Homily for Sunday, May 29th, 2011
The Lessons:
Psalm 66:7-18
Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14: 15-21
The Collect:
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Have you ever heard of "prosperity theology"? It is also called "Name it and claim it," as in "Ask the Lord for something you really want, and he will give it to you." Proponents of prosperity theology believe that God rewards all true believers with health and wealth. In churches that promote this belief system, living the Abundant Life is the theological focus. But I don't think the theology of abundance in such churches has a whole lot to do with the words in our collect for today. Sure, someone could read "O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding" and imagine great wealth and all the luxuries that attend it. In fact, that is exactly the kind of abundant life the "name it and claim it" churches preach, but you and I know that is NOT the abundance Christ offers us. In fact, wealth is so removed from what His kingdom means that Jesus said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter his kingdom. The abundance Christ holds out to us is a kingdom of love.
The next words of the collect are like instructions for how to enter his kingdom: "Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire." Loving the Lord in all things and above all things guarantees our entrance into the kingdom. It sounds like it should be pretty easy, doesn't it? What are the things in human nature that prevent us from the kind of wholehearted love Christ asks of us? Sometimes, we have a hard time loving our neighbor because we don't love ourselves. In fact, we can be downright hateful in the things we say to ourselves in the mirror. Most of us don't take very good care of ourselves, and that's not loving ourselves, either. If we truly believed we are the "offspring" of God, as today's lesson from Acts tells us, or that God and Jesus "live in" us, as John's gospel says, we ought to treat our bodies as sacred space. We ought to recognize the indwelling of the divine in everyone around us. In doing so, we may come closer to loving God in and above all things. Still, it's very hard.
Human nature being what it is--fearful, suspicious, selfish--the kingdom doesn't seem to be so near as Jesus promises. Remember the rich young man who was attracted to Jesus' teaching and wished to follow him? He asked the Teacher what he needed to do in order to be his disciple, and when Jesus told him to give up all of his wealth, the rich young man turned sadly away. Jesus was sad, too, because he saw the potential goodness in the young man. I may have told myself that, not being rich, I am not like the young man; however, I know there are many things I would rather not give up in order to love Christ with my whole heart. (Comfort being a big one!) I wish it didn't have to seem so hard!
As I write these words, I am reminded that we are at the 6th Sunday in the season of Easter. All of the lessons for the Sundays since Easter have concerned the disciples and their reactions to the death and resurrection of Jesus. The second Sunday focused on Thomas and the way he expressed doubt and was reassured by the resurrected Lord. On the third Sunday, we read the story of Jesus' encounter with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In this story in particular, as you read it you may want to shake those disciples and ask them why they are so blind. Why can't they see they are talking to the Lord? Priest and writer John Dominic Crossan says that we have our own Emmaus road encounters all of the time. Like the disciples, we don't recognize the Lord until we invite him in. Our ability to enter the kingdom with the Risen Lord, to live in love as Christ loved us, is completely dependent on our willingness. We have to want Him in our lives in order to see that He is already there.
It's really that simple, although we humans like to complicate everything. In today's Gospel lesson from John 14, we see Jesus preparing the disciples for his death and resurrection. (As usual, they don't get it.) Could his language have been any plainer than this? "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you." Jesus speaks these words to us as well. He lives in our hearts. Since he is inside all of us, we are connected by his presence, all members of the same family and "offspring" of God. We are asked to be willing to pour out our love for him in the way we love one another. Our willingness to love abundantly grants us the abundant life of the eternal kingdom. Welcome, brothers and sisters!
Monday, June 20, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Homily for the Easter Vigil April 23, 2011
"Welcome Happy Morning, age to age shall say." So begins a very old Easter hymn, dating back to the 6th century. When that song was first written, Christianity had endured for 500 years, and Venantius Honorius Fortunatus, its writer, predicted the continuing of the faith down through the ages. 1500 years later, we can say the same--welcome, happy morning. Easter has arrived!
John's gospel calls Jesus "the true light, which enlightens everyone." On this night, we began our vigil in darkness, remembering the hours when the true light seemed to be snuffed out, when Jesus lay silently in a dark tomb. He, who was God incarnate, endured the pain of a human death, in suffering that can best be described as torture. He surrendered his life, in obedience to the Father, and by dying for our sins, gave us the promise of eternal life. His resurrection on Easter morning demonstrated the way to new life for all his followers.
Imagine what this night of vigil must have been like for those early Christians who came to be baptized on Holy Saturday. After three years of intense preparation, they walked naked through the water, like children entering Paradise: innocent and believing. They were not simply claiming a religion; they were entering a close-knit community. Being a Christian in those days was no easy proposition; those were very dark times indeed, when Christians were persecuted and many were martyred. Early Christians trusted that God would make a way for them in this world and would welcome them to a better life in the next. They entered the waters of baptism with complete assurance of Salvation.
Why did those early Christians pursue the faith in spite of the dangers they could face? Why are there still people of faith today, 2000 years since the death of Christ? For that matter, why are we gathered here in this chapel near Kinsey Run on a Saturday evening? The answer to all these questions is the same. We love Christ because he first loved us and gave his life for us. As Thomas Merton wrote, "We could not seek God unless he were seeking us." Some of us feel a gentle nudge and others, like St. Paul, find themselves knocked to the ground by the power of the call, but all of us are called into the body of Christ. We are called by the power of love and the hope of new life in the world to come. Our faith has survived all these years because many of us have had a personal encounter with Christ, and we bear witness to others. Resurrection is very real to us because Christ lives on in every faithful heart.
Just as each morning the light returns with the rising sun, the darkness of the tomb could not erase the Christ-light. In every act of love, in all our thoughts that turn toward him, Christ is alive in the world. As he told his disciples before the crucifixion, he had to leave them, but he would send the Holy Spirit to dwell in their hearts. The light of his love is eternal and infinite because of his death and the resurrection we celebrate this evening.
All of us have our own experiences with death and resurrection. As much as we'd like to recapture happy days we remember from years gone by--family gatherings at the holidays, graduations and weddings, the birth of a child--those events have died to us. Yet they live in memory and continue to bring us joy.
Both of my parents are long dead, but in my thoughts of them, I feel them to be very much alive. As much as we might want to, we cannot bring back the past, but the blessings of the past--the love, the joy, the hope--can never die.
Even nature has a way of reminding us of the reality of resurrection. We suffered through an exceptionally cold winter this year, but the flowering of dogwood and redbud and the mantle of green bring evidence that seeming death is annually conquered by the force of resurging life. The flood of June, 1995, nearly destroyed this valley and left many of us wondering if anything would ever grow here again, but by the following spring, the meadows were green once more.
Welcome happy morning, age to age shall sing. The light that came into the world and was heralded by the star of Bethlehem on Christmas Eve has now expanded to encompass the whole world with its radiance. The light of Easter Eve is the abiding light of love.
Amen.
John's gospel calls Jesus "the true light, which enlightens everyone." On this night, we began our vigil in darkness, remembering the hours when the true light seemed to be snuffed out, when Jesus lay silently in a dark tomb. He, who was God incarnate, endured the pain of a human death, in suffering that can best be described as torture. He surrendered his life, in obedience to the Father, and by dying for our sins, gave us the promise of eternal life. His resurrection on Easter morning demonstrated the way to new life for all his followers.
