proper10-july-15.md

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title: Homily Proper 10
author: The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway

Homily July 15

Ordinary Time, Proper 10: Supply St. Peter’s

Two great themes of Ephesians

We will hear from this letter in the NT for the next 6 weeks, up through the end of August. A little introduction to it seems like it might be in order, to help train our hearts and ears to hear the word spoken through the rest of the summer. I will take all this personally to heart, because, in fact, I am in need of a word of hopefulness during these times that seem so dark and fraught. This letter takes a cosmic view of things. It is a classic view of Christ as the Lord of all creation. Creation is big.

1. Christ has reconciled all creation to himself and to God, and
2. Christ has united people from all nations to himself and to one another in his church.

In an almost trite sort of way, I can tell myself, “This, too, will pass away.” “In the scheme of God’s plan for creation, these times don’t even measure a blip.”

That message doesn’t always get through to our hearts, in the same sort of way that my mother’s admonition, “You ought to send a thank you note to your … (fill in the blank)” would often go in one ear and out the other. We had a vivid example this past week of how the wider world can lose its significance in the light of one powerful local example. The saga of the discovery and rescue of the Thai soccer club, deep underground for over 2 weeks, was extraordinary, poignant, tearful, and a good reminder for us of what is important and what is not.

The words from this letter from our New Testament aims to give us the same kind of message but from the opposite perspective. The author of this letter is taking a cosmic view of things and telling us that even from that perspective each of us has a part to play.

In the news this past week there was a science story about the identification of certain neutrinos as coming from “A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far Far Away…” The Washington Post started its story:

When the sun was young and faint and the Earth was barely formed, a gigantic black hole in a distant, brilliant galaxy spat out a powerful jet of radiation. That jet contained neutrinos — subatomic particles so tiny and difficult to detect they are nicknamed “ghost particles.”

Four billion years later,…

I found the story of some interest because I wrote a paper in my 2^nd year of college about neutrinos. At the time they were mostly known as a theoretical particle that the physics theories predicted ought to be, but there was very little evidence for them because they are very difficult to detect. They are so small that most of them pass through the earth on their way to another part of the universe. In the intervening 50 years, of course, scientists have found ways to to detect them and the interesting part of last week’s story is that in addition, scientists can now determine what the origin was of the neutrinos that they detect.

Awesome and amazing.

That’s the kind of perspective the letter to the Ephesians tries to bring to us, coupled with the proclamation that we, insignificant human beings that we are, have a part to play in God’s awesome creation.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love …

Adoption

Many years ago when I was in graduate school I took a seminar on the theology of ministry. The basic method we used was to observe a variety of different ministries – I mean really different kinds of ministries – and then to come back to our group and to reflect theologically on what we observed.

We observed the usual kinds of things like Sunday worship, funerals, weddings, etc. But we also observed some less traditional ministries. In the early 1980’s that included radio ministry and that was mostly being done by conservative Protestant ministers. I didn’t feel particular affinity with them but I chose to approach my “research” with an openness based precisely on the fact that I didn’t know or relate to it.

I ended up listening to one program in particular that changed my life. Imagine that. It was by Chuck Swindoll. My recollection was that he was teaching on the prophet Hosea, but my memory could be faulty on that point. What is very clear to me is the theme. The theme was adoption. The narrative in the Bible was about God adopting the people as his own. In spite of everything …

The metaphor just hit me like a spear, penetrating to my heart. I somehow knew deep within me it was “adoption” that was most like the relationship between us and God. We are not God and we are not even part of his “family” except in so far as God created us to be like him. So the love that God has for us is not particularly like that of a biological father and mother, but more like an adopted father or mother.

At that point in my life, the birth of my oldest children had been the thing that awakened love within me. Little did I guess, however, that it would be the entrance of children more like adopted children that would really teach me about love. I went on in future years to be a host for a number of foreign students and invited young people to live with me for extended periods of time. There would be the older folks who became like aunties & uncles to me and the adopted children of other families that would become more like children than my biological children.

Paul was onto something when he greeted the Ephesians with the blessing we have heard this morning.

