The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 22, 6 October 2013

“Fettered Service”

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 22

6 October 2013

Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church

Fremont, California

Lamentations 1:1-6

Lamentations 3:19-26, or Psalm 137

II Timothy 1:1-14

Saint Luke 17:5-10

INI

The Method:

In my life as a preacher it has always been my practice to confine my preaching to the texts for the day.  I think that it is important to comment on the rich array of Scripture that the lectionary now gives to us, and to awaken the both of us to the often hidden treasures that abide there.  This morning, however, I am aware that I need to take a much broader approach.  First of all the lessons are somewhat disparate, and to wrestle them into a unity would be a futile and not all that useful exercise.  The first reading is a continuing reading that has now landed in the book of Lamentations, and the second reading is a continuing reading from I and II Timothy.  Then there is the Gospel – and it is here that we can take our stand and both listen and comment.

Another point that makes me pause this morning and take a different approach.  Being a liturgical church, along with our Roman and Lutheran brothers and sisters, we tend to have a preaching program that is deeply tied to the liturgical year.  During the festival half we are lead from event to event.  Advent (and its shadow which we are entering with these Sundays) leads us to the prophets and an outlook anticipating the end of time – and ultimately the promise of Jesus.  Christmas is a collection of events.  Epiphany begins with the Magi and then continues with Jesus’ baptism and what flows from that.  Lent, although meant to be introspective and devotional, still casts a long glance at the Passion and the events of Holy Week.  Easter is the same.  So we as Christians tend to think of our faith as centered in a series of events.  Although that is partially true, it neglects to look at the teachings of Jesus.  Ordinary time, green time, if you will, attempts to do that, but our minds have been formed to even look at the teaching moments as events: The Sermon on the Mount, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, the Sending out of the Seventy-Two, and so on.

In the Gospel for today, the disciples ask of Jesus to increase their faith.  Many commentators see this request not so much as avid students urging their Rabbi for new truth, but rather a social jockeying for place in the “kingdom”.  Jesus however has something entirely different in mind.  Before we get to that insight, however, we need to rehearse the teaching of Jesus.  And to do that, I’d like to focus our search so that we can see some unique perspectives that we can apply to Jesus’ instruction to the disciples.  Here’s my method.

Sharpening our Focus

The Gospel of Mark, Matthew, and Luke all depend on a supposed source called “Q” (which stands for the German word “Quelle” the word for “source”.  This book contains sayings that contribute to the three Gospels.  I have, however, tied these sayings to those found in the Gospel of Thomas, to provide a further filter and focus to our query.  What did I find?  I found plenty.  Too much for a sermon, however, so I have chosen these four sayings from Luke and Q to give us our focus.

1.     Jesus teaching is counter cultural.

2.     Jesus wants us to be aware of our own situation.

3.     Jesus wants us to be ready to do mission work.

4.     Jesus wants us to give.

Let me fill these in:

Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone. 
(Luke 12:51-54, Thomas 16)

Talk to your neighbor, and let them know that you are a Christian, and you will hear a few expectations that they will have of you.  The question for all of us, when we hear those expectations is how they match up to the expectations of Jesus.  Here Jesus does not run away from the conflict that arises when truth is spoken, but rather seeks it out.  The question is then, for what are you willing to stand up and be outspoken?  Are you willing to try that principal against those of Jesus?  Can you dare to be different?  The WWJD question in the last decade did not wrestle with the radical Jesus, the Jesus that requires us to be outrageous in our living out the Gospel.

You see the sliver in your friend's eye, but you don't see the timber in your own eye. When you take the timber out of your own eye, then you will see well enough to remove the sliver from your friend's eye. 
(Luke 6:41-42, Thomas 26)

We have learned to be critical of our time, and there is much to be critical about.  Have we, however, learned to be critical of our own lives?  Sometimes, no most of the time, we reserve such introspection to Lent, and forget the disciple the remainder of the year.  Jesus wants his disciples to know themselves intimately.  How do you do that?  There are Ignatian methods that I could share with you, prayer practices, private confession and absolution, and other means that can make us aware of what we are.  Luther had a great term: simil Justus et peccator, “at the same time justified and a sinner”.  Jesus wants us to have a perspective of ourselves before we cast a glance at our neighbors.

