus in prayer. A community of women forming to ask God’s direction in their lives to help further the Kingdom, it seems, is worth our joining them in prayer.

I leave you with this prayer, the Daughter’s motto:

For His Sake, I am but one,
I cannot do everything, but I can do something,
What I can do, I ought to do
What I ought to do, by the Grace of God I will do,
Lord Christ, what will you have me do?
Amen.

May 17, 2009

2009-05-17T10:41:00.001-04:00

The 6th Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

For the last few days I have been experiencing something that I understand many transplants to the Lehigh Valley experience, a sort of hazing for new residents. Despite growing up in the pollen capital of the south, with no adverse reactions, I seem to have come down with that local brand of hay fever that many have called: the Lehigh Valley crud.

It hasn’t been so bad, just some sneezing and coughing and dripping, and the whole experience has almost been worth it to hear Lulu, my beagle who also is apparently susceptible to exotic pollens, sneezing her way around the house. But all of this is an elaborate backstory to explain why I found myself, last night, spread out on the couch with a box of tissues in one hand and the remote in the other, watching the only thing I could find on the television, which was a Billy Graham Crusade from 1986.

I don’t think this is a clergy habit that I am exposing to the world, we don’t all spend our Saturday nights studying evangelism of the highest style, or if we do we don’t talk about it to each other, but I have seen this particular program before, a collection of classic footage of Graham’s arena-filling crusades from throughout his extensive career, always ending with an altar call as the thousand member choir sings “Just As I Am”.

Last night’s episode didn’t fail me- June Carter and Johnny Cash made an appearance, and that enormous choir sang a few other hymns I love from my youth before swelling into the strains of “Just As I Am, Without One Plea, But That Thy blood was shed for me, And that Thou bidst me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.” The altar call began, and hundreds of folks swarmed the field of the stadium, seeking Jesus.

And watching this program last night, I was struck by how often Graham talks about Heaven in his preaching. Heaven is a topic we just don’t hear about that much these days, yet it was something with which this preacher was both intimate and confident- and he seemed to define heaven as God’s eternal reward for a life lived to his glory here on earth.

I know for myself that my earliest thoughts of heaven were informed primarily by cartoons- fluffy clouds, angel wings, harps, that kind of thing. I’m not sure that it ever really matured much from there, and, as is true with most things, seminary left me with more questions than answers about what heaven meant for us as Christians and as Episcopalians.

However, I think that a true idea of what heaven looks like is given to us in the readings today. In the Gospel from John, Jesus says to us: “Abide in my love.” If we love God and each other as Jesus has loved us, we are told, our joy will be made complete.
And so that, I believe, is the closest we will get to a picture of heaven- the Kingdom of Heaven/ Kingdom of God on earth is when, in serving each other for the love of Christ, we become mirrors for God’s love. And as we reflect that divine love to each other, a community of love is born.

This past week the clergy of the Cathedral attended a clergy day at Good Shepherd, Scranton, and our speaker was The Rev. Dr. Courtney Cowart. Her ministry has primarily been one of disaster response. She was serving at St. Paul’s Chapel when the events of September 11 occurred, and she described looking around the historical chapel, days after the towers fell as it became the headquarters for rescue workers, and seeing letters of thanks and prayers from children all over the world, covering the walls (and the recent hundred thousand dollar paint job) to fifteen feet high. She saw Buddhists creating peace mandalas in front of the altar, and monks chanting psalms, and volunteers treating the ragged, rubble-injured feet of searchers in the “holiest of holies”- George Washington’s family pew. In that moment she saw the Holy Spirit working in this group of strangers suddenly made family- in the words from Acts, “the Holy Spirit truly fell upon all who heard the words, they gathered in places of tragedy and pain, and sowed love- without borders, even the Gentiles!” In that instant, that chapel was transformed into the Kingdom of God on Earth.

Dr. Cowart was also a part of the relief efforts in the Diocese of Louisiana immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and again, as residents reached out to one another and volunteers created a human flood of hope from around the country into the Ninth Ward and other devastated parts of the city of New Orleans, heaven became a reality, and the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand in the love shown by one stranger for another.

How do we live into this kingdom of God that we are called to in our everyday lives? How do we become a member of this Kingdom of God on earth, outside of the catharsis and superhuman intensity of tragedy? It is as simple as saying, “Have me, Lord- “Just As I am, o Lord, I come.”

The Fifth Sunday of Easter

2009-05-11T14:03:00.002-04:00

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

May 10, 2009

Acts 8:26-40, 1 John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8

In the Book of Acts today, we are privileged to eavesdrop on an encounter between Philip and an Ethiopian. Philip was one of the apostles. He knew Jesus, saw Jesus, heard Jesus, touched Jesus, and he believed! And he shared his first hand experience of Jesus with this other person who in turn heard and believed.

In John's first letter, John, who was an apostle, someone who saw Jesus, knew Jesus, heard Jesus, touched Jesus, is teaching what he learned from Jesus and about Jesus to the early church and any others who would hear so that they in turn might believe.

In the Gospel, we have Jesus himself speaking to his disciples; saying that if they are faithful, God will continue to be present with them in a way that will guide, encourage, support, strengthen and help them know, appreciate, and live the truth of the Gospel.

He uses the old-fashioned word “abide.” “Abide in me as I abide in you.” We don’t use that word much anymore. It has to do with persevering, continuing, lasting, staying with it. “Stick with me and I will stick with you.”

The three lessons describe encounters with God in Jesus; they describe what its like to be close to God. They speak of powerful, direct first-hand meetings with the reality of God – who is Jesus, and they speak of the promise of this kind of intimate experience.

These lessons don't deal with ideas about God, images of God, symbols for God; rather they deal with first-hand, "up-close and personal" encounters with God - in Jesus, in scripture, in one person telling another where they have found love, security, meaning, direction, purpose, future; one person saying to another, “Come see what I have found.”

When I asked Patricia to marry me, now over some 40 years ago, as you might imagine, it was with fear and trembling, as it often is. When I asked her to marry me, I did not say “Will you come and abide with me?” I said “Will you marry me and come live with me?” But what I meant was, “Will you abide with me?” Will you know me so well, love me so deeply, be with me in good times and bad, build a future with me, let me count on you to be there?

That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Live in me as I live in you. Know that I will be there with you day in and day out, encouraging, supporting, guiding, healing, forgiving. Live in that, because I live in you. Choose that, chose to abide with me.”

We live in a disposable age. We dispose of items when we are through using them. We dispose of products, we dispose of relationships, we move on. Someone has said, “No wonder the term, abide, is rare. What it means is rare, in our time.”

But that is what God wants for us, that is what Jesus offers us, and that is what we are asked to offer others in the name of God, on behalf of Jesus. The chance to abide in the love, grace, and mercy of God, constantly being called and nurtured to be our best selves.

In the early church it was not enough to say the gospel was for all, because all meant all Jews, but not Gentiles. So when the Word of God in that time was heard, those Christians had to be sure to specify that the gospel was not only for Jews but also for the Greeks. Paul's letters are full of other specific designations for whom the gospel was meant; slaves gentiles, and more. We have not yet fulfilled the meaning of “the gospel is for all.”

Being part of a welcoming community places upon us a responsibility to share the experiences we have come to value; helping to bring others to the experience we have come to know. It has been said that evangelism is "one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread."

By the grace of God, we have found bread here. We can abide here with God and with one another. That places upon us an obligation to share the good news with others. We are to become, with Paul, "… all things to all people, that we might by all means save some."

The love of Christ in which we abide, that we have known in our lives, that we cherish in the very core of our being, that has made us a new creation – that love of Christ is the love in which we are to abide and we are to share.

The Love of Christ is not for private consumption. It is given, to be given away. It is part of our life, that we might share life. It is generative, welling up, erupting into life through lives to bring life.

His Love is not a possession to be garnered, gained, grasped and kept for oneself – it is to be spread abroad with powerful abandon so all may have the opportunity to abide in that love.

It is important to remember that this love in Christ is not exclusively spiritual transformation, although it is that. It is also a liberation that touches every dimension of human existence. Healing, empowering, exorcising, befriending, bringing the lost, the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the outcasts back into the light and the life for which God created them. Using the power of God's love to heal and reconcile, save and forgive, restore and renew.

Today’s readings invite us to open ourselves to the power and presence of God in our lives - in this very life that we live every day, and to dwell there, abide there, and to tell others what we have found. By the Grace of God, thanks be to God. Amen.

The Second Sunday of Easter 2009

2009-04-29T15:12:00.004-04:00

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

When I first started seminary, not that long ago, I was confused to hear my professors and other learned church folks describe all things Christian as being “Easter-centered”.

As followers of Christ we are Easter People, defined by Christ’s empty tomb on Easter morning. Our 30 year old “new” prayer book is an Easter Prayer Book, as it intentionally re-centers our worshipping life around the resurrection of Jesus, both on the micro-level of sharing in the Eucharistic Feast at every Sunday service, and the macro-level of focusing on the promise of resurrection in every major event in our lives as a church- our holiest days, our ordinations, weddings, baptisms, even funerals where the color of vestments the priests wear was shifted from solemn black to Easter white, all to remind us that we were given life when Jesus triumphed over death.

I quickly added this to my own glossary of church speak, and on this second Sunday of Easter it resonates even stronger. This is the golden time of our liturgical year, the solemnity of Lent has been survived, and the relentless schedule of Holy Week has been completed and the lilies and brass bands and general hustle and bustle of Easter Sunday came off without a hitch and now we can sit back and relax enough to bask in the glow of what we just experienced and say:

Alleluia, alleluia Christ is Risen!

Today we are given a glimpse into what it really means to be an Easter People as Christians- literally in John’s Gospel as we hear of the life of the apostles in the days immediately following Christ’s resurrection, and more metaphorically in the message from Acts and in the Psalms, describing what it looks like to have heaven on earth, how the earliest Christian communities embraced Easter in their daily lives, as brethren lived together in unity, and no one was needy, and no one had more or less than they needed.

And in it all, we have the shadow of Thomas, and his doubt. We’ve all heard so much about Thomas that when I realized I would be preaching about him this week I mentally yawned, because what is there to say about Thomas that hasn’t already been said? In a way I feel bad for him, I see him as that stock foot-in-mouth character from tv shows and movies who has the very bad luck of having the exact person he was talking about standing right behind him. But as I sat with this story this week, I started to see more in Thomas than the blustering oaf who didn’t have enough faith, and I actually started to be very thankful that Thomas wasn’t in the room that first day when Jesus appeared to the other disciples, so that he could say, when he heard about it, that he simply couldn’t believe such a thing to be true without proof. In that moment Thomas let us all off the hook for our very human-ness, stated flat out that this risen Lord thing is a very difficult concept and he would like to ask a few more questions before he bought it, in short- he made it okay for us to be faithful and also admit that we don’t really have all the answers.

Facebook story: I recently reconnected with someone I went to high school with via that most astounding of unifiers- Facebook. After the initial round of “how’s your mama and daddy” and “you are a what?” sort of catching up, he told me that lately he had begun to have questions about the things he had been taught in church, and that he was deeply unsettled by this. He was afraid that after an entire life of unshakeable faith, he was no longer able to believe in God.

I don’t think I am breaking his confidence by discussing our online conversation from the pulpit, not just because you could never pick him out of the 500 folks I graduated with, all of whom seem to be on facebook, but because I realize that, in the unorthodox setting of an online networking community, I was given the opportunity to help someone address the questions that I know I have had and I bet everyone in this room has had at some point, the really basic ones like “How can God allow suffering and evil in the world?” and “How can a God of love condemn those who have never had a chance to learn about Jesus?” and “Is there a hell?”.

I didn’t have any easy answers for my friend, and I don’t have any for us here today. He is growing out of a particular denomination’s answers and searching, like we all have to eventually, for answers he must come up with on his own. But I was thankful for the luxury of talking about these basic parts of our faith, which too often I think we just don’t let ourselves question, afraid to ask about for fear of our ignorance being exposed, for our selves to be exposed as doubters. It is a lot easier to develop strongly held opinions about the esoteric things like incense or architecture or who really owns the church property, and avoid the shame of being a fraud.

Jesus wouldn’t let Thomas off the hook so easily- he offered up the marks of the nails in his hands to be touched and the wound in his side for inspection, and by doing so he let Thomas know that he could have all the physical proof in the world, but without faith in his heart, none of it mattered. All the proof Thomas needed, that any of us need, of God’s existence can be found in the way each of us chooses to live Easter everyday- to love God above all else, and our neighbors as ourselves, because we were shown in sacrifice and an empty tomb the triumph of a life lived not to our own glory, but to the glory of God.

AMEN.

Great Vigil of Easter

2009-04-29T15:07:00.002-04:00

The Rev. Mariclair Partee

This is the night.

This is the night- as we heard in the ancient hymn of praise called the Exsultet just moments ago- when we rejoice with choirs of angels and all the company of heaven that Jesus Christ has risen, and lives again. This is the night when two Marys travelled to a tomb with spices and oils to anoint the body of their crucified Lord, and found instead an angel with news of resurrection. This is the night when our faith was formed in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, and we form it again every Triduum as we kindle the new flame out of the darkness, and watch as that single flame grows into a flood of light and we are reminded, once again, that though Christians preach Christ crucified, we are defined by Christ resurrected.

