Another sermon

This was July 30, 2006. Just ran across it looking for my sermon for this week.

 

          So, here, in the middle of summer—a time of relaxation and recreation—we are confronted with two powerful, unavoidable images.

 

          Elijah is taken away in the whirlwind, in a chariot of fire pulled by horses of fire.

          And Jesus walks on the water.

 

          You’d think God would leave us be for a while…let us rest and “kick back”. Instead we have whirlwinds and water-walking.

 

          So, what are we to make of this? How are we to lean into the flaming chariot and the water walking? What does it mean to me and you?

 

          God calls us to miraculous moments—events and experiences outside the realm of reason. God calls us to see the chariot and to watch Jesus cross the sea on foot. God calls us to be MORE THAN WE CAN BE….

 

          The disciples had been there for the feeding. They had seen the 5000 full and more on five loaves and two dried fish. They had gathered the remains themselves—7 baskets full some of the accounts tell us, or 12 baskets full in other tellings of the tale.

          They had seen all that and Jesus had sent them ahead while he went up into the lonely places to pray. So, off they went in their little boat to cross the Sea of Galilee.

          That Sea (no more than a large lake, really) is in a strange place. The wet eastern winds off the Mediterranean collide with the Golan Heights on the East side of Galilee and are bounced back to the heat and low pressure around the sea. Sudden and rough storms result.

          That’s what happened to the disciples. Jesus saw it all from the western shore. They were rowing against the wind and waves.

          So he decided to walk.

          As he was passing them by, leaving them to their own resources, they saw him and cried out in fear, already anxious about the sea. They thought it was a ghost and they were terrified.

          Jesus heard their cries and came to them, walking on the sea. He entered the boat and the storm ceased and they were all astonished.

 

          It’s all about “seeing God” around us, when the seas are rough.

          It’s all about calling out to God, even if what we call is wrong.

          It’s all about knowing God will be with us, no matter how fearful or anxious we are.

          I talked about this at a nursing home when I was doing the eucharist last week. And all those people—many in wheel chairs, some in the last stages of life, all of them cut off from what you and I think of as “normal”….all those people nodded and understood.

          More than we do, I would imagine. More than we understand.

 

          The sea is so big and our boat is so small.

          Storms come rolling up when least expected.

          Life is hard and confusing and painful and confounding.

          In the storm tossed darkness we often see ghosts.

           And we almost never “truly understand”.

 

Mark is telling us all that is alright, all that is as it simply is.

But Mark is telling us more—much more than that.

No matter what—Jesus is near; no matter what—God is close; no matter what—we are not along; no matter what—help is on the way.

Just that. That and nothing else.

It is all we can understand and all we need to know….

 

My sermon for Sunday

 (I hardly ever have a sermon by Wednesday. If you go to Trinity, Milton, don't read this.)

JULY 25

          I had an assistant Rector once at St. John’s in Waterbury, Mary Ann Logue, older than me, back then, and a dear friend, who preached one Sunday on the feeding of the 5000.

          Her message was that people who had brought food with them to the deserted place were so moved by Jesus’ effort to feed them all with five loaves and two fish that they brought out their food and shared it so that there were 12 baskets full of food left over.

          I couldn’t wait to ask her, after the service, where she got that idea.

          “From Biblical scholars,” Mary Ann told me.

          Well, what was I to do?

          Argue with Biblical scholars?

          But that’s what I’m going to do today—argue with that point of view.

          I want the Feeding of the 5000 to be a miracle caused by God.

          I want the five loaves and two fish to be all the food there was.

          I want Jesus’ ‘thanks’ for the loaves and fishes to have inspired God to multiply them many, many times so that they could feed everyone and have an abundance left over.

          John’s gospel today is about ‘abundance’ and it is good news we need so very much to hear—not just this day, but every day of our lives.

          We live in a time of great ‘scarcity’.

          “There is NOT ENOUGH” everywhere around us.

          There is ‘not enough’ food for people all around the world.

          In our own country, there is ‘not enough’ wages or government support so that millions are below the poverty line.

          There is ‘not enough’ health care and mental health support to keep everyone healthy in body and mind.