The crop is huge but the workers are few, so beg the harvest boss to dispatch workers to the fields. 
(Luke 10:2, Thomas 73)

As much as television can, it gives me a clue as to how lost and floundering we all are.  We are all looking for something that will give meaning to our lives.  If you watch reality television you can see that that “meaning “ is achieved at the expense of others.  We look at people who don’t have a clue about much of anything, hoping that it will convince us that we do.  That is the harvest – but it is only a potential harvest.  It is a harvest awaiting workers.  What are we doing together to get out the message of life for all?

Congratulations to those who go hungry, so the stomach of the one in want may be filled. 

(Luke 6:21, Thomas 69b).

You may have read this in the paper –

“Americans throw away 40 percent of the food they buy, often because of misleading expiration dates that have nothing to do with safety, said a study released Wednesday by Harvard University Law School and the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.” (SFGate, 5 October 2013)

In view of the hunger of the world, we are a wanting society.  Jesus treasures those who hunger for the sake of those who are really hungry.  My brother has borrowed a slogan with which he and his family try to leader their lives, “Live simply, so that others may simply live.”  What have you given up so that you might give to those who need?

In short, be a cultural misfit, understand who you are in faith, know what opportunities there are for your service, and be prepared to give.

A Troubling Metaphor

Jesus then tells a quick story about a slave and a master.  The master comes first, the slave second.  In our egalitarian society, and having as a society jettisoned the institution of slavery, teaching disciples to be slaves can be a bit troubling.  But that is exactly what Jesus wants us to understand – our place over against him and the mission that he provides.  Slaves!  It is a term that Paul is not anxious about, for he describes himself in such terms.  Once we have jumped over this cultural obstacle, we can begin to understand what it means, and tie it to what Christ asks us to do.  So to go over Jesus’ teachings again:

1.     Know that you will differ from the prevailing attitudes of our own time.

2.     Know who you are in Christ.  Remember your baptism (remember that bowl at the back of the room.  Be here next Sunday as we invite Marisol to join us in the baptismal fellowship here.  Know that you are something different.

3.     Know where it is that you are called to serve.  Know all the avenues of service in this congregation and in this community.  Take in the nourishment of the Eucharist, and the grace of the Crucified One so that you can take your own cross out into the world – the cross of service.

4.     Finally, know what you have so that you can give.  The slave served dinner and ate later. Know that those who hunger and need are your masters.  You will be fed later – with the bread of heaven.

SDG

A Sermon for Saint Michael and All Angels Day - 29 September 2013

The Quiet and the Hidden

Saint Michael and All Angels

30 September 2013

The Society of Catholic Priests

St. James’ Episcopal Church

San Francisco, California

Genesis 28:10-17

Psalm 103

Revelation 12:7-12

St. John 1:47-51

The Quiet Place

My office looks out onto the Labyrinth at Saint Anne’s Church.  This afternoon as I am writing this a woman has placed herself on a bench at the periphery of the path, and she just sits in the relative quiet of Fremont.  Last week it was a young man of about 20 who parked his car in the lot and took up the same position at the edge of the path.  He sat in quiet for over an hour. 

Judith, a member at another church that I served, would take her place in the quiet church during the weekday, seated in front of the icon of the Theotokos.  She would sit and move to the rhythm of her own prayer.  I would see her active in her prayer, much like my mother, Ruth, who would trace her hands in silence over the raised letters of my father’s name, at his gravesite – soon to be her own.  Silence was what mattered at that moment.  I can recall, as I recently mentioned at another gallery, walking through the halls of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, noticing a quiet and dark room.  I entered, attracted by the quiet, and was quickly taken up by a standing Buddha, the sole object in the room, place in front of a violet cloth.  This was it, I decided, this is what my faith needed to look and feel like – quiet and simple. 

Jacob comes to his own quiet place, and having just wrested the birthright from his brother, relaxes in the silence of a protective rock and sleeps, and dreams.

The Hidden Place

So why have we come here this evening?  What has drawn us here?  Is it the quietness that follows a busy day that we seek, or is it to rest and reflect in this place that is hidden from the world.  We come together as Anglo-Catholics.  It is important, I think, that we begin to understand what that means.  It is important that we acknowledge the tradition in which we serve.  In the beginnings the fathers of the Oxford Movement were not so much concerned with the gestures and vestures of the mass so much as the hidden service to which they felt called.  In the Hanoverian and later Victorian period there was a hidden neediness in British Society – and it was this ministry that first attracted the tractarians.  We can resonate.  The needs in our society are hidden by our habit of not seeing them or dealing with them. 