In talking with a wise friend about what I should preach tonight, he said, “Say nothing! On this of all nights the symbols do all the preaching that is needed!”

And it is tempting, to bask in the silence after that beautiful chanting and drama, and appreciate the hard work of the altar and flower guilds and all the other guilds that made tonight’s splendor possible, and say nothing for fear of spoiling the message!

However, as the newest priest on staff, I figure I should earn my keep, so let me say this:

Historically the newest members of the Christian faith were inducted on this night, so that they could begin their new life as Christians as all Christians re-lived the mystery of Christ’s resurrection that gave birth to our religion. Anyone who has ever worked diligently through a confirmation class will feel they got off easy when they hear that these earliest catechumens spent three years in preparation and classes. For three years, they were led out of the church after the liturgy of the word, denied sharing in the Eucharistic feast, until they were deemed ready by their teachers.

We have a first hand account of the process from Egeria, a 4th century pilgrim to Jerusalem:
“On the first day of Lent, the candidates [who have been prepared] are led forward in such a way that the men come with their godfathers and the women with their godmothers. Then the bishop questions individually the neighbors of the one who has come up, inquiring: "Does he lead a good life? Does he obey his parents? Is he a drunkard or a liar?" And he seeks out in the man other vices which are more serious. If the person proves to be guiltless in all these matters . . . the bishop . . . notes down the man's name with his own hand. If, however, he is accused of anything, the bishop orders him to go out and says: "Let him amend his life, and when he has done so let him then approach the baptismal font."”

Those who are deemed proper candidates for baptism then spend the entirety of Holy Week reading the Scriptures and thinking on holy things, so that their minds and bodies are ready for the transformation that is coming.

Other historical documents have allowed us to piece together what happened on the night of the vigil itself, when these initiates were asked questions much like we just were in our renewal of our baptismal vows, then stripped of their clothing to enter the darkened baptistry, stepping one by one down the steps into a pool- not a font like we have here, but a pool large enough for an adult to be submerged in. With each step the water would rise higher on the candidate’s body, until it covered the head. At this point the candidate would probably feel like he or she was drowning, with no sense of the direction to the steps and safety in the darkness. At some point in this confusion and panic, the priest would offer a hand and pronounce the words: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, and the new Christian would be anointed with holy oil and led from the pool- reborn into a new life in Christ. Then she or he would be wrapped in a new, pristine garment of white cloth, and led into the blinding light of the church, illuminated by hundreds of candles, to participate in the Lord’s supper for the first time.

You can imagine the joy of the new Christian, half-drowned but safe, and clean, and dry, and surrounded by warmth of candlelight and community, warmed inside by the presence of the Lord.

It is no coincidence that this moment in the life of our church happens as the Earth around us is waking from the deep sleep of winter, and the sun is warming the ground so that the grass greens up, the daffodils and tulips and hyacinths spring from the dirt in a riot of color and scent, and nature begins to come to life again. That in itself is the richest sort of symbolism- the whole earth is welcoming the resurrection of Jesus Christ by reminding us of the Loving Creator who made it. And so again we are reminded of that Creator’s love for us, in the sacrifice and resurrection of his son, our Lord on this night-

For tonight our Risen Lord has conquered sin and death, and assured us of everlasting life in him!

Good Friday

2009-04-10T12:18:00.001-04:00

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

We hear the words of this familiar Negro spiritual this day, knowing our journey in this “Great Week” and on this second of the three holiest days ritualizes God’s powerful action of love and freedom for our lives. For the Christian, the action we are invited to is the deepest of intimate moments. The spiritual we sing is crafted by one who clearly is not reflecting ABOUT Jesus on the day of his crucifixion, but instead is a love song being sung by one who KNOWS Jesus. This KNOWING is clearly expressed with a depth of love and intimacy. This Jesus is one who is named as Lord, declaring the author’s willingness to adore, love, and to follow Jesus. To declare as Lord is to find a deep intimacy that leads to complete trust and faith in the one who leads. To declare as Lord is to lose one’s own need to control, to protect, to play it safe, and to risk the losing of much in the hope of gaining something new and unexpected. This is intimacy and trust-defined faithfulness, to follow wherever this Lord may lead. Not without uncertainty, not without trembling, not without grief, but following in spite of it. In this case, the following leads perhaps to the most unexpected of places, to a tree, where there are nails and torture and death. The one who sings this song KNOWS this Lord. What else would be a response to such a circumstance than the very trembling professed, surely a trembling in disbelief, deep grief, and disquiet.

I might suggest this day, as you approach the experience of this ritual, that you consider the question of how we receive the story. Do we receive the story as those who hear about Jesus of Nazareth? Or do we engage the story of one we KNOW, intimately, lovingly, beautifully, in the depth of love, one to whom we dare give our hearts over and follow because we have claimed him and trust him as LORD!

Claiming Jesus as Lord is not an easy thing. First of all, in modern times and in our culture, to call one Lord invites us into a fear that we might be “LORDED OVER” and for a politically-free people, this has negative connotations. Secondly, depending on how we are wired, we may find ourselves of the ilk whose default mode is to manage things on our own. We are apt to be trained to find that extra effort and skill to resolve things on our own. This, in itself, is not a bad approach to life, but oft times, in spiritual matters, is met with futility. Beyond that, we are human beings living in a world where we may not easily become vulnerable to another, vulnerable enough to show our tender spots, our roughest edges, our greatest weaknesses. To do so takes so much trust. Ask yourself this day, really, “Who do you trust?” Who do you trust to be most vulnerable with? Do you feel you KNOW Jesus well enough to let go? To expose your tender spots, your roughest edges, your greatest weakness? To hand your heart over and call him Lord, trusting that he will meet you in those tender places, to meet you in those rough edges, to meet you in that greatest weakness, and not only meet you there but invite you to meet him in his?

I submit to you this day that this meeting of Jesus in this most intimate circumstance is where we may find power and meaning of this day we dare call “Good.” Meeting Jesus in his most vulnerable and tender moment, in his roughest edge, meeting him in his greatest weakness, NO, following our Lord into his greatest weakness, this is perhaps where God’s mysterious power waits for us.

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they pierced him in the side?

Come and know him, see what God can do with the most vulnerable of circumstances. See the paradox of how weakness becomes the crucible for power and new life. It was not a tree, of course, but a tree, if you will, in the shape of a cross that Jesus hangs on today, dies on today. Make no mistake, the cross in Jesus time was a symbol of power, the power of an occupying Roman government that chose crucifixion as the method of capital punishment for those who broke the laws of Rome and for those who posed a political threat. Jesus, our Lord, was executed as a criminal, make no mistake. Remarkable then, isn’t it, that this symbol of judgment and murder would become for followers of Jesus a symbol of God’s power. Why? Because God’s ways of power would be strikingly opposite to the ways of an oppressive government that ruled by fear, instituted a system of economic injustice for the powerful’s gain, and to keep the poorest poor; and whose response to conflict was war and terror. Instead, God would choose to transform the world by showing another way of being whose most powerful weapon was compassion and forgiveness, the core values of Jesus’ life and teaching. For those who follow Jesus to the cross, there we find a symbol not of execution, but of God’s turning weakness into power. For all who KNOW Jesus know that our weakness, our rough spaces, our tender spots, are offered to the world as compassion and forgiveness, the ointment of transformation. Knowing Jesus means knowing God is banking on this power, and it is in you and it is in me.

So we follow our Lord and offer him our hearts, grateful for our meeting him. And on this day, we lay him in the tomb and we wait, for we KNOW there is another day coming.

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh!
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

Maundy Thursday

2009-04-10T09:35:00.002-04:00

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
April 9, 2009

There is a Latin word for where we find ourselves tonite. The word is Triduum. It is Latin for three days. Patrick Malloy, the rector of Grace Church in Allentown, who has recently been called to be associate professor of liturgics at General Seminary in New York City, has described the Triduum this way:

“(We have three liturgies that) are really one liturgy.
• Thursday, we experience in the washing of feet and the sharing of the eucharist how servanthood is true risen life.  
• Friday, we celebrate Jesus’ victory on the cross and how in our own daily dying, we live.  
• Saturday night, we see in fire and the stories of how God saved our ancestors through water and in the eucharist how risen life is now ours, and how we are charged with sharing it.

We have been working and living for this time for a long time. And then comes Sunday with the celebration of the Easter resurrection of Jesus.”

But tonite we focus on incredible, amazing, incomprehensible acts of love performed by Jesus as he provides a meal for his friends and disciples and as he lovingly bathes their feet in an act of humility and servanthood.

Later in this liturgy, after we all have shared in this last supper with our Lord, Mariclare and I will lovingly wash the altar. The accent is on the word, lovingly. This is a night made for love. Not the romantic kind, but the kind that does move the earth and the heavens and the hearts of all of God’s faithful people. This is a big night! And it is all about love.

The offering of bread and wine, the offering of the body and blood of Jesus – these are the things that will connect his disciples to him and to one another forever. It will be their strength. It will be their nourishment. It will be their bond. It will be his continuing presence with them.

Jesus offers one last teaching, one last demonstration of the nature of God’s kingdom that he is bringing into being, one last act which incarnates – which brings to life right there and then – the purpose of his life and ministry, and the nature of God and God’s kingdom.

He does it by washing their feet in a humble and humbling act of love. “The only way to teach the disciples the reality of the kingdom was to get down on his knees and wash their feet.”

The Gospel of John was written decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus to a church that was polarized with division, with contention, with great disputes about who was more right, more righteous, who had the best take on the truth, knew best what God wanted for people, for the world and for the church.

It seems disciples will be disciples no matter in what era they live. The gospel writer obviously felt that the great divisions of the world and the church needed to hear again this final teaching from Jesus that the kingdom of God is defined by love as he has loved and by servanthood as he has served.

And tonight we hear again this message addressed to our world, and to our church, and to us. It seems that things are not much different today. Still self-righteousness, still “my way or the high-way”, still separation of one from anther, still division in the church among the Roman, and the Orthodox, and the Anglican, and the protestant denominations; still between the evangelicals and the social gospel crowd; still between the Episcopal Church USA and the conservative churches of the Anglican Communion, etc., etc. etc.

In the hope that the message, the commandment to love and serve will work deeper into our personal and communal life and practice, we remember once again that “Jesus got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.”

We hear him say again, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one an-other's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

My wonderful friend and colleague Bill Lewellis holds dear a vision of how Jesus will greet each of us when we arrive in heaven. Tired and worn, Jesus greets us with a towel tied around him and a ba-sin and water to wash and refresh, as he says “welcome to the banquet that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

This self-offering and servanthood is not what the people of that time – including the disciples – expected from God, from the Messiah of God, or from the man, Jesus. It is not what people from this day and time expect, either. People do not expect the power of God Almighty to be shown in humbly serving all sorts and conditions of people, especially the lonely, outcast, the sick,

"The tired, the poor,
The huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse on our teeming shore.
The homeless, tempest-tossed,"
The illegal alien, the un-lovely,
The inconvenient, the pesky and the pest.
Whatever the sort and whatever the condition.

They do not expect power to be patient in suffering. They do not expect power to be an offering of love. They do not expect power to have to - or to be able to - endure. They do not expect power to serve others.

The Jesus who offers himself, the Jesus who serves others, the Jesus who goes to the Cross, is the truth of God. It has been said, “The crucified Jesus is the only accurate picture of God the world has ever seen.”

That is the One we are to walk with this Triduum, these three days – and rejoice in on Easter morning – and follow all the days of our life.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

2009-04-10T09:18:00.001-04:00

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett
March 29, 2009
John 12:20-33

I climbed into the pulpit to preach one Sunday, not into this pulpit but one where I was the guest preacher. In the pulpit on the little wooden stand for notes was a small brass plaque, dark with the venerable age of the early 20th century. The plaque contained a short message for the preacher, each preacher privileged to climb the steps to preach. In the language of King James it read, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

I imagine that you, too, are here today to see Jesus; to see Jesus so that, as the old hymn goes, you will be better able to:
   See him more clearly.
   Love him more dearly.
   Follow him more nearly day by day.

So have you taken into yourself this hope from today’s Gospel story? You have come here today, and perhaps you wait hopefully, expectantly, even attentively to see Jesus. I pray you do.

What is it that you hear when Jesus says, “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”?

I want to explore with you for a few minutes what it means for Jesus to say that judgment of the world has been rendered; that the ruler of the world has been thrown out.

What would it mean for you if today the ruler of the world were really driven out? What would it mean if the ruler of you were driven out? What would it mean if those powers to which you feel subject were driven out? The power of not having enough? The power of not being good enough? The power of the now, over the future of what could be? The power of a life of insufficiency? The power of me first? The power of what was? The power of the status quo? The power of the fear of the unknown?

What is it? Which is it for you?

