Believing in God's Promise

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

The first lesson today from Genesis tells an old story. Not quite in the beginning, but close to it. The central figure in this story is Abram. Shortly after this story his name would be changed and he would come to be known as Abraham. But at this point, he’s still Abram. Genesis has described several conversations between God and Abram up to this point, and in each one God has promised Abram that he would make a great nation of his descendants. Apparently Abram was getting tired of this promise since both he and the reader at this point are aware that Abram is in his late seventies and his wife Sarai is not far behind in years and they had no children.

God seems oblivious to this fact as the promises continue, but Abram is annoyed. Finally Abram calls out and says “What will you give me, because I am childless and the only heir I have is my servant Eliezer.” But then an amazing sight is described that is in fact a ritual of covenant between God and Abram. In the offering of animals and the mysterious appearance of a smoking pot that passes between them, a deal is made. God formalizes the promise and just beyond the lesson we read, a prediction is made that foretells the descendants of Abram leaving that land, being enslaved in Egypt and then returning. The deal God made with Abram was the promise of the land that would become the nation of Israel.

All of this because Abram was a righteous man, and God likes righteous people. Righteousness involves to trusting, and often waiting. By the end of his life, Abram had two sons, one by his wife’s servant Hagar named Ishmael, and one by his wife Sarah named Isaac. But he had faith that out of these children a mighty nation would come. He had this faith, because God had promised.

God’s promise is a theme that runs through the Bible constantly. Another theme is the difficulty people have in believing it, or at least having the patience to see them come to pass. In the Gospel lesson another promise is alluded to. Jesus responds to the Pharisees who warn him about Herod’s threats by invoking the words “third day”. Those words used in the body of the Gospels foreshadow the resurrection on the third day and the promise of God made to all believers through the resurrection.

The Bible is a book written many years after the stories they describe and the writers include elements of foreshadow to tie the themes together for the readers and show how God’s promises eventually come to pass. What distinguishes a righteous from an unrighteous person is the one who holds onto the faith in the promise and the one who doesn’t. The one who lives into the promise and the one who acts as though it doesn’t exist.

One of the strengths of the themes in these stories, the tireless patience of the writers, and the examples of the righteous people they depict, is that any reader can identify with them in their own difficulties and despite apparent obstacles, believe that God’s promise will come true and always comes true.

During this February observance of Black History month among other events and activities, there have been pictures on the bulletin covers of contemporary African American religious leaders. On the cover today is a picture of The Rev. Peter Gomes, professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University and Chaplain of Harvard’s Memorial Church. He’s an American Baptist minister and among his many books is one that became a best seller in 1996 called The Good Book. In it he describes how the Bible has been used as a weapon throughout history against Jews, women, homosexuals and usually any kind of change and progressive justice. His new book, called The Scandalous Gospel is a discussion of the radical nature of the Christian faith that most contemporary Christians would find, well, scandalous. He argues that true Christian values have been left behind and replaced with harsh, judgmental, narrowly focused and self serving ideologies. Actual Christian love, as Jesus lived and taught it, is far more inclusive and caring than today’s Christians would recognize.

As a man of faith, a gay man, an African-American man, a professor and prophetic voice in America and the world today, Rev. Gomes also speaks of the promise of God, it’s obstacles in societies, and yet its endurance and ultimate victory.

It’s hard to tell people to wait. It’s harder to be a person who does wait. The people in Haiti must wait. Their ordeal will end, but not for a long time. Now the people of Chile, as well as the people of the Middle East and Africa, and even in America. The promise of God reaches individuals and nations, but sometimes it seems excruciatingly slow or at worst forgotten.

One of the major tensions for us to balance what must wait with what can change now. Sometimes being told to wait is simply an effort to put off changing what is wrong. Dr. King’s famous statement that justice delayed is justice denied argues against the obstacle of waiting. How long were African Americans told to wait, that “now is not the right time”. Similar statements are being made today with marriage equality and even health care. In the end, waiting and stalling are not the same and we need to be careful about mistaking one for the other.