I recall fondly an evening with James Tramel.  We had dinner in Berkeley, and then walked down Shattuck Avenue.  Each person with a hand out was greeted by James, and given at least $1.  Finally he looked at me, handed me $5 in single bills and said, “Now it’s your turn.”  Even though I had accompanied his ministry, and observed it, I was not seeing.  It was essentially hidden from me – or more correctly, I was hiding its nature and its call to me as a Christian.

Jacob goes to a hidden place – the Yahwist indicates that it is an arbitrary place, with no essential importance or meaning.  Soon it will be revealed as something other than quiet and hidden.  Its history may have been crowded with the ancients who had gathered there in times past to honor the gods and nature.  The memories of that shatter Jacob’s presence, as he dreams what was quiet and hidden is suddenly revealed. 

The Place of Commerce

“He dreamed, and, look, a ramp was set against the ground with its top reaching the heavens, and, look, messenger of G-d were going up and coming down it.”

As I reviewed this text, in my mind I saw Albrecht Dürer’s The Mass of Saint Gregory.   As the saint is offering the canon of the mass, surrounded by liturgical ministers and believers the accouterments of the mass are completed by an image – no a vision – of the resurrected Jesus’ hovering over the altar.  It is reminiscent of the text in Genesis as Jacob observes, “Adonai was poised” over Jacob.  In addition surrounding Gregory and Jacob are evidences of the commerce of heaven.  “and look messengers of G-d were going up and coming down it.”

Had I looked deeper at the lady and young man sitting at the Labyrinth, I might have discerned the same heavenly commerce for them.  Or had I been sensitive I might have observed the realities of Judith’s prayer, and the answers that were sent back.  What was my mother praying as she touched the stone of memory of my father – what angels attended to her?  And what angel brought me to the quiet room of the Buddha, so that I could welcome my own Redeemer’s power in life?  It was the commerce of this world that urged Jacob to depart from his brother, and it will be the commerce of heaven that will urge him to come back. 

We are in the business of the commerce of heaven and earth.  G-d observes.  Angels abet the commerce, the conversation, and the interaction of the two spheres.  And what is our purpose as priests – of this society – in this society?  What do we observe and what answers and meaning do we provide.  Jacob assigns a name to his arbitrary resting place – Beth-El – House of G-d.  Is that the intersection that we occupy as well?  How is G-d present in what we do?

For now, I think, it is we who ascend and descend the ramp.  It is we who are the messengers.  Where in our world does the ramp come down to connect our world with the heavenly world?  That is our duty to determine and to share with others in our calling.  We must provide a way that reveals its quietness and hiddenness as a sign of its true nature – a way to Emmaus, a path with Abraham and Sarah, a way in the wilderness.  It is ours to share with others.  It is ours to set up a stone of awareness, and anointing with oil to make real its purpose.  Our rock, our hands, our oil, our hearts, G-d’s message, our priestly ministry.

SDG

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 20, 22 September 2013

“The Heart of Prayer”

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 20

22 September 2013

Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church

Fremont, California

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Psalm 79:1-9

I Timothy 2:1-7

St. Luke 16:1-13

INI

First Reading of the Gospel and Questions

All that I heard this week from my fellow priests was the concern about preaching on the Gospel reading for this morning  - The unscrupulous steward.  Although to our ears it should not seem that strange.  A manager manipulates his boss’ accounts for his benefit, and for the benefit of others, so that he is not caught being a bad accounts manager for the man he serves.  Not so odd is it.  We read about it every day, if we dare to open the financial pages of the newspaper or follow the news feeds on our phones.  Enron, Lehman Brothers, Sallie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Vatican Bank, well I could go on and on.  The parable that Jesus uses to teach his disciples about the true value of things seems to be another example of the greed, self-interest, and indifference evident at that time and in our own time.  The questions that confront us as Christians are “what shall we learn from this?  What is Jesus really trying to communicate to us?  How can such corrupt behaviors serve as an example to us?”  Those are good questions, and ones that I am bidden to answer as we examine this text.  Before we go there, however, I want to tell you a story that can provide both background and context to Jesus’ parable.  I hope that you will find it helpful.

