Stewards of Self & Substance

A Sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on November 11, 2007
24th Sunday after Pentecost/Year C

Sermon Text: Psalm 145

What is it that would cause you to break spontaneously into song? Are you like that at all? Have you ever camped in the mountains and woken up just as the sun is beginning to paint the sky and the surrounding peaks and you crawl from your tent, stand straight, fill your lungs with pure mountain air and channeling Gordon MacRae, you suddenly belt out: “Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day …”.

A beautiful fall morning can inspire as well … and if not a song, exactly, coming face to face suddenly with a spectacular blaze of crimson and orange and yellow can set everything inside of me a-jangling. Jan and I like to stroll with the dogs in a nearby park where crepe myrtles and scarlet maples put on a display that can leave us literally stammering.

One of our number here sent my family and me a seasonal greeting card the other day … inside was a handwritten note in the card that described the view from her living room window. The writer of the note exulted over the way the sun was lighting up the lower branches of a fall-colored Raywood ash … “red, gold, green, and orange shades of leaves with pots of chrysanthemums below reflecting all the same colors as the ash. “It is really NEAT!” said the writer of the note. “That is how I also praise God and feel so blessed to live here.”

Perhaps latent within us all is the impulse to praise God for the beauty of creation … mountain mornings, sunsets at the ocean, the unique beauty of changing seasons … the impulse to spontaneously voice our thanks links us to the psalmists whose great prayers of thanksgiving and praise have moved people of like heart and mind and spirit for thousands of years.
Psalm 148: Is a psalm of praise for God’s Universal Glory

1Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise God in the heights!
2Praise God, all God’s angels;
praise God, all God’s host!

3Praise God, sun and moon;
praise God, all you shining stars!
4Praise God, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!

7Praise the Lord from the earth,
you sea monsters and all deeps,
8fire and hail, snow and frost,
stormy wind fulfilling God’s command!

9Mountains and all hills,
fruit trees and all cedars!
10Wild animals and all cattle,
creeping things and flying birds!

11Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
12Young men and women alike,
old and young together!

13Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for God’s name alone is exalted;
God’s glory is above earth and heaven.
14God has raised up a horn for God’s people,
praise for all God’s faithful,
for the people of Israel who are close to God.
Praise the Lord!

The psalmists were the praying, singing poets and composers of sacred verse and song in the worship of Ancient Israel. Onto parchments and skins they would scratch out the words that would guide the congregation of old in their worship of God.

When we worshiped at Congregation B’nai Tikvah recently and shared in their musical Shabbat, it felt to me closer to how I imagine the worship of Israel was in the time of the psalmists … closer certainly than the propensity of modern Christian worshipers to praise God with loud clanging electric guitars and PowerPoint. To be fair, there are Jewish congregations who also employ all the modern gadgetry in their worship … Christians do not have the corner on liturgical “kitchiness”.

There is a snippet from traditional Christian liturgies that is calling to me, just now … a snippet that many of you grew up praying every week, every time you worshiped. Just saying the opening words will trigger an automatic response in many of us. But as you respond in a moment, be especially mindful of the third phrase … the third response. And emphasize, if you can, the third word of that third phrase. I think you’ll understand when you get there:

The Lord be with you // and also with you.

Lift up your hearts. // We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God // It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is indeed right and good to give you thanks and praise, almighty God … continues the familiar Eucharistic prayer.

This is entirely consistent with the praying sentiments of the psalmists … it is RIGHT and GOOD to give God thanks and praise. The psalms of praise exhort the people of God to give thanks to God, to sing praise to God, to bless God’s holy name.

It’s a little bit like Halloween where candy-laden fairy-princesses and pirates and ghouls traipse up the walk, offer you the choice of their trick or your treat … and then, on the occasions that they silently turn away from your door there is often a voice that speaks from the surrounding darkness:“Don’t forget to say ‘thank you’.” At which the little ghoul turns back and says: “Thank you!”.

It is indeed right and good to give almighty God thanks and praise.

Of all the things that moved the psalmists to voice their praise, it was, perhaps, God’s very goodness and God’s activity within history that moved them most of all. Praise for God’s mighty acts and God’s mighty works was at the heart of Israel’s praise of God. Israel understood God to be profoundly intermingled with human history and Israel’s history, profoundly intermingled with the doings of creation that God so deeply loved.

To sing praise to God’s mighty works and mighty deeds was to acknowledge God’s loving activity that ranged from the outer reaches of the cosmos to the inner reaches of every heart.

This joyful psalm that we sang together this morning praises God’s reign over the world. God has created a world of wonder and acted powerfully to save Israel. The psalmist says that faithful people declare to the next generation the wonderful works of God. The God of creation and history is a God of justice, hearing the cry of those who are oppressed and saving them. God watches over all. It is not only Israel who will be saved, but “all flesh” will come to know God’s greatness. This is the God who we follow as disciples, working to bring about God’s reign of justice and peace.

There is, in the psalms, a profound linkage between the “praise-worthiness” of God and God’s fiercely loving pro-activity on behalf of the weak and the poor and the oppressed. Those who would presume to offer their praise to God OR to lead God’s people in praising God would do well to remember this linkage, to remember, God’s bias on behalf of those denied access to the earth’s bountiful table of provision as our friend Ken Sehested has put it in our hearing so many times.

But … is it possible to praise God too much? Or to praise God wrongly? Is it possible for our praise—our worship—to become a hindrance to our wider responsibilities as God’s children and disciples of Jesus?

Apparently old prophet Amos thought so. To hear Amos describe the liturgical landscape of his day, you get the sense that the worship of Israel had pretty much reached its zenith. The simple spontaneous praise of God and God’s good works had evolved into a whole minor industry of worship … it’s kind of like some of these made for TV worship services that you can stumble across when channel-surfing. If only you could channel the preacher’s allowance for clothing, jewelry and hair-gel into a charitable cause.

Amos’ feelings about the worship of Israel as he observed and experienced it could be described as “less than charitable”.

Amos says:

21I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

And reading the gospels you get the sense that Jesus is no less critical of Israel’s worship industry in his day, turning over the money changers tables and driving the worship merchants from the temple.

The prophet Amos speaks so loudly, so stridently that reverberations of his ancient prophetic tirade can still be heard today. And it serves as a reminder that prayer and praise separated from compassionate activity and pursuit of justice obstructs God’s work and thwarts God’s intentions for the human family.

Of all the sermons preached on the subject, I’m not aware of any more powerful than that preached by Isaiah, the prophet. In the 58th chapter, the prophet distinguishes between false and true worship.

Isaiah 58: False and True Worship

58Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
2Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practised righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgements,
they delight to draw near to God.
3‘Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?’
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day,
and oppress all your workers.
4Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
5Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

6Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
7Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator* shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
9Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
10if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
11The Lord will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
12Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.


13If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the Lord honourable;
if you honour it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;*
14then you shall take delight in the Lord,
and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth;
I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

[Preacher’s note: “At this point, I spoke away from the script for several minutes about two modern figures who are living out Isaiah’s vision: Dr. Paul Farmer (featured in Tracy Kidder’s “Mountains Beyond Mountains”) and Greg Mortenson (in his own account, “Three Cups of Tea”)].

CONCLUSION:

People of Shell Ridge Church: If, upon, rising, we are moved to sing “Oh what a beautiful morning …”, let us likewise be moved to labor on behalf of those who awake to hunger … to violence … to oppressive conditions … to despair … to war.

If, when we gather to worship, we are moved while singing “How Great Thou Art” and “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee”, let us ground our praise and ground our adoration of God in re-committing ourselves to serve God’s creation, God’s family, our neighbors and friends throughout this good earth.

In the Stewardship of our selves and our substance, our persons and our plenty, and in the larger scheme of life, witness, worship and work: there is no higher praise to God that we can offer than the nearly wordless praise of:
loving … giving … and serving.

Amen.

Stewards of Grace

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on November 4, 2007
23rd Sunday after Pentecost/Year C

Sermon Text: Luke 19:1-10

What is it that drives a person up a tree?

For Stephen Sillett, it was the chance to prove that the tree he was currently in was the world’s tallest. Stephen Sillett is a botanist at Humboldt State University in Arcata. Last year on the northern California coast, Sillett climbed a coastal redwood recently named “Hyperion” and proved that it was the tallest tree yet known to exist at 379.1 feet. On an earlier climb in another 300+ footer, Stillett fell from a height of around 28 stories and only saved himself by grabbing a branch on his way down. His shoulder was painfully ripped from its socket, but his grip held and he was saved.

What drove Julia Butterfly Hill to climb a 180 foot, 600 year old Redwood and not return to the earth for 738 days was a desire to prevent the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting down this old-growth giant. It is the same desire, as I understand, expressed by the tree-sitters who, even now, are perched outside the stadium on the Cal campus in Berkeley.

For any young girl or boy, it doesn’t take a noble cause to send you skyward. Just ask any one of a number of Shell Ridge kids who just can’t seem to stay out of our Sycamores.