Imagine what this night of vigil must have been like for those early Christians who came to be baptized on Holy Saturday. After three years of intense preparation, they walked naked through the water, like children entering Paradise: innocent and believing. They were not simply claiming a religion; they were entering a close-knit community. Being a Christian in those days was no easy proposition; those were very dark times indeed, when Christians were persecuted and many were martyred. Early Christians trusted that God would make a way for them in this world and would welcome them to a better life in the next. They entered the waters of baptism with complete assurance of Salvation.
Why did those early Christians pursue the faith in spite of the dangers they could face? Why are there still people of faith today, 2000 years since the death of Christ? For that matter, why are we gathered here in this chapel near Kinsey Run on a Saturday evening? The answer to all these questions is the same. We love Christ because he first loved us and gave his life for us. As Thomas Merton wrote, "We could not seek God unless he were seeking us." Some of us feel a gentle nudge and others, like St. Paul, find themselves knocked to the ground by the power of the call, but all of us are called into the body of Christ. We are called by the power of love and the hope of new life in the world to come. Our faith has survived all these years because many of us have had a personal encounter with Christ, and we bear witness to others. Resurrection is very real to us because Christ lives on in every faithful heart.
Just as each morning the light returns with the rising sun, the darkness of the tomb could not erase the Christ-light. In every act of love, in all our thoughts that turn toward him, Christ is alive in the world. As he told his disciples before the crucifixion, he had to leave them, but he would send the Holy Spirit to dwell in their hearts. The light of his love is eternal and infinite because of his death and the resurrection we celebrate this evening.
All of us have our own experiences with death and resurrection. As much as we'd like to recapture happy days we remember from years gone by--family gatherings at the holidays, graduations and weddings, the birth of a child--those events have died to us. Yet they live in memory and continue to bring us joy.
Both of my parents are long dead, but in my thoughts of them, I feel them to be very much alive. As much as we might want to, we cannot bring back the past, but the blessings of the past--the love, the joy, the hope--can never die.
Even nature has a way of reminding us of the reality of resurrection. We suffered through an exceptionally cold winter this year, but the flowering of dogwood and redbud and the mantle of green bring evidence that seeming death is annually conquered by the force of resurging life. The flood of June, 1995, nearly destroyed this valley and left many of us wondering if anything would ever grow here again, but by the following spring, the meadows were green once more.
Welcome happy morning, age to age shall sing. The light that came into the world and was heralded by the star of Bethlehem on Christmas Eve has now expanded to encompass the whole world with its radiance. The light of Easter Eve is the abiding light of love.
Amen.
Homily for Good Friday April 22, 2011
"And we call this Friday Good." These are the last words of Part IV of T. S. Eliot's poem "East Coker." A provocative statement, isn't it? As a child I wondered why on earth anyone would call this anniversary of Christ's excruciating death good. What can be good about an unjust arrest and unfair conviction? What is good about the taunting of the crowd, the flogging by the Roman soldiers, the agony of the cross, the betrayal by the disciples, even the seeming abandonment by the Father? Why do we call this day good?
The first and obvious answer is that this is the day on which Christ died to atone for our sins, the self-sacrifice that gives us hope of eternal life. But there is something more. In what we call Christ's passion, we see the man Jesus at his most divine and the Lord Christ at his most human. In his willingness to suffer and die for us, in his obedience to God and his forgiveness of the very men who kill him, we see the man's divinity. In his tormented prayer from the garden--"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me"--we see the mortal man. When he tells his disciples they will betray him, we recognize his human loneliness. Don't we all feel the pain of this young man when he cries from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
From the earliest days of Christianity, the question of whether Christ was truly both human and divine has been debated. In the 3rd century, a group of Christian followers of the Egyptian presbyter Arius contended that since Jesus was created by God, he was therefore subordinate to and less than the Father. He was, in their eyes, an ordinary mortal. At about the same time, the Gnostics were contending that Christ was completely divine and in no way human, that he was purely of the spiritual realm. Imagine how our understanding of the Lord would have changed if either of these interpretations prevailed. Our current belief that Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully divine underpins our understanding of his love for us.
The church's early controversy ultimately led to the 1st Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, the source of the Nicene Creed we say to this day and reaffirm whenever baptismal vows are made. We recite the Nicene Creed so often that what it says probably eludes us. Why it was written, why we say it is simple: the Nicene Creed declares the full divinity and the full humanity of Jesus. It defines the three figures of the Trinity as being equal and inseparable. Listen to some of the familiar passages from it; see how they uphold both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus:
"We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten by the Father, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father. For us, and for our salvation, he came down from Heaven, by the power of the Holy Spirit...he was made man." Both truly human and truly divine, "he suffered death and was buried," but "on the third day he rose again."
On this day, this Good Friday, we are asked to rise with Jesus on the cross and descend with him into the tomb. We are asked to enter into his suffering, his darkness. Despite his anguished prayers the night before in the Garden, Jesus calmly responds to Pilate, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world." He accepts and fully understands the cup that has been given him. As Isaiah had prophesied, "He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed."
In the first line of the Good Friday section of his poem, T.S. Eliot calls Christ "the wounded surgeon," who heals us, as the prophet said, "by his bruises."
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart....
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good
As the poem suggests, we spend many of our days in lightness, going about our business, believing we are "sound," without considering the real cost of the peace we have been given by our assurance of salvation. On this day, this Good Friday, we are asked to ponder the pain and the darkness of the cross and the suffering of the one who gave his life for us. "Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."
This willing descent into darkness, this complete surrender, the spiritual choice modeled by Christ, has been called the via negativa, the descending way, and it can be terrifying. In spite of his pain, Jesus trusted God and God's plan. In spite of the pain for his Son, God knew that ultimately His plan would be successful. Jesus surrendered his mortal fears and followed the preordained path to the cross. Do we ever truly surrender our fears, worries, preoccupations to God? When we manage to let go in that way, it can feel like "sinking into the arms of God," as Meister Eckhart, 13th century mystic, described it. Maybe, like me, you only surrender when you have exhausted every recourse in a terrible situation until all you can do is surrender it to God. Maybe, like me, when you find that you are finally compelled to surrender, you feel immediate release and you know, on some very deep level, that "all shall be well." Don't you wish you could remember this feeling the next time you find yourself in turmoil? Why do we always take back the illusion we have of controlling our lives? Why is surrender so hard for us? I guess it's because we are fully human--and not very divine!
As many times as I've heard and read the Gospel stories of Holy Week, I still find my heart pounding as the events move relentlessly on to their bitter end. Jesus clearly knows all along what will happen--who will betray him, how he will die--but he continues along the path without veering from it. Yes, he has a few weak seconds of mortal fear and anxiety in the garden and on the cross, and in those moments we recognize our human brother. But his weakness is completely subsumed by his staunch courage and unwavering obedience. Those brief glimpses of human frailty, however, are essential to our understanding of the Lord. The Nicene Creed reminds us that it is important for us to believe that Christ was both man and God. As Edmond Browning, former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church so beautifully states it,
"Jesus was really divine and really human. The way in which he lived that out has always been a mystery. People have often solved it by claiming Jesus didn't really feel the things we feel: no doubts, no temptations, no yearning for love and intimacy. This cannot be! His sacrifice was nothing if his life and its joys were a matter of indifference to him. Part of the glory of the Cross is its sorrow: a young man with everything to live for lays down his life out of a love purer than any the world has known."