Walking in the World

Yesterday I presided at a funeral – actually I co-presided at a funeral.  Cris Gutierrez was a woman of our time.  I knew her because her husband, Mark, was a member of my parish.  Both of them were writers and observers of the urban scene in Northern California.  Their magazine Frighten the Horses blazed new literary, cultural, and sexual trails for the readers who had similar questions about how to live in our time.  Cris was not religious, at least not in the usual sense, although her writing revealed how indelible a Catholic upbringing can be.  Mark was a good Lutheran and then a good Episcopalian.  So the service began at St. Gregory of Nyssa Church on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, where you get to dance the liturgy.  Then it moved to Saint Francis Lutheran Church, in the Castro, where Cris’ ashes would be interred. 

To get to Saint Francis, we walked in a liturgical procession with drums, banners, crosses, and vestments, down to Seventeenth Street and then over to Church Street.  We walked in the world.  From the gentrification that surrounds St. Gregory’s we passed the transitioning design center area, moved under the raised section of Highway 101, where we greeted those who had pitched a tent to get out of the rain.  We walked past both trash and beauty.  A truck was delivering bread, and another was picking up garbage.  We walked through the industrialized zone east of Van Ness Avenue, and past the new dance venue built by the Oberlin Dance Collective.  We were greeted and ignored.  Some paused and smiled, some tried to avoid.  We walked through the heart of the Mission where we were greeted with the produce stands, tacquerias, and the new chi chi restaurants that are crowding the area.  We walked through the residential areas around Delores Park, and past people sitting in the new parklets that dot the streets.  Down Church Street we ducked under trees, and played chicken with on-coming groups of young people.  We navigated all this until we reached the memorial terrace at Saint Francis Church.

As I walked this procession, led it actually, holding high a Coptic Cross bedecked with ribbons, I realized I was walking this morning’s sermon.  How many unscrupulous managers had I passed?  How many confused and wondering Christians had I passed as well – wondering how to live the Christ life in this world?  I saw the poor and hungry, and I saw the wealthy and well fed.  I saw those who looked at our procession as a traffic problem, and those who honked their horns and saluted us.  We were in the world.

New gleanings from the Gospel

Jesus’ message, especially in Luke, is about finding the Kingdom of Heaven, and realizing its presence in midst.  Luke is carefully clear about the intentions of this Kingdom, and who are its natural citizens – the poor, the sick, the lame, the blind, and the sinner.  Jesus takes us into the heart of the problems of the world, and in the life and behaviors of this manager says to us – “find the kingdom anywhere!”  What does that mean?  It means that we can find examples of faith even in the world that seems indifferent to G-d, and G-d’s ways.  It is a world that was familiar to Jeremiah.  It is a world that both G-d and the prophet weep over in the first reading for this morning.  It is a world that is honest with us about its need, and it is a world that calls upon us to pray.

Jesus’ parable does not rejoice so much in the life of this manager, as it rejoices in the opportunities for the kingdom that are evident there.  Jesus wants the disciples, and us to ask the question again.  In the previous parables, given for the benefit of the Scribes and Pharisees, Jesus wonders what is truly of value in this world.  The lesson we learned that we value often what we lose, and we rejoice in what we find.  Now to the disciples he poses the same question – what is really valuable to you?  If it is money and things, then follow the example of the manager, and make friends for yourselves with money.  If it is more than that, then strive for heaven.  The collect for today makes this very clear.

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Prayer in the World

While walking along the street, I remembered the second lesson for today: “First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for everyone.”  And here the author of I Timothy does not leave us stranded in an ideal of prayer, but rather enumerates the opportunities: “for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”  How we need to pray for our leaders whom we expect to lead us in serving, well, all those people we encountered in our procession.  You see them too don’t you?  Sinners and righteous, elbow to elbow in the grocery store, or in the office – on the street – taking your parking place.  Prayer needs to be not only in the heart of our own need, but in the heart of the world as well.  If you don’t know where that is then take a walk down Fremont Avenue.  I had lunch at Dina’s Diner the other day.  “Are you a father?”  “Not Catholic?” “Episcopalian?” So many opportunities to encounter the world, to pray for it, and then to bargain with G-d – and here is Jesus’ point.  Bargain with G-d, and promise those who seek G-d, or who don’t even know G-d, promise them everything: Bread, Wine, Water for cleansing, and Words of Forgiveness.  Take their debts away and be the unscrupulous, prodigal, believer.  G-d will love it.

SDG

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 19, 15 September 2013

“What have we lost?”

