Speaking the truth to Power and Money!

Go Down Moses!

In a few more minutes from now, we will baptize Logan and Makenna Franey. Last week, we baptized four youngsters and today we will baptize two more. If I had my way, I’d baptize as many kids and adults as I could get my hands on almost every Sunday of the Christian year. It is especially appropriate to baptize folks on Pentecost as we did last week, on All Saints Sunday in November, on the great Feast Day of the Baptism of our Lord in January, on Easter Eve and on the occasion of a visit from our Bishop.

As Pentecost celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church; a time when the Spirit of God fills our lives and thus the church is born, so now we come to the great feast day of Trinity Sunday. 

On this day we celebrate the great mystery which is in the Name of God. 

In the former instance, Moses was minding the flock of his father in law Jethro, just passing the time of day as it were, when he happened upon a mysterious sight. There before him was a burning bush and yet it was not consumed. It was on fire, yet it didn’t burn up. 

“What’s this?” Moses mused.

God answered from somewhere deep within Moses’ heart. “Take your shoes off Moses. The very land on which you are standing is holy ground. I have seen the sorrow and the suffering of my people in slavery. I want you to go and tell old Pharaoh ‘Let my people go!’”.

Moses reasoned with himself; “What then shall I tell the people? Who are YOU. What is your Name. “Every god has a name. Who then are YOU? 

God said; “I AM. That’s who I AM.”

Moses and God spoke together and began a dialogue which we continue up to this day. It is a dialogue of the inner heart. The "I am" who I am is always in conversation with the "I AM" of who God is. You see, it is a conversation of the inner heart. It is a conversation born out of the discovery of "Being" itself. I discover that I am. If I look deeply enough, I discover that God IS too. 

Yet having established the obvious is not enough. There is something to be done about the fact that God IS and so am I. God and I both have noticed that there is suffering, oppression and injustice. And when God in my inner heart notices such a thing God wants me to do something about it. God wants me to go to Pharaoh and tell him; “Let my people go.”

But, like Moses, who wouldn’t be afraid of going to Pharaoh and telling him to release the foundation stone of his economy? Who wouldn’t be afraid of going to the power holders, and the money holders of any age and telling them, “Let my people go”? Telling the truth to power and to money is a terrifying challenge. Look what happened to Jesus when he spoke to the money holders in the Temple precincts!

When God’s people suffer from the rod of oppression, my heart will not be silent. God’s heart will not be silent. And we must then be on our way to Pharaoh. We may resist doing so out of our fear. Pharaoh will resist complying with the mandate for justice. He will not give up without a fight. Power and money will resist mightily against the call for justice.

But God will make known the way and the truth and the life, there is no possible way to make your way to God if you are the agent of suffering and injustice, and somebody must be willing to say so. 

“Go down Moses; and tell old Pharaoh; ‘Let my people go!’”

That’s why God’s flames burned within the bush where Moses stood without consuming its leaves. This is why God’s flames burned over the heads of the disciples at Pentecost. This is why God’s flames of loving justice burn within our hearts today. It is to catch our attention. It is no magic trick. It is God’s heartache over the suffering of God’s people.

Does your heart not ache with God that so many suffer in the throes of warfare, poverty, unemployment, crime, natural disaster and disease? It is bad enough when we suffer from the caprice of nature. “The thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (Hamlet 3:1) as the Bard would say cry out to our hearts and our prayers. Yet so much suffering is caused by the print human hands. 

Do you not want to speak up to Pharaoh?  Are you looking for a place to speak your heart or God’s heart? Then follow the money. Speak to power. That will guide you to where God wants you to go. God has seen the suffering of his people. So have you. Look at inner city Philadelphia or Reading and ask yourselves; “What’s this? What is this suffering?”

Why not just give everybody in America a good job with full benefits. Surely if we can bail out banks too big to fail, we can put our own people to work...don’t you think?

Life is a prayer obviously. We’re always speaking to our own hearts and in our own hearts and to the hearts of others. God’s heart is within and among our hearts. Calling us again and again to go to Pharaoh.