Amen. Amen.
The first and obvious answer is that this is the day on which Christ died to atone for our sins, the self-sacrifice that gives us hope of eternal life. But there is something more. In what we call Christ's passion, we see the man Jesus at his most divine and the Lord Christ at his most human. In his willingness to suffer and die for us, in his obedience to God and his forgiveness of the very men who kill him, we see the man's divinity. In his tormented prayer from the garden--"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me"--we see the mortal man. When he tells his disciples they will betray him, we recognize his human loneliness. Don't we all feel the pain of this young man when he cries from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
From the earliest days of Christianity, the question of whether Christ was truly both human and divine has been debated. In the 3rd century, a group of Christian followers of the Egyptian presbyter Arius contended that since Jesus was created by God, he was therefore subordinate to and less than the Father. He was, in their eyes, an ordinary mortal. At about the same time, the Gnostics were contending that Christ was completely divine and in no way human, that he was purely of the spiritual realm. Imagine how our understanding of the Lord would have changed if either of these interpretations prevailed. Our current belief that Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully divine underpins our understanding of his love for us.
The church's early controversy ultimately led to the 1st Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, the source of the Nicene Creed we say to this day and reaffirm whenever baptismal vows are made. We recite the Nicene Creed so often that what it says probably eludes us. Why it was written, why we say it is simple: the Nicene Creed declares the full divinity and the full humanity of Jesus. It defines the three figures of the Trinity as being equal and inseparable. Listen to some of the familiar passages from it; see how they uphold both the divinity and the humanity of Jesus:
"We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten by the Father, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father. For us, and for our salvation, he came down from Heaven, by the power of the Holy Spirit...he was made man." Both truly human and truly divine, "he suffered death and was buried," but "on the third day he rose again."
On this day, this Good Friday, we are asked to rise with Jesus on the cross and descend with him into the tomb. We are asked to enter into his suffering, his darkness. Despite his anguished prayers the night before in the Garden, Jesus calmly responds to Pilate, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world." He accepts and fully understands the cup that has been given him. As Isaiah had prophesied, "He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed."
In the first line of the Good Friday section of his poem, T.S. Eliot calls Christ "the wounded surgeon," who heals us, as the prophet said, "by his bruises."
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart....
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good
As the poem suggests, we spend many of our days in lightness, going about our business, believing we are "sound," without considering the real cost of the peace we have been given by our assurance of salvation. On this day, this Good Friday, we are asked to ponder the pain and the darkness of the cross and the suffering of the one who gave his life for us. "Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."
This willing descent into darkness, this complete surrender, the spiritual choice modeled by Christ, has been called the via negativa, the descending way, and it can be terrifying. In spite of his pain, Jesus trusted God and God's plan. In spite of the pain for his Son, God knew that ultimately His plan would be successful. Jesus surrendered his mortal fears and followed the preordained path to the cross. Do we ever truly surrender our fears, worries, preoccupations to God? When we manage to let go in that way, it can feel like "sinking into the arms of God," as Meister Eckhart, 13th century mystic, described it. Maybe, like me, you only surrender when you have exhausted every recourse in a terrible situation until all you can do is surrender it to God. Maybe, like me, when you find that you are finally compelled to surrender, you feel immediate release and you know, on some very deep level, that "all shall be well." Don't you wish you could remember this feeling the next time you find yourself in turmoil? Why do we always take back the illusion we have of controlling our lives? Why is surrender so hard for us? I guess it's because we are fully human--and not very divine!
As many times as I've heard and read the Gospel stories of Holy Week, I still find my heart pounding as the events move relentlessly on to their bitter end. Jesus clearly knows all along what will happen--who will betray him, how he will die--but he continues along the path without veering from it. Yes, he has a few weak seconds of mortal fear and anxiety in the garden and on the cross, and in those moments we recognize our human brother. But his weakness is completely subsumed by his staunch courage and unwavering obedience. Those brief glimpses of human frailty, however, are essential to our understanding of the Lord. The Nicene Creed reminds us that it is important for us to believe that Christ was both man and God. As Edmond Browning, former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church so beautifully states it,
"Jesus was really divine and really human. The way in which he lived that out has always been a mystery. People have often solved it by claiming Jesus didn't really feel the things we feel: no doubts, no temptations, no yearning for love and intimacy. This cannot be! His sacrifice was nothing if his life and its joys were a matter of indifference to him. Part of the glory of the Cross is its sorrow: a young man with everything to live for lays down his life out of a love purer than any the world has known."
Amen. Amen.
Friday, March 4, 2011
A Loving Parent
Homily for Sunday, February 27th, 2011
Scriptures:
Isaiah 49: 8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34
Since I preach only one Sunday a month, I am usually a little anxious about what the appointed scripture lessons are going to be for the 4th Sunday. There are many passages in the Holy Bible that are either very difficult to comprehend or so stern and forbidding that they can be scary to think about, much less write a homily around. But I was thrilled when I opened the lectionary and found the lessons for today to be some of my very favorites. Even the collect appointed for the 8th Sunday in Epiphany is a beautiful one, and it sums up the message of today's lessons in a concise and compelling way. Let's revisit the collect now:
"Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord." The opening words, "Most loving Father," hint at an underlying theme in Christ's teaching: We can trust in God because God loves us as a father loves his children. In fact, I think it is safe to say that we come to believe in God and have faith in his love for us through what we learn about love from our own mothers and fathers. Trusting in God to provide all we need, as he provides for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, relieves us of all fear. When we were very young children, we had no awareness of being in need. If we were fortunate, we had loving parents who met all of our needs before we could even name them. Having a father's hand to hold or a mother's loving arms to embrace us cast out all our fears. As the collect suggests, we grow into "faithless fears and worldly anxieties" as we confront the responsibilities and difficulties of being adults, but it doesn't have to be that way. Our loving Father and our Brother Jesus are ever with us.
For me, the passage from Matthew that begins with the words "Consider the lilies of the field" always reminds me of my dear mother, whose name was Lillian. She could not have been more loving or tender to her children, and in her own ardent faith, she exemplified the love that casts out fear. This passage also always reminds me of Graves Mill, since my earliest memories are set here, in the place where my mother was born. As a young child, in the early '60s, on summer mornings I would walk up Graves Mill road from my grandmother's home to get the mail and visit Dolly at the post office. Along the roadside, orange tiger lilies grew among tall stalks of Queen Anne's lace and blue bachelor's buttons. The fields were full of wildflowers, daisies and clover and buttercups, and bobwhites called from the fencerows. Singing as it tumbled over stones, the Rapidan River was my companion. Here, it was easy to feel both protected and loved, the way these old blue mountains surround the valley like a shield. Here, it has always been easy for me to know the presence of God, to know that I am "preserved from faithless fears and worldly anxieties." As today's psalm reminds us, it is in humble trust that we turn to God and find God's nurturing presence: "like a child upon its mother's breast, my soul is quieted within me."