Do you remember hearing a child say to an older more powerful child, “You’re not the boss of me”? Well, who or what is trying to be the boss of you? What power or powers rule, govern, guide your life, your behavior, your actions, your goals? What if today they were driven out and you became truly free? Think about it.

Free to be. Free to do. Free to dream. Free to live a dream. Do you have a dream waiting to be lived?

Remember that dream spoken of on the mall in Washington.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!"
And look at what’s happened since then?

If you have a dream, what’s keeping you from living into it? What ruler prevents you from living toward it, reaching for it? If there is something in the way of you and your living into your dream, well that is a power that rules over you. What if today that ruler of your world was driven by out by Jesus Christ?

If you can say, Jesus is Lord, then you are on the way to recognizing the truth that Jesus is Lord, the Lord of you, and the other rulers of your world have been driven out. You are on the way to knowing there is nothing between you and Jesus. There is nothing between you and the true you, the one God created you to be.

If you truly believe Jesus is Lord, then you have been freed from the powers of this world. There is nothing between you and the person you are created to be, and you are free to live that way – now.

“The judgment of this world” is the climax of Jesus’ work on earth, the end of everything that separates us from one another and from God and from our true selves. It is nothing less than the answer to our prayer that God's kingdom come and God's will be done -- on earth and in us, as it is in heaven. And nothing else has a hold on us.

Are you waiting to use your voice, your power, your life for some purpose until you've got the education, the money, the institutional clearance, the world's permission? Why are you waiting if the time is now. If there's something you're passionate about, some possibility that has ignited your imagination, some dream perhaps to make some corner of the world a little more like the visible sign of God's love, God's peace, God's justice, and God's blessing, you need no permission from the rulers of this world or of your world. They have been driven out.

We are very close to Holy Week and looking toward the journey of Jesus to the Cross. The Cross is the judgment God renders on this world. It is the end of everything that separates us from one another and from God and from our true selves.

Listen to how St. Paul puts it. "If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? … Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? …No… For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." – Romans 8:31-39

If Paul is right that Jesus is right, then we don't need to fear. We need to follow. When Jesus is lifted up, he draws all people to him. The God we see in Jesus Christ, the God who created the universe – the God who created you, and redeemed you, and calls you, and loves you – that God is still drawing the universe toward the dream for which it – and you – ache. That God is calling you. He is the one who has already freed you from the rulers of this world.

Is this the Jesus you see? If it is, follow him.

2009-04-06T08:41:00.001-04:00

Palm Sunday Homily-Sunday April 5, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

" Throughout the whole week, beginning from to-morrow, let us all assemble in the martyrium, that is, in the great church, at the ninth hour." This is the instruction as recorded by Egeria, a nun and a pilgrim to Jerusalem in the late fourth century. The instruction is given by the Archdeacon and is part of the ritual of Holy week as experienced by those who would travel to Jerusalem seeking through ritual a connection with Jesus. The instruction was the beginning of invitation for what would be called the Great Week, or as we call it today Holy Week. Our ritual today in this liturgy of Palm Sunday finds its roots in the early experiences of Pilgrims to Jerusalem.
Someone once said that to recognize the signs of God, pay attention to your stirrings. Look closely when you feel the swell of joy within, or the tightness as your throat closes up in sorrow. Live in that moment, poke around in its corners, and feel the texture of its walls. Sit with it for awhile, long enough to sense the presence of God sitting with you.(1)
Today we begin our ritual gifted by a tradition of pilgrimage dating back to the fourth century. We begin our “Great Week” with ritual opportunities to recognize and pay attention to signs of God. Today in our Palm Sunday ritual we have shared our enthusiasm and affection for our Lord by welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem riding on a donkey while onlookers sing Hosannas and wave palms. In the ritual we are reminded that both the donkey and the palms were signs of royalty in the ancient world. The fact that Jesus chose a donkey over a horse to ride was also significant. Kings at war rode horses; kings entering in peace rode donkeys. Jesus comes to Jersualem very intentionally embodying a peacefulness of his kingdom theology. Those expecting a military kingship to smite enemies and restore Israel, would need to look elsewhere. Jesus also comes with courage. Jesus is surely aware his entry into Jerusalem will catch the attention and despise of Roman authorities and Jewish religious leaders. This Jesus is remarkable in his insistence to ride into the roughest of circumstance so that love may have its day.
Our ritual today has brought us to meet him. We bring our hopes and expectations whatever they may be to Jesus and we have waived our palm branches and have sung All Glory Laud and Honor in welcome. Then not too long after we join voices in shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” We are remarkable at times in our inability to hold the course in following him. It is a human experience isn’t it, to savor the opportunity to join in the goodness and fervor of worshipping the triumphant nature of Christ, we do after all like to be on the winning side, And at another moment to find ourselves pushing Christ away, losing sight of our call to follow Jesus into the roughest of places.
It is startling then isn’t it, that we end up at the foot of the cross and there find instead of rejection, arms stretched wide with an embrace of forgiveness. Glancing through the shadow of the cross we see a light of new life. There is a chance for us after all. How remarkable is this Jesus?

Welcome to the Great Week. Welcome to this week of ritual that promises much. Pay attention to your stirrings. Look closely when you feel the swell of joy within, or the tightness as your throat closes up in sorrow. Live in that moment, poke around in its corners, and feel the texture of its walls. Sit with it for awhile, long enough to sense the presence of God sitting with you.(1)
(1) Reference taken from www.explorefaith.org

2009-03-23T13:26:00.001-04:00

The Fourth Sunday of Lent
March 22, 2009
Numbers 21
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, writing in the June 1867 edition of the periodical The Atlantic monthly shares his observations of the then “negro” people. He reflects particularly on their spirituality as reflected in the songs they would sing. Higginson writing some two years after the Emmancipation, he speaks to a people who have been freed by law but who continue to wait to experience the fullness of freedom.
A long waiting of oppression continues and our writer comments on the power of the songs that carried a people held in captivity to a place of perseverance even while they waited. One such spiritual of waiting goes like this:
Go in de wilderness,
Go in de wilderness, go in de wilderness,
Jesus call you. Go in de wilderness
To wait upon de Lord.
Go wait upon de Lord,
Go wait upon de Lord,
Go wait upon de Lord, my God,
He take away de sins of de world.

"Jesus a-waitin'. Go in de wilderness,
Go, & Go.
All dem chil'en go in de wilderness
To wait upon de Lord."

Waiting upon the Lord is where we find our engagement with the scriptures this day as we turn our sights on the Book of Numbers. The Book of numbers translated from the Vular English is Numeri. The Greek is Arithmeti but the Hebrew title for this book reads B’midhar, which reflects more the reality of the book itself, translating “in the wilderness”.
The Book of Numbers is the fourth of the Pentateuch. It is a compilation of 1,000 years of experience and scholars tell us contains at least three different sources who are reflecting back on the years of the people of Israel’s time of waiting in the dessert for the full promise of God’s salvation after having been liberated from slavery in Egypt. Its characterized by telling the story of God’s salvation with God’s people, and the ordering of those people. It is a wilderness story and it is a story of waiting. It is a story of the struggle that exists to be patient in waiting, to struggle with keeping eyes fixed on a hopeful dream, when the realities of the wilderness of life are chipping away at those dreams.
The scripture speaks of this struggle . Numbers tell us that Moses led the people out of Egypt by way of the Red Sea going around the land of Edom. On the way we are told, “the people grew impatient”. They asked Moses, did you bring us out to this desolate and awful place to die? There is no water and the food is horrible. One can understand Yahweh perhaps responding to this “impatient whining” negatively given all the trouble to free these folks. Moses himself must intercede on behalf of the people when God’s disappointment is manifest through poison serpents biting those who have lost the vision of hope for their lives. Ironically it seems Moses himself is begging God to remind the people of the vision of freedom rather than give in to the limitations of the struggle in the dessert where people will die. Yahweh responds with a symbol of life, a serpent on a stick, those who are bitten by despair and hopelessness may now turn and gaze upon a vision of life. In the wilderness wait upon the Lord. Be Patient and look for life.

The text book definition of patience is,
1. the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.
2. an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay

Let us be honest with one another, it is easy to lose patience when the provocation, annoyances, misfortunes and pain of life is more than we can bear. It is not unnatural to experience restlessness or annoyance when the movement of our hopes and dreams of our lives are delayed.
All of us know misfortune, all of us know pain. All of us know irritation. When all the guarantees of life and the hope of what has been promised is so distant we have lost sight of it, then what? Some of us may know first hand what it is to have our sights set upon a life long dream, even having labored toward that life long dream only to be left in some in-between place waiting and wondering what happened or what is going to happen. I myself was certain at this point of my life I would enjoy my induction into the baseball hall of fame after a successful career at second base with the Philadelphia Phillies. More seriously we have had dreams perhaps for our children, investing time, love, money, hope in the lives of one you love only to see that child run into a difficulty or become involved in choices of life that dash their potential. We have had dreams perhaps of our own lives when health, emotional or physical, present challenges that dash our own potential. We have had dreams perhaps of relationships we imagined with fullness and joy instead stressed and strained dashing our imagination of love. We have had dreams perhaps for our professional lives believing we would arrive at a promised land of accomplishment only to spend time in the wilderness waiting to a point of impatience where we can no longer even imagine a once tangible reality of future.

Indeed wilderness is a time that tests our patience. Like the people of Israel where will we turn? Who will intercede for us? How will we discover again God’s presence and how will God remind us of his dream for our lives? In the wilderness, especially in the wilderness we need to be reminded of God’s dream for our lives. It is especially when the things the world can offer us for our existence seem to be working against our dream that we must pray for intercession to reach for those things that cannot be quantified to lift us to a new place, a new reality.

You all remember the story of Frederick. Leo Leoni’s dreamer field mouse. You remember how Frederick and his friends prepared so very differently for a long and arduous winter.

You remember about the chatty little field mice who began to collect straw and corn for the winter. The staples to keep them warm and fed. They worked hard and long, all except Frederick you remember.

Working hard and growing tired of seeing Frederick seemingly doing “nothing” they asked,
“Why are you not working Frederick?” “ I am”, he said. “I do work. I gather Sun Rays for the cold dark Winter Days.”
Again another day, the field mice worked hard, pulling food closer to the wall that would become their refuge for the winter. In the distance they looked and they saw Frederick staring off into the meadow. Frustrated and with despair they asked, “And now Frederick?”
“I am gathering colors for winter is gray.”
Finally, after a long day of work, the busy mice gazed upon a meadow only to see Frederick standing by himself. In Frustration they proclaimed, “And now Frederick, now what are you doing?”

Frederick proclaimed, “I am gathering words for the long winter days, for surely we will run out of things to say”.

Well you remember the story, the snow came and the mice were prepared. For some time, they nibbled comfortably in the warm wall, feeling good they shared stories of foolish foxes and silly hens.

Slowly their supplies ran out. They winter days grew longer and colder and slowly the supplies so carefully stored began to run out. Finally, their worst fears became a reality and the field mice were left without food. Cold and hungry they realized they had nothing left and turned to Frederick. ‘What about your supplies Frederick?”
“Close your eyes”, said Frederick.

“Now I send you the rays of the sun. Do you feel how their golden glow?” The mice began to grow warmer.

“And how about the colors Frederick?”, the field mice begged.

They closed their eyes and told them of blue periwinkles, red poppies in yellow wheat, and green leaves on a berry bush, they saw colors as clearly as if they has been painted on the sky above them.

“Now the words”, they exclaimed, “Give us the words Frederick!”

Frederick stood among them, cleared his throat and exclaimed,

“Who scatters snowflakes? Who melts the ice?
Who spoils the weather? Who makes it nice?
Who grows the four-leaf clover in June?
Who dimes the daylight? Who lights the moon?

Four little field mice who live in the sky.
Four little field mice….like you and I.

One I the Springmouse who turns on the showers.
Then comes the Summer who paints in the flowers.
The Fallmouse is next with walnuts and wheat.
And Winter is last….with little cold feet.

Arent’ we lucky the seasons are four?
Think of a year with one less…..or one more!”

Like a vision of something more God holds out for us the promise of new life even in the wilderness. A serpent on a stick or a poet’s words painted on our hearts. We hold and wait for God to draw near to us and point us expectantly to a new day.
A people waiting patiently to see the fullness of their freedom sang these words and we join them this day:
THE COMING DAY

"I want to go to Cannan,
I want to go to Cannan,
I want to go to Cannan,
To meet 'em at de comin' day.
O, remember, let me go to Canaan (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
O brudder, let me go to Canaan, (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
My brudder, you -- oh! -- remember (Thrice.)
To meet 'em, &c.
To meet 'em at de comin' day."