Jesus refers to prophets being killed in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is an important image since it is the capital of Israel, the very heart of the country, and the tangible symbol of God’s true promise to make them a nation. And yet in the midst of this promise, suffering and division has always been present. There is bitter grief in Jesus saying how he would gather them all like a hen gathers her chick if they would but listen.

How many problems and issues in the world that bring suffering would be solved if people would listen to the love of God and extend that loving hand. How simple it seems for the love of God to gather people, and yet we would not.

The collect we opened the service with for this second Sunday of Lent asks God to “...be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ, your son.”

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with need and injustice in the world. It’s easy to walk away and say nothing can be done. But at the very least, awareness is something. Awareness leads to prayer and prayer leads to action. When we are called in extraordinary circumstances to show God’s love, we do. The generosity and outpouring of prayer and goodwill flows to various people in times of need. Our challenge is to embrace people in the ordinary times as well. We’ve demonstrated this many times in responding to disaster relief, to homelessness, and to people in need in our own parish. It’s all part of the unfolding promise of God.

But the promise of God does not only flow out to others. The promise of God is to us too. Abram was a simple man who heard the promise of God in a vision and believed it. He didn’t see its fullness, but his faith in it determined how he lived his life. He did not live as someone who felt beaten and betrayed by a promise not kept, but as someone who lives in the expectation and joy of a promise not yet fulfilled.

How each of us approaches our lives is really up to us. We can live in dread of inevitable disaster, or in optimistic hope of inevitable victory. The Scandal of the Gospel, found in the Good Book is a profound belief in the promise of God and the unshakable quest to embrace it. The promise of Jesus is a life of fullness and eternal life.

God showed Abram the sky and told him to count the stars if he could. That same number would be the number of his descendants. For a seventy something year old man without any children, that must have seemed pretty far fetched. But he believed even when the promise seemed absurd. And it filled his life with joy and expectation. God’s promise of love, inclusion and justice sometimes seems equally far reaching and absurd, and yet it’s what informs our lives. We can live in the joy and expectation of God’s promise unfolding. Amen.

©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ

Lent

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

Our service today is vastly different from the one we had last week. For those who were not here last week, we broke from our traditional liturgy and had a Mardi Gras feel. Richard Berggren and some of his musical associates put together a jazz ensemble and arranged hymns, service music and anthems with toe tapping energy. Vanessa Aiken, who has provided us with beautiful liturgical dancing several times in the past, shared her gifts again with us from the opening song “When the Saints Com Marching In” as she danced down the aisle to various other pieces during the service. Dean Kravitz played jazz arrangements of hymns during Communion, and one of my friends named Kenny Ford, who sang an anthem at my 25th anniversary service last month, was invited to return, to sing another one.

Mary Davis was invited back to preach for us and did her usual outstanding work. And then the coffee hour afterward. “Coffee Hour” is a rather humble name for the feast that was prepared by the Absalom Jones Committee. The mood was high and the music wonderful. All in all, my Lord what a morning.

Today’s service couldn’t be more different in style. We have entered into the season of Lent the past Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. It’s far more somber and serious. Mardi Gras all over the world are a last hurrah for the faithful who enter this wonderful season of Lent. For many, Mardi Gras is just one more party, but to Christians it’s a joyous conclusion to the Christmas season and a transition to a time of preparation for the Easter season. The church also goes from celebration to celebration, but we divide them with seasons that help us to get ready. In this case, Lent is the season that prepares us for Easter. It’s a time to slow down and think about the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and the promise of resurrection made on that first Easter day.

Well, slowing down is the first problem. Who can do that? Our fast paced world and culture of exhaustion have no intention of slowing down. If anything, the pressure is always there to move faster. And we do move faster to the point where we begin to think that exhaustion is normal. We’ve lost the skill of slowing down. After our most recent snow storm I heard so many people talk about how wonderful it was to be home form school or work, only to be bored by day's end not being able to get out and about as usual.