The verses from Isaiah speak to those who have known the loving care of good parents, but is also offers consolation to the ones who may not have been so fortunate. God says, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palm of my hands." These words are not simply reassuring; they are insistent! God says "See! Look my way and you will find how very near I am to you. You are not only held safely in my hands, you are inscribed there. You are part of me."
When I was a very small child, I was afraid of whippoorwills. Nowadays, I miss hearing their beautiful call. Whippoorwills do not seem to be as plentiful as they were back in those days, and I rarely hear them. But back then, I couldn't fall asleep some nights for hearing their loud cries, and "Whip poor Will" didn't sound very friendly to me. One of my favorite memories of my father is of the night he found me awake, scared of the whippoorwill, and offered me some comfort. Sitting next to me, he turned on the lamp by my bedside and held out his hands, cupped together. He said, "Sue Anne, the whippoorwill is just a little bird. It could fit right here in the palm of my hands." I was never afraid of a whippoorwill again.
Jesus says to us, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, `What will we eat?' or `What will we drink?' or `What will we wear?'... your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
When we are children and our parents are nearby, we trust we have nothing to fear. We trust that our needs will be met. Being so fortunate, we are grateful for our blessings. Today's collect begins, "Most loving father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us." God's will is for us to respond to our blessings with gratitude and to release our fears and worries to Him. I lost my mom twenty years ago and my dad, seventeen, but I cannot lose the Lord in the same way. The only way I can lose the one who has me inscribed on the palm of His hand is if I turn away from Him.
Oh, Lord, remove from us our faithless fears and help us, like children, to trust and love you more and to live our lives in joyful gratitude. Amen.
Scriptures:
Isaiah 49: 8-16a
Psalm 131
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34
Since I preach only one Sunday a month, I am usually a little anxious about what the appointed scripture lessons are going to be for the 4th Sunday. There are many passages in the Holy Bible that are either very difficult to comprehend or so stern and forbidding that they can be scary to think about, much less write a homily around. But I was thrilled when I opened the lectionary and found the lessons for today to be some of my very favorites. Even the collect appointed for the 8th Sunday in Epiphany is a beautiful one, and it sums up the message of today's lessons in a concise and compelling way. Let's revisit the collect now:
"Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord." The opening words, "Most loving Father," hint at an underlying theme in Christ's teaching: We can trust in God because God loves us as a father loves his children. In fact, I think it is safe to say that we come to believe in God and have faith in his love for us through what we learn about love from our own mothers and fathers. Trusting in God to provide all we need, as he provides for the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, relieves us of all fear. When we were very young children, we had no awareness of being in need. If we were fortunate, we had loving parents who met all of our needs before we could even name them. Having a father's hand to hold or a mother's loving arms to embrace us cast out all our fears. As the collect suggests, we grow into "faithless fears and worldly anxieties" as we confront the responsibilities and difficulties of being adults, but it doesn't have to be that way. Our loving Father and our Brother Jesus are ever with us.
For me, the passage from Matthew that begins with the words "Consider the lilies of the field" always reminds me of my dear mother, whose name was Lillian. She could not have been more loving or tender to her children, and in her own ardent faith, she exemplified the love that casts out fear. This passage also always reminds me of Graves Mill, since my earliest memories are set here, in the place where my mother was born. As a young child, in the early '60s, on summer mornings I would walk up Graves Mill road from my grandmother's home to get the mail and visit Dolly at the post office. Along the roadside, orange tiger lilies grew among tall stalks of Queen Anne's lace and blue bachelor's buttons. The fields were full of wildflowers, daisies and clover and buttercups, and bobwhites called from the fencerows. Singing as it tumbled over stones, the Rapidan River was my companion. Here, it was easy to feel both protected and loved, the way these old blue mountains surround the valley like a shield. Here, it has always been easy for me to know the presence of God, to know that I am "preserved from faithless fears and worldly anxieties." As today's psalm reminds us, it is in humble trust that we turn to God and find God's nurturing presence: "like a child upon its mother's breast, my soul is quieted within me."
The verses from Isaiah speak to those who have known the loving care of good parents, but is also offers consolation to the ones who may not have been so fortunate. God says, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palm of my hands." These words are not simply reassuring; they are insistent! God says "See! Look my way and you will find how very near I am to you. You are not only held safely in my hands, you are inscribed there. You are part of me."
When I was a very small child, I was afraid of whippoorwills. Nowadays, I miss hearing their beautiful call. Whippoorwills do not seem to be as plentiful as they were back in those days, and I rarely hear them. But back then, I couldn't fall asleep some nights for hearing their loud cries, and "Whip poor Will" didn't sound very friendly to me. One of my favorite memories of my father is of the night he found me awake, scared of the whippoorwill, and offered me some comfort. Sitting next to me, he turned on the lamp by my bedside and held out his hands, cupped together. He said, "Sue Anne, the whippoorwill is just a little bird. It could fit right here in the palm of my hands." I was never afraid of a whippoorwill again.
Jesus says to us, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you-- you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, `What will we eat?' or `What will we drink?' or `What will we wear?'... your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
When we are children and our parents are nearby, we trust we have nothing to fear. We trust that our needs will be met. Being so fortunate, we are grateful for our blessings. Today's collect begins, "Most loving father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us." God's will is for us to respond to our blessings with gratitude and to release our fears and worries to Him. I lost my mom twenty years ago and my dad, seventeen, but I cannot lose the Lord in the same way. The only way I can lose the one who has me inscribed on the palm of His hand is if I turn away from Him.
Oh, Lord, remove from us our faithless fears and help us, like children, to trust and love you more and to live our lives in joyful gratitude. Amen.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
A Meditation on Light
Homily for Sunday, January 23, 2011
Lessons:
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27: 1, 5-13
Matthew 4: 12-23
On January 2nd, as David and I were driving home after visiting family and friends in Northern Virginia, we drove through a brief rain shower near Ruckersville, and then, as we turned onto Earlysville Road, a double rainbow appeared in the sky. How propitious seemed that rare and spectacular phenomenon at the beginning of a new year and in the midst of winter!
For a variety of reasons, January has often been a difficult month for me. The days are short, dark, and cold, and it seems that bad things always happen in January... the shooting in Tucson this year and that terrible earthquake in Haiti last year are examples. A few years ago, to ease my dread of this month, I decided to make a special effort to celebrate the season of Epiphany. My artificial Christmas tree has always gone up in early December, and I decorate it with white lights and blue ornaments and call it my Advent tree. On Christmas Eve, we add red, green, and gold trimmings, and the tree is bright with Christmas cheer. Now I have removed all but the white lights, the stars, snowflakes, and angels, and I call it my Epiphany tree. I'm delighted to be able to leave it up into March this year, since Ash Wednesday is late and Epiphany is a wonderfully long season. How fitting that it is called "The Season of Light"!