When I was a young boy growing up in Port Angeles, Washington, there was an old Atlas Cedar across the street. We would ride our bikes and play with our matchbox cars in the dirt at its base. But sometimes when I was alone, I would climb the old tree’s branches almost like you would climb a ladder. Some 50-60 feet in the air where the top thinned out and swayed in the breeze I would perch and look out over our town. Had my mom known that from time to time I ascended to the wobbly top of this old tree, this mild-mannered pastor’s wife might have become prone to violence. There are some things your parents are better off not knowing. And there is something about climbing a tree for clearing your head or changing your perspective.

So what drove Zacchaeus up the sycamore tree as the author of Luke’s gospel tells it? This is one of the most familiar stories in the Bible for those of us who grew up going to Sunday school. Possibly it is because someone turned it into that snappy little song of which the Ramblers earlier reminded us: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he …”.

You know, as I try to shape a mental image of Zacchaeus, it’s not hard for me to imagine that a similar song was sung tauntingly and disparagingly about the once diminutive boy and now diminutive man. What is it about human beings that makes us want to exploit the perceived weaknesses of others? Zacchaeus’ vertically challenged condition was well-known enough that Luke notes that it is what drove Zacchaeus to climb that sycamore tree.

And isn’t it just like Luke’s gospel that all the wrong people seem drawn to Jesus. All the wrong people seem to “get” Jesus while all the right people fight him all the way to the cross. Zacchaeus is one of the “wrong people”. And it’s not his short stature that is what’s wrong in the sight of the good, respectable folk … it’s that he’s short on scruples and short on compassion and short on anything that makes a good person “good”. He’s the chief tax collector and as such had made himself rich on what he has forcibly extracted from residents of Jericho on behalf of the hated Roman government. If Zacchaeus had been wronged as a child, he made it up in spades as an adult.

He’s a bit of a Richard Nixon character. When Nixon lost to Pat Brown in the California governor’s race in 1962, he purportedly withdrew from politics and blamed the media for his loss saying: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more …”. When people start talking about themselves in the third person, it’s time to get worried.

Zacchaeus knows what it’s like to be kicked around. And while he’s had some measure of revenge, so it seems, something about Jesus drove him to want to get closer and have a look at this man that some were claiming to be a fulfillment of God’s promise to send a messiah, God’s representative on earth. If Jesus really did represent the goodness and mercy of the God of Israel, Zacchaeus wanted to see it for himself.

While Zacchaeus had long been judged by what people thought they knew about him, his tree-climbing reveals that there was more to know. And presumably “the more” that there was to know was that this heartless thug yet had the capacity to change … to transform … to discover a capacity for generosity and kindness.

As children we are warned not to pre-judge … not to judge a book by its exterior, yet on the other hand, paradoxically, we’re told—warned— that “we never get a second chance to make a good first impression”, that the initial seconds of every first meeting create an indelible image of a person that is almost impossible to erase. It’s possible to spend much of one’s adult life trying to outlive the old and often false myths of one’s childhood … the names we got called, the caricatures of our true selves that we got saddled with. Some of us have fled our families of upbringing because of our families’ refusal to let us change, develop, transform and their determination to tell the old stories of childhood as though they still define us. As odd as it seems for the son of a pastor who is himself a pastor to say it, this is in part my own story.

What did the good people of Jericho think they knew about Zacchaeus? Bad man. Cheater. Collaborator. Opportunist. Clear case of Napoleon complex. A neat little box. And it serves people’s own ends … their own needs to keep others in little boxes. As long as “bad people” behave like “bad people”, then perhaps the extremely modest goodness that I am capable of won’t seem quite so modest. This is partly what’s at stake in the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in the previous chapter of Luke who are both everheard praying at the temple. Here’s how Eugene Peterson describes the two prayers and their pray-ers in his translation, “The Message”:

The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: 'Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.' "Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, 'God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.'"

Do you not find it interesting to note that Jesus said that is was the tax man and NOT the Pharisee who went home made right with God? Luke tells us that Jesus told this story to “some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people.”

Last night, several of us from Shell Ridge attended a celebration at San Leandro Community Church. We celebrated together the widening circle of inclusion on behalf of our lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered sisters and brothers in Christ. But reading the ancient and awful prayer of the Pharisee should remind us that widening circles of inclusion don’t likely happen easily or overnight.

Last night, my longtime and very dear friend and colleague, Jim Hopkins told a story I’d never heard before. During his admission into seminary, Jim was asked if there was anything that might ever cause him to ever leave the ministry in the American Baptist denomination. Jim quickly and confidently replied that if ever the denomination permitted homosexuals to assume pastoral leadership, that would be the time for his exit. This story was told in the midst of his description of his long, full circle of healing from the homophobia with which he’d been raised. He described how his parents had left the Southern Baptist church of his childhood because the Southern Baptists had just gotten “too liberal.” If you don’t know it, Jim has pastored for 18 years the congregation that has helped lead the healing of homophobia and helped widen the circle of inclusion for LBGT folk for a couple of generations. It is the congregation where I received my pastoral training. It is the congregation that aided in my own healing from homophobia.

I learned something else last night. George Barna is the leading pollster on behalf of Evangelical Christianity, in other words, on behalf of fairly traditional and conservative Christianity. He’s the Southern Baptist equivalent of the Gallup Poll. In a recent poll whose results have just been released, Barna asked both churched and un-churched young adults to describe in a single phrase what it was that summed up Christianity. A single phrase. Churches like us take a crack at that from time to time. We say about ourselves things like: “friendly … caring … welcoming … peacemaking … justice-seeking” … inclusive … any others? _____________________???

So, a large sampling of young adults from age 16-29, both self-described non-Christians as well as avowed churchgoers, were asked: “In a word, what describes Christianity?” 91% of the non-Christians and 80% of the regular church-goers, the Christians, said the same thing. The phrase that best describes Christianity from the vantage point of their generation is: “anti-homosexual”.

WOW. Wow. Is it this for which Jesus came to live, minister and die and be reborn? Is this what the modern church has been reduced to in its public witness on behalf of Jesus the Christ? This Jesus who called down from the tree Zacchaeus, this Jesus who joined Zacchaeus in his home at the common table, this Jesus who would soon go up on this own tree because he believed that nothing less than full “God-imagined” humanity resided in every human soul, every heart, and could be freed for the benefit of all … if only we saw people as God saw them.

If rotten to the core, tax-collecting, Rome-collaborating Zacchaeus, who was worse than even “robbers, crooks and adulterers” in the minds of his more righteous neighbors—if Zacchaeus could be transformed and discover within a wellspring of generosity and justice … well … what’s possible for you and for me? And what’s possible for the venerable and vulnerable church? Might we one day not be defined and described by what we are against but the many good things we are for?

Now, as much as ever, is the time for the church to prove to a cynical world that it is not a “heartless thug”, but a place and a people of transformation and healing, generosity and kindness, a people of hope where there is “a place for all.” Now, more than ever, may be the time for Shell Ridge Church to unequivocally declare that “if God made you, then we want you.” Now may be the time for us to plainly state that there are NO people, none of God’s human creation in its wondrous variety who are not fully welcome into the life and the love of this congregation.

It is at the table of fellowship in his own home that Zacchaeus discovers his own hidden capacities for transformation and generosity and fairness. It is at the table of fellowship in our home—THIS home—that we are given an opportunity to discover and live out these things as well. It is at the table of fellowship that we learn and re-learn how to be good stewards of the grace of God that has been showered so generously upon us in the person and the sacred friendship of Jesus.

It is also at the table of fellowship in this “home of faith” that we learn that it takes all of the Zacchaeuses of the world together with all of us to create the truest vision of hope and transformation for our world that is in such need and knows such hunger for bread and meaning and hope.

You’re learning these Sundays that we are in a Stewardship campaign … a campaign where we are invited to “surrender all” … where we are invited to place “all that we have” and “all that we are” in God’s hands so that God’s great work of Shalom may be done in our world and in our time.

Our theme this year is “Quilted Together in Community and Common Ministry”. As I’ve thought a bit about this theme, it occurs to me that there’s nothing lonelier than a single “quilt block”. Can you imagine trying to get warm under a single, tiny square of fabric? It is only as dozens and hundreds of odd bits of random fabric are lovingly joined together that a quilt reaches its potential as a source of protective warmth and a thing of great beauty.

Very much the same is true of the bread that we break at each and every time of communion. The individual ingredients of bread are, by themselves, basically AWFUL … it is only being mixed together in the right proportions … lovingly kneaded … and carefully baked that we get a good loaf of bread that is a delight to both the mouth and the soul.

On our own, we cannot rescue the tarnished name of Christianity … or save the world from its many enormous challenges or its seeming determination to destroy itself. But when we come together around the table with our hearts and hands open to receiving the grace of God in Christ as symbolized in these gifts, we give God the chance to soften us and transform us. We give God the chance to channel the very same grace that has been given to us into the lives of the world around us.

It is at the table of the Lord where we know grace and feel the powers of transformation at work and where we can hear and repeat the words spoken to the transformed and transforming chief tax collector: “TODAY is “salvation day” in this house.”