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 19

15 September 2013

Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church

Fremont, California

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Psalm 14

I Timothy 1:12-17

St. Luke 15:1-10

INI

Losing yourself (Umberto Eco)

I love reading, and one of my favorite authors is Umberto Eco.  He was a professor of semeiotics (the study of symbol and meaning) at the University of Bologna in Italy.  All of his books a filled with symbols known and unknown, popular and arcane, arrogant and simple.  Some years ago I read his novel, The Mysterious Fire of Queen Loana.  It is the story of a man who following a stroke wakes up one day realizing that his has lost his sense of memory – to a point.  All that he has read, he retains.  It is his memory of family and relations that has disappeared. Indeed, he cannot remember his own name. The novel reports his efforts in gaining back his history, his family, and really his sense of self.  He retires to his grandfather’s home in Solara, and in the attic of that home discovers all the books, games, newspapers, and other materials that re-mind him of his life before the stroke. 

It is an interesting notion, isn’t it; continuing to walk through life, but without the usual reminders of what it is that you really are.  It is this dilemma that Jeremiah approaches in the first reading for this morning.  In the oracle that G-d speaks, we sense a familiar notion of loss: “For my people are foolish, they do not know me…they have no understanding.”  In this revelation, both G-d and prophet plumb the depths of a nation’s loss.  Later on in the poem, G-d is still speaking the prophet’s thoughts; it is as though creation itself had been lost.  “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light.”  Does this sound familiar? 

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth – and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters – Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light.”                        

That light seemed to be gone, and what Jeremiah is trying to tell us, through G-d’s voice and mouth, is that even our very createdness can be lost.  As we read the news these days about diminishing habitats and resources, we can begin to understand such a profound loss – creation itself.  Yambo, the main character of Eco’s novel has lost something dear – his very sense of self.  Jeremiah wants us to think beyond that to the total loss of G-d.

Losing things of Value

In the Gospel for today, Jesus, countering the attitude of the Scribes and Pharisees about his seeming loss of social values, “he welcomes sinners and eats with them,” offers three parables about loss and value.  Value is relative, isn’t it: one sheep among a hundred, one coin among ten.  It is in the third parable, which is not a part of our reading this morning, that we begin to really count the value.  For in this parable it is the loss of a son, a loss of the future and of promise – for that is what an heir was.  The prodigal son lost or squandered the inheritance he demanded from his father, and the father prodigally gave it away, not once, but twice when the spent son made a return to his father’s house. 

In yesterday’s New York Times there was a rather long article about those who live in the so-called “Inland Empire” east of Los Angeles, where housing values have impoverished people.  Their tale is about value.  One family, now living in a home with termites and water damage, a home that is a quarter of what they used to have, that home to them is of inestimable value.  It is where they live and survive.

What have you lost?  Anything?  A loved one, a friend, a relationship?  In order to understand both Jeremiah and Jesus, this morning, we have to begin by counting the value of things.  There is for us, whether we bring it mind or not, a hierarchy of value in our life.  For Yambo in Eco’s book there was the sincere desire to regain all the value that was represented in a lived life.  All of these memories and shared experiences (shared with family and friends that are even more valuable) are crucial to what we are and what we think ourselves to be.  The perspective of someone who is homeless, or mentally ill will be a different perception than ours – but they will be of value.

Gaining Perspective – Losing God.

We need to go back to Jeremiah again before we can understand what Jesus is trying to teach us.  What Jeremiah sees in his society and culture is a profound loss of G-d.  And before we diminish this loss by saying, “Oh, Jeremiah just didn’t want them to lose their national identity – It was Israel’s G-d that was being forgotten,” we need to understand something about Jeremiah and Isaiah and other prophets of the period.  They were not so much interested in resuscitation of a lost nation and kingship.  They had cast their eyes to a much larger stage on which the G-d of Israel was working – G-d’s kindness measured out to all the nations.  That was the thing of value.  To lose G-d was to lose the connection between Creator and Creation, the connectedness of all created things – the human community.

Losing that sense of G-d, that G-d is both Creator and Sustainer, that G-d binds us to one another, losing that sense is what concerns Jesus.  Who are the sinners with whom he eats?  Well, some of them were evil.  The tax collectors represented the Roman oppression and became wealthy because of it.  How different were they from the average citizen (even today) who did not care for the poor, or from the poor who stole, or from the child who disobeyed her parents?  Augustine saw us all bound together in sin.  Jesus wants the Scribes and Pharisees to see us all as bound together in our common value before G-d. 

