Sermon

St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Durham, NC

5/21/06 - 6 Easter

The Rev. Harriette H. Sturges

Let us pray:

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and redeemer. Amen.

Tell me a word you just heard from the reading from Acts?  From the psalm?  From the Epistle or Gospel. No fair peeking. No jokes about short term memory. Already this morning we've sung, said, read and heard a number of words. And this happens to us everyday.  Words come at us in amazing amounts, at breakneck speed.  When we have an announcement at church we  put up posters, make phone calls, send emails, write an article for the bulletin and the Epistle and announce it at every service for several weeks before we expect most people to hear it and have it even register much less be remembered.  Yes, I know you are an exception. Even so I've been worried about our hearing, reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting our scripture readings.

One of the great strengths and advantages of the Episcopal church is that we read a lot of scripture every Sunday. Another bonus is that we read the same scriptures at least every 3 years in church but you have to be at least as old as I am and have paid close attention and gone to church every Sunday to benefit fully from this schedule. Learning about God, God's kingdom, ourselves, our neighbors and our relationship to each from hearing scripture read is a holy task, an art that demands a great deal from us. I hope I can be proved wrong but my experience has told me that we don't exercise ourselves fully in this task.  If we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our might and love our neighbors as ourselves, we have to engage more than our ears and commit to more than the few minutes on Sundays to listening.

Words are powerful.  In the beginning God spoke and there was light and water and vegetation.  Creation came into being.  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God and became a New Creation. In the Old Testament each word was counted and each letter in each word meant something. Those in a culture who could read and write had respect and power.  But I wonder if our ready access to words now has diminished our respect for them and our ability to discern between words with meaning and non-essential gibberish.

So this morning I offer you a sure-fired, money-back guaranteed method for reading the Bible which will revolutionize your life.  It will bring wonder back into your spiritual heart, delight into your soul and give you more time for reading the fine print about the side effects and potential hazards of all the chemicals we have under our sinks which you should do every Rogation Sunday before disposing of them properly.

And this is it!

Choose at least one word to hear, learn, read, and inwardly digest by questioning it, imagining it, arguing with it, even playing with it. Wonder about it. And not just while you are in church. You can do this at red lights especially here in Durham where they last longer than anywhere else in the world.  You can do this in elevators, on the beach , pumping gas, washing dishes,or waiting in a check-out line.  Or you can set aside a time for it and really enjoy it.

Wonder! Wonder why these passages were chosen for this Sunday as you choose your word. What is this Sunday? It's Rogation Sunday and the 6th Sunday of Easter-notice the word "of" there.  It is important.  Not the 6th Sunday after Easter or in Easter but of Easter.  Ask your priest why at the next Front Porch. But this 6th Sunday is also the Sunday before the Ascension which is this Thursday.  Wonder why the passage from our gospel comes from the Farewell Discourse in John when Jesus is saying good bye before his crucifixion.  What words do you hear repeated in all the readings? Love, love one another, abide, famine?  What words refer back to another passage- Cyrene- when did we read about a Simon from Cyrene.  Where else have we learned about a famine? What is the word I need to wonder about this week, chew up, ruminate on, digest further, ask questions about, discern what you need?

Today is Rogation Sunday which is the Episcopal Church's liturgy for Earth Day and has been celebrated for centuries.  We've been green a long time but until recently we have been steadily losing ground, literally. Do we see the loving-kindness of the Lord filling the whole earth as the psalmist claims?  How can the earth fear the Lord? Why would there be famine?

We are usually good about asking questions but when we do we want solid answers.  How long does the warranty last?  Is this item energy-efficient, recycled?  What is it made of?  Where was it made?  Did the worker receive a fair wage? Is it organic? What are the side effects.  How much does it cost?  Good questions but not always the ones to ask scripture. These need to be more open-ended leading to many responses instead of just one answer. But this is also what makes scripture so relevant, so fascinating, so inexhaustible and timeless, and so essential.

When you get home circle the words in the scriptures that are repeated like love, abide, famine, friend. Then choose one to ponder. Why, what do they mean, why are they  repeated, do they mean something different in each passage, do the different uses add to the meaning?  From the third grade on, maybe even before, we can learn to find the words repeated and begin to ask questions. Three year olds love learning new words.  Our children can discuss patens, cruets, creation, redemption and parousia. In the atrium they learn to meditate on words like love, abide, friend? Why not all of us?

Once we get hooked on the words, we can begin seeing the patterns and connections.  Scott often emphasizes the Benedictine pattern of behavior- stability, obedience, and conversion of life. We see this pattern reflected in the pattern of the words in scripture.  We are to abide, our footsteps are to be steadied in the word and love of God.  We are to keep the commandments through obedience and the conversion of life can be seen in the joy and bearing fruit of loving one another. In Acts the stability is in the steadfast devotion, the word, and person of Jesus in the midst of the instability of being scattered because of persecution. This stability of heart no matter what the outward circumstances leads to obedience to the word, to the keeping of the commandment to love another and then to action which is conversion of life- how to show this love.  Here, it is a sacrificial offering to those who will suffer famine throughout the world.

As an environmentalist I'm challenged by the repetition of the word famine in the psalm and in the reading from the Acts of the Apostle. Our prophet Amos contends there is also a famine on the land, not a famine for bread, or a thirst for water but of hearing the words of the Lord. What causes any famine- words or food?  Who suffers the most? The young and old who die first or those who live after having seen them die. The world who lets them die? Are famines inevitable or a symptom of how we mismanage the gift of creation? Famine, a word to ponder, to wrestle with, to respond to.

As a deacon, who is ordained to sacramentally represent the ministry of servanthood in the liturgy and to remind the church of the needs of the world, I'm also challenged by the words of Jesus that he no longer calls us servants but friends.  What does this do to the servanthood of the baptized? How does it fit with other times when Jesus reminds us we are to be servants and serve one another as He serves us?  Does this passage exegete the others? Enlarge the meaning? Does the juxtaposition of servant and friend mean that the servanthood of the baptized requires more than just doing our duty, of being moral or ethical?  Do we have to add love and relationship to what we do? What is the difference in being a servant to those in need and being a friend?

Words, words, words.  Words that hurt, words that heal.  Words that wonder, words that stifle.  Words that distract, words that transform.

What is the word you need this Rogation Sunday, this sixth Sunday of Easter in the year of our Lord 2006.  What is the word you need to hear, to share, to inwardly digest?

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