People of Shell Ridge and Stewards of God’s grace: TODAY IS the day that God has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Today IS salvation day in this house!

Amen.

In Good Times & Bad

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on October 14, 2007
20th Sunday after Pentecost/Year C

Texts: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66; II Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19


This was not exactly another Friday night. It was intended to be the night of a lifetime … the night among all nights for the young woman and man. They had met a year earlier and now were preparing to enter into a life covenant with one another. The wedding was scheduled to be performed in a beautiful outdoor courtyard—enclosed on all sides, but wide open to the sky. Unfortunately, between the rehearsal on Thursday and the afternoon of the wedding on Friday, it poured BUCKETS.

October in California is famous for its lingering Indian summer, warm days and gentle evenings, soft breezes and rustling leaves. But this year has started off a bit on the soggy side and it threatened to drive the soon-to-be-married couple into a drab room off of the courtyard where they would, to be sure, be properly hitched, but not in the style they’d hoped. At five o’clock, the rain had stopped, but threatening clouds persisted. The temperature was hovering in the high 50’s—but at the moment, at least, it wasn’t raining. The hotel staff set out the folding chairs and stood the flowers on their stands where they danced in the breeze. A friend of the family rolled out the white runner and scattered rose petals daintily on its surface … and then a gust of wind blew it all away. At 5:30, there were occasional gaps in the clouds overhead, but still no rain. Now a solitary musician, a saxophonist, began his gentle wailing while the guests began to mill around the back of the courtyard.

Finally the time came: the guests were seated with the bride and groom’s mothers not far behind. The groom, best man and I entered from the side and were soon joined by the matron of honor. Then the bride came strolling down the flower-strewn, but now runner-less aisle, her arm looped in her father’s while the saxophone player offered up the most interesting version of Here Comes the Bride I’d ever heard. And still, the rain restrained itself from dampening the couple’s hopes and sending us all scurrying. We were shivering, but we were dry. Soon, we found ourselves in that so familiar and so difficult verbal terrain where spouses-to-be audaciously claim that no matter what lies ahead, they will survive it together as a couple, they will stick with it through thick and thin. In spite of admittedly knowing nearly nothing about the future and what it holds, this couple was the latest in a really, REALLY long line of marital daredevils to claim that their covenantal promise is: “for better, for worse … for richer, for poorer … in sickness and in health.”

The other really long line that Friday night’s couple joined was that of the writers and singers and poets and prophets and dreamers of the Bible whose every thought and word was based on the belief that God’s love and presence was as predictably certain as the daily emergence of the sun and the laws of gravity and the fact that the California Golden Bears will never quite be able to keep from stumbling in their ascent to the top of the college football heap. Corinne, let’s just let that deep sigh out and move on.

The Biblical writers knew they dwelt in an errant universe where calamity could strike at any time and where humanity could be unspeakably cruel. But that was far less important to the Biblical writers than the simple facts at the heart of the universe that God “IS”—simply “IS” … and that the God who “IS” is “for” God’s creation … for the earth and all that is in it. For the Biblical writers, God was a loving creator who had included God’s own being in the creation so that it was impossible that they could ever be apart.

Much, much later, in his letter to the Roman church, Paul reminded them that “nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God” … NOTHING. It was as though God had stood alone shivering in the early twilight of the creation of the universe and pledged God’s own being to a creation that was yet to be, promising for God’s own part: “I take you to be mine: for better, for worse … for richer, for poorer … in sickness and in health.” What has been joined together in the heart and imagination of God’s own being, nothing … NOTHING can put asunder. Not even our own willful, back-turning, back-sliding, so careless-in-the-things-that-really-matter selves can force God to turn God’s back on us. The author of the second epistle to Timothy, writing in the Spirit of Paul, said: if we are faithless, God remains faithful—for God cannot deny God’self.

It would be a denial of God’s own being to be anything other than faithful to God’s children, to God’s creation. Would that human parents could remain as consistently true to their best parental instincts and ideals. Would that the 16 year old boy in Martinez had had a father and the 9 year old boy in Berkeley had had a mother whose hearts were as clear about remaining faithful and loving as God is toward us all. And is it not implied in the contract made at birth—if not conception, that we parents—both biological as well as “situational”—promise with every cell and neural impulse to seek the highest good for the children we parent, truly: “for better, for worse … for richer, for poorer … in sickness and in health.” And I’ll leave it to the leaders of tonight’s “Healthcare for ALL” to possibly suggest that were we as faithful to the children among us as we believe God is to us, that there would be no uninsured child in this nation OR, if it be in our power, anywhere on this planet.

We may affirm that God is a faithful, loving parent who wills our highest good, but we’ll also acknowledge that God does not shield us from every earthly ill.

Several years ago at Peace Camp … several of us sat in a dormitory lounge passing a guitar around and sharing songs we knew. It’s always been one of my favorite parts of the summer gathering. My friend Joe Phelps, a pastor in Louisville, picked up the guitar and started singing a song called: “Poetry” and it became an instant “dormitory lounge” classic. Walt Wilkins is a friend of Joe’s and the writer of this song. Listening to the song, Walt clearly has no trouble thinking of God as creator and sustainer and gentle lover of all that is:

Now, somebody made everything

From the soul, inside out to Saturn's rings

How my baby smiles and how Ray Charles sings

Of course we were created

The clouds make rain, the ocean makes sand

The earth breathes fire, and lava makes land

Now that took a mighty hand

And a wild imagination

One of these days the Ramblers are gonna show up and sing Walt Wilkin’s wonderful song.

But the verse of the song that has always stuck with me the most is just a little snippet that goes: “the world has a way, if you know what I mean, of scuffin’ you up”. When I first heard them, those words hit with surprising force. Maybe it was because my pastor friend singing them had been through some very tough times. Maybe it was because I knew that each of us in that circle had been scuffed up a time or two or ten. Have you ever been “scuffed up” by life?

I’ll bet that’s how Israel in exile might have described it when Jeremiah spoke to them the word of the Lord that told them to hang in there.

And I’m fairly certain it is “life in exile” that is being described when the psalmist tells this morning of “being tried as silver is tried … of being brought into the ensnaring net … of having burdens laid on their backs … of having to endure a trek through fire and water.”

And what about being afflicted with a disease, as Luke tells it, that causes the whole human family to flee from the sight of you. It helps to remember that being “exiled” doesn’t necessarily involve being shipped off to a foreign land … it’s also being treated as foreign and strange and frightful by those of your own community … even those who are unaware they’re doing it … it is being exiled while yet in your own land.

Exile can even be something as simple as age and aging--though that’s certainly not true for everyone. I’m thinking right now of Millie Harris, whose birthday we celebrated on Wednesday at the American Baptist Women’s White Cross luncheon. Seeing Millie on her walker lets you know that life’s laid some “scuffing” on her, yet she entered the patio room with her trademark smile on her face and a quip on her lips. And perched jauntily on her head was an amazing velvet birthday cake hat complete with velvet candles.

Now no matter what age it is you are turning, it is good to be remembered on your birthday … perhaps it’s a small symbolic reminder that at the heart of all things, we are beloved.

I have a dear friend whose friendship goes back over thirty years. We met when he worked at my uncle’s church camp while I had a huge crush on his sister. In the more active times of our friendship, we were like blood-brothers and soul-mates. We roomed together in college and even began seminary together before he wandered off to get married and … scuffed up a bit by the experience.

He has long since re-married and has a wonderful family and a good career. Our friendship has been in a kind of “maintenance mode” in recent years, but the one thing we can always count on is that a birthday will never pass but that we will pause to call and catch up with each other. On May 5th, I called and wished my friend a happy 49th birthday. On September 7, on my 29th birthday … er, my 49th birthday, the day came and went with nary a word from my friend. It seemed odd to me, but perhaps it was simply a measure of how many years it had been since we’d been “best friends”. A whole month went by in silence … and then one day, a note:



Hey Greg,

I just realized for the first time in all the years I forgot your B-day. I'm sorry. I have been going through a lot of stuff lately. I know that is really no excuse, but it took my mind of off regular things for awhile. On the 28th of August I had to have a prostate biopsy. That was not fun. Then I had to wait to hear if I had cancer. My biopsy came out okay, except for one sample. They took 14 samples—NOT FUN!

From August 17th through September 4th I went through at least 20 tests. I had MRI's MRA's for my brain and neck. I was in the hospital almost every day. So, the end to my summer was not fun for me. After all the tests they ruled out a lot of things. I was diagnosed on September 4th with Parkinson's disease the day before school started. At first the doc thought I had symptoms of what the call Parkinsonism's. There is no medication for that form and the symptoms are horrible and scary. He tried me on a medication and said I'm going to treat you for Parkinson's and if the medication works on you; that will be a good thing. Well, the medication worked thus it relieved a lot of anxiety for Polly and me. She was a wreck anyway because she was reading stuff off the net. I choose to not read stuff and I went right to acceptance. Polly on the other has had a really hard time. But, now she is better. As of yet I don't have the tremors. Most of my symptoms are motor related. I have not missed one day of school. I'm still running as much as I can. My left side is affected a bit more than the right side. All in all I'm doing well. I hope you and your family is doing well too. Take care,

I hope you had a good B-day.

