SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY – 11 FEBRUARY 2007
ST PAUL LUTEHRAN CHURCH, ABQ NM – The Rev. P. L. Holman
Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26
“Blessed to be in touch”
In our last episode…
Back in the day, radio dramas used to hold their listeners in great suspense. Folks would listen as religiously as some watch soap operas or CSI-Miami today. From week to week the story would unfold, and the tales, listening to the radio dramas often more attentively than they would to their own family stories, would captivate the hearers.
In our last episode of Sunday worship we heard from Jesus about our call to be a welcoming-embracing-expanding-reweaving community of folks, ever changed by those we welcome, ever changing to welcome more. Like the nets and the catch of fish and the followers of Jesus before us, we’ve been called to go deeper – to get wet.
Today we hear the rest of the story, the sort of job description or “compensation agreement” for those who answer the call. What can we expect in return for saying YES to the grace of God? We can expect to know poverty, hunger, sorrow, and scorn, and blessings beyond our wildest imagination! What are the consequences of failing in that call? Laughter that is empty, hunger that can’t be sated, and the ultimate judgment: what you’re grasping is all you’ll get.
Blessed to know poverty –
One way to define poverty uses the word “wretched.” Poverty is wretched because it means among other things physical suffering, financial insecurity, political powerlessness, social scorn, and psychological anguish. In a word, poverty is death-dealing. Jesus tells his disciples, and us: blessed are you who know and name this death, for you have glimpsed the meaning of life.
The Episcopal Church has released a study guide on global poverty to help congregations and other groups expand our understanding of deadly poverty and become part of the worldwide movement for change. It was released as part of the ONE campaign, an ever expanding network of congregations and partnerships committed to speaking up for change and encouraging our own government to meet the commitments we have already made in the fight against poverty.
This is not just a political journey – it is at heart a spiritual one. Awareness of the world’s need and our own relative greed challenges us at the deepest levels to develop the inner freedom to name the ways we are bound to MORE THINGS and open our hands to receive the ONE THING needful, to know Christ and rejoice in the gifts we already have in abundance.
Blessed to know hunger –
During the confirmation lock-in on worship Friday night we put our physical hunger in a new perspective. At midnight we gathered for Compine, prayer at the close of the day. We used the order of service in the new ELW hymnals. It began with a time of confession and forgiveness wherein I spoke my confession to the 8th and 9th graders, and they pronounced forgiveness to me; then the roles were reversed. The service unfolded in candlelit assurance of God’s presence with us throughout the night and for all eternity. A too short night later, we started the day with Matins or Morning Prayer. As one youth pointed out, at night we asked forgiveness for all the things that went wrong that day, and in the morning we asked God to start us off right so maybe the new day will be better. We did this before breakfast mind you – we asked God to “open our lips that our mouths might show forth” God’s praise. And then we broke our fast!
To follow the path Jesus has set before us is not only to be aware of the reality of the world’s hunger, and the baptismal call to share our abundance with those in need. It is more deeply to live out of the center of that hunger – to be aware of our own need for God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s peace and day by day to live out of the center of that awareness firmly anchored against all the winds of pain and chaos and death that assail us. Now more than ever we need that anchor, in these days when all the givens of those good old radio days seem up for grabs like so many items on eBay… now more than ever we all need that anchor. Jeremiah reminds us of the life-giving power of being anchored or rooted near the source of Life: Blessed are those … whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.
Listening back to the words of the ancient prophet now gives Jesus’ promise that “the hungry will be filled” new meaning: being filled is not just an individual matter -- it is a matter for the whole community. When trials come, and hunger threatens to overwhelm, those who trust in God will continue to bear fruit, continue to fulfill their call, continue to feed the world.
When we reflect on our lives through the lens of the world’s despair – the hunger and poverty of the world – we certainly will know sorrow. And it is embracing that sorrow that makes bearing the fruit of joy possible.
It has been a crazy week in Lake Wobegon – er, Albuquerque, our hometown: hospitalizations and surgeries, physical seizures and theological seizures, folks wrestling with the meaning of life and the meaning of rules and the moorings of faith. I had to check the calendar to make sure Lent hadn’t started already… In a powerful conversation with a sister in Christ, who shared with me her good news of love after loss, literally of new life after death, I couldn’t suppress the tears. That conversation created sacred space for a moment in the midst of my cluttered office and cluttered life – sacred space created by shared tears, and a thank you: “thanks for crying with me, Pastor!” The absurdity of the moment morphed into wonderful laughter. And then it clicked: that’s what Jesus meant when he said blessed are you who weep now – joy comes in the morning! Opening ourselves to one another in the deepest times of pain clears the way for joy, creates a pathway for peace. The net is torn, and rewoven stronger. We have one another, and together we continue to bear fruit.
I leave tomorrow for two weeks of vacation in Ghana, West Africa. The journey with my brother Tom and his partner Mary has not been an easy one for me. Their charismatic call and theological framework are not exactly how I talk about my faith, and the challenging physical conditions in which they’ve served for almost three decades are beyond what my limited patience could endure. Yet to share in their story as they trained unschooled men to be language teachers, as they welcomed ancestor worshipers bound by the obligation to appease the spirits of their dead into the freedom of living in grateful response to God’s saving grace for them Jesus – Tom and Mary’s stories have expanded how I tell my own story. In some way it’s been a journey not of converts counted and budgets met, gas tanks filled and New Testaments sold, but of stories shared and individual “characters” transformed into communities of faithful character – communities of folks who are in touch with hope.
When it comes to evaluating our performance against the expectations of the job, we are blessed to remember that in the amazing economy of God’s grace, sorrow shared that cuts in half the burden of sorrow, and joy shared doubles the joy. It’s not so much about doing anything right that matters, but about our being in touch – simply being in touch with the source of Life and the pain of the world, we will continue to blossom with the fruit of hope.
Amen