We don’t know how to slow down and we come face to face with the realization that even taking things slow is a skill that needs to be developed. The season of Lent is a silent appeal to do just that. Develop the skill of slowing down. Do this by increasing the time we spend in prayer or meditation. (I’ll take a moment to brag about the Confirmation Class. When we start the year with new students the first thing I do with them after the preliminaries is to teach them to meditate. They look at me in the way Middle School youth look at adults when they’re sure we’ve lost our minds. We begin with an explanation of what meditation is, a time to still the wild random thoughts and become centered. I time them and say we’ll go as long as we can before someone starts giggling. The first class is usually about 8 seconds. But over the weeks and months we’ve gotten up as high as 10 minutes. For ten youth, that’s pretty good.) It’s a skill I encourage everyone to work on.

Lent is also a time of self reflection. Each of us has things in our lives that we are embarrassed, sorry, or even ashamed about. There are things we would like to improve. One of the consequences of meditation is that these things generally rise to the surface of our consciousness demanding attention. People generally have ways to cope with these invasions to our consciousness - we stay busy, turn on the TV or music or just keep talking. Silence is often threatening because it means that what we don’t want to look at is right there in front of us. While we can certainly address these things all year long, Lent is a time to give particular attention to the practice of silence, allowing these thoughts to emerge and deal with them sacramentally. “Confession” is a word that strikes fear in the hearts of many who grew up under a stricter model than the Episcopal Church offers. We have the General Confession as part of our weekly service, but we also have private confessions available by appointment. This comes as a surprise to many, but I assure you it’s true. We don’t use little booths for confession, we hold them in more comfortable manner, such as in an office. Still, confession and pastoral conversations are ways to address some of the issues that surface during our meditations, issues that can reach anywhere from slight embarrassment to perhaps making us feel unloved or unworthy of the love of God. And sometimes the issues are not of a negative nature, but calls of discernment. Sometimes there are goals or projects or even life changes that are exciting and scary and silence brings them up too.

I encourage you to take advantage of this Lent to slow down, meditate and pray, and seek the pastoral conversation of your clergy or even a close friend. If you would like to discuss confession, Chris and I will be happy to do so.

The seriousness of the tone of today’s service is intentional to convey the seriousness of the work that self reflection is. It’s not intended to accuse or punish, but identify and heal. Too long has the church taken on the role of punisher and not enough time as healer. Much of the ministry in St. George’s is focused on healing and the opportunity for prayer, meditation, confession, and pastoral conversation are forms of it.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is in the desert. The story takes place right at the beginning of his ministry after he was baptized by John in the Jordan River. Through Baptism and the words heard form heaven by God calling him his beloved son in whom he was well pleased, Jesus takes a time of silence for forty days. What wells up in him are the temptations to abuse his newly formed ministry. For personal gain, power, or aggrandizement. He could have had it all. But it would have been at the sacrifice of his mission to bring the people of God back into relationship with God. Through his prayer and mediation he confronted each of the temptations and stayed true to his call. I always remark on the closing line of this passage, “When the Devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.” Temptations don’t go away, they wait for an opportune time. Even for Jesus.

As part of Black History Month, the Absalom Jones Committee has been sponsoring a film series on Friday nights. This coming Friday the movie is “Crash,” an amazing story that addresses many shades of racism and prejudice. It will be followed up on Sunday with a discussion forum highlighting some of the themes raised in the movie. This past Friday we watched “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.” It’s a documentary about the Women’s Peace Movement in Liberia that led to the exile of President Charles Taylor. It’s a stunning example of a leader who succumbs to each of the temptations Jesus faced in the desert, and turned an opportunity to serve his country into a nightmare of unspeakable cruelty and terror. It is an equally stunning example of the power of prayer and a commitment to peace to overcome it. The women in Liberia and eventually Ghana were fed up, and refused to tolerate the abuses they received – the killings, rapes, looting and continual terror and deprivation they were subjected to as a nation and gathered in prayer and grew in numbers and influence until they forced concessions that led to peace. They were not interested in satisfying greed, a need for power or grandiosity. They wanted peace for the country and safety for their children and themselves. One of the moving interviews was of a woman who told how hard it was to forgive the soldiers who acted so cruelly. But she came to the conclusion that despite how difficult it was, it was necessary if she and the country were to heal. That is an example of praying the Devil back to hell.

The three temptations Jesus faced in the desert are fundamentally the same that anyone faces. Material things, power or control, or manipulating how we are seen or treated by others. There’s not much new under the sun, and there’s no such thing as an original sin, it’s all been done before. But the temptations to do things, and the actual acting out and doing things that harm others or ourselves are very real.