Steve

“Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night.”

My friend Steve is entering a new time in his life—but “new” in this instance does not imply better or improved. He is entering a kind of exile where slowly, but damnably surely, his body will become exiled from itself.

We have all seen changes of one terrifying kind or another afflict people we love. And many of these changes are denoted by innocuous names that truly fail to convey the dreaded implications. And yet when we hear these names, there is a stiffening in our posture and perhaps a similar stiffening in our spirit.

What do we do when we get to the other half of the promise that seemed held out to us so cheerily at birth. At birth and in youth and even the perpetual youthfulness we many of us seem determined to live out, we often live as though the first half of the marital and divine promise is the only one we’ll ever know: better … richer … health. So what do we do when that chapter seems to end and now we arrive at the second part of the marital and divine promise: worse … poorer … sickness.

Perhaps we could call this “ultimate measure” time. You’ll likely recall that famous quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he said: The ultimate measure of a person is not where he or she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he or she stands at times of challenge and controversy. What is true for the trials and tribulations of the world we live in can also be very true of the trials and tribulations we must face as solitary human beings as we come up against our own limits, our own mortality. Our “ultimate measure” will likely be exposed by the serious scuffing life can lay upon us.

My friend Steve and I took classes in college from an Old Testament professor who was a bull of a man. On the handball court, he would regularly whip opponents half his age. Then the summer between my junior and senior year, this stalwart professor suffered a serious, but non-fatal heart attack. And though he regained his health, his spirit was irreparably broken. And when he finally died several years later, it could be said that he had truly died some years before.

If we’re going to talk about the “ultimate measure” of a person, it’s not that we’re speaking of superhuman existential courage … scoffing at death when it sneers in our face. That’s not it. But it may be that the ultimate measure is the kind demonstrated by the 10 lepers in Luke’s story. The ultimate measure of a person is that in our hour of greatest need, we turn with confidence to that which will never fail us, will always be with us and for us, for better, worse, rich and poor, sick and healthy times of our existence.

The ten lepers know that in their condition, they really have no one to turn to, no one who will be with them and for them … except other lepers. But the communities of their upbringing and the center of their faith are all virtually closed to them. And with God so very strongly identified with the family and the temple, the lepers are, therefore, virtually without God. Yet in Jesus they see a glimmer of hope. The prophets of old had spoken of hope and healing that would come to barren and wasted places. And in Jesus they see the word of that hope made flesh.

And though Jesus had all the same reasons to reject the lepers as everyone else seemed to, he did not. We do not know exactly what transpired, but Luke tells us that Jesus inspires the ten lepers to go to the priest to present themselves and in that simple act of trust they find their healing. But Luke goes on to tell us that one of the lepers is “leprous” in more than one way—he not only has the dreaded skin ailment, but he is also a despised Samaritan. And though he, like the other nine, has been restored to health, he yet remains a Samaritan and what good will it do him to present himself to a priest of Israel, what good will it do for him to “go back home” when his home is not where the others are going.

And so, with what surely is some great trepidation, he turns back … back to the one in whom there had been no judgment, only welcome and hope and healing. I deeply appreciate what Ann Fontaine says in her blog in considering the odd actions of the healed Samaritan leper, returning to Jesus. She says: “When the ten lepers were all suffering from a common disease, they were bonded by their outcast status. When they were all healed, the nine returned to their life: their ethnic and religious life. The foreigner only had Jesus at that point … and perhaps he had found his true home.”

Given the chance, I wonder how my friend, Steve, would describe his encounter with God--with the Divine--in this utterly new and foreign time in his life. He did say to me in his note that, unlike his wife who has been quite undone by it all, that he has “gone right into acceptance.” His reference is, you might know, to Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ “stages of grief”. In her classic book, On Death and Dying, Ross describes the five stages as:

* Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
* Anger (why is this happening to me?)
* Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
* Depression (I just don't care anymore)
* Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)

I told Steve that in jumping straight to “acceptance”, he was a better and stronger soul than I am.

Jeremiah seems almost pastoral in seeking to move the exiles past all of the other very understandable emotional stages to the stage of acceptance. Might it be in acceptance of what cannot be easily or immediately changed that we find new strength for living and wellsprings of God’s grace?

Jeremiah tells the broken-hearted exiles who are now foreigners in someone else’s land, to settle into this experience, to live their lives the best they can, to resume the normal patterns of their lives as though they had not been uprooted and forcibly moved to a foreign land. It was in exile that the people of Israel learned to live with God in their hearts, and not just in the temple. Perhaps in finding God in the midst of their exile, the exiles found their true home.

Every one of us here, I suspect, has something … a wound, a weakness, an awareness … that cannot be easily or immediately changed. It may literally be a sickness unto death or it may be an inner affliction that will dog and worry us all the long way to the grave. Whoever we are, whatever our affliction, we may find our healing in approaching the source of grace and presenting ourselves to that source with “bold humility”.

We cannot guarantee that the promises we make to one another in good faith will survive the rough and tumble of human existence, we cannot guarantee that the good healthy genes of our parents will help us beat every deadly disease, we cannot guarantee that we will nimbly avoid every awful accident. We can only acknowledge that within the heart of all that is in this world, this universe, God is for us … that wherever we are, God IS with healing and grace for our change-battered souls.

God is the firm foundation upon which our lives can safely rest, come what may. And, as we will sing in a few moments:

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

Amen.

Anybody Listening?

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on September 30, 2007

Year C / 18th Sunday after Pentecost

Text: 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31

Many years after Paul had died, a wise church elder wrote a letter to a young leader of the church … or perhaps he wrote to young leaders in general. The wise church elder felt it was important to speak in the continuing spirit of the Apostle Paul who had been a wise shepherd and guide for the early church. And so he wrote this letter as though it was Paul writing to his young protégé and traveling companion, Timothy. Writing in the spirit of Paul, the Apostle’s counsel and wisdom found new expression in a new time in the life of the church.

I guess it’s a little like trying to remember the wisdom of one of your parents or a beloved mentor in their absence, and while you can’t quite quote them verbatim, you have a sense of how they might have approached a new time or a new predicament.

I told one of you recently that I continue to be amazed at how poorly received are my long and eloquent sermons to my children. And my personal sermons to my dear spouse are only slightly better received. I cast gems at their feet … I weave nearly visible wisdom in the air with my words … and do they clasp me in a warm embrace, eyes wet with gratitude, mumbling their deep and abiding thanks that I have seen fit to gently correct and guide them? Perhaps someday. And in ways they can’t know and I can’t even always say, they do bless and gratify me.

But I have also been blessed by the presence of others … students … docile souls who have been putty in my pastoral hands. But seriously … I have and we have all been blessed by women and men who were and are engaged in the study of ministry and related matters. Beth … Amy … Micky … Nancy … Jodie … Trevor … Jennifer … Angela. And looking back I find myself wondering who guided whom? Truly there was a high degree of mutuality and reciprocity in our relationship as student … pastor … and people. We all learned. We all grew.

Now it so happens that one of those ministers in training is all growed up and is now a pastor in a far place. In fact it’s so far away, that I’m pretty sure you can’t get there from here. In approximately one hour, our dear friend Trevor Hanbridge will be duly installed as the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Springfield, Vermont. I really do think of the happy meeting of Trevor and Calvary as a modern sign of God’s continuing activity. In reading e-mails from Trevor and e-mails from one of the members of the pastoral search committee—a young man I knew from my days in Vermont, it seems clear that this is a marriage that has been and is blessed by God.

At some point in that service, an audio recording of a greeting from me on our behalf will be played at Trevor’s installation. What I’ve written is certainly no epistle, but it does give me joy to warmly recall the friendship masked as guidance that I was and we were all able to share with Trevor … and, also, of course, with Cindy, Isabelle and Mae.

Dearest Trevor, Cindy, Isabelle and Mae,

What a joyous day and time you must be having. And what a joyous day and time your now beloved congregation must be having.

And dear Calvary Baptist friends, my warmest congratulations on this God-drenched time in your life as a congregation.

Three years ago this month, a wide-smiling, bright-eyed, slightly graying young man from Burlington wandered into the open arms of our California congregation. Of course it was his lovely wife and daughters of whom we took the most notice. But this young man very quickly insinuated himself into the deepest places of our hearts. How blessed we every one of us Shell Ridgers have been to spend three years on a common journey with Trevor and the Hanbridge family.

One of the most impressive things I have noted about Trevor is his unwavering commitment to his family. Next to his loyalty to his God, nothing claims a higher place in Trevor’s life than his wife and his two daughters. One should always be suspicious of a pastor who thinks God calls him or her to place the church above their family. Trevor has got it right.