2009-03-16T09:58:00.001-04:00

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Sermon: Lent III
March 15, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Richard Swenson in his book “Overload, Learning to Live with Limits” describes his experience with patients in his medical practice. He describes a time when he recognized he was seeing more and more patients who were younger and younger who did not have easily identified issues for diagnosis but were demonstrating physical difficulties. The more time he spent with patients he recognized what you and I will hear as an obvious conclusion; all of them were living lives where the demand on their lives was more than they could possibly handle.
His experience led him to prescribe for his patients that they be about creating Margin in our lives. He defines the concept of Margin as “The space that once existed between ourselves and our limits.” The equation he created is as follows:
Power-Load = Margin
Power= the things that give us energy, our skills, our time, our training, our emotional and physical strength, our faith, our finances, our social support, our relationship, our creativity.
Load= the things which demand things from us. Our work, problems, obligations, commitments, expectations (internal and external), debt, deadlines, interpersonal conflict, our health issues.
He suggests that the complex world and culture we live in presents an unprecedented complexity and challenge to the limitations we have as human beings. This complexity and challenge to our limits is what he calls the Sabotaging of Margin.
The Sabotaging of Margin
• 1.Progress differentiates our environment-giving us more and more of everything faster and faster
• 2. Spontaneous flow of progress is toward increasing stress, change, complexity. Speed, intensity and overload.
• 3. All humans have physical, mental, and financial limits that are relatively fixed.
• 4. The profusion of progress is on a collision course with human limits. Once the threshold of these limits is exceeded, overload displaces margin.
• 5. On unsaturated side of their limits, humans can be open and expansive. On the saturated side, however, the rules of life totally change.
One example he states for us to consider how our margin is being sabotaged is the difficulty of living in an age of information Overload. He suggests that there is more information in one edition of the Sunday New York Times than a person living in the 17th century would have encountered in a lifetime. I have not idea how he or anyone would really know that, but that sounded very cool to me.
We need not venture too far into this theory to realize some of the other ways the world we live in challenges our margin. We live in a time of Physical Overload. Technological advancements lead us to vocations and occupations where more and more, less and less is required of us physically.
When our relationships are strained with those we love, or with our colleagues, or even our brothers and sisters at church, the stress of this disruptions erodes our emotional and spiritual energy. Jesus stressing of forgiveness in his ethic clearly speaks to the disruption of what we would call sin. This erosion certainly isn’t unique in our time but is ever-present.

Many of us know that if we are to compete in a global economy the pressure on our time of productivity grows and grows. The work day has expanded with so many of us knowing what it is to rise in the morning in darkness and to return home at night in darkness with a long full day of “work”, only to go to bed and do the same thing the next day. Our time overloaded.
We know all to well these days the ramifications of financial overload. Consumerism is such a key component of our economy and its very premise is built upon creating a system where we need to buy and are tempted to extend. Some years ago I read a statistic that suggested that generation X on average was spending 120% of its annual household income. One need not be a mathematician to know how that equation works out. If you purchased a home in the past ten years it was probably not an uncommon experience to be invited into a “creative conversation” that included mortgage, second mortgage, packaged financing, that seemed more colluded to helping us believe we could buy a home we could not necessarily afford. We see now of course the difficulty in such a course of action and thought and many of us know all too well the stress of financial overload.
All of these things and others Dr. Swenson suggests contribute to the sabotaging of Margin! When Margin is sabotaged, he says, our limits are exceeded and the result is that we experience a decrease in perception. We cannot see the world and the choices we have in the world clearly, AND, because of this we perceive that we have lost options.
The antidote of course for Dr. Swenson, a Christian man, is that we intentionally seek to create margin in our lives. He suggests we pay careful attention to our Power-Load Equation and we seek to look at the areas in our lives where we can create the space for energy.
He suggests:

10% Margin in our Lives!!! (Reserves)
• 1. Margin in Emotional Energy
• 2. Margin in Physical Energy
• 3. Margin in Time
• 4. Margin in Finances

So the question of the day is,
HOW IS YOUR POWER-LOAD EQUATION?

If it is like those of the patients that Dr. Swenson began to encounter in his practice, chances are to begin a conversation when one is living an overloaded life means there may need to be come cleaning up of space on the hard drive. There is not better time for such examination and cleaning up then during Lent. One way to get there is through contraction.
Contraction is the popular word of the day being used currently to describe our economy’s response to our exceeding our limits on the financial side. I’d like to make use of this word today. First by reminding one another that at the root of this word is Contract.
In my wife’s line of work (a mother -baby nurse) contraction means an opportunity has arisen! New life, New Birth is about to take place

The Israelites knew of new life and new birth, being born into a new and unique relationship that would be defined by holy and faithful expectations of living in relationship to their God and to one another! A life-giving relationship would be guided for a nomadic people with new found freedom and promise with a contract that would define their Power-load equation.
This Power-load equation would be defined in covenant or in contract. Perhaps as we seek the 10% of Margin in our lives, and examine our Power-load limit, we can learn something new of the Ten Best Ways to Live as Jerome Berriman expressed them in Young Children and Worship.
For the Israelite people, the commandments that Moses delivered from Yahweh were a contract, a code of living. This code of living would be what is described by scholars as an apodictic contract as opposed to casuistic contract that were common in ancient times with other peoples living in proximity to the Israelites
A casuistic code or contract was common in these times and of course were defined as “if you do so and so, such and such will be the penalty”.
The contract of the Israelites with Yahweh is apodictic, reflecting the nature of an agreement based upon a “Suzerainty arrangement”. This arrangement was present among some people and nations as they came to peace agreements in ancient times. Such an agreement or contract is reflected in Israel’s relationship with Yahweh. The definition of this contract recognizes a relationship between one who is greater in power but not oppressive in that power, which is beneficial for all. This apodictic contract then is what will define the Power-Load equation for God and God’s people, and to live by it, would give life!
As we examine our Power-Load equation, perhaps a look at the contract again, will lead us to a place of power.
You know them and I couch my examination of the commandments as Jerome Berriman would, “The ten best ways to live”.
First: The Best ways to Love God
1. I am the one true God, this is very important, everything depends on this, and so have no others than me. This best way to love God recognizes a profound statement of monotheism in the midst of polytheistic people’s and cultures. Not only is Yahweh the God who brought Israel out of bondage, the source of their salvation, but Yahweh is the source of all life, of all being, of all things.
2. Make no Idols to serve: If you are serving them, you are forgetting me and therefore you, be careful about our idols. In our own Power-load equation we must ask what idols need be cleared out because they are sabotaging our margin. Wealth, success, alcohol, drugs, etc. . . .
3. I am God- do not speak lightly of me. In ancient times it was commonplace to appeal to deities for the support of curses on others or in support of magical causes. Among pagans this included evoking deities to bless weaponry. This is not consistent with the code of Yahweh’s character and disruptive to the Power-Load equation.
4. Keep the Sabbath; this is the day Yahweh tells us that delight is to be found. Yahweh creates in six, and delights in it all. We are invited to delight in it all as well and in one another. How can we possibly create margin if our Power-load equation is saturated to the point where we can not take delight.

Such are the best ways to Love God, now here are the best ways to Love each other.

5. Honor your Father and your Mother. In an ancient order of things this is not just a mandate to honor your own mother and father but honoring the place of parenting in tribal life
6. Do not Murder seems self-explanatory, though I admit we seem to struggle a bit with this.
7. Do not break your marriage but more value it, honor it, and give power to it by intention, time, and appreciation.
8. Do not steal. Having respect for others property including slaves not only creates an ethic of common respect, but in this ancient time having been just freed from slavery, it is a direct commandment to stay away from the common practice of owning slaves. Having been freed slaves; do not be even tempted to steal one’s freedom. An advocate for freedom is an advocate for a healthy Power-load equation.
9. Do not bear false witness. More than just being truthful, but being respectful of another’s dignity is life giving to all.
10. Do not even want what others have. This of course implies we are grateful and satisfied with what we have. Being grateful for what we have at the exclusion of wanting what others have speaks to an inner place of gratitude. This inner place of gratitude speaks volumes to the power side of our equation.

We began our exploration of Margin now through a lens of contract or covenant. A life-giving code that speaks to a holy way of living that bears power as we encounter our load.

Jesus made this contract even simpler: as he quoted Summary of the Law- Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself.

Sigmund Freud described the contraction of life in birth with the term Point of No return: That is the point in which in delivery contractions force that which is about to be born into the birth canal- it’s the in between place then where a decision must be made, out or in! Contractions give birth to something new yet even I the midst of the contraction we may need to push a bit as we seek to embrace new life.
Perhaps your contract this Lent is to explore your power-load equation, discovering how best to Love your God, love your neighbor and love yourself. Push.

The Second Sunday of Lent

2009-03-08T16:03:00.005-04:00

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 + Romans 4:13-25 + Mark 8: 31-38

We have just heard about the faith of Abraham and the faith of Peter. What’s the state of your faith these days? Are you like Abraham in that you possess a rock-solid faith in El Shadai, the God of Abraham or in Jesus the Christ where you are able to build your life, able to bet your life, and that of your family, on the promise of God as did Abraham? I must confess – it is Lent – that “I am no Abraham”.

From time to time I have questions. Every now or then a niggling doubt creeps in. Upon mature reflection as I look back over my shoulder at an incident or an event or a period of my life, I often find that I have hedged my bets. I have made sure there was a back-up, a plan B or C or D. I have gone in a different direction. I have remained in my comfort zone. All because the house of faith that I have built has not been built on solid rock, but rather on sinking sand.

We hear Jesus say in the seventh chapter of Matthew:
24“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. 26And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”

There’s an old hymn by Edward Mote written in 1834 that goes:

My hope is built on nothing less 
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
 I dare not trust the sweetest frame, 
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.
Refrain: On Christ the solid Rock I stand, 
All other ground is sinking sand; 
All other ground is sinking sand.

Well there you have it. Here I stand, and every now and then the ground feels like it is shifting, sinking, moving under my feet and I wonder if my faith will be enough.

I do not have the faith of Peter either, which is also a rock-solid faith, although at times Peter’s faith is misguided, misinformed, misunderstood, misplaced, or just plain has missed the point. The gospel this day follows immediately upon Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, long awaited by the people of God. Jesus offers it as a corrective to Peter and a call to those who would follow in his way.

The messiah Peter and Israel expect is not the messiah who comes in Jesus of Nazareth. No white horse, no armed confrontation of the oppressive Roman occupiers. He brings no political or military victory, but rather he comes as a servant of God, a son of humankind, who is willing to pay the cost of being faithful to life as God intends it to be. He is even willing to go to the Cross.

The Cross. Now, many of us have experience of the cross as a focus of prayer, as a symbol of God’s salvation. Many have it as an item of adornment fashioned prettily or beautifully in gold or silver, perhaps set with sparkling or colorful stones of varying cost, a cross that we admire as it hangs about our neck or sits upon a shelf or table.

But Jesus knows the cross as “an ingenious Roman invention, a diabolically simple, cost-effective and highly visible public deterrent to those who would oppose the might of Rome; the cause of excruciating torture, public humiliation, and eventual death.” That’s what Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel.

No metaphorical reference here. Something a little beyond our selfish whining about the crosses we have to bear in this life. Jesus is saying that we may be asked to “put our all on the altar” as the old hymn goes. Sometime between birth and death it will come to each one of us, perhaps more than once, when our faith will be called upon.

There is a fine film in the video stores about a man named Oscar Romero. The title is ROMERO. He was a prince of the church. Had risen to the height of his profession. He wore royal robes, bejeweled gold crosses. He ate the finest of foods prepared and served by servants. He was the Archbishop of El Salvador. And then the people revolted against the hard-line right wing oppressive regime that led the government, and people were being indiscriminately arrested tortured, disappeared, killed. Christians were being persecuted, and Romero became the leader God had called him to be. Such a threat to the right wing paramilitary groups and to the government that one day they killed him in the cathedral. Shot him to death on the steps.

The producer was asked why he made the film. He answered, “Because I think it's the best example I know today of God's becoming involved in history, becoming involved in a human being to enrich other human beings...Here we have a person who was a mouse - you know, traditional, scared, cautious, neurotic, rigid. But this mouse in three years becomes a tiger - defending human rights, speaking for the poor, defending the poor. He becomes a prophet!” He had what St. Theresa called a holy daring.

But where did it come from? How did he find it? Such a faith?

In his letter to his fellow primates across the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote on faith at the beginning of Lent, “Our hearts are still on the way to full conversion, and so the work of the Cross, finished in itself once and for all, is still working itself through the life of every Christian. Lent is our best opportunity to let God move more deeply and permanently into the areas of our lives that still resist his grace.”

That gives me such comfort. It is all right to be a work in progress. My little mustard seed of faith will grow and blossom into its fullness when the time is right. It will be enough.

Another bishop by the name of Dehqani-Tafti faced martyrdom in 1979. He was the Anglican Bishop of Iran when the Islamic revolution took over the country. He was spared, but his son was not. Listen to his words....“They are coming this morning. For about an hour now I have been in this chapel, having fellowship with God. I feel his presence within me, about me and in this particular problem and all the present problems in our country and in the world. Everything is in his hand and he is the Just Governor and the Almighty God. Therefore this is my prayer.

