Soliloquy

The great Jewish sage of the Middle Ages, Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, or as he is best known, Maimonides or Rambam, concluded his medical oath with these words.  “O God, You have appointed me to watch over the life and death of Your creatures. Here I am, ready for my vocation.” To invoke the Divine in this way is to make the Divine present, to bring it out of hiding into the open space of encounter and engagement. I begin my prayers each day making God present in each moment of my day and my activities. I am able to do this because God has appointed me to a life of prayer as well as a life of work or vocation. Prayer, as Maimonides knew well, has less to do with saying than with being. Prayer is vocation. Vocation is prayer. The essential nature of prayer is unconditional surrender to God, to be completely disposed, body and soul, to the invitation of the Divine. To be ready for my vocation means that I come before the Divine as I am, sinful and unclean, willing to stand under judgment and grateful to be forgiven by grace to fulfill the call that addresses me in the Gospel. Yet, I am so very aware that to be ready for my vocation is always a threat to the self I so carefully protect.

The voice of the Gospel breaks into the open spaces between the Divine and me bearing contemporary and immediate sounds that can be confusing. With effort, I can sometimes hear an ancient voice that no longer speaks with the force of will, but with the favor of remembrance. It fades quickly, displaced by the urgency of the moment. Now I readily hear the voice of joy and laughter with their distinct timbre beckoning me to a casual self-forgetfulness that pretends to be liberating. I ponder fleetingly whether I am deceived by grace. I push aside the voice of illness and pain when they appear. They are an unwelcome intrusion into my life so skillfully designed to avoid all unpleasantness. It is much more pleasing for me to drink from the fountain of joy than to sip from the cup of bitterness. The Gospel does not push me into an unwanted embrace with the bitter ordinariness of my life. Neither does it force me to accept grief, loss, defeat or disappointment. Rather, the Gospel always arrives ahead of me, prepares a place for me in the heart of grief, loss, disappointment and defeat, awaits my arrival with patience and when I am there anoints me with its comforting love. While there it is revealed to me that the vocation for which I am made ready is gratitude, i.e., Eucharist.

Summer offers us an opportunity to relax with family and friends and to refresh ourselves for the rest of the year’s journey. It is also the time for us to reflect on the blessings that have shaped our lives and our relationships so far this year. These are not simply this year’s blessings, for blessings are continuous, unceasing. They clear a path for us each day into a future that gradually opens up to reveal the goals and destinations to which God has called us. This summer, some of us are going through afflictions, illnesses of different degrees of severity, some may even be ultimately fatal. These do not feel like blessings but are more like burdens that weigh upon us and hold us down. Burdens, too, are as revealing as blessings. Burdens unveil the strength of soul and spirit that dawns for us at the break of day as a promise that we will be borne through the day on God’s grace. The prophet Isaiah comforts us with these words,” A bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench.” (Isaiah 42:3). Burdens are not a divine test to find out just how faithful we are. God already knows that! Burdens, among which we count illness, are human events, sometimes painfully tragic but often less so. Burdens are an horizon, heaven touching earth, divine grace embracing human frailty. Because we have held our faith in front of us through our journey of health or illness, we know that we have the grace to bear our burdens for however long until we find the blessings hidden in them. Burdens are blessings in disguise, an opportunity for gratitude. That is difficult for many to hear, and as disciples of Jesus Christ we will need to find many different ways of saying that until the message is heard.  Illness is itself a stewardship of grace. Illness demands that we conserve God’s grace so none of it is lost in fear and anxiety.

             For us Lutherans, that stewardship of grace is embedded in “Justification by faith,” the heart of our Christian life. It throbs in health as well as in illness not only for each of us as individuals, but also for all of us together.  In our community of faith, on our walk through health or illness, we live in other people’s visions and we dance in other people’s dreams. This gathered life is life that embraces the divine. St. Paulwho spoke from the depth of his own suffering says, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:7). The foundation of that statement is our life together in Christ. A gathered life holds within itself the promise of health and the fear of illness. One way of feeling justified is to know that God is bearing our illness and burdens until we are strong enough again to assume them. Justification, making us whole again, is God’s free gift to us, whereby through Jesus Christ grace grants us forgiveness and reconciliation. Reconciliation makes whole again what was broken between the Lord and us, and what was broken within ourselves. Justification is a promise that God will not leave what is broken in its broken-ness, that God will not leave the sick and distressed in their distress, that God will not abandon us in health or in illness. We are stewards of that promise, even when we break for summer.