          There is ‘not enough’ compassion from those who ‘HAVE’ to reach out and share with those who ‘HAVE NOT’. Two billionaires, you know their names, are building rocket ships to take them and other rich people into space, when that money could do so much good for those in need in our country and around the world.

          There is ‘not enough’ equal educational opportunities for all of our children to be given the education they need to succeed in this country.

          There is “not enough” commitment from many in our country to make sensible rules about guns to cut down on the epidemic of gun violence killing and maiming our fellow citizens.

          With so much ‘scarcity’ around and through us, why do I want to talk about ‘abundance’?

          Talking about ‘abundance’ in a time of such ‘scarcity’ seems out of touch with reality.

          But I’m talking about God.

          Talk about being out of touch with reality!

          God is beyond our reality.

          God is capable of miracles.

          Our God is the God of Abundance—feeding 5000 with five loaves and two fish.

          But I’m not letting US off the hook.

          Where are the five loaves and two fish we can share like that young boy?

          Maybe Mary Ann Logue and the Biblical scholars were right about that—God’s ‘abundance’ comes from our ‘sharing’.

          Five loaves and two fish each—that’s all we’re asked to give. And if we give it, God will make it ‘abundant’.

          Just five loaves and to fish. That’s all. And it may just be enough.

          If we give out of the abundance God has given us, God’s ‘abundance’ will multiply our sharing over and over and over again.

          Just like that.

          Just like that.

          Share into God’s abundance.

Amen and Shalom

 

         

I went to Milton today

I went to Milton today and met with a couple of parishioners.

Next week, and every week after that, I'll go on Wednesday to lead a Bible study group over brought from home lunch and talk with people afterwards.

I'm going to do a study called "Reading the Gospels Side-by-side", which I've done at OLLI at U. Conn./Waterbury several times.

It is challenging since it brings into question what people 'think' about the gospels.

I look forward to it.

They, as far as I've been able to tell, will be up for it.

We'll see.

There is smoke high up in the air from the forest fires on the West Coast. We really are all in the same world.

I'm beginning to look forward to vacation in late August.

I don't look forward to the drive, though we did it many times when we were younger.

But the time on the beach on Oak Island is worth that.

We are going to have serious work done on our house this summer and fall--the foundation needs work, Bern wants two bathrooms gutted, the upstairs and dining room painted, the carpet upstairs pulled up and Lord knows what done and a new deck.

Luckily we have wonderful credit and can get a loan and have a healthy savings account to dip into.

I'm hoping the carpet and painting can be done while we're in North Carolina because that would be a real disruption.

We'll see.

Bern and I aren't on the same page about some of it--but most of it.

 

Guess what I got?

There was a great couple who lived down the street and to the left of St. Paul's in New Haven.

They both worked at Yale and had a 5 year old son who had never been baptized.

They came to church--both birth Episcopalians--from time to time and I liked them a lot.

Then their parents were coming to visit and wondering why the little one hadn't been baptized. So they came to me and I talked to him for over half-an-hour and decided we could do it.

Both their parents were there for the service.

I baptized the boy and then he came to communion for the first time.

When  he started back to his seat he stopped people coming up and said, very loudly, "Guess what I got? I got the Body of Christ!"

After half-a-dozen remarks like that, one of his grandparents tried to hush him.

I stopped everything and said, "No, don't stop him. We should all go back to our seats telling people we got the Body of Christ."

For a couple of months I heard people whisper to each other on their way back from communion, "Guess what I got?"

I loved that.

We should all do it all the time.

Getting the Body of Christ is worth sharing with other....

 

 

Time

to share my first post again....

Sunday, March 8, 2009

My first post

Sitting under the Castor Oil Tree (March 7, 2009)

The character in the Bible I have always been drawn to is Jonah. I identify with his story. Like Jonah, I have experienced being taken where I didn't want to go by God and I've been disgruntled with the way things went. The belly of a big old

fish isn't a pleasant means of travel either!

The story ends (in case you don't know it) with Jonah upset and complaining on a hillside over the city of Nineveh, which God has saved through Jonah. Jonah didn't want to go there to start with--hence the ride in the fish stomach--and predicted that God would save the city though it should have been destroyed for its wickedness. "You dragged me half way around the world," he tells God, "and didn't destroy the city....I knew it would turn out this way. I'm angry, so angry I could die!"