“O God, I thank you for the small seed of faith which you have planted in me. According to when it is necessary make that grow in strength, give me trust and serenity of heart so that I may be a worthy representative for you. Grant me courage, honesty and fearlessness that I may not show any weakness, except the weakness of the Cross, that is, loving to the end in the face of hatred and misunderstanding and perseverance to bear suffering. O God, help me to bear it…Let your will be done.”

I have come to believe that if we can give an amen to such a prayer, then we have a faith that will be sufficient for the day, whatever the day, whenever the day should come. It will be enough.

I mentioned that the ancient name for God used by Abraham, El Shadai, means God of Enough.

Can you trust in that? Can you give it a faithful and fervent Amen? If you can, it will be enough.

2009-03-02T17:33:00.001-05:00

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Sermon: Sunday March 1, 2009
I Lent Mark 1:9-15
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

“God is not something people choose for themselves. (Being chosen by God) does not grant access to all the answers but means contending with hard questions, thankless tasks, and usually a harrowing journey.”

These words were written by an individual to set a context of their experience of being drawn into a community of faith and coming to a decision for the first time in her life to “join” or become part of a church. Kathleen Norris, author of “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace”, describes her journey that propelled her to overcome her fears of being part of a church, to be patient with the boundaries that churches sometimes unknowingly present to un-churched people, and to come to a point of making a decision to become part of a community of faith. Kathleen Norris describes the experience as not so much having made a choice, but of coming to an understanding that God has chosen her, AND everyone else she was about to join in this new journey in her life.
She writes, “All Christians are considered to have a call to what is commonly termed, ‘the priesthood of all believers’; all are expected to use their lives as to reveal the grace of the Holy Spirit working through them. It’s a tall order, to literally be a sacrament, and it helps to remember Jesus statement, “You did not choose me, I chose you”.
She continues,
St. Bonaventure wrote, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”

By now you may have figured that I would like to focus this sermon today on the idea of choice. Surely by now you are in full awareness that we have embarked on our journey into Lent. You know this because at the very least, there is a prediction of 3-6 inches of snow, the normal weather prediction at the beginning of every lent. You also can see of course that the liturgical colors have changed to purple. If you had the opportunity you bore on your head the ash that reminds you of God’s calling you into being out of the very dust of the earth and your inextricable connection to one another and to the God who made you. We began this morning in penitence, asking God’s forgiveness through corporate confession. You have been invited to a season of self-examination and prayer. You may also be well on your way to establishing and living into your Lenten discipline. This discipline conversation may involve these questions: “What shall I give up? Or what shall I take on? This endeavor of course comes with the memory that such efforts find their meaning in the purpose of becoming more intentional about removing the obstacles or providing a path toward growing closer to God and neighbor.
I said in the beginning this sermon would focus on choices. I am aware that often our Lenten disciplines lead to an exploration of choices. If you are a list maker often such exploration leads to a list far more robust on the side of bad choices rather than good ones. Today, this first Sunday of Lent, with deference to our inclination to make disciplines about delving morosely into the bad choices we have made, I instead want at least for us to consider a bit not so much the choices we have made, but rather what it means to be chosen.
St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes choices in one way, Christ another.” We live in a world and in a culture that values deeply choice. In fact, having the opportunity to make choices is a core value of who we are as a free people. I suggest however that the spirit of having choices has also grown into all aspects of our lives from consumerism to moral decision making. We have so many choices about us that I suggest we are sometimes numbed by the choices that are about us. I remember escorting a young African man who had just arrived in Austin Texas to begin study to the grocery store. I will never forget watching the incomprehension on his face as he considered the possibility of so much food in one place, and then the deeper mystery when he realized there were choices of the same kind of food. He was frozen in his place, numb, and unable to move forward to make any decisions about food.
In our Lenten journey you may be pondering the choices you have made, and sometimes making a list of things we “ought to be doing” or “ought to have done”. I suggest sometimes an exploration of such a list may lead to a level of “frozen incomprehension” as it did my African friend on his first visit to a grocery store. So I offer another way to look at this Lenten journey and the issue of choice. I suggest to you as you take this journey to remember as you consider those things that are in the way of a holy and faithful life that you remember not so much of your choosing and choices, but that God has already chosen you!
The account of Jesus’ Baptism in the Gospel of Mark depicts the moment of Jesus Baptism. A voice descends from heaven, “This is my beloved Son with you I am well pleased”, In other words, Jesus, I have chosen you! Jesus is blessed with an understanding of his being chosen and immediately propelled into the wilderness where he will face with temptation what it means to be chosen by God. He will emerge from that 40 days and 40 nights knowing the course ahead will have him contend with difficult questions, be full of thankless tasks, and often be harrowing. He will go however, and as Mark would have it, be about proclaiming the immediacy of the Kingdom of God.
I have a fantasy each time I preside at or participate in a baptism. In that fantasy I can see the face of the individual emerging from the waters of baptism and I can hear a voice crying from heaven Bill, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Mary, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! Jane, you are my beloved, with you I am well pleased! In other words, whoever you are, child of God, I have chosen you! Now into the world with you, knowing I never said it would be an easy ride to be chosen, so face the demons in your life, and know that wild beasts will be your companion in this world, But go broken as you may be full of limitation and often not getting it right, but go knowing I have chosen you!
Kathleen Norris, quoting St. Bonaventure reminds us, “The world makes its choices in one way, Christ in another, choosing to employ our weaknesses rather than our strengths and our failures far more than our successes.”
Some on this Lenten journey may ask of you; Have you chosen Jesus today? Some may ask what choices you have made instead of choosing Jesus? My grandfather was a lifelong Roman Catholic but not a churchgoer. Every Christmas Eve he celebrated Mass with the Pope on television and by his bed stand after his death sat a well worn crucifix that I prize to this very day. I can remember profoundly just a few days after my grandfather’s death being approached by a well meaning member of my community of faith knowing of my grandfather’s lack of church attendance, she stated, “I certainly hope your grandfather chose Jesus.” Working through the insensitivity of what I firmly believe was a statement not designed to offend, I knew inside of me what the response was to that statement. I do not know how my Grandfather chose Jesus, but one thing for sure I knew, I knew Jesus chose him!
I submit to you that our Lenten journey be an opportunity not so much to do an accounting of our disappointments and poor choices as a vehicle for understanding the depth of our faith, but rather to ponder the depth of what it means to be chosen by God. God chooses us with our limitations, our transgressions, our dirty little secrets, our imperfections and our brokenness. What God does with such weakness and vulnerability, well, is the whole point of the story isn’t it! It’s called Grace!
This Lent let us lay vulnerable before the God who has chosen us. Let us lay before God what he already knows: That we are too quick to judge and condemn rather than to forgive. That we are too quick to reject those who differ from us in opinion, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and even beliefs in God. That we give in to easily to apathy or selfishness when it comes to giving of ourselves for the healing of the world. That we too often hoard our resources, our money, our food, even our thoughts and feelings. That we too often allow our Eyore complex to have the day rather than go give Charlie Brown a say.
Lay all of this weakness before God, it will be familiar to him. He knows you already because he has chosen you! Because he has chosen you there is no time to let it weigh you down, instead, watch what happens as the God of our collect for the day does what God does, taking the weaknesses of each of us, and finding the might to save us! Amen.

Ash Wednesday

2009-02-25T11:32:00.003-05:00

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Some months ago I referenced a Church sign in a sermon that read, “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” Today we begin our Lenten journey. This ritual season of 40 days and 40 nights is often characterized by self-examination, prayer, repentance, and discipline. I submit to you that our Lenten journey in essence is an exploration of what it means to be truly ourselves. I do not suggest this exploration as an exercise of narcissism as our culture might encourage, but rather to explore your lives through a lens of belief that we are created by a God whose power is love. So powerful is this love that it dares to take the very dust of the ground and call us into being so that we might be delighted in, find delight, create, and experience the depth of love, in essence, come to know ourselves as the once who created us knows us, discover who we are!

The exploration of who we truly are must lead us into the knowledge and truth that this gift of life in love is not just for us as individuals but belongs to everyone. All of us are created out of love and dust. We are inextricably bound together and made to be in relationship with the one who loved us into being and with one another. These relationships call us to live with authenticity, faithfulness, and integrity!

Our experience has taught us, however, that there are times and moments when we are not aligned with life in such a way. Just as remembering that we are dust reminds us of God’s creative moment and our interconnection with our brothers and sisters of dust, we also are reminded that on our own our struggle to live that life is often colored with limitation. “And to Dust you shall return.” Our lives are finite, the dust of which we are made does sometimes grow tired and weary, and sometimes it is filled with dis-ease. With an eye only to the dust and not on the creative love that called it into being, we sometimes forget our interconnection and interdependence. We sometimes are fooled into placing our value in a narcissistic adventure of who we are that leads us to selfishness, hatred, disregard and offense. We know this about the dust, we have experienced it, and we are it. With an eye leaning back toward the love that calls the dust into being we know deep in our hearts that we cannot hate, disregard, offend, do harm to another being of the ash without in essence hating, disregarding, offending, and doing harm to ourselves. We know this in our minds and in our hearts, and we know too often it is a script we find ourselves participating in; it is a script of sin.

Today, should you choose, you will wear the mark of dust on your forehead and you will be reminded of the depth of opportunity and challenge that comes with our call into being. We are given the opportunity to embrace the depth of what it is to live a life that aligns itself with the intentions of what is was created for. The journey to come into the fullness of who we truly are is the opportunity to discover through experience the depth of what it is to love. This exploration will place before the God who created us and our brothers and sisters created of the very same love and dust our failures, disappointments, and disillusionments. Discovering and naming the limitations that impede our faithfulness and integrity to our relationships, we rend our hearts wide open. We invite the creative love to fill the gap and to move us to make right what needs to be made right, and restore us to union with God and our neighbors. In essence, coming into our own, discovering who we are. Blessed journey.

Only Jesus

2009-02-24T11:29:00.003-05:00

February 22,2009
Scripture Lesson: Mark 9:2-9
Text: Matthew 9:8

When Jesus led three friends to a place on “on a high mountain,” “he was transfigured before them” until they heard a voice instructing them to “Listen” to their teacher. “Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.” It can sound like a big let-down: after a moment of vision, after a great spiritual experience, there is only Jesus, the traveling preacher, teacher, healer from Nazareth. After all is said and done, for us also, there is only Jesus.

Dean Pompa asked me to talk about how world and local mission work has impacted me. Mission: responding to a call, to an invitation to move beyond your usual place, comfort zone, to serve and witness to Christ. Missions is the outcome of the Transfiguration story, the real importance of which is not so much on what happened to, or in Jesus, but in the response to it. One way is illustrated in the first response of those disciples: because “they were terrified,” they wanted to memorialize it; build a worship center; protect what they had built up; and so on. The second way is illustrated in Julia Ward Howe’s famous hymn: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me?” Are you allowing that glory to transfigure you, and your life, and this church, and the corporate life of this church? Are you allowing it to free you from your fears? Missions, involvement in and commitment to missions, is the key. Because it is through mission that you will either find that transfiguration experience, or that you can appropriately respond to it.

Let me tell you a mission story. In the mid 90’s I organized a group of people from several churches in the suburbs just north of Chicago for a mission trip to Haiti both to be part of international security for a national election at a time when elections there were marked by violence and murder, and to work at a children’s hospital. Haiti is one of the poorest places in the world. You can see that as soon as you fly over it: the country has been denuded of trees for fuel, so the topsoil has all washed into the ocean inlets where it becomes a mucky mix with sewage and garbage. Other than the fortified complexes where the rich and powerful hide, there is almost no sanitation, no utilities, no medical care. During the day you see children searching through the huge piles of garbage and human waste in the main intersections that gets doused with gasoline and burned at night.

At the church I where I was the pastor, [there] was a man named Dan: an active churchman, but a guy who never related to the missions, not even to our men’s group service at a soup kitchen in Chicago. Somehow the Lord put it upon my heart to invite him to Haiti. One day when I was getting ready to go to the hardware store to get some supplies, Dan showed up at my office, and I asked him to go along. It is kind of a guy thing, hardware stores. There surrounded by the tools, I asked him to join us on the mission to Haiti, and he astonished me by saying yes. He just needed to hear a call, personally, in the right context at the right time. Later I was astonished by the transformation that occurred in Dan as during that mission experience. It might have happened the time that we went up to a small mountain village. I hiked with others, but Dan isn’t the hiking sort, and I have a picture of this overweight American on a small donkey traveling up a mountain path surrounded by smiling children. It might have happened the night before the election when I convinced him to ignore the Marines warnings and walk around Pour-au-Prince [sic], during which we saw hundreds of children sitting around the only gas station is the area doing homework because there are no lights in homes. Maybe it was when we delivered our suitcases full of medications to the joyful nun who runs the most primitive clinic I have ever seen in the poorest slum. Maybe it happened when we were on the roof of the children’s hospital pounding nails. I just know that the experience transformed him. And in almost every Christmas letter he mentions his most recent mission trip to Haiti.