But what exactly IS light? As a certainty of everyday life, we fathom light most easily in its absence; at least, in darkness we better grasp our need for light. A scientist would tell you that light is electromagnetic radiation. Just as a living organism can be broken down into cells, light is made up of photons. When sunlight makes its way through droplets of rain, it is refracted into the colors of the spectrum, and we call it a rainbow. Although we think of the sun and moon as earth's primary sources of light (other than our man-made ones), the universe is full of light not generated by its heavenly bodies. Isn't it interesting that in Genesis 1, we are told that God said "Let there be light" on the first day? It isn't until Day 4 that He creates the sun and moon. Light, then, simply IS. Like air, it is a substance we can move through in space and time. Although it is intangible, light has a definite and important part to play in our lives.
The shorter days of the winter months, the preponderance of darkness, and the lengthening of twilight in the late afternoon have led to an ailment that afflicts a significant number of people--Seasonal Affective Disorder, more commonly (and aptly) called SAD. People who suffer from SAD are urged to use sunlamps and to go outdoors in midday, when the sun is brightest. Even if we've never been diagnosed with SAD, most of us can be a little blue on the darkest days. As much as we long for light during the darkness of our winters, imagine what light must have meant to people during the millennia of human history before the invention of electricity. Nowadays one has to drive very far out on back country roads to escape what is called light pollution, and we have more light than we need at the flip of a switch. Last February, by the fourth day of being out of power, I felt a shroud of gloom at nightfall, and I wasn't sure I could endure it for even one more day. Please imagine with me the world as Isaiah and Jesus, Shakespeare and Thomas Jefferson, and even our great-great grandparents knew it, when every evening brought unyielding night. The light produced by candles, torches, and oil lamps couldn't penetrate the darkness beyond a few feet, and darkness must have seemed like a wall.
A world that experienced genuine, almost tangible darkness for half of every day is the context for today's words from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah speaks of the Lord as a "great light." "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness--on them, light has shined." The preciousness and power of God for his people is summed up in Isaiah's equating of God with light. But it is the ending of this chapter in Isaiah, Chapter 9, that connects the splendid origin of that "great light" to the coming of the Messiah: "For a child has been born to us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Jesus is the Light of the World. He says so himself in John 8:12. "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
Light as an image of truth, power, life, and hope hearkens back to the first story of creation in Genesis, when the earth was called "a formless void" and darkness covered everything, until God spoke and said, "Let there be light." Isaiah tells us that the arrival of Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the creation promise. "His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace..." The star that heralded his birth and drew three wise men from the east is the first association of light with Jesus. What were these wise men really seeking? Some scholars surmise that they came from Persia. At the time of Jesus's birth, the dominant religion of Persia was Zoroastrianism, whose doctrine was to believe in one universal God, a God that espoused truth, beauty, and order. For three men of high station (they are called kings, after all) and great learning to make such a difficult journey, it suggests they had very high expectations of the infant they came to honor. Could these men, who may have believed in one universal and unifying God, have sought out the infant hoping he would bring peace to all mankind? Is the story of the Epiphany foreshadowing the arrival of God's kingdom on earth?..."Thy kingdom come," we say...
In today's gospel lesson from Matthew 4, Jesus is specifically connected to Isaiah's prophecy of the Prince of Peace; in verses 12 through 17, Isaiah's words are rephrased. As he begins his ministry, Jesus tells the people that he has come to bring the kingdom of heaven: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." And what will God's kingdom look like? In God's kingdom, people are cured of every disease and every sickness, as Matthew 4:23 tells us. Jesus is the light of the world. He is also love. In last Sunday's lesson from Living the Questions, a biblical scholar suggested that the idea of the kingdom of God is an easy one to understand if we remember that Jesus and everyone around him lived under the rule of a Roman emperor. The world would have been a very different place with God on the throne instead of the emperor. Better yet, this scholar suggested, if God was and is king, what would God's budget look like? How would Jesus spend your tax dollars? As he himself said, "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Here, of course, light means having little weight and being easy to carry. Even in our well-lighted world, the significance of light is still reflected in our use of the word. As a word, light has many happy connotations. Shall we mediate on a few of them?
When your grandchild calls you on the phone and says, "Are you coming over?" (as mine did yesterday), you might think, as I did, that child is the light of your life.
When you "see the light," you have finally understood something that had been perplexing and troubling you.
To "shed light" on something is to bring it out into the open so that everyone can appreciate its meaning.
When a person's face "lights up," it is full of joy.
Someone with a "light touch" has the grace to deal with others tactfully and delicately.
When a butterfly "lights" on a flower, anyone who sees it may be cheered.
To have a "light heart" is to feel released from care and worry.
If you are "light on your feet" you are nimble and graceful.
The Age of "Enlightenment" was a time when reason and science overcame superstition and prejudice.
Before I get too carried away with the various uses of the word light, I would like to ask all of us to consider what our world would be like if the light of Jesus had never entered it. Seriously, can you imagine this world without him?
I would never ask such a question anywhere but in a church. Here, we are united in our belief in Jesus as Lord. We profess the truth of his teachings and, in calling ourselves Christian, we acknowledge our faith in him. As Episcopalians, we are all part of the Anglican communion, and as Americans, we have been shaped by Western culture and Western civilization. The laws we live by and the way we conduct our daily endeavors all reflect the philosophy and mores handed down to us by our European ancestors. From the Magna Carta to the King James version of the Bible, from our own constitution to Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," we are a people who have inherited the benefits of living in God's kingdom. We believe in justice, in mercy, in equality, in our responsibility for and to others. We believe in self-sacrifice for the greater good, in courage, in integrity. All of these principles were modeled for us and for our ancestors by Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. The kingdom is very near when the Light prevails.
Lessons:
Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27: 1, 5-13
Matthew 4: 12-23
On January 2nd, as David and I were driving home after visiting family and friends in Northern Virginia, we drove through a brief rain shower near Ruckersville, and then, as we turned onto Earlysville Road, a double rainbow appeared in the sky. How propitious seemed that rare and spectacular phenomenon at the beginning of a new year and in the midst of winter!
For a variety of reasons, January has often been a difficult month for me. The days are short, dark, and cold, and it seems that bad things always happen in January... the shooting in Tucson this year and that terrible earthquake in Haiti last year are examples. A few years ago, to ease my dread of this month, I decided to make a special effort to celebrate the season of Epiphany. My artificial Christmas tree has always gone up in early December, and I decorate it with white lights and blue ornaments and call it my Advent tree. On Christmas Eve, we add red, green, and gold trimmings, and the tree is bright with Christmas cheer. Now I have removed all but the white lights, the stars, snowflakes, and angels, and I call it my Epiphany tree. I'm delighted to be able to leave it up into March this year, since Ash Wednesday is late and Epiphany is a wonderfully long season. How fitting that it is called "The Season of Light"!
