Count the Stars of Heaven!

Count the Stars of Heaven

Have you ever been in the desert at night when the sky is as clear as crystal? I remember a night like that when we were out west not far from the Grand Canyon. We had taken the train cross country when the children were little, and we still speak of that amazing and memorable vacation. I remember one night stepping outside and gazing up to heaven and the sight I saw that night took my breath away. The stars filled the sky as if someone had spilt a saltskaker across the canopy of space, so vast was the multitude of stars. Being a city kid, I had never seen such a sight as this.

When I think of Abram and his encounter with God that night as he poured out his heart in lamentation over his childless estate, I think of my experience of that night in the desert. As I gazed into the heavens, I was immediately transported into the Royal Realm of the Holy One. I heard no voices that night, certainly nothing like Abram's encounter. But I did have a sense of the awesome dimension of God's creative love and mercy. There was a sense in that moment that as God embraced the Universe, so too God embraces the human heart; mine, my family's, and every family under heaven; such is God's abundant love and mercy toward us all.

It is in such a moment as this that Abram heard God's promise. He heard  that God would bless his servant with abundant hope. Abram would come to know that his descendants would be as numerous as the very stars of heaven he was looking at. We know from Science that we are all stardust. Parenthetically, istn't it interesting that stargazing leads to faith and physics, they ways of God and the ways of Science. Our Ash Wednesday liturgy teaches us; "Dust we are and to dust shall we return!" Stardust! God's stardust! Full of God's love, mercy, and hope. And we're told that Abram believed God. It was in that faith that God reckoned it to him as righteousness. 

The Psalmist tells us that the one thing we ask for and the one thing we  seek is that we may dwell in the House of the Lord forever. Here we are today in God's House, and so too in this world where we live, suspended in the heavens among the stars of the universe. Here we live in the House of the Lord forever. Amazing! "To behold the beauty of the Lord, and to seek Him in His Holy Temple". We are God people; we are God's Temple: the Temple of God's Universe.

On a different note, the Psalmist continues in vers 18 "O tarry and await the Lord’s pleasure; be strong, and he shall comfort your heart".

I know that to be true. As Helen Keller once said: "As the world is full of suffering, so is the world full of those who overcome it." During her last journey toward heaven, I asked Cindy's mom what she wanted in heaven; she looked at me as if to say; "What are you smoking?" But then she thought about it. Maybe there is a God. Maybe there is a heaven and if there is, she thought, "I want to be gathered to my loved ones; especially with my mother and my two sons whose deaths broke my heart." That's what I want from God.

What is it you want heaven to be for you? Perhaps it is too soon to ask such a question. God knows, I'm willing to put it off as long as I can. But this I know. The world may be full of suffering, but there are those who courageously overcome it as well. That heaven is in the here and now is what matters. Look at the stars of heaven as Abram did. The Father of Faith. Count those stars if you can, so shall your hopes be! Such is God's Love and Mercy.

The world we live in is full of those who renounce any hope of God, or heaven or eternal life. In today's second lesson, Paul laments those whose "end is destruction, and whose minds are set on earthly things". God knows, every time I do a wedding or a funeral, it is clear that there are many "out there" who have no church, no faith, no hope of anything more than what we know in the here and now. I know them well. There are many among our friends and family. For such as these, last week's memorial service for Nona was patiently endured until we got to the reception where we could greet family and friends and of course eat.

I was so grateful for the church that day. The love of Sarah Kelb, Priest in Charge, the women of St Paul's Church, North Andover who put on such a nice spread. The love was palpable. There were those who would have preferred that there be no service, that we rent a hall and hire a caterer. That's not how Cindy and I were going to do things. Oh no, Nona was going to have a good send off. The church was full of such faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these, as the scripture says is love. Thank you church. Your love is of the essence in setting forth the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is with such love as this that the stars of heaven shine down upon us and within us with the Glory of God.

But back to earth now for a minute. Jesus understood Jerusalem all too well, then as now. The place that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and many more besides. The human heart is so full of violent hatred is it not? And God looks over the heart of humanity with such deep and profound sorrow.

Jesus seeks to bring peace to the place called Jerusalem; the very name of the place means Peace.  

In English; Salem

In Arabic; Salaam

In Hebrew; Shalom

The etymology of Jerusalem means the "dwelling place of Peace" or the "foundation stone of Peace". 

How often Jesus would have gathered us within his embrace as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. But we would not. And we still won't.

It is not just religious differences, but racial, ethnic, gender and orientation that divides us. The "we/they" phenomenon is operational in our political and religious lives and it goes well beyond that simple good natured ribbing that has always been part of our mixing it up with one another. It spills over into vitriolic hatred, violence and ultimately warfare. 