Whom have you lost here?  Who used to enjoy your fellowship at the Eucharist, and is no longer present with you in the Feast of Thanksgiving?  Who among you is sick or lonely?  Who among you has lost the ability to say what their troubles really are?  Whom have you lost to your fellowship here simply because they don’t know you are here? 

In a play Friday evening by Word for Word at Z Space in San Francisco, the actors playing out a book by Zona Gale, Friendship Village, tell the story of a Thanksgiving Dinner in Friendship, Wisconsin.  Caliope, a town resident wants to have a Thanksgiving Dinner for “those who are sick or poor” but soon realizes that no one like that exists in Friendship.  Even so she convinces six other people to contribute to the cause and assures them that there will be guests for the dinner.  At the end of the chapter we realize that her “guests” were those she had asked to prepare for the dinner.  In the asking the reader or the audience realizes that they were in deed the sick and the poor.  Sometimes we lose the ability to detect the poverty or illness of those around us.

There is a word that gets lost in these parables and that word is found.

“When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.”

“When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me.’”

“But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.”

Such a brazen thing I am doing, nagging you about what you have perhaps lost.  It is a wrong tactic.  What I should be saying is “Find and Rejoice”!  That is why you are here – to find those who have been lost to others – to rejoice at sons and daughters who might find this place a home.  All of the symbols and actions that we do here are capable of reminding others of the life that they may have lost.  Like Yambo, they can reclaim the life G-d has graciously given them.

So who will it be?  Whom will you invite?  Over whom will you rejoice?

SDG

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 18, 8 September 2013

“Centering”

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 18

8 September 2013

Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church

Fremont, California

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17

Philemon 1-21

St. Luke 14:25-33

INI

Introduction of the Theme – Centering

I would like to focus our thoughts on the readings for this morning by introducing a central thought and suggesting a practice that you might use in your own life.  In order to introduce the central thought or theme, I need to relate an experience I had in seminary.  Actually it wasn’t at the seminary, but while I was at seminary.  I’ve always been interested in the arts, and so I thought taking a course in ceramics might be interesting.  I enrolled in a course with Steven Zawoiski, a local artist and potter.  We learned various techniques; roll construction, slab construction, and throwing pots on a wheel.  And here we come to our central point.  In order to throw a pot on a wheel the potter needs to take sufficient clay, place it on the wheel, and then, with the wheel running, center the clay so that its center of gravity is in the exact center of the wheel.  If the clay is not centered, the pot will torque out, and pulling a pot out of the whirling clay will become impossible.  Jeremiah understands: “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand.”  This centering of the clay is physically demanding, requiring strong hand and arm muscles and deep intent on discovering the center.  This is the central idea for us this morning – centering the clay, our lives, our family, and our thoughts.  Centering.

The second part of this introduction is a practice that we can employ when working at the discipline of centering our lives in Christ.  It is called centering prayer, and it can be quite useful in doing the business of centering life in Christ.  I will describe the steps to you, and will give you a copy of these steps at the end of the service.  It is a simple and elegant way to center prayer and thinking:

1.     Sit comfortably with your eyes closed, relax, and quiet yourself. Be in love and faith to G-d.

2.     Choose a sacred word that best supports your sincere intention to be in the Lord's presence and open to His divine action within you (i.e. "Jesus", "Lord," "G-d," "Savior," "Abba," "Divine," "Shalom," "Spirit," "Love," etc.).

3.     Let that word be gently present as your symbol of your sincere intention to be in the Lord's presence and open to His divine action within you.

4.     Whenever you become aware of anything (thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, associations, etc.), simply return to your sacred word, your anchor.

So now that we have the central thought and practice – centering, let me suggest to you from today’s readings, words that might serve as anchor words for your prayer.

Centering on Repentance (Jeremiah)

Jeremiah introduces a clear-cut visual when he talks about the pot, which has been spoiled in the potter’s hand.  “And he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”  The word for repentance, metanoia in Greek, means to literally “turn around”.  As the potter recenters the clay, so Jeremiah bids Israel to turn around, to turn their faces back to the G-d who is the potter.  Jeremiah was preaching to a people who thought that political solutions would take them out of the crisis in which they found themselves.  The dilemma was similar to the one we find ourselves in – how do we deal with Syria?  Where is G-d in the situation?  What might our thoughts be if we were looking at G-d for an answer? So if we were to use “repentance” as a centering word, we might begin to wonder what it is that we need to move away from, to look away from.  We might wonder how we can turn and face G-d again.  First centering word: “repentance”.