But what exactly IS light? As a certainty of everyday life, we fathom light most easily in its absence; at least, in darkness we better grasp our need for light. A scientist would tell you that light is electromagnetic radiation. Just as a living organism can be broken down into cells, light is made up of photons. When sunlight makes its way through droplets of rain, it is refracted into the colors of the spectrum, and we call it a rainbow. Although we think of the sun and moon as earth's primary sources of light (other than our man-made ones), the universe is full of light not generated by its heavenly bodies. Isn't it interesting that in Genesis 1, we are told that God said "Let there be light" on the first day? It isn't until Day 4 that He creates the sun and moon. Light, then, simply IS. Like air, it is a substance we can move through in space and time. Although it is intangible, light has a definite and important part to play in our lives.
The shorter days of the winter months, the preponderance of darkness, and the lengthening of twilight in the late afternoon have led to an ailment that afflicts a significant number of people--Seasonal Affective Disorder, more commonly (and aptly) called SAD. People who suffer from SAD are urged to use sunlamps and to go outdoors in midday, when the sun is brightest. Even if we've never been diagnosed with SAD, most of us can be a little blue on the darkest days. As much as we long for light during the darkness of our winters, imagine what light must have meant to people during the millennia of human history before the invention of electricity. Nowadays one has to drive very far out on back country roads to escape what is called light pollution, and we have more light than we need at the flip of a switch. Last February, by the fourth day of being out of power, I felt a shroud of gloom at nightfall, and I wasn't sure I could endure it for even one more day. Please imagine with me the world as Isaiah and Jesus, Shakespeare and Thomas Jefferson, and even our great-great grandparents knew it, when every evening brought unyielding night. The light produced by candles, torches, and oil lamps couldn't penetrate the darkness beyond a few feet, and darkness must have seemed like a wall.
A world that experienced genuine, almost tangible darkness for half of every day is the context for today's words from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah speaks of the Lord as a "great light." "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness--on them, light has shined." The preciousness and power of God for his people is summed up in Isaiah's equating of God with light. But it is the ending of this chapter in Isaiah, Chapter 9, that connects the splendid origin of that "great light" to the coming of the Messiah: "For a child has been born to us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Jesus is the Light of the World. He says so himself in John 8:12. "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
Light as an image of truth, power, life, and hope hearkens back to the first story of creation in Genesis, when the earth was called "a formless void" and darkness covered everything, until God spoke and said, "Let there be light." Isaiah tells us that the arrival of Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of the creation promise. "His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace..." The star that heralded his birth and drew three wise men from the east is the first association of light with Jesus. What were these wise men really seeking? Some scholars surmise that they came from Persia. At the time of Jesus's birth, the dominant religion of Persia was Zoroastrianism, whose doctrine was to believe in one universal God, a God that espoused truth, beauty, and order. For three men of high station (they are called kings, after all) and great learning to make such a difficult journey, it suggests they had very high expectations of the infant they came to honor. Could these men, who may have believed in one universal and unifying God, have sought out the infant hoping he would bring peace to all mankind? Is the story of the Epiphany foreshadowing the arrival of God's kingdom on earth?..."Thy kingdom come," we say...
In today's gospel lesson from Matthew 4, Jesus is specifically connected to Isaiah's prophecy of the Prince of Peace; in verses 12 through 17, Isaiah's words are rephrased. As he begins his ministry, Jesus tells the people that he has come to bring the kingdom of heaven: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." And what will God's kingdom look like? In God's kingdom, people are cured of every disease and every sickness, as Matthew 4:23 tells us. Jesus is the light of the world. He is also love. In last Sunday's lesson from Living the Questions, a biblical scholar suggested that the idea of the kingdom of God is an easy one to understand if we remember that Jesus and everyone around him lived under the rule of a Roman emperor. The world would have been a very different place with God on the throne instead of the emperor. Better yet, this scholar suggested, if God was and is king, what would God's budget look like? How would Jesus spend your tax dollars? As he himself said, "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Here, of course, light means having little weight and being easy to carry. Even in our well-lighted world, the significance of light is still reflected in our use of the word. As a word, light has many happy connotations. Shall we mediate on a few of them?
When your grandchild calls you on the phone and says, "Are you coming over?" (as mine did yesterday), you might think, as I did, that child is the light of your life.
When you "see the light," you have finally understood something that had been perplexing and troubling you.
To "shed light" on something is to bring it out into the open so that everyone can appreciate its meaning.
When a person's face "lights up," it is full of joy.
Someone with a "light touch" has the grace to deal with others tactfully and delicately.
When a butterfly "lights" on a flower, anyone who sees it may be cheered.
To have a "light heart" is to feel released from care and worry.
If you are "light on your feet" you are nimble and graceful.
The Age of "Enlightenment" was a time when reason and science overcame superstition and prejudice.
Before I get too carried away with the various uses of the word light, I would like to ask all of us to consider what our world would be like if the light of Jesus had never entered it. Seriously, can you imagine this world without him?
I would never ask such a question anywhere but in a church. Here, we are united in our belief in Jesus as Lord. We profess the truth of his teachings and, in calling ourselves Christian, we acknowledge our faith in him. As Episcopalians, we are all part of the Anglican communion, and as Americans, we have been shaped by Western culture and Western civilization. The laws we live by and the way we conduct our daily endeavors all reflect the philosophy and mores handed down to us by our European ancestors. From the Magna Carta to the King James version of the Bible, from our own constitution to Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," we are a people who have inherited the benefits of living in God's kingdom. We believe in justice, in mercy, in equality, in our responsibility for and to others. We believe in self-sacrifice for the greater good, in courage, in integrity. All of these principles were modeled for us and for our ancestors by Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. The kingdom is very near when the Light prevails.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
What the Ducks Do for Us
Homily for Sunday, October 24th
Lessons:
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10
The Dell Pond is a lovely oasis of peace in the midst of the racket of human endeavor on Grounds, as we say, at the University of Virginia. On Emmet Street, right next to the Curry School of Education and across from the Newcomb Hall parking garage, the little pond is passed daily by hordes of people on foot or in vehicles. For the last two years the construction of Bavaro Hall, the Curry School's new building, was going on just a stone's throw away from the pond, and now cranes and construction crews are at work on the garage across the street from it. Still, as I walk past it most days, the beautifully landscaped pond, with its water lilies and weeping willows, is the very image of tranquility and grace.
When I first began to work at my present job, a pair of domesticated ducks were permanent residents of the pond, and I monitored their activities as I walked to and from work. Watching them as they glided across the water or rested on the grass, I was touched by their dependence on each other, on the way they did everything side by side. I found myself feeling anxious for them if I didn't see them and delighted when they reappeared. Snapping turtles occasionally rise to the pond's surface, golden koi flash far beneath, and sometimes a great blue heron stands knee-deep at its edge, but the ducks have been a constant presence on the pond.
I have discovered that I am by no means the only one who feels an affectionate attachment to the Dell Pond ducks. On nice days parents with young children stop by to see and feed them, older adults relax on the bench overlooking the pond, and students snap photos of the ducks with their cell phones. One day I met one of my coworkers passing the pond, and I found out that Peter often brings the ducks cracked corn during the winter.