God causes a tree to grow to shade Jonah from the sun (scholars think it might have been a castor oil tree--the implications are astonishing!). Then God sends a worm to kill the tree. Well, that sets Jonah off! "How dare you kill my tree?" he challenges the creator. "I'm so angry I could die...."

God simply reminds him that he is upset at the death of a tree he didn't plant or nurture and yet he doesn't see the value of saving all the people of the great city Nineveh...along with their cattle and beasts.

And the story ends. No resolution. Jonah simply left to ponder all that. There's no sequel either--no "Jonah II" or "Jonah: the next chapter", nothing like that. It's just Jonah, sitting under the bare branches of the dead tree, pondering.

What I want to do is use this blog to do simply that, ponder about things. I've been an Episcopal priest for over 30 years. I'm approaching a time to retire and I've got a lot of pondering left to do--about God, about the church, about religion, about life and death and everything involved in that. Before the big fish swallowed me up and carried me to my own Nineva (ordination in the Episcopal Church) I had intended a vastly different life. I was going to write "The Great American Novel" for starters and get a Ph.D. in American Literature and disappear into some small liberal arts college, most likely in the Mid-Atlantic states and teach people like me--rural people, Appalachians and southerners, simple people, deep thinkers though slow talkers...lovely for all that--to love words and write words themselves.

God (I suppose, though I even ponder that...) had other ideas and I ended up spending the lion's share of my priesthood in the wilds of two cities in Connecticut (of all places) among tribes so foreign to me I scarcely understood their language and whose customs confounded me. And I found myself often among people (The Episcopal Cult) who made me anxious by their very being. Which is why I stuck to urban churches, I suppose--being a priest in Greenwich would have sent me into some form of shock...as I would have driven them to hypertension at the least.

I am one who 'ponders' quite a bit and hoped this might be a way to 'ponder in print' for anyone else who might be leaning in that direction to read.

Ever so often, someone calls my bluff when I go into my "I'm just a boy from the mountains of West Virginia" persona. And I know they're right. I've lived too long among the heathens of New England to be able to avoid absorbing some of their alien customs and ways of thinking. Plus, I've been involved in too much education to pretend to be a rube from the hills. But I do, from time to time, miss that boy who grew up in a part of the world as foreign as Albania to most people, where the lush and endless mountains pressed down so majestically that there were few places, where I lived, that were flat in an area wider than a football field. That boy knew secrets I am only beginning, having entered my sixth decade of the journey toward the Lover of Souls, to remember and cherish.

My maternal grandmother, who had as much influence on me as anyone I know, used to say--"Jimmy, don't get above your raisin'". I probably have done that, in more ways that I'm able to recognize, but I ponder that part of me--buried deeply below layer after layer of living (as the mountains were layer after layer of long-ago life).

Sometimes I get a fleeting glimpse of him, running madly into the woods that surrounded him on all sides, spending hours seeking paths through the deep tangles of forest, climbing upward, ever upward until he found a place to sit and look down on the little town where he lived--spread out like a toy village to him--so he could ponder, alone and undisturbed, for a while.

When I was in high school, I wrote a regular column for the school newspaper call "The Outsider". As I ponder my life, I realize that has been a constant: I've always felt just beyond the fringe wherever I was. I've watched much more than I've participated. And I've pondered many things.

So, what I've decided to do is sit here on the hillside for a while, beneath the ruins of the castor oil tree and ponder some more. And, if you wish, share my ponderings with you--whoever you are out there in cyber-Land.

Two caveates: I'm pretty much a Luddite when it comes to technology--probably smart enough to learn about it but never very interested, so this blog is an adventure for me. My friend Sandy is helping me so it shouldn't be too much of a mess. Secondly, I've realized writing this that there is no 'spell check' on the blog. Either I can get a dictionary or ask your forgiveness for my spelling. I'm a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa ENGLISH major (WVU '69) who never could conquer spelling all the words I longed to write.

I suppose I'll just ask your tolerance.