Centering on the Journey with G-d (Psalm)

The psalmist in Psalm 139 seems to understand G-d as potter as Jeremiah understands G-d.  “You press upon me behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”  Or as Robert Alter translate it: “From behind and in front you shaped me, and you set your palm upon me.”  G-d knows us because G-d has shaped us.  The experience with G-d does not stop there, however – it continues.  “You trace my journeys and my resting-places, and are acquainted with all my ways.”  The centering word that comes to us from this Psalm is “Journey”.  Where are you going?  What is your destination?  With whom are you traveling?  The psalmist understands that the G-d who made us does not just place us on a shelf of pots (if you will) but rather continues in life with us.  The journey with God begins from our very beginning, “For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  What would it be like for you to pray having the full knowledge that your journey in life is not done in solitude – but rather that G-d accompanies you in all things.  The second centering word: “journey”.

Centering on our Family (Philemon)

Jeremiah knew troubling political situations, the psalmist had a rich interior life, and now Paul involves himself in a situation that most of us would not have touched with a ten-foot pole.  He doesn’t address the evil of slavery, but he does address this issue of “family.”  His friend, Philemon, perhaps a fellow Christian leader, has lost a slave, Onesimus, who has run away to Paul.  Paul makes a Christian of him, and finds him “useful” in his work in the church.  Paul encourages Philemon to receive Onesimus back into his household, and then to release him to work with Paul.  It is an interesting commentary on family.  When we run into the word “household”, the Greek oikos, we need to be aware that it is inclusive of much more than immediate family.  It included everyone, family, slave, some clients, children – all who worked and labored in the house.  After the Second World War, when huge numbers of people left the towns and cities in which they were born and raised and moved to larger cities at some distance from their homeland, people began to realize that “family” was more than aunts, uncles, and cousins.  There was a growing “fictive family”, as my husband would call it – a family brought together by mutual love and respect.  This is what Paul is advocating – a family centered in service to Christ?  Who is your family?  Who is included, who is not?  How do you pray for your family both real and virtual?  The third centering word: “family.”

Centering on Discipleship

It is this image of family that Jesus uses as a deciding point about discipleship.  On various occasions Jesus uses the family as a point of discussion about what the Kingdom of Heaven is all about.  The central idea that emerges is that of “cost”.  When told that his family was waiting to see him, Jesus shoots back “who is my family?” His answer is broader than we might expect.  “Who ever does G-d’s will – these are my family.”  Another way of putting it would be that whoever paid the cost of discipleship is family in the Kingdom of Heaven.  The Lutheran pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way in his book The Cost of Discipleship, “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”  Talk about cost!  This is, however, how Jesus talks about what it means to follow him.  “Take up your cross”, Jesus says. 

This is where prayer comes into the picture, and the prayer that Jesus mentions in the Gospel is very practical.  What do people who are building a house do – they count the cost.  A king who is going to wage war?  Count the cost.  Do you see the prayer in counting the cost?  Centering our prayer on discipleship would need to take in account all that G-d has done for us (G-d’s cost) and all the ways we are known by G-d and are known by us.  The psalmist can help,

“LORD, You searched me and you know,

It is you who know when I sit and I rise,

You fathom my thoughts from afar.

My path and my lair you winnow,

and with all my ways are familiar.

For there is no word on my tongue

but that You, O LORD, wholly know it."  - Alter

In short G-d knows the sum of what we are and that is what we need to add into the calculation of the cost of our discipleship.  What does it cost you to love your family?  What does it cost you to follow Jesus?  What is the cost of your discipleship?  If your answer is “nothing”, then I need to send you to your prayer desk to calculate the cost.  I doubt, however, that any of you would answer such.  You do know the cost of love (family), and the cost of following Jesus (worship and service).  Now to press on in our journey together and individually, we all should center our prayer on discipleship.  So the fourth centering word: discipleship.  Things that we should do today to make us ready for our prayer during the week:  have assurance in the words of forgiveness in the Absolution, be nourished by the Eucharist, and touch the water of your Baptism.  Then, center your week in Christ, neighbor, and self.

SDG