I must say that I liked Trevor from the first moment I met him. I’ll also say that I like the person and pastor Trevor is becoming. For three years I watched Trevor perform a slow, intricate dance with his God and his faith and this not-always-comfortable calling into pastoral ministry that yet beckoned him like a siren. Yet every step of Trevor’s dance was taken with thoughtfulness and integrity. Trevor could have tried to become a living miniature of the many wise and wonderful human influences in the church and the seminary around him, but instead he chose to remain, or perhaps I should say, continue to become his own man—his own person. Trevor certainly values the council of others, but he seems also to know his core and his foundation.

Calvary Church, you will be blest repeatedly as you share your journey with a pastor who has his priorities in order, is in love with God and his family, and is on a journey of life and faith whose outcome cannot entirely be known except that God is with you and you are on this journey together.

So, dear friends, on this day when you formally join into this sacred movement of Christ’s ministry together, my prayer for you is that you will strongly encourage one another in your becoming—that you will determine to grow as partners in this marriage of ministry. Grow in compassion. Grow in Christ-likeness. Grow in wisdom. Grow in depth and breadth of love for all people, and indeed, for all of God’s beloved creation.

God has richly blessed some two hundred years of this congregation’s life and ministry, your work and your witness. May God go with you, pastor and people, into every future minute and moment as you discover new vitality as the hands and feet of Jesus, serving in his stead.

Finally, to Trevor, Cindy, Isabelle and Mae: I love you all and the Shell Ridge church family and I wish you and the Calvary Baptist family the very best.

Peace, your friend Greg (or “P.G.”)



I’ve taken a few moments to mentally compare my celebratory note to Trevor with the Epistle to Timothy … and I realize how much trust and courage it takes to write a note as strongly worded and as fiercely directive as was the Epistle … or any of the other New Testament epistles. These are passionate sermons inscribed in blood on parchment and hide. They are written with great passion because they are about things that matter greatly. On the occasions I’ve stepped into the pulpit with that kind of passion, I’ve always done so with great fear and trembling … and I’ve always ended completely drained and literally trembling.

Now it may be a while before the right combination of trust and courage allows Trevor to preach on the subject of “blind greed”, but the author of 1st Timothy and the author of Luke’s gospel have noooo such fears, no such restrictions … they lay it out in living color. And their message? Greed is blind, greed is corrupting and greed kills.

It’s hard to contemplate a sermon on money and greed without thinking of the two Barry’s across the bay. Barry Zito is the former Oakland A’s pitcher who signed away his zen-loving soul when he inked a contract last year for $126 million, the highest paid pitcher in baseball history. As an impoverished pitcher in Oakland, he won the Cy Young award for the American League’s best pitcher. In a Giant’s uniform this year, he was, shall we say: lackluster? And then there’s Barry Bonds, the skinny but highly skilled player who was once baseball’s highest paid player. Barry now looks like two of his former self while the shadow of alleged steroid use clouds what should have been one of baseball’s brightest careers.

Only those who spent the last few months colonizing Mars will not know that Barry broke the most sacred record in sports, besting Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron as the new home run king. Except there’s that little cloud of doubt and suspicion. And actually, it’s not a little cloud.

A New York fashion designer bought Bonds’ 756th home run ball at an auction for $752,000. Then he ran an online vote to determine the fate of the ball. The three options were: send the ball to the Hall of Fame as it is, send the ball to the Hall of Fame with a giant asterisk branded in it or send it into outer space and oblivion. The fans chose to send the ball to the hall of fame with the asterisk to indicate that Bonds’ home run record will always exist under an air of suspicion.

And this summer, in the Tour de France one cyclist after another was dismissed from the tour for evidence of cheating. And last year’s winner will likely soon be stripped of his award.

As most of us know, Diablo Valley college has been rocked by a grade for sale scandal … criminal charges have been filed against 34 current or former students and 21 more are being investigated. A columnist in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “Ask a high school or college student about cheating, and before you can finish the sentence, the person will blurt out two things: "Everybody does it," and "It's no big deal."”

Million dollar baseball contracts, a branded ¾ million dollar baseball, steroids in baseball and blood doping in cycling, and academic dishonesty that “everybody does” and that’s “no big deal”. And these are just odd, random examples of values and balance and perspective gone awry. And it seems to me that one could argue that at the heart of these cultural maladies … these ailments is the old demon “greed.” Greed for money, greed for influence, greed for advantage, greed for privilege, greed for power, greed for winning at all costs. It’s all greed. And the wise old pastoral soul who writes in Paul’s name and the gospel writer who wrote Luke and Acts both wish to warn and remind us that “Greed is blind, greed is corrupting and greed kills.”

Greed may be dressed in Giant’s orange and black or the Tour’s yellow jersey or it may have a really odd Donald Trump hairdo, but in the end, the wise souls wish to remind us, greed feeds on itself, feeds on others, is nearly blind to its detructive ways and consumes everything in its path.

In Luke, this morning, Jesus tells a parable that is astoundingly graphic. It’s about an extremely wealthy man who dress and conspicuous consumption tell the listener that this man has more money than he knows what to do with. He’s so wealthy that he uses bread for napkins and throws it on the ground where the dogs fight over it. When the dogs aren’t fighting over the bread, they are, in an odd depiction of kindness, licking the wounds of a beggar who lives at the wealthy man’s gate. And though the rich man is aware of the dogs, he seems completely unaware, completely oblivious to the beggar lying on the ground in his desperate and depressing condition. You get an early sense of where this story is going because while the dying beggar has a name, Lazarus, never is the rich man given that honor. It’s the first of several reversals in the story, reversals for which Jesus’ parables become well known. In this life, it is the wealthy and the powerful whose names we remember on concert halls and charitable foundations. But who remembers those whose lives are like the dust in which they are forced to dwell? The nameless multitudes whose misfortune it so nearly is to have ever been born.

And so what an astounding reversal of social expectation and an astounding reversal of roles. Lazarus soon dies, in Jesus’ story, and is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham where he takes his rest. This is the royal treatment. The rich man is sent to eternal torment and even there remains unnamed, just another rich brute too blind to take note the great suffering that was at his very feet.

And you would think, within the context of this story, that his eternal torment would make him a bit wiser … and yet his two requests of Abraham regarding Lazarus shows that he still considers Lazarus as a lowly slave … a go-fer. Even in torment he cannot see the humanity of the one who had suffered on his doorstep.

If I were to take this sermon up to this point and leave it now in your hands to complete, where would you go with it? Any takers? I ask the question because in our modern era where satellite communications have given us a window on every corner of the planet—including the most miserable and afflicted corners, there are literally billions upon billions of Lazarus’ whose thin limbs, distended bellies, tattered clothing and sore-covered limbs are within our view … they are on our “virtual doorstep”. Probably not even Jesus could have foreseen a day when our technological omnipresence in the world would rival that of God’s. And we’d better hope that Jesus’ parable is just a stern warning to middle class and better citizens of first century Palestine, because if you and I have any sense that heaven and hell are literal realities, then we all better pack our coffins with a whole lot of aloe vera and lidocaine.

In a conversation with Jan’s mother who was visiting last week, she reminded me that the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that there will be 144,000 people in heaven … but according to my rough calculations based on Jesus’ parable this morning, there will be about 6 billion people gathered around Abraham’s bosom … I hope it’s a big bosom … and the top 5 percent of the world’s population who control the lion’s share of the world’s wealth are going to be begging a few of those billions to dip the tips their fingers in cool water to slake our eternal thirst.

When I was in junior high, I sang in a church youth choir directed by my mother. And one of the hot junior anthems of the late 60’s and early 70’s was entitled “Hey, Hey, Anybody Listening?”. The song went: “Hey, hey, anybody listening, hey, hey, anybody there? Hey, hey, anybody listening? Anybody care?”

It seems to me that this was the song Jesus was singing when he told his parable and it seems to me that it was the song that the author of the epistle to Timothy was singing: “Is anybody listening? Does anybody care?”

We do well to remember that Jesus’ parables were not typically sweetness and light. And of the harsh judgment found in his harder parables, we’d do well to consider that it may just be folk like us who receive the gloomiest verdict. It’s as if Jesus is asking: “Is anybody listening? Does anybody care?” At the end of the parable, the rich man, now desperate to warn his brothers, is now bargaining hard with Abraham: “but if someone goes to warn my brothers from the dead, they will repent." And Abraham said to him, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets”—in other words, what has been taught to them for generations, “neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." '

Well, how do we find our way out of this homiletical corner? In part, it is by listening again to some of the final words to Timothy, words that remind the wealthy of his time and ours that we are all linked together, every way you can describe the polarities of human existence, that we are all yet bound up in a single garment of destiny, as Martin King put it.

As a fellow Baptist preacher said, “A faithful response to the poor now involves not only some clear refusals to own or spend in certain ways and some very personal acts of self-giving, but also commitments to far-reaching structural change. This does touch on who pays how much tax, and on what workers everywhere are paid and on what kind of healthcare is available to the poor. If we don't hear the Gospel impinging on those questions, it's not the Gospel of Jesus we've been hearing.”