The traditions we bring back today, specifically the singing of the Great Litany and the choice of hymns and other music, stand in stark contrast to the high celebration of last week. Joy can be very surface and actually a mask for what lay beneath. Taking the time to do some soul searching and soul finding, gives reason for real celebration. It’s definitely fun to have a party, but a real celebration comes after a journey. A journey in which obstacles have been overcome, growth has happened and healing has occurred. I invite you to take Lent seriously and see it not as an antiquated season of the Church year, but an opportunity for real growth and healing. Amen.

©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ

Going Deeper

By The Rev. Bernard W. Poppe, Rector

Last week we read lessons of the call of Jeremiah, and the early start of Jesus’ ministry. The lessons this week continue the themes of God’s call, this time to Isaiah and Jesus’ call to Peter and Andrew.

The first lesson from the book of Isaiah is a very familiar one to priests. It’s a favorite lesson to be read at ordinations and I guarantee that all you have to do to bring a smile to any priest is say the opening line of the 6th chapter of Isaiah, “In the year that King Uzziah died....”

Because what unfolds is the wonderful vision of Isaiah of God’s heavenly throne, the ambivalence of Isaiah about his worthiness to preach, his acceptance of the call when God asks, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And Isaiah says, “Here am I, send me.”

It’s a powerful lesson and in the ordination services it concludes there with the heartwarming conviction of the new prophet to bring God’s word to the people. For new priests this vision and conviction is a powerful inspiration.

And while the ordination lesson ends with Isaiah accepting the call, our lesson today does not. I must say it’s a very strange message that Isaiah is to deliver. “Keep listening but do not comprehend, keep looking, but do not understand. Make the mind of this people dull and stop their ears, so that they many not ... turn and be healed.”

As though that were not bad enough, it gets worse. Isaiah wants to know how long this is supposed to go on and God tells him, O not long, only until “the cities lie in waste without inhabitant...and the land is utterly desolate.”

Well, that’s not a message I’d like to bring! Remember last week, I was wondering what I might say up here that might get me in the same predicament that Jesus got in with his first sermon; the one for which his shocked congregation wanted to throw him over the cliff. That might do it. That, or as I learned, making fun of the Super Bowl. There are some things we get very touchy about. And the next thing you know, it’s over the cliff with you.

Well, before we get too bothered by Isaiah’s message and God’s seeming lack of concern for the people, there is a bit of Hebrew theology I would hasten to remind us all about. And a hint about Bible study. The words were all written well after the fact. They are not transcripts of actual conversations. They were written in a way that interprets history. By the time the book of Isaiah was written many battles and wars had been fought. The land became desolate and without inhabitants. Isaiah’s warning’s had, in fact, fallen upon deaf ears at important times. He was part of the King’s inner circle of advisers, but the King didn’t always listen, and he made some tragic decisions.

By the time the book was written, it definitely seemed as though the people heard Isaiah, but didn’t comprehend; and looked, but didn’t understand. They ears were stopped, and their eyes were shut, and they did not turn.

The key to the passage we read this morning is in the last phrase, talking about a stump that remains after the tree is felled. The phrase is this: The holy seed is its stump. The seed is hope in the time of desolation. When willful people get into trouble, whether individually or as a nation, there is always a seed of hope that remains. In the midst of the turmoil of his day, Isaiah planted that seed, and his words gave comfort not only to the original people of Israel that heard it, but every generation that’s heard it since.

The people of Haiti have experienced desolation beyond description, and their major city is not inhabited as it was just a few weeks ago. There is a lot of hope they can cling to with the international aid they are getting and there is always hope that this crisis will inspire necessary changes in their government and the way they do business. Our own economic crisis has caused desolation in the financial topography of this country and the ripple effects felt around the world. Ears that were stopped, eyes that were shut; and the open question with all our crisis, “How long, O Lord?”