For others mission is the way to respond to having glimpsed the glory. At New Bethany Ministries missionaries from this congregation and a hundred others do birthday parties for our resident homeless children, help homeless moms with school work or driving lessons, become pen pals with our mentally disabled residents, do filing in our financial case management program for the mentally disabled, help me raise the money to pay for our good work, or cook and serve meals to the hungry. For example, three days a month mission teams from this church cook and serve meals, which you could occasionally join for a hands-on mission experience. And thousands of people like you participate by sacrificially donating so support our local mission work. Occasionally I bring a television crew into New Bethany for action shots and interviews for my weekly television show. Recently, I walked up with the camera man and asked the missionaries from St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church why they seemed so happy. One woman looked right into the camera and said, “we are always happy when we are here.” Another looked up from the salad preparation counter and said, “it’s because when we are here we are doing exactly what Jesus wants us to do.”

Don’t you want to be happy? Then allow the frequency and degree of intensity of times when you are doing exactly what Jesus wants you to do to increase. Those three disciples not only had a vision, they also heard a voice explaining the meaning: “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him!” That is when “they looked around, [and] … saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.”

I am quite aware of the fact that many criticize people of a liberal theological bent of being more focused on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth which so center on being a good neighbor, on serving and giving for others, than on the significance of salvation through Christ Jesus Our Lord. This gospel lesson, however, clearly reveals that you can’t have one without the other: Christ who saves us, is Jesus to whom we are to listen, and whose way of being in the world we are to follow.

Many of you have had a mountain top moment in which you glimpsed the dazzling beauty of the transfigured Christ, an experience that convicted you of the truth of the doctrine of the Incarnation: perhaps during a sermon, or a sacramental occasion, or while pray-fully pondering scripture. If not, participating in missions can be your path toward that experience. But as a mountain hiker, who always feels compelled to get to the top of the highest mountain within reach, I can tell you that you cannot stay long at the peak: you have to come back down to where the air is thicker, the elements less serve, water is available, and … where the poor and those who serve them can be found. But that is ok with me, because every day down here in the valley there is only Jesus.

Listen to him, and through the eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in the hungry, the homeless, the poor, not because of their virtue, or behavior, but because that is what he taught. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith, you will see only Jesus in happy people who sell some of what they have to give to the poor, even during frightening economic times. Listen to him, and through eyes of faith you will see only Jesus in those good Samaritans who happily work together to serve needy and poor neighbors. And, if as a congregation you listen to him, and make, above and beyond ordinary denominational requirements, missions and the participation of every member in missions through some appropriate way, your top priority, this church, like others that make that commitment will thrive in faith, in hope, in joy, in active participation, and others will see in your life together, only Jesus.

So, Brother Tony: the impact of missions in the lives of individuals like me and congregations like Nativity who respond to the call: a fuller, more meaningful, more holy, happier life of hope and faith. Plus the possibility of singing: “Mine eyes have seen . . . a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me!”

Missions is the route toward transfiguration. Missions is the way to respond to transfiguration, because, in the end, there is only Jesus. Listen to him.

2009-02-17T09:37:00.005-05:00

Rev. Demery Bader-Saye
Sermon ~ February 15th, 2009
Cathedral Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem
Mark 1:40-45

The Lonely Leper

I was the second tallest girl in my sixth grade class. Annie was the first. She towered over all of the girls and all but one of the boys. As you may imagine, that grade being what it is, and kids being who they are at that age, she was sometimes the target of teasing words. She was somewhat of a leper, an untouchable, a misfit. But then most kids are at some moment in their lifetime ~ too short, too tall, too skinny, too fat ~ I was teased for my buck teeth and bony hips... “hippy,” I was branded that year. Which is why Annie and I got along OK. That, and we had a wonderful teacher, Mrs. Osborne ~ a big, tall, beautiful black woman with big hips and big lips... “all the better to kiss you with,” she responded when Emily Hubbel asked her about them one day. Mrs. Osborne would circulate about the room with smiles and squeezes and little hugs and winks for all of the outcasts in the sixth grade. She was a healing hand when we needed it, which guided us through a rocky time. She never talked about it to us, but I just know she was a Christian. She had that Church Potluck veteran look to her ~ that gospel-singing, amen-saying kind of spirit. And she just radiated with the love of Christ.

It was the healing hand of Christ which reached out and touched the leper that day in Galilee. An outcast, he came to Jesus, begging, and said, “If you choose, you can make me clean,” for it was thought that people with the contagious disease were not clean. And Jesus was moved, and tenderly, he first reached out and touched the man. And then, Jesus healed him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” And, unable to contain his elation, his joy, the man showed himself to the temple priests as Jesus had commanded him, and went about the countryside telling everyone about the loving touch and healing hand of Jesus of Nazareth.

You see, the leper was healed in two ways that day ~ emotionally and physically. Because he was a leper we can be sure that no one had touched him for as long as he had the disease. Can you imagine? Not being touched, not even by accident ~ for surely people would go far out of their way to avoid even coming near a person with leprosy, which is defined as a “contagious disease marked by ulcers on the skin and bone and can lead to paralysis, gangrene and deformation.” The man had probably not been touched for years. And who knows what he looked like, or smelled like. And yet there he stood, desperate and bold, before a man he believed might bring healing to his lonely life. And the man, Jesus, reached out and touched the leper ~ before healing him ~ a touch without condition, a touch without hesitation, a touch without judgment. A touch that said, sick or not sick, you are worthy of love and acceptance.... and it is yours in the name my Father, God, the creator. Before Jesus healed the leper’s sores, Jesus touched him, and then, only then, did Jesus command his illness to be gone. The healing hand of Christ.
When in your life have you felt untouchable, unloveable, undesirable? .....

Have you ever been the outcast? ..... If, when you think about it you feel that loneliness again, or pain, or isolation, or sorrow, I invite you to imagine yourself coming before Jesus, asking to be made well and whole again, to feel his warm gaze upon you.... See the gentle smile on his lips, feel the warmth of his hand. Spend a moment in the circle of his grace... Know that sick or not sick, clean or not clean, all together or falling apart, you are worthy of emotional healing – of his love and acceptance right now today. And know that his intention, his choice, is to heal you completely ~ and if it cannot be today, then one day.... and forever.

Until that day, when every leper is healed, every blind eye given sight, every lame limb enlivened, the healing hand of Christ is at work in the world to touch the untouchables, give love to the unloveable, to recover the outcast as one who belongs. How, how can it be that his hand at work when he sits in heaven at the right hand of God and so many are lost and suffering, alone and in need of acceptance and kindness ~ where is the healing hand of Christ?
Take a moment, won’t you, and lower your eyes a bit and look at your hands... Be they older or younger, or somewhere in between, be they gently spotted with age and bent with a touch of arthritis, soft and firm, or weather beaten and dry ~ your hands, each of our hands, have the power to heal. We remember today that we, the church, are the body of Christ ~ imperfect but utterly loved and undoubtedly called to bring hope and healing to this broken world.

Who are the lepers in your own life? Who comes to you desperate and bold in your week, or hovers on the fringes of your life, quiet and afraid, in need of acceptance and kindness?
And, thinking of the broader community around us, which of society’s lepers will we (or could we if we chose to) come in contact with during the week? ~ the homeless? the poor? those with HIV or AIDS? prisoners? people with different skin color? people with different ways of thinking? people who are emotionally or mentally ill?

If we choose, others may experience the healing hand of Christ in our warm touch, in our kind smile or gracious words. Clean or unclean, sick or well, they deserve his love ~ and if his love is good enough for them, without a doubt ours is, too.

2009-02-10T12:52:00.002-05:00

The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
Sermon
V Epiphany-I Mark 29-39
February 8, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

“Wait a minute, it can’t be over, Where is the Redemption!” These are the words that were lifted up behind me and into my ears from a dark movie theatre at the conclusion of a recent film Felicia and I viewed. A complex drama of struggle; personal struggle, power struggle, struggle with integrity, compassion, sexuality, concludes in such a way that leaves the audience, well disturbed, wandering how it all works out, what the truth of the matter is. Unsettling at best, the words waft from a dark theatre amply for sure vocalizing my own unspoken and unresolved sentiment: “Wait a minute, it can’t be over, where’s the Redemption?”

I believe that we, the people of God, created in God’s image, have a story that lives in us that we take to every moment of our lives! When the story in us is challenged we cry out! I believe that message living in us is a story of redemption! A story where the things in our personal lives, the things in our common life, the things in our country, our world, and yes even in the cosmos are whole, free, in union.
Our Gospel story today invites us into this story of the acting upon a message of wholeness, freedom, and union. We learn from the story that there is a miracle, a healing, and that this action is part of the deliverance of a message. What is the miracle? Simon’s mother-in law is ill, in bed with fever. Jesus goes to her at once and lifts her up, the fever leaves her. She is healed. Now, what is the miracle? A colleague at clergy bible study suggested the miracle was that Simon wanted his mother in law healed at all, (not so nice). But, she is healed, restored, and set back into motion in her life of service. The story goes on to tell us then, that all who were sick or possessed with demons gathered around the door of that house, and Jesus cured many and cast our demons of many.
Mark’s telling the story, from chapter one announces to us that in the person of Jesus, our deepest yearnings are met with God’s deepest desire! The miracle is for the first century experience, that those things which held power over people in such a way that distorted and disrupted their participation in wholeness, freedom, and in life, are removed! Simon’s mother in law is healed, and is restored, she is set right, brought back into the fullness of her life, as are those who come to Jesus, crowded at the doorway.
If we now have answered the question, whats the miracle, the more important question to be explored is what the story reveals to us in the next paragraph, Jesus got up, went off to pray (good modeling by the way), they hunted for him (also known as they disturbed his prayertime), and he responded, now we must go on to proclaim the message to the next town! So, we move from miracle to message! Whats the message!
The message I submit to you is found somewhere in the articulation of the young woman’s cry at the end of a challenging life story in that movie theatre! You remember, Where’s the redemption! The message as it were is in the Kingdom principles revealed in the actions of Jesus of Nazareth! It is that story the begs to be lived in each of us! It is redemption-Salvation itself!
Now these are words, words we throw about you and me. They are churchy words, theological words. I submit to you that these words have power and meaning for you and for me. The deepest meaning of these words are already planted in a story that begs to be lived in us through God’s grace! We want the order of things set right don’t we! We want for those things that block, inhibit, imperil, distort the fullness of who God created us to be, to be removed, set right, redeemed is the theological word. We want to be set free from those things that hold us in bondage from knowing the fullness of our potential as creatures of God. We want to be set free form our addictions, our worries and anxieties, our greed. We literally want these obstacles removed so that we might taste freedom- Salvation is the theological word.
There is a story that is implanted in each of us. The story is a story of redemption and salvation. It’s the kind of story that begs to be lived and told, and when it is not, when it is not told, lived, experienced our very soul cried out for it. The messiness of life, of our world, yes even of our cosmos! When out of kilter, we know deep inside ourselves that something is out of order! It is then that our soul sends the cry for redemption and a message if you will meets us where we are-God’s Kingdom desire is that things be set right, set free!

2009-02-01T14:56:00.000-05:00

IV Epiphany
February 1, 2009
The Ven. Richard I Cluett

Deuteronomy 18:15-20 + Mark 1:21-28

This morning I want to use a few of my words to talk about the Word of God and I know that is a daunting task I have set for myself, but I am going to step out on the Word of God.

“Words, words, words, I am so sick of words…” were the words of Eliza Doolittle, in the musi-cal, My Fair Lady, and those words are basically what the people of God were saying to God about “the Word of God” in the reading from Deuteronomy. “No more. God’s Word is too pow-erful, too demanding, too real, too personal, to close, too much what God wants and not enough what we want, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”

Which is, really, an understandable human response.

God’s word is powerful. God’s word can be overwhelming. God’s word sometimes is too per-sonal. God’s word sometimes is too demanding, and too relentless, too stark, too true. It gets in your head, it gets in your gut, and it gets eventually into your heart. It can be too much. It can be too hard, sometimes, to hear the word of God and then to bear the Word of God, too live with it. That was the experience of God’s people told in the Deuteronomy.

And we know what they knew. You cannot run from, you cannot hide from, you cannot turn off the Word of God. It just keeps on coming. Or do you disagree?

Do you think perhaps the word of God takes a holiday? Leaves the scene from time to time? Or takes a hike when God is fed up with us? No. We have learned that God is faithful. Won’t leave. Won’t give up. Called the “Hound of Heaven,” God is.

God’s word is eternal. It’s there – always there. We may not hear it, but it is there. If the word is rare in these days or on any days, it is because we have blocked it out, sort of like the Voice of America radio station is blocked out of Cuba. But like the VOA, it is possible to shut it out, but you can not shut it off.

So what the people of Israel tried to do was to tone it down. They wanted an intermediary who would stand for them in God’s presence and receive the Word of God, and then who would re-cast it, reframe it, rephrase it, humanize it, tenderize it, downsize it so that it becomes palatable to God’s people in a more comfortable form.

And so God called Moses to be the intermediary, and he became the greatest of all the prophets of Israel. But what people discovered was that the Word of God delivered by Moses was still the Word of God. It still had power – power to create, power to move nature and kings and armies and God’s people; power to reveal God’s will, power to reveal God’s reign in the midst of life.