He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Understanding the mystery of God’s will

With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

Throughout the years of my ministry I have continuously been in the presence of people who are suffering in any of a multitude of different ways. My desire and my calling has been to minister to them in whatever way I could figure out. Sometimes it was more obvious than other times. Many times I prayed, beginning with the words, “Lord I don’t know what to do. Lead me.” Then, typically, I would say the Hail Mary. Sometimes I would remember the words of The Rev. Peter J. Gomes, former chaplain at Harvard University (RIP). He told a group of us in Honolulu that before every sermon he preached he would say the words from the Hippocratic Oath: Lord, let me do no harm.

As I ministered with people in need and pain I struggled to find the right words. Often the words, “It will be all right” were not at all appropriate. If a grandchild or spouse was about to die, for that person, “It’s going to be okay” were platitudes and empty of significance.

But I am with Paul when he says that God has a plan for the fullness of time and that all things will be gathered up in him. Where are the words to say that? The gestures to show that?

All too often it’s not obvious, but that has been my goal. The message of hope, the good news, is not a platitude. It is a deep and awesome truth.

Addendum

lectionary

proper-9-july-8.md

author: The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway
title: Homily: Spartanburg: Proper 9
date: July 8, 2018

lectionary

Welcome: Introduction

Thank you for inviting me to pray with you this morning, to celebrate the Eucharist this morning, and to share with you about the Gospel as I hear it and see it. This is the first time I have supplied in Spartanburg. I’ve come along ways from the little mining town in Arizona where I was born. You can see that my white hair indicates a well-traveled head. Of course you wouldn’t know ahead of time that my hair began turning white in my 20’s.

I am a retired priest, but I’m not retired in the sense of kicking my feet back and not knowing what to do. I am teaching as an adjunct at Winthrop University because my wife is on the faculty there, teaching Math to folks who are going to be teachers. I teach in the Religion Department.

I was raised in the West, went to seminary and graduate school in the midwest, was a rector of congregation in Northern Indiana and one in Honolulu. I have taught at schools in Indiana, Hawai’i, and South Carolina.

I am married to a wonderful woman who, unfortunately can’t be here this morning. She had surgery at the beginning of June. The surgery seems like it ought to be relatively easy to bounce back from. It was bone surgery on her foot. We knew, though, ahead of time that it was a recovery that would take 12 months. Every day is better than the day before, but it’s a long haul.

Between us we have 7 children living all across the country, from Honolulu to Atlanta, 5 grandchildren living in Colorado and Washington State.

We moved here from Hawai’i in 2014. Both of us had fallen in love with Hawai’i during our dozen or so years living there, but we decided that various factors were telling us to move back to the mainland. My wife was hired on the faculty at Winthrop and so Rock Hill was the place.

As I anticipated being here this morning I remembered that the first place I really visited in South Carolina was Spartanburg. Mary Pat had driven here on a Saturday morning to attend a conference involving South Carolina educators. I got a call an hour and a half after she left the house and I heard a panicky and slightly distraught voice. “I locked my keys in the car!” So I drove here and we had lunch together. This morning is now the next time that I am doing anything but driving through on my way somewhere else.

Buechner on Religion

I feel so free since retiring from parish ministry. It’s not about being free from working. I’ve been working pretty hard.

I feel freedom the way I think the Jesus wanted us to feel free. The gospel is intended to set us free. It always has been. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Gal 5:1)

My sense of the gospel which brings us together here is pretty broad. It extends to you and to me. To Spartanburg, South Carolina. To Honolulu which is the place I call home, although I don’t live there any more. And to the moon and to the stars – and beyond.

Let me give you a sense of what I mean.

Frederich Buechner, an author some of you may be familiar with, was often able to put into words what is for me only a gasp of wonder. He wrote about religion in general:

Religion as a word points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he can never know fully until he reaches it.

We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe – life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by…

On our refrigerator, like lots of refrigerators, there are lots of different kinds of things posted and taped: photos, mementos, that sort of thing. Among them in our kitchen is a little magnet that my wife gave to me. It says: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”

The gospel I share with you this morning is that kind of gospel. It is “good news” because it takes your breath away – in a good way … figuratively … so to speak. It is the presence of God, often in a most tangible way that we can touch and feel.