As people of faith, we are called in Lent to repent; to prayer and fasting, self examination and denial. All people of faith are likewise called to repentence as Jews are at Yom Kippur, the holiest days of the year. At Ramadan, Muslims are called to prayer, fasting, self accountability, and works of charity. All people of faith are called to repentance.

How can we get it so wrong?

As with Abram, the Father of the three Great monotheistic Faith traditions, we all find ourselves under the same stars of heaven, and under the same authority of God. It is the same God who calls us all to look up to heaven and count the numbers of the stars if we can.

We are also required to pray, to fast, to examine ourselves and to acts of charity during our high holy days. And not just then, but throughout the rest ofour lives as well. 

In Judaism, God calls us to Obedience.

In Islam, God calls us to Mercy.

In Christianity, Jesus calls us to Love one another.

Obedience, Mercy, Love; these are not suggestions, these are our commandments! Yes look up to the stars of heaven; the words are written not just there in a far away place light years away, but within every human heart.

Perhaps we might remind ourselves as Paul does that our "citizenship is in heaven". I ran across these words of meditation in my prayers earlier this week in "Celtic Daily Prayer". They speak well of that kind of this kind of citizenship

Go peaceful

in gentleness

through the violence of these days.

Give freely.

Show tenderness

in all your ways.

Through darkness,

in troubled times

let holiness be your aim.

Seek wisdom.

Let faithfulness

burn like a flame.

God speed you!

God lead you,

and keep you wrapped around The Holy Heart!

May you be known by love.

Be righteous.

Speak truthfully

in a world of greed and lies.

Show kindness.

See everyone

through heaven’s eyes.

God hold you,

enfold you,

and keep you wrapped around The Holy Heart.

May you be known by love.

~Paul Field, Celtic Daily Prayer

In the Name of God; the most holy, undivided, and everlasting Trinity.

Amen.

Fr Paul

Civil Unrest & Terrorism

Civil Unrest and Terrorism

In God We Trust

So says the coinage of the Republic. 

The collect of the day teaches us to trust in God with all our hearts. And there are two reasons for that; firstly, God resists those who put their confidence in their own strength, and secondly, God never forsakes those who make their boast in the mercy of God.

Certainly we see evidence of that in Sacred History. Today, for instance, in our First Lesson we read of God’s ordinance regarding the institution of the Passover meal. The ritual of Passover is a reenactment of the means by which we came from slavery to freedom.

Blacks were slaves in America, Irish were slaves in Ireland, and the British were slaves in their homeland as well if we go back far enough in history. I was surprised to learn that the stirring words of Rule Britannia, a grand national song the British sng a the conclusion of the Proms in London include the words; “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.”

Rule Britannia!

Britannia rule the waves.

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

Ah there’s nothing quite like the Proms. We have the Pops, but the British have the Proms. Either way what fun!

In the history of all people, if we go back far enough, we will discover that we were all slaves at one time or another. We were and are in turn, also oppressors. It is in the nature of Sacred History that God will choose a Moses who will go to every Pharaoh and say; “Let my people go!” 

Most economists note that in the current history of America, the only place where income in increasing significantly is in the top 1% of the population. You will remember that Pharaoh was worried about the number of Hebrew people in the land and decreed that the male children would be killed. One of those children got away as we already know from the cycle of readings around the life of Moses. 

Then there were too many Hebrew children, now we have millions of illegal aliens and children without parents invading our shores from Central America. Like we did when the Irish and the Italians who invaded before them, we posture ourselves politically against the inevitable. 

People go to Pharaoh again and again seeking a place in the sun. Whether it is citizenship or a raise in the minimum wage or just a job, the powerless will always be met with the same response from those with the power. NO!

I see slavery in our young people today here at home in America, and abroad as well. I ache for our young people, whether in the teeming inner cities of our nation, in rural areas or the middle east. If they do not have an opportunity to find their way toward economic freedom, they will be forced into a life of crime, waste away into a life of drugs abuse, or turn to a life of violent terrorism, which at least promises them all the rewards of heaven. 

I would argue that it is a dangerous posture for us to allow our young to languish in a kind of modern variation of slavery and oppression. I’ve spent a lifetime in the cities and in the rural areas of this country and I can tell you chapter and verse about the hopelessness of these young people.

Take away hope, and you take away everything. If you grow up in my family or in my church you will find out it what it is like to be loved and educated and equipped for life in this world. You will make a contribution to the creative, redemptive and sanctifying work of God. If you grow up in my home, God help you!

What does our Catechism teach us about the Five Mighty Acts of God? Yes, you all know them, of course. They are 

I. The Creation

II. The Exodus

III. Jesus Christ

IV. The Church

V. The Christian Hope

That’s the foundation of all faith. God created us. God brought us out of slavery and into freedom. God sent Jesus to be for us the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus gave us the Church as the Community of Faith where we might live out our faith. And The Resurrection of Jesus establishes the Hope in which we all live both in this life and in the life to come.