When Moses spoke as Moses you could tell it was Moses. Like when I speak as Rick, you know it’s only Rick. When Moses spoke God’s Word you could tell it was God’s Word. Theologian Karl Barth said, “There is a yawning gulf with no fellowship or comparison possible between God’s Word and all other words. God’s word works wonders.”

Eventually “the word was made flesh and dealt among us, full of grace and truth.” We learned new things about God, experienced the power of God’s Word in new ways: healing ways, re-demptive ways, life-creating and life-changing ways.

The Word has the power to confront and overcome evil and to restore humankind into a relation-ship with God where each of us can hear the Word of God as Jesus heard it, himself. “You are my child, my beloved.”

Because of Jesus we know that God has said to each of us and continually says to each of us, “You are my child, my beloved.”

And those words have the power to move us deeper in God’s kingdom, deeper in God’s world, deeper into meaningful relationships with those around us and with those who live far, far away from us. Power to move us out from our self-centeredness, self-conceit, self-delusion, and self-gratification.

Some of you know of the marvelous poet Maya Angelou who wrote a memoir titled Wouldn’t Take Nothin’ for My Journey Now.

“One of my earliest memories of Mamma, of my grandmother, is a glimpse of a tall cinnamon colored woman with a deep, soft voice, … each time Mamma drew herself up to her full six feet, clasped her hands behind her back, looked up into a distant sky, and said, ‘I will step out on the word of God.’

“The depression, which was difficult for every one, especially so for a single black woman in the South tending her crippled son and two grandchildren, caused her to make the statement of faith often.

“She would look up as if she could will herself into the heavens, and tell her family in particular and the world in general, ‘I will step out on the word of God. I will step out on the word of God.’ … I grew up knowing that the word of God had power.”

“(But) In my twenties … God didn't seem to be around the neighborhoods I frequented.

“One day a teacher, Frederick Wilkerson, asked me to read to him. I was twenty-four, very eru-dite, very worldly. He asked that I read from Lessons in Truth, a section which ended with these words: ‘God loves me’ I read the piece and closed the book, and the teacher said, ‘Read it again.’ I pointedly opened the book, and I sarcastically read, "God loves me." He said, ‘Again.’

“After about the seventh repetition I began to sense that there might be truth in the statement, that there was a possibility that God really did love me. Me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew that if God loved me, then I could do wonderful things, I could try great things, learn anything, achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person with God, constitutes the majority?

That knowledge humbles me, melts my bones, closes my ears, and makes my teeth rock loosely in their gums. And it also liberates me…”

The power and possibility of the Word of God. Don’t deny it. Don’t close yourself off from it. Seek it, eagerly. Hear it. Crave it. Wait for it. Don’t let it pass you by.

God would speak a Word to each us – maybe it will come in the night hours, or in the reading of scripture, or in the bread broken and the cup shared, or in the voice of another, or in the face of a stranger, or perhaps in the silent spaces when we make ourselves ready to hear the Word that is always there.

Listen for it and “step out on the Word of God”.

2009-01-26T10:34:00.001-05:00

1.25.09 - 3 Epiphany, Cathedral, Bethlehem Year B The Rev. Canon Jane Teter

In the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Give us grace, O lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, … (Collect for the day).

When I was a child, one of the more important pieces of family equipment was an old iron bell. My mother used this bell to call us home for dinner and other family activities. Its gong would sound throughout the neighborhood, and my brother and I would abandon games of hide-and-see, cowboys and Indians, and turn our skates and bicycles around and head home.
Because we knew the consequences of not immediately heeding its summons, we quickly responded to the bell. Even the neighbors knew what it meant. Our passage home was often accompanied by a neighbor calling out, “your Mother is calling.”
The calls in today’s Gospel demand a similar kind of obedience, even if they are profoundly different from my mother’s dinner bell. Jesus issues two calls, one universal and one particular. Though their scope is different, both insist on an immediate response.
The first call defines Jesus’ message in three simple phrases, “This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand! Reform your lives and believe in the good news!” Isn’t that the heart of the Christian vocation? - “this is the time of fulfillment, the reign of God is at hand, reform your lives and believe the good news.” To know that here and now God is completing the work of redemption in our lives? To hear in that good news the invitation to become more than we ever thought imaginable?
Only from the center of that first calling can we begin to understand the second, not as something that was given to the disciples there and then, but to us at this moment. For Jesus takes the universal call of his preaching and he calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, you and me, to follow him.
But notice how he does it – it is not simply a matter of call; but to call from; to call to. Unlike my mother’s bell, the call of Jesus doesn’t demand that we abandon what we are doing but that we transform it. Simon and Andrew will no longer be simple fishermen. They will fish for people. James and John will leave their father not to abandon their family but to belong to a larger family: those who hear the word of God and keep it.
It is the same for us today. Each one of us is called to use our particular talents and limitations to further the fulfillment of the good news in everything we do.
We are called to model our lives on the example of Christ. Now, we know we can never be perfect, but surely we can try to do our very best.
We need to do what we can do as best we can and not worry about what we cannot do. Perhaps that is visiting a shut-in, volunteering at a soup kitchen or a food bank or a shelter, maybe reading a book to children or the elderly. Some may run errands or do some shopping or help with minor repairs, shovel snow or cut the grass. I know some of you helped in some way when our local churches (including Nativity) cam together to set up emergency shelters for the homeless when it was bitter cold outside. There are many opportunities – use your gifts to make a difference in someone’s life.
When I moved here from Lebanon many years ago, I left behind several residents of nursing homes that I visited regularly. I missed those visits and I began to send notes and cards to them on any and every holiday. I did that for several years and then began to wonder if I was doing this for myself. Then one day I met an old friend for lunch and she told me she had been to visit May and May had showed her a huge pile of cards she had received from me over the years. My friend told me she looked through them all the time.
So, you see, little things do mean a lot.
Today’s gospel tells us to “follow me and I will make you fish for people.” A retired priest who is a good friend is an avid fisherman. He says, “the lesson is about the calling of Simon and Andrew to be evangelists.
The point is that God through Jesus asked them to be followers of him, and that he would make – not force – but help them become “fishers of men.” He built on what they already knew and utilized what they were to help become evangelists, heralds, role models, mentors.
I think of the people who have influenced me, he continues: college professor, priest, mother, garbage man, sick and lonely, many parishioners and many friends. In this day and age with the decline of heroes and moral leadership, and the rise of cynicism, we must listen carefully and respond faithfully to the invitation of Jesus.
He continues, “I hope I am not stretching it too much when I say fishing can teach you a lot. There are three requisites about fishing. You have to go where the fish are. You have to offer what the fish want. Your have to present your offering in a way that is attractive and inviting, not scary or threatening. Doesn’t this say something about evangelism? He says that, even more basic, you have to have confidence, you have to have hope, you have to have a sense of expectancy that the fish are there, that you are offering them good stuff, and that you can catch them. Frequently, he says, I have seen evidence of fish. Often I see others catching fish. Sometimes I have caught a fish. Even so, the ratio of cast to fish is very low. There are other benefits to fishing. Perseverance is important. Keep trying. I have gotten to know a wonderful guide on the river. Jerry sometimes comes over to me and suggests I cast to a different location, try a different fly, or with a suggestion to improve my casting.
This friend has some wise learnings:
- be inviting but not scary or threatening
o no “brother are you saved”
o no “you better mend your ways or you will go to hell”
(who am I to make that decision?)
- we need to be caring and compassionate and have lots of patience in all we do. We need a good, positive attitude – remembering to
follow Jesus’ example in reaching out to people.
- we need to meet people where they are, not where we want them to
be. (not “why the heck is he homeless – the point is he is homeless and needs our help).
- Don’t go it alone – be open to support and suggestions from others.
Maybe my way isn’t the best way – my fisherman friend was open
to suggestions that made him a better fisherman.
And so, this Jesus, this guide, comes to Simon and Andrew, James and John, and to each of us, and says “come here with me, watch me, try this…I will make you fish for people.”
“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation…”
Amen.

2009-01-19T10:07:00.001-05:00

Sunday January 18, 2009
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
II Epiphany
I Samuel 3:1-10

A boy, rabbinic scholars tell us probably 12-15 years old, living thousands and thousands of years ago, is slumbering warmly in his bed, protected from the elements of the outside when he is rudely interrupted by a voice calling him! Samuel, Samuel! Thinking wrongly the voice is but a rude interruption or even a call for help from his mentor Eli, who he shares the space with, he rises from the warmth of his bed, and travels through the dark house and asks, What do you want! It’s not me calling, go back to bed! Good news! We all love to go back to bed. Three times that voice comes and three times the young boy finds himself confused and yanked out of bed! Finally Eli, the mentor discerns the voice must be coming from God and with simple wisdom and some fear for his own place in the world, Eli says, it is God, Just lay there and listen! Imagine the twelve year old boy and the context of his world. These were ancient times where the people of Israel in their journey with Yahweh have not yet developed into a nation governed, ruled, and protected as other people’s were at the time. Many of their powerful neighbors were established as a monarchy, ruled by a King. Israel at this point in their history are more of a confederacy of sorts, organized as tribes scattered throughout an ancient land, worshipping a unique God. This people would daily be challenged by influences of competing for “prosperous” and generous farm lands. They would compete with a diversity of people’s and nations for the same land, and would be influenced by other customs, ways, and even Gods! How do these tribes stay unified, protected, and how do they make for themselves an “economy”? For Samuel, the young boy, he will be called by God to stand in line as a “JUDGE” and a Prophet”. A Judge as is the name given to those “holy men” called to be leaders of this “confederacy” of tribes, to hold them together, unified in purpose, in devotion to Yahweh, and as competitors to foreign influences and challenges. For Samuel, the young boy, you have to wonder as he contemplates the complex enough question of who he is becoming as a young man, how he might identify himself as a young man in complex world. If he is to Listen to God, what could it all mean for his life? If he is to listen to God and even make his way through the complexity of his context to discern this call, he has to be asking what difference can he make at all should he respond to this call?

I don’t know about you, I don’t know how you listen to God’s voice. I don’t know if God’s voice wakes you from your sleep, or slips into your daily conversations, or comes to you in prayer. I know what wakes me these days is the stark contrast of the cold outside and the blessed warmth of my bed. What wakes me these days is the strange juxtaposition of life that puts me in the warmth why others are on the street in the cold. I know what wakes me is the middle of the night is the thought and challenge of waking my way to the next piece of my daily routine, how and when the juggle of schedule will lead to all that needs to be done get done. I know that at times when I am awakened in the middle of the night I give in to the bad habit of turning on my television and there I see the complexity of the world I live in. I know you see it too: war, economic tenuousness, disease, famine, crime; you know the list. These things of my context I confess I sometimes get a helpless feeling, as I consider what it is that I am to do about any of it.
The complexity of the pace of life and our place in it is a challenging enough task. We consider our place and future in our vocations, employment, our relationships, and in our household. It is plenty complex as rise and face our own identity, strengths and weaknesses in the human condition. It is even more complex when we consider the struggles of our local governments, our nation, and the world.
I suppose what I mean to say is that when we start each day, just trying to figure out who WE ARE, What we will BE, WHO we will be in the everyday, this seems like enough of plenty, BUT when on top of it then we may find ourselves reflecting on a world and even struggling to pray for a world that is war torn in many places, where there is suffering and hunger in so many places, where there is financial and economic tenousness and even ruin in so many places, this sometimes seems overwhelming!
We listen for God’s voice the scriptures reveal to us, yes Lord, but How can we even consider taking our place in this sometimes overwhelming world? Where do we look for that voice? How can we hear that voice? Most importantly, if we do hear that voice, that call, and if we get to a point of responding, are you sure its going to make any difference at all?
Sometimes in it all we may find ourselves caught up at times in history, where the smacking of justice catches up with the ticking of history. We may see glimpses of calls heard and responded to that break in to our daily lives in tangible and significant ways. I pray we note the significance of his profound historical moment in our country as we witness an African American being sworn in as President of these United States. This is particularly poignant as this act occurs just a day after we recognize the life and witness of Martin Luther King who, having heard God’s voice of call, responded in such a way that led to the sacrifice of his very life in the name of Justice and equality for all of God’s people. I pray this sacrifice by not only Dr. King, but so many ordinary people who marched and sacrificed and died in dark remote forests in the middle of the night, to public streets in cities like Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, and Chicago. These brave actions made so such a moment in history possible. Regardless of our political positions and persuasions all of in this moment of history want what is best for our country. We hope against hope that the difficulties of our country and the world can be faced with integrity and faithful action by those we elect to help lead and invite us into faithful actions of resolve in the face of our challenges.
Thank God for such a witness and response to God’s vision for equality that would lead us to see tangibly that equality is possible.
Yet still, for you and for me, trying to figure out our place in this world, even so, we may be wondering how we take our place in this equation of life in a way that can make any difference at all? Let’s face it, for the majority of us here today, and certainly with some exceptions, we will not be the ones sitting at tables of influence charting forward a plan for economic recovery, or for finding resolution to peace in the middle east, or creating a systematic approach to eliminate hunger and disease, around the world. Its complex enough isn’t it, trying to figure out how we will stay alive in our marriage, Be alive as a parent, sustain ourselves and provide for ourselves and our families.
So as we rise in the darkness of each day, grateful we pray for the gift of another day, but I confess as we engage the boy Samuel and the story of his calling, perhaps each us deep down asks the question, so if I can after all Listen for God’s voice calling me, what difference will it make anyway even if I figure out how to respond?