All too often the formal church – the church as institution – is primarily concerned with something less than that.

Guide to upcoming General Convention topics:

Guide
This week is a big week for the institutional church. General Convention is meeting in Texas.

When I was in parish ministry I would look for ways that I could call attention to the way the church is interconnected throughout the world. I experience God in part through the mystery of the Body of Christ, spread throughout the world and by the Communion of the Saints, spread through history. One of the ways I would emphasize that connectedness was to talk about General Convention at appropriate times. Sometimes it was unavoidable. Sometimes it was just to call attention to the fact that it had begun.

I have often said to folks that one of the things that is the very best about being retired is that I don’t have to go to any meetings. I am convinced that God forbids there to be meetings in heaven. Nevertheless, God is at work at meetings as well as other places.

The 79th General Convention will be held at the Austin Convention Center from July 5 to 13,

The Episcopal News Service has a lot of information about General Convention. On the page that lists the main concerns are the following:

Marriage equality

There is continuing work on the liturgies for same-sex marriage. There is continuing concern that everybody isn’t of one mind about same-sex marriage.

Revising the Book of Common Prayer?

10-15 years ago I started laughing at myself every time I referred to the “new prayer book”. I remember the days of struggling with it when it was still new. But it’s not new any more. It’s old. Well that’s the issue there.

The Episcopal Church and the #MeToo movement

The church is sensitive to gender issues. It has made that clear for 50 years or more. It’s still wrestling with it. Like all the rest of the country.

A salary for the president of the House of Deputies

It would be easy for me to be cynical about this one. It’s a holdover from 3 years ago. My cynicism isn’t about whether the president of the House of Deputies ought to be paid a salary. Probably he or she ought to be. But that it occupies so much of our time and energy …

Following up on the church’s three priorities: evangelism, racial reconciliation and justice and care of creation

Well that’s a tall order. Those are big priorities – although I count 4 – and I appreciate the list because in some ways it describes what it means to be the Episcopal Church. These are priorities for us. But none of those is going to be solved. If we’re going to “follow up” on them, it seems to me it needs to be a kind of “examination of conscience.” Maybe a confession is in order and then the acceptance of God’s awesome and unfathomable Grace.

Middle East peace

Really in contrast to the above, this is really, really important. But, again, I wonder about the time and energy spent on the issue. I think of the old Rabbi, living in Jerusalem, speaking on a video that I sometimes show my Bible classes. He says, “You know Jerusalem is known as the city of peace. (Salem might be construed as related to the word Shalom) But really, the rabbi goes on, There has never been peace. Not for 4,000 years there hasn’t been peace.”

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Being retired, I get to think more intentionally about what is important and what isn’t. The gospel of Jesus Christ – in all of its breadth and power and mystery – that’s important. That begs for our time and energy. And too often it gets the scraps thrown under the table.

The agenda at General Convention might point us in the right direction. But for myself the reading from Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians is a more poignant signpost.

mystic vision as authority … but in practice it is weakness that is strength … paradox

I hear in today’s scripture readings a passion for the kinds of things that are most important. Paul proclaims that his authority, his strength, comes from weakness. It comes from having come up against the very thing that he can’t defeat. He can’t solve. Maybe a little like finding peace in Jerusalem.

Paul suggests in elusive language that he himself has witnessed God’s power and miracle. “I know a person in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to heaven…” I have known such a person myself. And my guess is that each of you has also. Yourself? Or another? Perhaps your grandmother? You wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t known someone like that. As Buechner put it, we are all mystics.

And like Paul each of us carries a thorn – a thorn we would gladly not advertise or carry around – but which God in his mercy has let us tote around. It is our undoing as often as not. But in the light of the gospel it is our very strength because it points to God’s very real and awesome power.

Whenever I am weak I am strong. We can proclaim that from the rooftops and the world will not reward us. But it will be the truth and it will set us free.