In the spring of '09, the white female duck disappeared and did not return. Her mate was clearly grieving, and I was devastated. There had been local news stories about a den of foxes that lived near the railroad tracks under Beta Bridge--a rabid fox had bitten someone--so I assumed a fox had killed the female duck. After a few weeks of watching the lonely duck grieve, Peter and his wife Ann called the SPCA to ask if they had any ducks who needed a home, and three new ducks came to live at Dell Pond. The original lone duck was immediately enfolded into the new flock. Last winter when deep snow covered the ground and the pond was frozen, I wondered how the ducks would manage, but they survived. Since then, another buff-colored female duck has disappeared, but the remaining three ducks are always together.
What have the ducks done for us? What do they represent? A community of caring has sprung up around these ducks, and although we don't all know one another, we share a common cause. When one of the female ducks was laying eggs on the grassy turf beside the pond, a student left a sign near the eggs, imploring the groundskeepers not to discard the eggs. My friend Peter brings them cracked corn, and children toss bread crumbs their way. I believe I am not the only person who verbally greets the ducks upon encountering them. Those three brave and vulnerable ducks are the unifying bond of a group of otherwise unconnected people.
Shared belief in Christ is the common cause that creates a community of worship and brings us all here to gather under this one roof. Though our lives, our politics, and our opinions on outside issues may vary greatly, our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ unites us. We expect to encounter the Risen Lord here in each other. As Henri Nouwen said, "God has given us the church as the place where God becomes God-with-us." In the ways that we worship together and love one another, we experience God. Community is essential for that purpose.
In today's epistle, Paul writes to the Thessalonians, "We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing." Paul hails the church at Thessalonica as a model church because the people there lived in mutual love and support of one another. We are all called to be part of such a community, with our common cause the love of the Lord, and our expression of this love revealed in the way we treat each other and our neighbors.
Our gospel lesson for today, the story of Jesus's encounter with a tax collector named Zacchaeus, perfectly illustrates the inclusiveness of the Lord's community. You may remember the old Bible school song about Zacchaeus and what a "wee little man was he." It's a silly song, so I won't repeat it, especially since the song fails to convey one very important fact about Zacchaeus: though he may have been a man short in physical stature, Zacchaeus was not equally short in economic or social status. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and a very rich man. Why would such a powerful man press to get through the crowd to see a controversial itinerant preacher? Why would this tax collector, hated by his fellow Jews because of his position, risk making a fool of himself by climbing a tree to see Jesus? God has a way of placing such desires in our hearts; we love God because he first loved us. Zacchaeus must have felt his heart stirred by the words of Jesus, and his heart was rewarded when Jesus looked up in the sycamore tree and said, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today."
Others in the crowd grumbled because Jesus chose to go to the house of someone they considered a sinner and a rogue. They could find no common ground with Zacchaeus, and they judged him for his obvious faults. But Zacchaeus, at the Lord's invitation, was more than willing to become a part of the community of believers, even though his self-righteous neighbors wished to exclude him. He promised the Lord to give half of all he had to the poor and to make reparation to those he had harmed. Jesus has the final word for anyone who thinks he or she is better behaved and more worthy of the kingdom than someone else: "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost."
I fear there are too many old stories and bad jokes about St. Peter standing at the pearly gates and barring the entrance to heaven. That kind of expectation has all of us casting judgment on ourselves and on each other, deciding who is good and who is bad, who will make it into the kingdom and who will not. Truly, judging is not and has never been our job, and we can give thanks for that. How grateful should we be for the wideness of God's mercy that forgives us seventy times seven!
As former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Edmond Browning wrote: "The church is a group of people united in gratitude to God for the redemption of the whole creation from the decay of sin and death, not an elaborate set of reasons why I am saved and you are not...What will we be asked when we stand before God? Were you right all the time? Do you qualify for membership? That is not my image of God's judgment. I think we will be asked if we loved God and tried to show it in the things we did." Bishop Browning is really speaking of the greatest and most simple commandment, the one the Lord told us was the only one we need to remember. "Love the Lord your God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself."
Like the community of duck fanciers who pass by the Dell Pond, the church is a place where the common cause of love is the bond that unites us all. And like the ducks themselves, we are better off when we stick together.
Lessons:
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10
The Dell Pond is a lovely oasis of peace in the midst of the racket of human endeavor on Grounds, as we say, at the University of Virginia. On Emmet Street, right next to the Curry School of Education and across from the Newcomb Hall parking garage, the little pond is passed daily by hordes of people on foot or in vehicles. For the last two years the construction of Bavaro Hall, the Curry School's new building, was going on just a stone's throw away from the pond, and now cranes and construction crews are at work on the garage across the street from it. Still, as I walk past it most days, the beautifully landscaped pond, with its water lilies and weeping willows, is the very image of tranquility and grace.
When I first began to work at my present job, a pair of domesticated ducks were permanent residents of the pond, and I monitored their activities as I walked to and from work. Watching them as they glided across the water or rested on the grass, I was touched by their dependence on each other, on the way they did everything side by side. I found myself feeling anxious for them if I didn't see them and delighted when they reappeared. Snapping turtles occasionally rise to the pond's surface, golden koi flash far beneath, and sometimes a great blue heron stands knee-deep at its edge, but the ducks have been a constant presence on the pond.
I have discovered that I am by no means the only one who feels an affectionate attachment to the Dell Pond ducks. On nice days parents with young children stop by to see and feed them, older adults relax on the bench overlooking the pond, and students snap photos of the ducks with their cell phones. One day I met one of my coworkers passing the pond, and I found out that Peter often brings the ducks cracked corn during the winter.
In the spring of '09, the white female duck disappeared and did not return. Her mate was clearly grieving, and I was devastated. There had been local news stories about a den of foxes that lived near the railroad tracks under Beta Bridge--a rabid fox had bitten someone--so I assumed a fox had killed the female duck. After a few weeks of watching the lonely duck grieve, Peter and his wife Ann called the SPCA to ask if they had any ducks who needed a home, and three new ducks came to live at Dell Pond. The original lone duck was immediately enfolded into the new flock. Last winter when deep snow covered the ground and the pond was frozen, I wondered how the ducks would manage, but they survived. Since then, another buff-colored female duck has disappeared, but the remaining three ducks are always together.
What have the ducks done for us? What do they represent? A community of caring has sprung up around these ducks, and although we don't all know one another, we share a common cause. When one of the female ducks was laying eggs on the grassy turf beside the pond, a student left a sign near the eggs, imploring the groundskeepers not to discard the eggs. My friend Peter brings them cracked corn, and children toss bread crumbs their way. I believe I am not the only person who verbally greets the ducks upon encountering them. Those three brave and vulnerable ducks are the unifying bond of a group of otherwise unconnected people.
Shared belief in Christ is the common cause that creates a community of worship and brings us all here to gather under this one roof. Though our lives, our politics, and our opinions on outside issues may vary greatly, our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ unites us. We expect to encounter the Risen Lord here in each other. As Henri Nouwen said, "God has given us the church as the place where God becomes God-with-us." In the ways that we worship together and love one another, we experience God. Community is essential for that purpose.
In today's epistle, Paul writes to the Thessalonians, "We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing." Paul hails the church at Thessalonica as a model church because the people there lived in mutual love and support of one another. We are all called to be part of such a community, with our common cause the love of the Lord, and our expression of this love revealed in the way we treat each other and our neighbors.