From time to time, we are blessed to be able to serve the poor. Whether Winter Nights or Mexico Mission or White Cross or volunteer overseas missions or whatever … each of these experiences and others reminds of what we know deep down … that each time we serve, the ones we serve serve us … and inspire us and free us and renew our faith and empower us to live out the mission and meaning of Jesus. As Dorothy Day said so truly—this is my paraphrase: “I really don’t know about the salvation of any single soul; somehow we must all be saved together.”

So, dear friends, I’ll say to Trevor’s church and I’ll say to us, my prayer for you is that you will strongly encourage one another in your becoming—that you will determine to grow as partners in this marriage of ministry. Grow in compassion. Grow in Christ-likeness. Grow in wisdom. Grow in depth and breadth of love for all people, and indeed, for all of God’s beloved creation.

You may not realize it, but every sermon you’ve ever heard and every sermon you’ll ever hear again is asking one way or another, the question: “Hey, HEY! Anybody listening? Hey, HEY! Anybody there? Hey, HEY! Anybody listening? Anybody care?” Amen.

Pray for EVERYONE

A sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on September 23, 2007

Year C / 17th Sunday after Pentecost

Texts: Jeremiah 8:18--9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; Luke 16:1-13; 1 Timothy 2:1-7

So … summer is officially over … fall has officially begun. And as if to makes its point, Jan and I woke up yesterday morning listening to the gentle patter of rain … I got out of bed and unzipped the window and looked out upon a high sierra meadow glistening in an early morning drizzle. You’re right, we weren’t at home yesterday morning. We were camping up at Calaveras Big Tree State Park which is a bit northwest of Yosemite on Highway 4. The temperature was a brisk 44 degrees and there was water falling from the sky, but we were warm and dry and absolutely entranced by our morning in a mountain meadow. I have camped outdoors most of my life and I’m happy to say that we’ve learned how to be relatively comfortable in nearly every condition. That was not always the case, however.

I will admit that the following memory was evoked by a conversation this past week with a couple of our young boys in Logos who are also Cub Scouts … or Scrub Sprouts as we used to call it.

The year was around 1969. I had followed in my brother’s footsteps and joined Troop 476 that met in a ramshackle disaster of a building in Port Angeles, Washington. There were an unusual number of tenderfeet joining the troop that night, so I was given the dubious distinction of being the patrol leader of this raggedy group of pre-teen, pre-adolescent, pre-pubescent boys. Oh … my … goodness. Truly … don’t walk, RUN! Have I shared this story before?

Our first outing with me as the patrol leader was to a fall “camporee” at the local fairgrounds. In my position as the esteemed leader of these young “men”, I was responsible for making our camping arrangements and selecting the menu for our first memorable assault on the American wilderness.

In that day, nobody, and I mean NOBODY owned tents. Rich people owned tents and we were a bunch of lower middle class 11 year olds, so we used the next best thing: a gigantic stretch of thick black plastic sheeting. Somehow at the campground we managed to sort of prop up this enormous piece of plastic so it didn’t suffocate us at night. Now of course there just might have been a few “gaps” in the arrangement here and there, so wouldn’t you know that the night of the campout it poured BUCKETS. And, yet, I’m happy to report that owing to my burgeoning skills as a leader, NO ONE got wet, except for this one REALLY annoying boy—the one rich kid in the patrol. This was the boy who had an expensive sleeping bag that he boasted he could float down a river in. By the grace of the scouting gods, that very kid woke up in a puddle of water many inches deep. And he was not floating. And he was not amused. Great was our mirth and merriment. I think his parents threatened a law suit.

But the really great thing about that first campout was our inaugural meal together. I put a lot of time and thought into how best to keep the troops fit and happy and so we had cube steaks cooked on a hot rock warmed to just that perfect degree of rawness … topped off with snack pack chocolate pudding and orange soda. Yummm!!! Our family members came out that first night to make sure we were at least alive when the night began. And as they watched us lightly warming our cube steaks on the rocks and then peeling them off onto our paper plates, you could see their involuntary gag reflex in full display. I’m pretty sure no one actually died from the experience. And I’m also pretty sure that none of us has ever eaten cube steak again.

And I’m quite certain that as they watched us wrestling with the plastic and picking bits of rock from our teeth, that the one dominating thought of scouts, parents and troop leaders alike was: you know, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to be a LITTLE more organized.

In recent years we’ve seen some enormous public tragedies and one of the things that seems to have stood out is the organization, or lack thereof. In NYC, following 9/11, Rudolph Giuliani practically paved his way to a possible presidential nomination by his sterling organization and command of the situation. In the aftermath of Katrina, however, Michael Brown became the butt of every late night joke by his inept handling of the aftermath of the hurricane. “Heckuva job, Brownie.” Following Katrina, I think the general consensus was, you know, it wouldn’t hurt to be a LITTLE more organized.

This is likely what the author of these epistles to Paul’s young protégé, Timothy, thought. The young Christian church was suffering growing pains. They were spreading and growing larger and the problems that come with unregulated growth were beginning to afflict them. Competing versions of Jesus’ story and the truth therein were beginning to struggle. Chaos was threatening to sink the ship of the early church and in light of the indisputability of Jesus’ “delay”, some of the guiding minds of the church said, in effect: “While we wait for the return of our Lord, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt for us to be a bit more organized in the meantime.”

I’ve consulted with a few “organizational experts” in my time. Yes I have. And while I don’t claim to have been completely converted by any of them, I do know that the advice that always holds the most promise is the simplest. As in preaching, so in organization: K-I-S-S … Keep It Simple, Silly.

And the author of First Timothy—who is NOT Paul, but who writes in the spirit and voice of the apostle—keeps it good and simple.

But you know, before we consider what the author of the epistle DID advise, it is worth considering what he did NOT advise: Nowhere does he suggest that the church and its members simply withdraw from the struggles of the world while waiting indefinitely for Jesus to reappear. No matter how advisable it might seem within the context of our current conflicts, there is no suggestion to the young church that they simply “pull out” … no hint that the world was a “failed experiment” that was no longer worthy of their presence and their energies.

Instead, the author of the Epistle gives advice for remaining engaged and strong and focused while engaged. So I think it is very interesting that in the midst of helping the young church be better organized, the first piece of advice that is offered is a bit … “counter-intuitive”. And in our modern highly-organized era, we’d do well to pay attention, both in our church and in our own personal lives. In fact, much about our faith in this modern world is counter-intuitive compared to much of what claims to be “wise” in modern ways.

The author of First Timothy begins by saying, simply: “PRAY”. I like Eugene Peterson’s translation in “The Message”: “The first thing I want you to do is pray.” I imagine that some of my past organizational advisers wanted to offer me the same advice. But this is not “in the event nothing else works” kind of advice. This is “first things first” kind of advice. Before you do ANYTHING else, pray. Pray first. And pray ONLY if that’s all you can do. As we read through the gospel portraits of Jesus, we find that he was very clearly rooted and grounded in this living connection to God’s own being. Slipping away to a lonely place, climbing a mountain, kneeling in the garden—Jesus found the strength for his own life and ministry in his time spent joining his own heart with the heart of God. Martin Luther, who was the kick-starter of our Protestant heritage, is famous for saying: “I have so much business, I cannot get on without spending three hours daily in prayer.”

OK … perhaps some of us are thinking we’ve nearly reached nirvana by achieving three MINUTES daily in prayer. But three hours? But you know, it’s not the time spent, but the intentionality. The appointment. Perhaps time set aside as a “tithe of your time” as I think I heard Nancy Smith say it once. It is when we utterly forsake some sense of daily connection with the divine source of all creation that makes anemic our attempts to live out our faith, to employ in this hard-bitten world our faith-inspired values.

Right around the corner from our boy scout shack in Port Angeles was the home of a new friend I made in boy scouts. I was the patrol leader—I had a LOT of new friends J. One day I went to my new friend’s house. It was snacktime, so we ran inside to have our snack and before we were allowed to gobble down our cookies or whatever, we were forced, by my friend’s very religious mother, to bow our heads and to thank God out loud for our snack. It was, I’m pretty sure, my last snack in that house—I was terrified thinking what we might have to do over lunch or dinner. Right then I became aware that different Christians—because that’s all I knew at that time were Christians—put very different emphases on prayer. In the home of my Baptist minister dad, we prayed over our meals, but I guess we figured we had a kind of blanket coverage that blessed our snacks as well.

I think I realized at that time that prayer for me was not just a kind of pious mumbo-jumbo—though by no means do I intend to disparage the faith and prayers of my friend’s mother, which were extremely sincere. Prayer for me was not muttering the right words for the right occasion. I realized that for me ,“prayer” was more than words, more than a rote recitation at a prescribed time. In fact I think this event set me on the path of realizing that prayer is both hard to narrowly define, and hard to prescribe for anyone, including your own self.

Prayer can be words … or not words. Prayer can be solitary … or in a great company. Prayer can be in a state of stillness … or filled with action. Prayer can be sweetness and light … or soul-shattering agony.