REMINDER: WEAR RED ON PENTECOST

When I saw “Reminder: Wear Red on Pentecost” I smiled at the sentiment. Show our unity. Feel the fire, or as the poet Browning would have it, “the indubitable bliss of fire.” I smiled as I knew that I would be wearing black on Pentecost. I wear black most days. I’m comfortable with black. Red and Black are important to me, e.g., I am trying to keep the congregation out of the Red and in the Black, financially. I’m probably wrong if I assume that my sermons will lead to inspired giving. Sermons are curious entities oftentimes as useless as an appendix, an anomaly of evolution, but of sacred liturgy. A beleaguered parishioner often has to dig relentlessly to uncover the three theological gems that Lutheran pastors hide there as spiritual booby traps to elicit a sense of generous giving, of fidelity to quarterly statements and budgets. And Synod apportionment.  Finding those gems is as difficult as showing enthusiasm for okra.

Sunday is not the best day for sermons. While I’m not sure of this, not having a complete understanding of ecclesiastical laws, it does seem as if the thinking demanded by sermons would violate Sabbath rest at about 11:20 a.m. I hasten to add that I violate the Sabbath every Sabbath by working while trying to keep the Sabbath holy. For this I am grievously repentant. I am convinced, however, that a proper sermon is proper stewardship! The evident purpose of a sermon is the financial health and well-being of the congregation, the art of generating income, which Lutherans are wont to deny.  While it may seem insensitive to mention sermon and finance in the same sentence, I am palpably aware that Lutheran pastors are salaried servants, and that servanthood can go only so far without a fair amount of mammon.

A good sermon, probably any sermon, is an economic device. It may best be presented in a business context where the mention of money does not result in embarrassment, awkwardness, or at the extreme, apocalyptic judgment. It has always seemed to me that the best time and place for a sermon is Wednesday afternoon at a quarter to three, in the relaxed ambience of a board-room, while anticipating tea. In such a context the sermon would not be an intrusion upon the quietness of mind. It would offer an alternative to negotiations characteristic of economic interests. Since the amount of income hoped to be derived would indeed be a mere paltry sum compared to the accustomed expectation of return on investments (ROI), a sermon would be tolerated with equanimity and an appropriate level of empathy. In other words, it could keep us in the Black and out of the Red.

Red and Black are important in another way. They remind me of diversity. Pentecost is a story of diversity, the Holy Spirit calling diverse people into spiritual unity. That’s what we are: ekklesia, ek-klesia, the church, people called apart and called together. “Red and Yellow, Black and White, all are precious in his sight.” To be called is to be precious, and precious is priceless but still within budget. It’s that stewardship thing again. The Pentecost story quotes the prophet Joel that the sun shall be darkened and the moon turned to blood. Black and Red again! The sun, the greater light, becomes other than itself, now absorbed in darkness. The moon, the lesser light, becomes other than itself, now covered in blood. Otherness is diversity seeking embrace.

The gospel message is that Pentecost is a transforming event. It changes us, it makes us into something other than we are. The Holy Spirit, “tongues as of fire” (Acts 2:3) is the new light of Christ. When that light falls upon us it leaves no room for shadows. “The darkness could not comprehend it,” (John 1:5), and “Darkness is not dark to thee.” (Psalm 139:12). The Holy Spirit, “tongues as of fire,” is also an enlightening Word and a flaming sword, guarding us as it continues to guard Eden, the place of origin and destiny. The Holy Spirit on that first day of Pentecost made us into something that we were not, the  new place of origin and destiny, the Church. We are now the flaming sword. We are now the Word aflame. We are now the guardians of Eden, the guardians of origin and destiny. This is Stewardship!