Our gospel lesson for today, the story of Jesus's encounter with a tax collector named Zacchaeus, perfectly illustrates the inclusiveness of the Lord's community. You may remember the old Bible school song about Zacchaeus and what a "wee little man was he." It's a silly song, so I won't repeat it, especially since the song fails to convey one very important fact about Zacchaeus: though he may have been a man short in physical stature, Zacchaeus was not equally short in economic or social status. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector and a very rich man. Why would such a powerful man press to get through the crowd to see a controversial itinerant preacher? Why would this tax collector, hated by his fellow Jews because of his position, risk making a fool of himself by climbing a tree to see Jesus? God has a way of placing such desires in our hearts; we love God because he first loved us. Zacchaeus must have felt his heart stirred by the words of Jesus, and his heart was rewarded when Jesus looked up in the sycamore tree and said, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today."
Others in the crowd grumbled because Jesus chose to go to the house of someone they considered a sinner and a rogue. They could find no common ground with Zacchaeus, and they judged him for his obvious faults. But Zacchaeus, at the Lord's invitation, was more than willing to become a part of the community of believers, even though his self-righteous neighbors wished to exclude him. He promised the Lord to give half of all he had to the poor and to make reparation to those he had harmed. Jesus has the final word for anyone who thinks he or she is better behaved and more worthy of the kingdom than someone else: "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost."
I fear there are too many old stories and bad jokes about St. Peter standing at the pearly gates and barring the entrance to heaven. That kind of expectation has all of us casting judgment on ourselves and on each other, deciding who is good and who is bad, who will make it into the kingdom and who will not. Truly, judging is not and has never been our job, and we can give thanks for that. How grateful should we be for the wideness of God's mercy that forgives us seventy times seven!
As former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Edmond Browning wrote: "The church is a group of people united in gratitude to God for the redemption of the whole creation from the decay of sin and death, not an elaborate set of reasons why I am saved and you are not...What will we be asked when we stand before God? Were you right all the time? Do you qualify for membership? That is not my image of God's judgment. I think we will be asked if we loved God and tried to show it in the things we did." Bishop Browning is really speaking of the greatest and most simple commandment, the one the Lord told us was the only one we need to remember. "Love the Lord your God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself."
Like the community of duck fanciers who pass by the Dell Pond, the church is a place where the common cause of love is the bond that unites us all. And like the ducks themselves, we are better off when we stick together.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
A Meditation on the Cross
Homily for Sunday, August 29th
5th Sunday at Graves Chapel
Lessons for Holy Cross Day
The history of the cross itself is a history of transfiguration. As that favorite hymn "The Old Rugged Cross" says, the cross is "the emblem of suffering and shame." Death on the cross was meant to be humiliating, torturously slow, and excruciatingly painful. Inflicted on humanity for a thousand years, crucifixion was used as a means of execution from the 6th century BC until the 4th century AD, when the Roman Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, finally ended its use.
During those many years between the crucifixion of Jesus and the end of the terrible practice, other Christians were martyred on a cross. Of the apostles, Peter and Andrew were both crucified. Peter told his executioners that he was unworthy to be killed in the same way as His Lord, so he was crucified upside down. Dying in the name of Christ for one's faith became an honored tradition.
Nowadays the cross is ubiquitous. You can see crosses just about anywhere: dangling from ears or hanging on a chain around someone's neck, advertising Christian bookstores or planted in a group of three by the roadside. I have several crosses that I proudly wear as jewelry, but that use is not what I meant when I said the cross has its own history of transfiguration.
Think of the crosses you've seen. There are the simple ones, like the plain old wooden cross hanging above the pulpit here in the chapel. And there are beautiful ones, like the lovely one inlaid in the center of the chapel floor by Tom Pastore. Catholic crucifixes come in various shapes and sizes, but they all have a figure of the crucified Christ attached to them. Altars in most churches are adorned with stately brass crosses. No matter their shape, size, or appearance, all Christian crosses commemorate the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of my favorite altar crosses is the one in the chapel at Richmond Hill. It is a brass cross, very similar to ours here. What makes it special to me is the way it is decorated. The engraving is not immediately obvious; only when the light in the chapel illumines it from a certain angle can you see the flowers that adorn the entire cross. I can't see it without thinking of Easter morning and of the flowering of the cross, of the joy of children as they bring spring flowers from their gardens to drape on a rustic wooden frame. The tradition of flowering the cross is for me the most profound illustration of Easter. From the humiliation, shame and agony of Good Friday, the cross is transfigured into a thing of hope, joy, and glorious beauty. Only Jesus himself could have wrought such a change.
As the collect for Holy Cross Day says, " our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself. Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him." We all have a cross to bear, of one kind or another. Let us see the beauty of every cross we encounter as a reminder that our own pains, however awful they may be, can be transfigured by the grace of our Lord.
5th Sunday at Graves Chapel
Lessons for Holy Cross Day
The history of the cross itself is a history of transfiguration. As that favorite hymn "The Old Rugged Cross" says, the cross is "the emblem of suffering and shame." Death on the cross was meant to be humiliating, torturously slow, and excruciatingly painful. Inflicted on humanity for a thousand years, crucifixion was used as a means of execution from the 6th century BC until the 4th century AD, when the Roman Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, finally ended its use.
During those many years between the crucifixion of Jesus and the end of the terrible practice, other Christians were martyred on a cross. Of the apostles, Peter and Andrew were both crucified. Peter told his executioners that he was unworthy to be killed in the same way as His Lord, so he was crucified upside down. Dying in the name of Christ for one's faith became an honored tradition.
Nowadays the cross is ubiquitous. You can see crosses just about anywhere: dangling from ears or hanging on a chain around someone's neck, advertising Christian bookstores or planted in a group of three by the roadside. I have several crosses that I proudly wear as jewelry, but that use is not what I meant when I said the cross has its own history of transfiguration.
Think of the crosses you've seen. There are the simple ones, like the plain old wooden cross hanging above the pulpit here in the chapel. And there are beautiful ones, like the lovely one inlaid in the center of the chapel floor by Tom Pastore. Catholic crucifixes come in various shapes and sizes, but they all have a figure of the crucified Christ attached to them. Altars in most churches are adorned with stately brass crosses. No matter their shape, size, or appearance, all Christian crosses commemorate the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
One of my favorite altar crosses is the one in the chapel at Richmond Hill. It is a brass cross, very similar to ours here. What makes it special to me is the way it is decorated. The engraving is not immediately obvious; only when the light in the chapel illumines it from a certain angle can you see the flowers that adorn the entire cross. I can't see it without thinking of Easter morning and of the flowering of the cross, of the joy of children as they bring spring flowers from their gardens to drape on a rustic wooden frame. The tradition of flowering the cross is for me the most profound illustration of Easter. From the humiliation, shame and agony of Good Friday, the cross is transfigured into a thing of hope, joy, and glorious beauty. Only Jesus himself could have wrought such a change.
As the collect for Holy Cross Day says, " our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself. Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him." We all have a cross to bear, of one kind or another. Let us see the beauty of every cross we encounter as a reminder that our own pains, however awful they may be, can be transfigured by the grace of our Lord.
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