In the New Testament stories about Jesus’ healing, the word “Immediately” is often used. That word is not used in the stories of the Old Testament where healing takes a long time. Seeds take a while to grow. And the seeds of hope that are planted in our current crisis will grow, but not quickly. It’s an unpopular message, but one that still needs to get out there. “Whom shall God send, and who will go for us?”

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus meets Peter and Andrew for the first time and invites them to join him. In a fairly comical image, the carpenter is telling the fishermen how to do their work. “Go out a little further, you’ll be fine.” Of course, they do and like fish, Peter and Andrew are hooked. And this story becomes a parable for making disciples, for being fishers of people.

The key to this story, I think, is in Jesus’ direction for them to go deeper. In the language of story, Peter and Andrew had to follow the directions of someone they didn’t know and be willing to try something different. They needed to move away from the relative security of being close to shore and let down their nets deeper than they had before. They were amazed at the results.

This story becomes a model for us about how we get out any message about God. Believing Jesus, whether we know him well or not, moving away from that which is comfortable and being willing to go deeper. Peter and Andrew were transformed by this event, and so were those who eventually listened to them.

When we follow this model we can be amazed. Going deeper involves going into deeper truths. Sometimes gently, sometimes persistently, going deeper enters the place where hidden hurts, fears and anger live. It’s the place that is often too painful to recall or visit, but often the place that needs the most healing. It’s in the deepest parts of our being that we meet Jesus and where the healing we so desperately need can occur.

We have healing prayers as part of this service as well as the Wednesday night services. For those who want to go deeper, they can share with the intercessor a deep cause of pain or concern. Whether it’s physical, spiritual or emotional the very act of bringing to the surface that which is deepest in our troubled spirits and verbalizing it to another person for the purpose of prayer, is itself a healing action. Once our concerns are in the form of prayer a seed is planted that will grow into hope and healing.

It means leaving behind the safety of a familiar shore. Silence is for many a familiar shore, or hiding or subtle lying, or denial. Jesus invites us to leave the familiar shore and drop the net deeper. That’s where the real work is and the real opportunity for growth and health. The value of these biblical stories is in the spiritual truths we can gather from them and apply to our lives and circumstances.

February is Black History month. Our parish has a group called the Absalom Jones Committee (named for the first African American priest in the Episcopal Church), and this group has planned several events during the course of the month which are listed in the bulletin. Racial divisions in this country and around the world remain a painful and persistent illness in our human psyche and every day experience. Part of the value of having a month set aside for Black History is to drop the net of our attention deeper into the experiences of our African and African American brothers and sisters and those of European background as well. Racism is an illness that impacts people of color but truly infects white people around the world. For just as a history of oppression needs to be told by those who have felt its dehumanizing pain, there is a similar history of those whose inhuman actions have caused another form of spiritual disease. Slaves and slave masters were both dehumanized by the scourge of slavery. Prejudice today injures the targets of it as well as those who perpetrate acts of prejudice. Telling the stories of history raises to the surface the pain that needs to be told, and allow the healing to happen. Pretending racism and prejudice doesn’t exist is a form of denial that actually perpetuates it.

But it’s also a time of pride in telling stories of accomplishment that have not been widely told. There is a rich history of diversity that is not shared very well and dropping the net deeper catches some of those wonderful moments in history, and some of the wonderful things happening today.

As the month goes on and the events and forums happen, it’s our hope that as brothers and sisters in this community we can hear each others stories, reflect on the depth of pain and the possibility of healing. And also share joy in the stories of triumph and accomplishment. We can push out from the safety of familiar shores and drop the net deep into the waters of truth. We can do this because Jesus has invited us to do so.

Healing is transforming and it fans out from the one healed to the ones who need healing who will be drawn to it. The disciples discovered this, and so did the people of Israel so many years ago who first heard Isaiah plant his seed of hope. The healing of racism will not be immediate, but with God’s help the tree of righteousness will grow. The crisis that we face in our world and in our lives will not heal immediately, but with God’s help the healing that we need will grow. It’s so important that we embrace the truth of God’s invitation and whether we feel we’re worthy or not, realize that God calls us as we are to share in this work. To embrace and to share the love of God. Whom shall we send, and who will go for us. Here am I, send me. Amen.

©2010 St. George's Episcopal Church, Maplewood, NJ