Sermon for Easter IV, A
Bishop James Mathes
Sermon for Easter IV, A
For Daughters of the King, April 30, 2005
Isaiah 43: 1-3
Philippians 4: 8-9
Luke 6: 20 - 31
Come Holy Spirit: Touch our minds and think with them, touch our lips and speak with them and touch our hearts and set them on fire with love for you. AMEN.
I.
It is with a heart filled with joy that I join you today for this Eucharist
as well as our time of fellowship afterwards. I want to thank Fr. Keith and
the people of St. John's for their hospitality. Thank you, Daughters of the
King, for your ministry of persistent prayer.
II.
As I have thought about our Eucharist today and the ministry that you exercise,
I wanted to talk a bit about the being a people of prayer and how prayer informs
our identity and our mission. And the propers for the day provide touchstones
that will be our guide. Let us focus on three things: calling, constancy, and
caring.
III.
First, calling. In the reading from the prophet, Isaiah, we hear the word of
God through the voice of the prophet speaking to us:
Do not fear, I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
We are called by name. God calls us through with water and fire that does not
drowned us and fire that does not burn us. The waters of baptism kill the old
self and recreate us as sons and daughters. And the fire of the Holy Spirit
warms us plenty, but with the love and power of God. This is who we are. And
so the only response we can make, knowing that we are God's and in the midst
of God's abiding protection is to be in conversation with God. We share with
God our heart and soul, not because God doesn't already know them but because
we yearn to connect with the one who has redeemed us. And so we enter into sacred
conversation which we call prayer.
We believe and experience in this conversation a God who listens. God delights
in this conversation because it is a way of becoming more and more who God is
calling us to be. And one of God's delights is that this conversation is not
simply a direct feed between God and us as singular people. It is in and through
and among the community of the baptized. When you exercise your ministry of
prayer, you do so in the midst of the community of the called and so model and
amplify this sacred conversation, which brings me to our second touchstone,
constancy.
III.
We exhibit constancy when we are steadfast in our task and faithful to the end.
As a people of prayer, we are in a conversation with God that does not cease.
We raise up our thanksgivings to God for what God has done and is doing in our
lives. We hold up the leaders of our church and government that they may receive
divine guidance while dealing with vexing issues. And we pray for those in distress
and illness. We pray for the poor and those who are alone. We even pray for
those whose life has ended. Our prayers literally wrap around the planet and
extend and echo into the universe.
But still, people we love grow sick and die. The poor seem to only increase
in number. Wars rage from our inner cities with guns in the hands of children
to deserts filled with roadside bombs. And if all of that is not perplexing
enough, waves of water crash ashore and obliterate tens of thousands of lives
and wreak havoc with countless others.
And yet we pray…and we pray…and we pray. The cynic says that prayer
does not work. And if by not working, we mean that it doesn't provide consistent,
dependable results, then we would likely agree. But we know that prayer does
work. Sometimes it seemingly is connected to a miracle. I remember a time years
ago when as a seminary chaplain I was called, you see there is that first touchstone
again…I was called to the trauma unit of the Hospital that I was serving.
I found a young woman who had been stabbed by her boyfriend, the knife still
protruding from her chest. She asked that I pray for the hurting to stop. I
don't remember the prayer, but I vividly remember the tension leaving her face,
her breathing calming, and her telling me that the pain had subsided. My initial
thought was that it was a happy coincidence. Perhaps, the painkillers kicked
in a just the right moment. I left the unit overwhelmed, humbled, and a bit
afraid. Three hours later, I was called to the same patient, now admitted and
in her own room. She asked that I pray with her again because the pain had returned.
My first reaction was, "I don't know if it will happen again!" But
I prayed, and it did. From time to time, our sacred conversation connects with
the divine voice and God provides a particular place for the Kingdom to break
into our lives in astonishing power.
Conversely, my prayers for my dear friend Chris Smith were never answered and
he slowly died of a brain tumor that left Kathy a widow, and Connor, Emily,
and Natalie without a father as they continued on through elementary school.
My continuing conversation with God was honest, confused and angry. God listened.
I finally did. The words that I kept receiving were those of Julian of Norwich,
"All will be well. All manner of things will be well."
And so, I try to practice constancy in prayer. I do this knowing that you and
a great cloud of witnesses support me in this praying sometimes when I don't
even have the words or the will to continue. However, we keep speaking the words
and God listens. And God speaks the Word, and we listen and we share the Word
that we hear.
But sometimes our prayers have a non-verbal character. Sometimes they are incarnational,
that is enfleshed in our actions, which brings me to the third touchstone, this
one from the Gospel of Luke, caring.
IV.
In the Gospel, we are given the Lukan form of the beatitudes which list both
blessings and woes. The overarching clarion call with constancy is that we be
a praying people who care. And we care for the poor, the hungry, those who weep,
and the unloved even hated. What the world holds forth as a present blessing,
we wisely see as a caution and a potential for eternal woe. As a people of the
call with constancy, we are to ever reach out with our abundance to those who
have seemingly been cursed. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his last address
at Mason Temple in Memphis correctly pointed out that Jesus' parable of the
Good Samaritan is central to our faith. He decisively told those present and
us today, that our concern is for our neighbor and that anyone who is oppressed
is our neighbor. We are to be a blessing to the poor, the hungry, the weeping,
and the hated. And woe to us if we do not do this with extravagant love and
care. And so my sisters, we pray with words of love and hope. We pray with actions
that step by step bring the poor to the blessings that shall be theirs. If it
makes us poorer in the world's eyes, so be it. We are rich in God's eyes. If
it makes us misunderstood, we'll understand. If it makes us even despised, we
will be raised up. When Jesus spoke of his love, he used the Greek word, agape,
which is sacrificial and total love. It is not sentimental or sippy, but rather
bold, life-changing and costly. Our sacred conversation with God will inevitably
take us to this kind of caring. It will take us to agape for our neighbor
V.
And so, we pray and pray and pray. We pray because it is our calling. We pray
with constancy, without ceasing because the divine talk must be had, not for
results that we understand but for results that are in the hands of the one
who will make all manner of things well. And we pray in word and deed, so that
in this practice of conversation with the one who loves us completely, we might
completely love…and that is agape.
May you continue to mold and guide us all in a life of prayer. For we are children
of the Kingdom…sons and daughters of the King.
AMEN