If you take away our hope, or if you take away the church or Jesus, if you take away a sense that God has made us, then, sure as Mike, we’ll fall back again into slavery. I suspect that many of our young people are losing all sense of meaning, purpose and perspective in life. If there are no jobs, if there is no future, no purpose, then there is crime and drugs. 

If there is no hope for the young in the Middle East, they become prime targets for those who wish to wage Jihad or “Holy War” against the Western World. After all, the Western World has turned toward secularism and away from God, and though I understand why many turn away from religious zealots.

What I do not understand though is the growing concentration of wealth in the few. I object to the redistribution of wealth from the the 99% to the 1%. It is a posture of greed. A posture of greed is very dangerous both domestically and internationally. In today's Gospel, Jesus teaches us to take the case directly to the one who sins against you. If that doesn’t work bring a few respected leaders with you and seek some kind of accommodation. If that doesn’t work set the matter before the church and if that still doesn’t work treat the offender as you wold a tax collector. 

The tax collector was usually the richest man in town and treated as a pariah. He was among the most despised in all in the Ancient Near Eastern world. I hope you appreciate the exquisite irony in that the writer of this Gospel story was himself a tax collector. He knew what it was like to be treated as a social pariah.

All except for Jesus, who looked at Matthew, the tax collector, with compassion. He treated him as a human being and as a child of God. Jesus had no money and lived on a subsistence level. All we know about the taxes that Jesus paid was that famous quip from the 22nd Chapter of the Tax Collector’s Gospel where Jesus was given a coin with Caesar’s image imprinted on it. Jesus said; “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what belongs to God.”

Apparently Matthew thought that much more than wealth belonged to God. The encounter he had with Jesus turned his whole life upside down. He found his reason for living. He discovered what Justice and fair play meant. He found forgiveness, reconciliation. Above all, he found the love of God.

In Matthew’s Gospel, we are told the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. Apparently there were those standing idle early in the morning, and the landowner put them to work for the agreed daily wage. Likewise at 9 o’clock he went out and there he found more standing idle. Again he agreed to send them out to work and pay them fairly. He went out at noon and at three in the afternoon and he put them to work with the same promise of a fair wage. Finally at 5pm he still found those standing idle and put them to work again agreeing to pay them what was fair. 

When the time came to pay the laborers they all got a full day’s wage. A storm of protest erupted, since those who had worked the whole day could not understand why they would not be paid more than those who had only worked an hour. 

There are way too many standing idle in our inner cities, our rural areas and in the hot bed of conflict in the Middle East. Such idleness will give rise to crime, drugs, and international terror.

To my way of thinking there is a connection between the unrest we have seen this summer in Ferguson, Missouri, and other urban and rural areas of America and international terrorism. 

If we let our young people stand idle in the marketplace, a vacuum will be created that is worse than slavery. It is the vacuum of hopelessness. Nature abhors a vacuum. It must be filled with something. Domestically it seems to be filled with crime and drugs. Internationally it seems to be filled with the hope of heaven given in the delusional teachings of ultra radical Islamic terrorism. 

Obviously Moses, Jesus and Mohammed abhor slavery, injustice, and violence. All three believed and taught that God is the creator, the Law Giver, the All Loving and the All Merciful.

The Great Souls all teach us of The Dream of God. A dream where there is Freedom with Law, Justice, Mercy and above all, a Love between and among brothers and sisters. I think this is what Paul was trying to say in today's Epistle. That's what it all boils down to; "Love one another"!

This is our Dream too. The Dream will not come true until we Proclaim the Gospel of God's Love with courage and determination.

This is the Dream of God.

"Stop the Killing!" ~God

"Stop the Killing!" ~God

Somebody has to tell the religious nut cakes and everybody else to quit the killing!

Hamas, for God sakes quit shelling Israeli. The rockets you are using are not particularly accurate or effective and the rockets and troops of the Israelis are very accurate and deadly. So far about 848 Palestinians have died and three Israelis have been killed. It makes no sense to keep up the shelling when it comes back to bite you that badly. 

Quit the killing! 

All in the name of God!

And it goes on in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Ukraine, the planes shot out of the sky! Hundreds and thousands of lives lost amid the clamor; much of it at the hands of religious zealots. Stop killing the  children of God of all ages.

Knock it off.

I’ll tell you who is saying that. Not me! God speaks much more persuasively than I can. In all three Abrahamic religions God says; “Thou shalt not kill” and yet we wage war, they wage war, terror strikes in unexpected places and at unexpected times.

This is not pleasing to God.

In Judaism, God has given us the Law through which we might learn “Obedience”. So, for God’s sake “Obey”! 

In Christianity, God has given us Jesus through whom we might learn to “Love one another”. For God’s sake “Love one another”!