Madeline L’Engle in her book “Glimpses of Grace” quotes a poem her Grandmother used to recite to her:

“Little drops of water,
Little grains of Sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land.

She goes on to say, “ I believe the Kingdom is built on little things that all of us do. A single drop can’t even make a puddle, but together, all our drops and God’s planning can make not only a mighty ocean but a mighty difference”.

It’s easy to be overcome by the bigness of the complexity of the world’s needs and easy to be in a place to wonder, if we are able to hear God calling, What difference will it make anyway. It’s understandable that we may stand afar and be thankful that Samuel answered his call to Yahweh and became a prophet of integrity and a Judge who would lead the tribes of Israel strongly against foreign invaders. He would call people into faithful relationships with Yahweh, and he would “begrudgingly” give in to the cry for a Monarchy and anoint Saul as the first King of Israel.
Its understandable that we would stand grateful that a young boy from Atlanta would hear a call from God that would lead him to lead a movement that would work toward equal rights and we would give thanks for that sacrifice for justice.

But given most of us will not lead a nation, or a movement, though indeed I am banking on the fact that some out there may, we still ask the question to God, what difference can we make.
Sometimes God’s opportunity to “make a difference” begins with a simple email naming small realities. For example this week, an email came from across the river, It’s cold outside, dangerously cold, and the small but deserving homeless population in Bethlehem have no shelter. Like drops of water combining together to make a mighty ocean, or in this case, like grains of sand coming together to create a pleasant land, the pieces of a puzzle began to come together in response to a call! Here on Thursday night, blankets and pillows began to arrive, soup and cereal, bread and water, bodies and souls, coming together, and with heart and soul, the basement of Sayre Hall was transformed into a sanctuary from the cold for a number of God’s people who otherwise would have been on the street. The next night St. Andrew’s in East Allentown followed suit, and a van ran from the Cathedral transporting folks, lastnight the Unitarian Church became that pleasant land, tonight St. Andrew’s again, tomorrow back here at the Cathedral.

What difference does it make? I wonder if one of our guests after a night off of the street might help us with that answer.

1 Epiphany ~ The Baptism of Jesus

2009-01-12T10:08:00.003-05:00

January 11, 2009
The Ven. Richard I Cluett

“Today the Lord comes to be baptized, so that humankind may be lifted up; today the one who never has to bow inclines himself be-fore his servant so that he may release our chains; Today we have acquired the kingdom of heaven: indeed, the kingdom of heaven that has no end.” (excerpt from the Orthodox Liturgy, Feast of the Theophany, with thanks to Suzanne Guthrie)

And so it came to pass long ago and not so far away…

One sunny, early summer morning on the bank of a lake in western Massachusetts where my parents lived, our family was gathered for the baptism of my brother’s firstborn son. My brother had asked me to baptize him in that place where we all had been together so many times as a family. We had some pre-baptism conversations that sufficed as instruction.

We had also spent time discussing the theological ramifications of blessing the water of baptism – that would be … the lake. From that time forth would all those who dipped themselves into those waters be… Well, you can carry on that conversa-tion yourselves.

I stepped into the lake water with the parents and Godparents and the child. The prayers were offered, the blessing of the waters invoked, and I took the child in my arms and immersed him in the cold, dark waters.

At which point my brother lunged forward with a look of abject terror on his face, as I raised the sputtering child. Three times he was plunged into the dark depths and lifted into the light in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And my brother saw that his firstborn son was not sputtering, he was laughing, giggling, burbling with joy, with pure, utter joy! That day he acquired the kingdom of heaven that has no end. And, by the way, so did my brother.

But, there is a reason why the lectionary begins this day with the description of the very beginning and the dark chaos when the wa-ters covered the face of the earth, and then God brings forth -- Light!

Today we celebrate “God’s will to flood the entire world” with Light. We celebrate God’s will to bring each and every creature out of chaos, out of darkness, out of the depths, loosed from bind-ings into the light of life and love and freedom lived in God.

That is what we celebrate today and every time a person comes through the waters of baptism into the light of a life lived in God. [and that is what is going to happen with these 3 young children who will be baptized today.]

+ + +

James Weldon Johnson says that before God started creation, eve-rything was “Blacker than a hundred midnights/ down in the cypress swamp.”

Have you ever visited that dark place? I have. I have even inhabited it -- for quite some time. So did Jesus. In a time of wondering and confusion, his wandering brought him to the bank of the river where he was drawn into the dark, swirling waters, in the midst of the chaos of humanity drawn there for the same reasons. Down he went into the water, plunged by John under the waters, and lifted up into the light of God’s presence, now knowing that he was God’s Beloved Child.

Herbert O”Driscoll has told the story this way:
“And so he came to the place, a stranger as all Galileans were in this hot blazing valley leading to the Dead Sea. Their eyes met and the longing for certainty in Jesus eyes is mirrored by the ambiva¬lence in John's. … they move into the water...

“When he comes up from that transitory burial under the water, it seems as if his world ignites and shines with validation and certainty. He is right! The journey has brought him home! Wave upon wave of peace and wholeness descend on him, calming, resolving, dovelike. Thundering in his consciousness are the intimations of the truth about himself and his vocation. He feels the affirmation and the terror of being in the presence of him by whom he is called My Son, my Beloved.”

A short three years later, he again found himself in that dark place when he was in the Garden at Gethsemane. Darkness and chaos and the evil powers of the world surrounded him, and he ques-tioned, he agonized, over all that he had held so dear, for which he had labored so hard, given so much, travelled so far.

And again, from that darkness he was lifted up, high upon the cross, so that you and I and all who come to God in some sem-blance of faith, with some miniscule modicum of hope, but who come nevertheless – he was lifted up so that we can live in the light of God’s kingdom. Now He lives in the presence of God, He reigns in the kingdom of God, and He lives in the hearts of God’s people.

+ + +

Before God’s Incarnation, before God’s Epiphany, the world was sunk in deep darkness, and so it is again in our day and time. I will not afflict you with a litany of the darkness of the world today. You know it well. You live it, too. You contend against it, too. You want to rise from, as well. It is ever before us on CNN and the nightly news: local, national, and international. We know it in our neighborhoods, in our circle of friends, in our families, in our own selves. Darkness abounds. Darkness abides, Darkness would cling to us forever.

It seems to me that from the very beginning of beginnings, and from our own beginning coming through the waters of birth and the darkness of the birth canal into the light of life, from before time and forever, the journey toward light has begun in darkness.

But we don’t have to live there. It doesn’t have to end there.

What we read of Jesus’ baptism; what we observe in the baptism of an infant; what we dream of in those long night hours is true. God is in this life. God’s spirit is upon us. God’s love is constant. God’s power is ours. And God has given us a reason, a purpose, a life to be lived.

It is possible to live in this life, missing the light of God, missing the presence of God, missing the empowering, comforting Word of God's love, missing the light of God’s love. It was possible for Jesus to have stayed in Nazareth; he didn't have to go down to the Jordan.

We have those choices, too. We can decide to stay in our anxiety, to stay in our ambivalences, to remain trapped in uncertainties, to live in darkness. Or we can decide to leave our Nazareth, and make ourselves available to the word, the light, the love of God and to let God’s spirit work in us.

All of us are, each of us is, Beloved of God – the God in whose love and by whose power shown to us in Jesus – life can be lived, purpose can be discovered, hope can be found, and love can be known.

As the Orthodox liturgy affirms, “… we have acquired the king-dom of heaven: indeed, the kingdom of heaven that has no end.”

Amen. And amen. And amen.

2009-01-06T16:50:00.001-05:00

The Feast of the Epiphany Observed
Sunday January 4, 2009
The Cathedral Church of the Nativity
The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa
Matthew 2:1-12

At my house, the star that shines atop my Christmas tree has been dimmed! How quickly we have taken the journey of ritual that by its very definition as ritual invites us into an opportunity to become aware of God’s presence in our lives as miracle, hope, light, justice, peace. Our journey has led us from the expectant waiting in darkness to the rejoicing of God’s promise in flesh! The rituals of songs, prayers, symbols we participate in through our church year cycle bring awareness to my soul of my God who is my Companion, lover, friend, and strength.
The Christmas tree is my nod to the adoption of pagan symbolism and ritual into my own spiritual life. The Christmas tree that bore the light of a star on top of it, in the corner of my living room has now become a fainted symbol. The star, once beautifully and brightly lighted atop of that tree has come down. The victim of a golden retriever’s curiosity and wicked tail, the star could not survive the fourth tumble of the season to the floor. The needles of a dried out tree and a broken bulb signaled perhaps it would be best to remove the tree. The tree removed indeed and not lost on me is the reality that with the removal comes full recognition that in such simple symbolic things is great investment of emotion! The excitement of the promise of God’s hope and light is wrapped up in such symbols for me! I hate to take down a Christmas tree because it indicates to me the end of the full immersion in the season that leads us from our great expectations as we wait in darkness to the hope and promise of God’s “Emmanuel”! It was not lost on me that as I removed a broken star from the top of a dead Christmas tree, recognizing the removal of such also indicates the transitions that occur in my home! Back to school, back to the regular rhythms of work schedules, school schedules. That “special time” of rejoicing with family and friends, giving way now to the regular rhythms of our daily lives! But more than that, it was not lost on me the challenges of our spiritual journey in a difficult world as I also listened as CNN described yet one more unfortunate chapter of Middle East violence and dis-ease! The contrast of the promises of the season with the events all too familiar unfolding once again before all of us! When? When O Lord will we glimpse the fullness of your promise? Arise, Shine, your light has come, the prophet announces to us! “The glory of the Lord has risen upon you, nations shall come to your light!” O Come, O Come Emmanuel! Be with us God of peace, of compassion, of Reconciliation! Surely, the symbol of star I pick up from my living room floor is a star that leads the people he has made to the potentiality of something different than one more chapter of violence and despair! Shall we put away our things from this season, count it as over, and move on?
Not so fast! Let’s live into the fullness of the ritual that is set before us! The star on top of my Christmas tree may be dimmed but a star is followed today curiously by three strangers of the East, who catch a glimpse of it! This is the Epiphany journey we are invited to follow today! This is a story for the poet’s heart, the artists rendering! Our primary actors in this story today are in the scriptures nameless! Who might they be? Visitors Matthew tells us, Magoi! Though scholars throughout the years have tried to decipher just who these Magoi might be, “magician’s, or Zoroastrian Priests, it seems a reasonable conclusion that these “wise men” of the East at the least dabbled in astrology, and capturing a glimpse of the skies find themselves on a journey toward something clearly compelling enough to warrant a plan of action to embark on this journey!
Most importantly for Matthew’s Gospel, they are gentiles, and their recognition of this new born “King” tells us of God’s plan of salvation for all of the world and sets the stage for the drama that Matthew desires to tell of those within Israel struggling to accept the fullness of God’s Kingdom promise and God’s longing to shine a light of salvation for all of the world!
The scriptures do not tell us who these men are, but Christian tradition would name them, Melchior, king of Persia, Gaspar, King of India, and Balthazar, King of Arabia! Their following of this star would lead them to the presence of a new King, unlike any they had ever encountered! They would bring gifts worthy of a King, Gold of course! Frankincense and Myrrh, fragrance and oil worthy for the anointing of a King!
The promise that lies under this star is unlike any other King these brave travelers would know! This promise is clothed in humility and would stand in stark contrast to the “powers of oppression and abuse” of worldly monarchs, and instead declare a Monarchy whose powers would seek to transform a world through the powerful tools of forgiveness, reconciliation, and compassion! These powers are a far cry from missiles of provocation and devastation, and ground assaults of doom and blood.
And so it is for us! Our ritual pulls us into the fullness of what lies under the star! Particularly as the symbols of the season are slowly packed away and the world continues to present its challenges to another way of living, perhaps Epiphany is the ritual that rightly leads us with certainty back into our daily lives! THE EPIPHANY is God manifesting God’s light and goodness in the world through us. We stand in stark contrast to the darkness of the world and know that peace and reconciliation begins in an individual’s heart. Who full of God’s presence finds their fingers on a trigger? Who full of God’s presence finds in themselves an order for missile attacks? Who full of God’s presence can help but respond to violence with prayers and pleas for peace?
Lest we put away too quickly the symbols and rituals that invite us to the “isness” of God, let us become actors in this Epiphany drama! Like our main actors in this drama, shall we be compelled to follow a star? Let us bring gifts to the one we find there. Let us discover in our following that perhaps the gifts we bring are the same gifts given to us: forgiveness, reconciliation, and compassion.