These are words that resonate for me of God’s work in the world. From before my ordination I have felt called to ministry with small congregations. Where we are weak we are strong. I believe that. I’m generally not at all sure that the institutional church thinks that.

When I as a person have felt most vulnerable, most at my wits end, that has by and large been the time that I was most aware of my dependence on God and God’s strength and mercy.

Perhaps some of you know what I’m talking about.

Paul is using language here that is in some ways out of this world.

I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven (Paul)

At the same time he is speaking a language that you and I know all too well. “A thorn in the flesh” was given to him, as to each one of us.

for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

Where the Church is really alive, most alive, is in places just like Epiphany, Spartanburg. You are living the priorities of the Gospel – day by day. You know whose you are and that gives you authenticity. As it did to Paul. As it did to the saints in ages past.
Thanks be to God.

proper-8-july-1.md

Homily: July 1, 2018 – Our Savior

Proper 8

lectionary

• David: “lament” poetry and song
• Psalm 130 De profundis
• We are a church built on the backs of prophets and apostles who have gone before

Personal conviction: in order to see, hear God, one can start anywhere.

Based on the premise that God created all that is; so therefore God’s imprint is found everywhere.

The same applies to preaching the Gospel.

I have taken my vow to faithfully preach the Gospel very seriously. “As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ,…” ¹

Conviction, then, that the Gospel can be proclaimed from any setting.

For me, to preach the Gospel does not mean that my sermon must focus on the text we read from one of the 4 gospels. It includes that, but it is much bigger than those particular words from the Bible. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is much larger than that. It was, afterall, “at the birth of the beginning.”

Today, I begin with the psalm. In the course of reading Psalm 130, I hope to open up, at least a glimpse of, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

De Profundis … Out of the depths

Text

De profundis clamavi, ad te, domine, … ²

From the depths I call to you,
Lord, hear my cry.
Catch the sound of my voice
raised up, pleading.

If you record our sins,
Lord, who could survive?
But because you forgive
we stand in awe.

I trust in God’s word,
I trust in the Lord.
More than sentries for dawn
I watch for the Lord.

More than sentries for dawn
let Israel watch.
The Lord will bring mercy
and grant full pardon.
The Lord will free Israel
from all its sins.

To hear with wide open heart

Bernstein’s Mass

Listening to L. Bernstein’s “Mass” countless times – good fortune to be able to see/hear it performed in Columbia earlier this year. In it, just before the climax of the “theater piece” a song in 2 parts is sung. It is a part of psalm 130, De Profundis. “De profundis, clamavi, ad te Domine…” I can hear the music and the words so clearly. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”

I cannot hear this psalm without also hearing the powerful tenor voice and the orchestra of Bernstein’s Mass. Perhaps you have texts like that. In preparation for this homily, I was tempted to play a little piece of it … but decided against it.

While listening to the music this past week I had an insight. I realized that these past 40 years or so, I had understood “out of the depths” as meaning something like “from the bottom of the sea” or “from the bottom of the Grand Canyon.” It’s like … something deep. It’s like … down there. In other words I had heard these words coming from a place of profound awe and the grand gestures of God’s creation.

In other places in the Hebrew Bible the word here refers specifically to the depths of the sea. I grew up in Colorado where most of the land mass was above you. You looked up to see the Rocky Mountains, sometimes from a great depth.

Reading metaphorically

My insight this week was in realizing that the psalm in this case is speaking figuratively. “Depths” is really a metaphor – like most of the Bible, actually. It’s a metaphor for looking deep within oneself. But it’s also about seeing with eyes and ears of awe and wonder, as if you were on a boat in the middle of the ocean or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, looking up with awe and wonder.

Reading the psalm all the way through to the end, one realizes that it is about looking deep within a nation and a people as well as within an individual person. The translation I have just read makes that clear as it alternates from verse to verse, from an individual voice to a community voice. Crying out from the depths is as much a corporate need as an individual need.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, this week – as really every week, is addressed to each of us personally, but it is addressed to us as a community and as a people.