More important than anything is that (1) to be a person, and (2) to be a community that intends to live out of a posture of faith, and (3) to be a living demonstration of that faith, it is critical that the One who is at the center of that faith is One to whom you attend with regularity and intentionality. I remember Susan Johnson saying in sermon at a biennial quite a number of years ago: “No prayer, no power … little prayer, little power … much prayer, much power.”

If prayer for you seems to be something that only other people do you may wish to start here, with the phrase that my pastor in my teenage years used to introduce prayer in morning worship: “Prayer is the practice of honesty” to which I added in my own early years of pastoring: “Honest to ourselves, honest to God.” Inotherwords: being absolutely and nakedly honest about your own full being, full of hope and joy and brokenness and promise, in the presence of God—which is all the time—is not a bad place to start. And when we pray corporately, in morning worship, we do well to pray with that same honesty about ourselves as human beings and as American citizens and as members of this congregation.

Now there’s another thing that Eugene Peterson says in his translation that I like. The New Revised Standard Version, the version that’s in the chair in front of you, translates that we should offer: “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings”, but Peterson suggests that what is being implied is: “Pray every way you know how”. Each person praying out of their own natural tendencies in the midst of each unique moment is going to pray … uniquely. Be creative … be authentic … be honest … be daring … be humble and audacious … but, be faithful. Pray every way you know how … but PRAY.

It seems to me that this is one of the stumbling blocks for a good number of people who yet wish to call themselves by the name “Christian”. They hear this admonition to pray, realize that “praying” is not something that comes at all naturally to them, and conclude with a fair degree of finality: “Well, I guess I’m just not religious.” And with that they begin or continue their disengagement with the faith … and with the practices of the faith. But I would counter—and I think the witness of much of the Bible would back this up—I would counter that “prayer” is a far more expansive term than is allowed by our sometimes narrow sense that it is a pious language spoken by pious people. I would challenge the “less religious” among us—and at times, that’s ME—I would challenge us to take seriously Peterson’s translation: “Pray every way you know how.” Take seriously the challenge to try … to reach out in any way that is unique to you … to persist … to find your own forms and times and postures that work. I’m vaguely recalling the words of a struggling pray-er who said something like: “In reaching out in the dark, you will find a hand reaching toward you.”

And for what or for whom shall we pray? A parking spot in front of Tiffany’s? A perfect three-minute egg? For Uncle Ned’s daughter’s fencing instructor’s dog’s intestinal worms to go away? Maybe. But if these, everything else as well. It is here that the author of First Timothy hopes to shape the fledgling church, not just in praying alone, but in the strong suggestion that they “pray for everyone”.

Richard Foster wrote a classic book nearly thirty years ago on the spiritual disciplines that was influential for me in my latter college years and my time in seminary. In writing about the discipline of prayer, Foster suggests that “to pray is to change”. He says: “Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.” If Foster is correct, then the author of First Timothy wishes to expand the praying sympathies of the early church to include the whole world. “Pray for everyone!” he says. This is a remarkable thing because in that time there were plenty of reasons to narrow down your soul’s energies to simply your own people … your own kind. It was enough to be sympathetic and prayerful for the needs of your community and the many persecutions that Christians faced. But to pray beyond those boundaries … to pray for those whose practices were heretical … to pray for those who persecuted the followers of Jesus … and, most astoundingly of all … to pray for the rulers … the emperor and his ilk???

Now let’s imagine what it can look like to become so narrow … so selective … so shrunken in the scope of your prayers, that you not only pray only for your own kind, you no longer care at all for anyone but your own kind. Clarence Jordan preached a sermon about Jesus’ radical statement that we should “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us”. But Jordan acknowledged that for many people, good Christian people, even good American Christian people, our prayers, and therefore our sympathies and therefore our God was WAY too small. He said in his sermon: “I think most of us reflect the idea that is inscribed on an old tombstone down in Mississippi, “Here lies John Henry Simpson. In his lifetime he killed 99 Indians and lived in the blessed hope of making it 100 until he fell asleep in the arms of Jesus.” Now Indians don’t count—99 of them. You can live “in the blessed hope” of getting just one more, and round it off to get an even 100, and still “fall asleep in the arms of Jesus.” But if you had killed just one white [person], you’d fall asleep in a noose. “It’s all right to kill Indians, because we don’t care about Indians, but you’d better not kill a white [person].”

Now if you took the advice of First Timothy, and you prayed diligently for EVERYONE, could you kill … anyone? Now you may find Jordan’s story shocking and horrifying and wonder how our ancestors could have been so blind to the common humanity of our native neighbors. But when we consider that while we lost nearly 3000 of our citizens in the collapse of the World Trade Centers, we have willingly entered a conflict that has not only taken the lives of nearly 4000 of our own men and women, but has killed tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan citizens as well.

Prayer is the practice of honesty. Many of us started our young faith lives with prayers like: “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food.” But obviously an adult faith lived in conscious discipleship of Jesus demands of us a painful honesty about our world and our place in it. And the practice of prayer for EVERYONE combined with an understanding that prayer is the primary means by which God changes us means that as we pray we move differently in our world.

Every day and every prayer changes us. Every day and every prayer moves us, however infinitely slowly, toward greater Christ-likeness … if we will persist. If we will pray, God will faithfully partner with us in transforming not only ourselves, but the world in which we live. Prayer that persists is prayer that works … and Margaret Silf suggests that:

Prayer that works is prayer that makes a difference,

contemplation that turns into action,

on behalf of peace and justice in a troubled and unjust world system.

Prayer is energy, the energy of love and transformative power.

It is given to us to use for the good of all creation.

In prayer God gives us the fuel of life, and asks us to live it.

I have to confess that I struggle as a “pray-er”. It has never come easily for me, especially the challenges of being a solitary pray-er. It’s clear to me that we all have our gifts, and we all have our challenges. But where prayer “works” most fully for me is in community. It is the prayers that are prayed when we are together—ALL the kinds that we pray when we are together, where I feel the strongest connection with the divine spark.

The time in the New Testament where Jesus most notably taught his disciples about prayer, he offered a corporate prayer, a community prayer that combined a profound dependence upon God with a compassionate way of being with one another. “Our Father …” begins the prayer, and most of us have prayed with such rote regularity that the words spill from us so easily that we are in danger of losing the power and the meaning of the prayer. It is why I have not only drawn back from the regular use of the prayer, but have also sought to employ new, but faithful, interpretations of the prayer.

As we imagine that God is reaching out to us in prayer … and as we imagine that God is asking us to reach out to the whole world when we pray … and as we imagine that God’s powers of transformation within us and through us may be the greatest when we pray, let us hear in new words and accents the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples:

Eternal Spirit

Earth-Maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,

source of all that is and that shall be,

Father and Mother of us all.

Loving God, in whom is heaven.

The hallowing of your name echoes through the universe!

The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the earth!

Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.

In times of temptation and test, spare us.

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.

Amen.

From the Book of Common Prayer of New Zealand

Lost & Found

A Sermon by Greg Ledbetter preached on September 16, 2007

Year C/Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts : Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; Luke 15:1-10


In the coming week, summer will—sob with me now—officially come to an end. The seasonal dying and falling of nature is pressing upon us. But in these last days of summer, I wish to remember once more the poetry of the season … the way summer stirs us with its luxurious warmth and, for many of us, times of stillness and rest.

It is in summer that I am most likely to carry with me a collection of poetry … creative rhymes and rhythms of words that can send me just the way a warm summer evening or a fresh summer morning can send me. And of all the poems that summer inspires me to recall, there is one that stands out. Likely you are familiar it. And though I am not particularly inclined to turn to “religious poetry”, per se, this poem catches my spirit where it is … it speaks well for my heart’s turning in the season of the longest day:

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things,
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow,
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls, finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced, fold, fallow and plough,
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange,
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim.
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change;
Praise him.

“Glory be to God for dappled things …”

Many of you will know these words to be those of the English Victorian priest and poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. For many people, this may be the only poem of Hopkins’ that they know. And of the man himself: almost nothing. But reading the poem, one could guess that Hopkins was one of these English poet/priests who loved nothing more than a walk in the gentle countryside of England … strolling amongst the blooming heather … lolling by a stream watching the trout flit in and out of the shadows of the overhanging bank … lying on his back watching the endless variations of clouds and sky. A gentle, sunny, nature-loving soul.

I have to admit that until recently, that’s what I thought I knew about Gerard Manley Hopkins. Yet somewhere in the back of my mind, I carried one other snippet of Hopkins’ verse. And this summer, for some reason, the snippet kept rising in my consciousness and I wondered to myself at the odd dissonance it created with the poem with which I was more familiar. The snippet goes like this:

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me?

Wow … what happened to “Glory be to God for dappled things …”? Clearly, as one might guess upon further reflection about any human soul, there was more to know about Gerard Manley Hopkins. “Thou art indeed just, Lord” is the title of the poem that is probably more representative of the inner life of this poet/priest than is “Pied Beauty”, the first poem I read.