To Muslims, God has given us the Koran, in which we meet “Allah, the All Merciful”. For God’s sake, be “Merciful”.

As it turns out, our timidity as “mainstream Christians” has allowed the extremists within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, to rise to the forefront and pursue their bellicose and bloodthirsty ends all in the Name of God.

This is not pleasing to God, no not at all.

Quit the killing!

There are nobler ends to pursue. Perhaps we can work to end poverty. The Books of Moses, the Bible and the Koran tell us to do so.

Perhaps we can reach out to the marginalized and the outcast. Certainly we know Jesus was clear on that one. Just this week we celebrate 40 years since the ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven; the first ordinations of women in the Episcopal Church. The presence of women in the ordained ministry of the church has enriched the church. They also  prove that women can play to as much a mixed set of reviews as men. But it is the faith and the courage of women and men in this world that enriches all of life.

It is your courage and your faith that matters as we move throught this dangerous period of our history. It will take great courage and generous helpings of faith to stand up against the rantings and ravings of those at the extremes who do not embrace Obedience, Love or Mercy to Yahweh, Jesus, or Allah.

You and I know all too well the devious nature of human nature. After all we know that Jacob deceived his father to steal his birthright from his brother. So too we know that what goes around, comes around. Thus in today’s first lesson we find Laban deceiving Jacob on his wedding night by pulling a switch of brides. What a surprise that must have been bright and early the next morning. All in all Jacob paid for the love by Rachael by serving Laban 14 years at hard labor. She must have been very beautiful. 

This devious human nature is at the heart of human conflict. Thus there is more war, yet another impeachment and so on and so on. So many lives lost, so many dollars and materiel wasted, all because we cannot manage the conflict among us.

One hundred years ago, we built the Cape Cod Canal. Before that, we built the Panama Canal, through a series of devious human actions. We built the railroads…more devious human activity. In fact human history is the chronicle of a devious human nature and bloody conflict.

It is onto the stage of human history that Jesus comes, at the heart of the conflict, both in time and geography. He put himself into the hands of the Temple authorities and the Roman Empire. There’s nothing obedient, loving or merciful about that crowd.

But Jesus changed history and introduced a new world order. He insisted that the way through history was by the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine. “Do this in remembrance of me”. That word “remembrance” in Greek is “anamnesis”. It means remember in the the sense of invoke into the present my very being and life. This we do in remembrance of him. The only way through history is to bring Jesus into the present.

We remember his love, his forgiveness, his reconciling power. We still find ourselves in the midst of our dangerous and tiresome history. But the church has also brought us great peacemakers like Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu. 

The church has also inspired some of the most amazing creativity; her literature, music, art, and architecture, have all enriched our lives. 

Jesus gave us a reason to live. For not only are we to find a way to create, we also are here to save ourselves and others from the dangers of violent conflict. 

We are here to sanctify our lives and the lives of others by sharing our gifts and imparting God’s high and holy wisdom to this world.

This is none other than the Triune Power of God. God has entrusted this Triune Power to us. We must therefore speak in the unmistakable terms of our Lord and Savior.

Quit the killing! Knock it off! God is not pleased!

In today’s Gospel were told that at the end of the age a net will be thrown into the sea and all fish of every kind will be drawn ashore. The good will be gathered into baskets and the bad will be thrown away.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. Yes, it is a tiny, tiny thing but once grown to full blossom, it becomes an enormous tree. This is how God wants us to grow.

The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who took a measure of yeast and mixed it with flour and water. I have done this particular parable with every youth group in all churches I’ve served. I only wish I had more time to do it here. Make bread by hand. Notice how a little yeast bring flour to life and it rises, and when punched down rises yet again. Notice how it changes the whole lump and brings it to life. This is how God’s word is to grow in your life. It is to change you utterly and completely and grow within you. 

Notice that the kingdom of heaven is like the pearl of great price. It is worth more than anything else you may think you own. By the way. You don’t “own” a thing in life. You are a steward of the things you may have for a few years. But you don’t “own” anything. But whatever it is you think you have, once you discover the Kingdom of Heaven; once you know about the love of God and his power over Sin and Death; everything else in life pales by comparison. Sell it all and take hold of that which is of true and everlasting value.

The Scribes know what is of true value and what is not both in the new and that which is old and ancient of days. There is where we will find and cleave unto the Kingdom of God.

Finally there is this; of all the things that Paul says, perhaps the most stirring is that statement that really sums it up. For whatever I face in life and death there is that rock on which I have built my whole life. Keep building shipmates; for this is the very Kingdom of God.  As the blessed Apostle put it in today's Epistle; “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

There you are. That says it.

Now quit the killing! and Love one another!

Not my words! That’s what Jesus said.

Amen!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Fr Paul