Buechner on Religion

Frederich Buechner, the author, has often been able to put into words what is for me only a gasp of wonder. He wrote about religion in general:

Religion as a word points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he can never know fully until he reaches it.

We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe – life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmersat least of what the saints are blinded by…

On our refrigerator, like lots of refrigerators, there are lots of different kinds of things posted, taped, and variously attached: photos, mementos, that sort of thing. Among them in our kitchen is a little magnet that my wife gave to me. It says: “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.”

It is with such a spirit that we should approach Psalm 130, ready to have our breath taken away.

Listening to the psalm

Listen again with me from the 4 verses of the psalm:

I.

“From the depths I call to you …” I imagine a deep sea fisherman. Out in a small boat, water all around. One tiny voice, calling out. Expecting the Lord to hear.

I can hear the voice of the father in today’s gospel reading. Do you know the sound of a father, crying out at his children stolen from him? A father whose daughter is sick unto death?

A “little girl” who stood up after being put down. A young girl raised up as a sign of the Resurrection.

Jesus raised up a little girl, he rewarded her father’s humility in bringing his burden before Jesus. Though he had no children of his own in the biological sense of that word, all children were his. He felt the sorrow of all fathers as he heard the voice of one individual father.

How unrealistic we human beings can be? One little voice? Remembering that this psalm speaks not just literally but also figuratively. How can we expect God to hear the voice of this community of Christians, tucked away on one side of the continent? Or the voice of this nation, crying out at this particular point in human history?

II.

“If you record our sins, Lord, who could survive?”

The voice calls out with such passion and poignancy only because the woman is at her wit’s end. For 12 years she has bled. It’s impossible to keep her condition from being public. What kind of sin has led to such a thing, she mistakenly asks herself. How have I gone wrong?

Or the people ask, "How have I not lived up to my calling? My potential at one time was so great? How is it that I live in such mediocrity now?

Do we have the courage to ask those kind of questions? The psalmist does. Perhaps we can let the psalm speak for our deepest voices.

The courage comes from the conviction that God’s mercy and loving-kindness exceeds anything we can possibly imagine.

III.

“I trust in the Lord”

… blood that can’t be hidden. In society all too often it has been a focus of shame. It has been a way that men have shamed women. Even to the present day. Men of power have attempted to Lord it over women.

She doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But she is adamant that Jesus know, that he touch her. Jesus is worthy of the trust she puts in him. He is completely trustworthy in a world where trust has become scarce.

Jesus touches her with compassion, unclean though she be. Outcast that she is, Jesus reaches across the lines of separation.

The psalm reminds us throughout that it is about the community as much as the individual. Perhaps more so. As a community and as a people we have wandered astray, failed to match our potential, fallen short of the goals we have set for ourselves. We have done those things which we ought not to have done and we have failed to do the things we ought to have done.

The Gospel tells us that if we approach the Lord with courage and humility, enough to know and acknowledge our shortcomings, that the Lord is full of compassion and loving-kindness. We trust in the Lord’s mercy.

IV.

“More than sentries for dawn let Israel watch.”

We’ve seen the movies where a watchman is needed, even to the approaching dawn. Perhaps you have served in the military and you know the necessity of such a watch. The psalm calls us to that kind of attention.

As individuals, as a community, as a people, we are called to look honestly at ourselves. We do it with courage and humility, for we trust that the Lord will set us free.

“The Lord will bring mercy and grant full pardon. The Lord will free Israel from all its sins.”

Closing

As our collect puts it, we are built on the foundation of:

1. a weeping pastor who had lost his daughter A leader of synagogue and daughter at the point of death. … “Do not fear, only believe.” … “tabitha cum”
2. a woman bleeding for 12 years – who had to go public with her plea to be healed

An appropriate thing to be doing during the week that we observe our national independence day. It is appropriate for you as a congregation in your search for pastoral leadership. It is essential for all of us to do – as a people, as a nation, as a world – to maintain our humanity.

Out of the depths, I cry out. Hear my voice, O Lord. Hear our voice, O Lord.

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1. (BCP: Ordination of a Priest) ↩︎

2. From Psalter published by LTP, Chicago ↩︎