Thou art indeed just, Lord
JUSTUS quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum;
verumtamen justa loquar ad te:
Quare via impiorum properatur? etc.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,

Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes

Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

“Send my roots rain” … surely this is the cry of both drought stressed trees and other plants as well as lives and spirits who have gone too long without a sip at the fountain … without a cooling drench in the waters. Hopkins looks and sees all about him in late 19th century England … the conscience-less rich bleeding the poor of their very lifeblood … and he notes other poets and writers whose daily lives are like a wasteland of excess, churning out poetry and plays and novels while his own creative spark grows dim. Even nature, when he immerses himself in it, with its bounteous growth and vitality, seems to mock his gifts which seem to be drying up, which seem to lack the animating spark.

Looking back, it is clear that Gerard Manley Hopkins suffered from a crisis of faith—both his faith in his own creative abilities and his faith in the God he served so faithfully as a Jesuit priest. Others see also in Hopkins a clear indication of a bi-polar personality … manic-depression as it used to be known.

It is infinitely harder to look into the personality of the psalmist—particularly since the “psalmist” is, in fact, many “psalmists”, the sacred singers, composers and poets of Israel’s early worship. But clearly the composer of Psalm 14, which we sang together this morning, struggled with reconciling the seeming predominance of human cruelty and injustice coupled together with a flat rejection of the reality of God. And the backdrop of the psalmist’s cry is a profound faith that God can change all this, that God can set things aright … but that currently, God remains barricaded in heaven while all around the “wicked thrive and prosper.” “Why?” is the psalmist’s incessant cry.

In the soul struggling poetry of Hopkins and in the lament of the Psalmist, there is a certain bewilderment of the soul … a certain “lost-ness”. Certainly in Hopkins’ poetry there seems a great self-awareness of this “lost-ness”, this separation from the source of things. It is that same self-awareness of that disconnect and that great inner need that drove all of the wrong kinds of people to crowd around Jesus and drink up his every word. Water of life for the drought-weary soul.

And what was the message of Jesus? Hell-fire and damnation? Sinners in the hands of an angry God? Apparently not. Obviously not. Jesus spoke of a loving God who wished nothing more than to bridge the great divide between every human heart and God’s own being. Jesus spoke of GRACE. And he spoke of “repentance”, which is not to lacerate yourself until bleeding to death you are finally worthy of entering into the presence, but is simply and literally a “turning” and a “returning” … simply reorienting yourself until you stand in the presence of that great divine Grace upon which they had unwittingly turned their backs. “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling to you and to me …. Come home.” If you were an oft spit upon tax collector … if you were the town whore given the evil eye by “respectable people” every moment of every day … would not the gentle invitation to come into the non-judging presence of the one who has always loved you not cause you to draw near to its earthly source? To Jesus?

“I have come,” Jesus said, “not heal those who are ‘well’, but those who are ‘sick’.”

The religious authorities watch the impure and the unwashed throng to Jesus and it galls them. Just the presence of that many ritually impure souls in one place was enough to give them a collective case of the willys. It would be like Jerry Falwell (may he rest in, um, peace) it would be like Jerry Falwell at a NOW convention or me at a Southern Baptist Convention. While the crowds of the impure bothered the religious authorities, what really galled them was that it didn’t seem to faze Jesus at all. Not only did he not seem bothered by their presence, Jesus seemed to absolutely relish it.

There was no place more intimate and more sacred in Jewish culture than around the table. Perhaps more than even the temple itself, it was the table and the fellowship that happened around the table that was the heart of Judaism. And the leading complaint of the bystanding religious authorities is “this fellow welcomes sinners … and EATS with them!”

Do you remember my dear Vermont parishioner, Frances? Cigarette smoking in the church kitchen Frances? After she quit smoking, she became even more “peppery”, if that was possible. She loved to talk about her friends in town who were almost proud that they would not, under any circumstances, ever darken the doorway of the church. And in Frances’ mind, their reasoning was all the same: “Cause as everyone knows, the church is full of hypocrites!” At which Frances would always utter her famous comeback, “Yeah, well there’s always room for one more!!” And then she would cackle loudly. What she lacked in originality, she made up for with a certain crusty humor.

Hypocrites … literally, “actors” … or meaning more popularly “two-faced” … Jesus saved some of his harshest words for those who dwelt in the world with two faces. Their outer face was all loud, blaring piety for all the world to see … and fear. But their inner face was empty, tomb-like, devoid of light and love and grace. And the world may see your “outer face”, but we will always act out of our inner face … our inner space. It is why almost any who relish their religious “authority” will often have the appearance of acting on God’s behalf, but out of their tomb-like interior, act against the very God, the very grace they purport to represent. Jesus said to them: “‘Woe … to you … for you load people with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not lift a finger to ease them.”

It’s a bit like the way some of our more enlightened fundamentalist friends treat their gay and lesbian neighbors and children and fellow church members. They now will allow that some people are born gay, that is their un-chosen orientation, but they remind them that to act on that which is central to who they are is, yet, a grievous sin.

Because the religious authorities grumble that “this fellow welcomes sinners … and EATS with them!”, Jesus tells two stories. Painfully simple stories. Listening to Jesus, it seems that things of “highest heaven” are best told in the mundane details of earthly existence. A story of the pasture and a story of the household. A lost sheep and a lost coin. And the “actor” in the stories is the shepherd in the pasture and the woman in the household … the shepherd who will not accept that any of his charges should be lost and forgotten, and a keeper of a household who will not allow that anything of great value be left, abandoned behind without a complete and thorough search. Each actor in Jesus’ story is determined that the search will ONLY end when that which has been lost has been restored to its rightful place. The search will NEVER end until the search has been successful.

This seems to be at the heart of God as Jesus reveals God. God is the restless searcher who will not rest until all are found. And the really painful contrast in the stories is with the grumblers, God’s earthly representatives, who seem to have given up the search before it even started. And as I reread these oh-so-familiar texts for the umpteenth time, I begin to wonder if it is not the religious authorities who are, in fact, the sheep most lost and the coin most lost.

The problem with the Pharisees and the scribes, the grumbling religious authorities, is that they don’t recognize their own “lostness” … they will not consider that they are among the “lost” whom Jesus has come to save, the lost for whom God is also searching. It is psychologically easier to project one’s own barrenness, one’s own brokenness, one’s irredeemability on another, than to shine that bright light on the dry and empty spaces within. Gerard Manley Hopkins coined a word: “Inscape”. In part, inscape is our inner landscape … it is the human interior. Reading Manley’s inscape writ large in his poetry, you sense that he knew his brokenness, his barrenness—not that he was all broken and barren within. But witnessing the response of harshly judging religious authorities of any age and any stripe, you get the sad feeling that these are lost sheep who simply cannot face their own empty selves. They haven’t the courage to allow God into their “inscape” … their inner landscape.

In the last month, a rather stunning event occurred. A new book was released that has pretty much turned on our collective ears what we thought we knew about Mother Teresa, the merciful angel of Calcutta. The book is entitled: “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light”. It is a collection of notes and letters, written over a period of 66 years between Mother Teresa and her confessors and superiors. Teresa had requested that these letters be destroyed, but have been preserved by the church against her wishes. It remains to be seen whether this was the right or the wrong choice, but there’s no mystery as to why Mother Teresa made this request.

The letters tell with great bleakness and sadness that, for the final fifty years of her life, Teresa felt no presence of God or Jesus whatsoever. This is not in the least to say that she “lost her faith” or “lost faith”, it is to say that all of the ordinary means by which God’s Spirit had been made known to her in the first half of her life failed utterly to reveal God to her in her final fifty years.

Two things, at least, are remarkable in all of this. One is that Mother Teresa never gave up on her faith, never flagged in her observance of mass and the eucharist or times of corporate and solitary prayer. The other is that her extraordinary ministry of mercy steadily grew and grew throughout this entire time of barrenness. It was as though she had completely taken on Jesus’ own sense of forsakenness on behalf of those that all the world had forsaken. It is almost exactly as Paul wrote in Second Corinthians when he spoke of “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies”.

Near the end of John’s gospel, just following the so-called “doubting Thomas” episode, Jesus says to his disciples—and that’s all of us, including Mother Teresa and Gerard Manley Hopkins and you and me: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Have we the courage to face whatever dry emptiness there may be within, no matter what shows on the outside? And can we believe that God is the restless searcher who will not rest until all are found? That the heart of all that IS will not stop looking until YOU and I have been found? And having been found –and therefore found within ourselves the amazing grace that comes from having once been lost, but now found—can we project upon the world around us, tirelessly and without ceasing the inner grace and healing acceptance that God has given to us?

And perhaps we’ll never be the great inventive poet that Gerard Manley Hopkins was, but perhaps we’ll be able to affirm with him that:

THE world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

[from God's Grandeur]

Ah, summer is ending and fall is upon us, but fear not: the Spirit of God broods over us all with bright wings. And at God’s ever-expanding table of Grace, there’s always room for one more. Glory be to God. Amen.