My prayer is a conversation with you much like I do every Sunday. No need to bow your heads or close your eyes when you pray, especially when we pray out loud like this, or when we are alive to God and our brothers and sisters. If I were to pray in this moment I might begin to use some of the words of Richard Rohr, a Franciscan who speaks widely in ecumenical circles; a wonderful prayer for Trinity Sunday:

“O God your name is veiled in mystery, yet we dare to call you Father, your Son was begotten before all ages, yet is born among us in time, your Holy Spirit fills the whole creation, yet is poured forth now into our hearts.” ~Richard Rohr

I like that prayer for this day. You have created us. You have redeemed us. You fill us with your gifts of the spirit and fill us with your wisdom. And now you speak to us and say; “I have noticed the suffering of my people. Go to Pharaoh and tell him; ‘Let my people go’”.

When I Baptize Logan and McKenna today, I will ask them as I ask you to seek justice and to respect the dignity of every human being. You and I must go to Pharaoh to make possible the Dream of God in which we can “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.” ~Micah 6:8

This is not just a fanciful dream. It is a fire burning in the bush, and God tells us to take the shoes we’re wearing and remove them because the very ground we’re standing on is holy ground. 

God wants us to see what he sees. He wants us to see the suffering of God’s people. He wants us to go to Pharaoh and tell him “Let my people go!”

On this Memorial Day weekend we remember those who have paid a dear price for our freedom and who had the courage to speak up to the power of an oppressor of another time. We have come to another time in our Nation’s history where more is to be done to bring justice to the poor and to the suffering. It will be a different kind of struggle. It will be a different kind of warfare. So much of the suffering of our people is now from a place that presents itself to us in many disguises.

Seems funny when even Congress notices that Apple and Google pay next to nothing in taxes. The British Parliament is beginning to catch on to the same phenomenon there. You and I pay our taxes. Why not them. Yet, it's all perfectly legal. We voted for our representatives. They voted for the tax code. Mmm! Something fishy is going on in our democracies.

But there is plenty of time for all that. For one thing I do know, someone will go for God and tell old Pharaoh to let my people go. Right now, lets get on with something to gladden our hearts. Lets baptize Logan and Makenna in the Name of God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen

Fr Paul

God is about to do something new! What about us?

God is About to Do a New Thing

What About Us?

It has been a year now since I came to share with you this journey toward heaven. And what a year it has been! I dare say, we’ve grown accustomed to one another’s faces as the words of the tune from My Fair Lady puts it.

It was St. Patrick’s Day then. It is St. Patrick’s Day now. And that Irishman from Boston came by for a visit, and we’ve marched together along the pathways of Berk’s County in order to Glorify Christ and for the Salvation of our Souls.

We’ve driven out some of the snakes that posed a threat to our congregation’s well being, and we’ve sought to walk in the Light of Christ together.

So now we must prepare ourselves for God to do “a new thing” in our midst as the First Lesson puts it. “Forget the former things”. Ha, that’s not so easily done! Whether the things of Cal Adams, Johanna Graham or Paul Bresnahan, all of that will soon enough be a thing of the past. And we will need to forget them, honest to God, forget them; in order for God to really do a new thing with you and your new priest coming together to continue your journey toward heaven.

Oh yes, I know and understand how much you and I would like to continue on doing what we’ve been doing, but I suspect God has other ideas. After all, I need to get back to my city by the sea some day to watch the tides come and go with my trusty Lab-mix Alcibiades. Yes that’s his name. My son has read Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian Wars...and the dog ended up with one of the more obscure names from that chronicle. I call him “Al” for short, unless he’s in trouble.

All that aside, retirement beckons. I’ll grant you that a spontaneous outbreak of devotion led by none other than Chuck Crummy called out for the my election to the Episcopacy in Rome; and more than once I heard the acclamation; “Paul for Pope!” as recently as last week’s pancake breakfast. 

I would have gladly served. How I would have relished the opportunity to get my hands on Roman Catholicism and leave my mark there, for the sake of those yet considered outcasts in the company of Jesus by that lot. Alas the Princes of the Church were led in other directions and a good man; a man of humility from Argentina was elected; a Jesuit no less, and he has called himself “Francis” to set the tone for his own papacy. We can hope for the hope of the poor now. And that is no mean thing. If this pope looks out for the poor of the planet, his papacy could be of historic significance.

It will take some time for us to hope for much else. Women will have to wait, for instance. Isn’t it interesting that the very next Sunday after the election of Francis, we come to a Gospel that places Mary at the feet of Jesus? This is a position reserved for the Disciples of a Teacher. Those who sit at the feet of the Teacher have a special place in the heart of The Teacher. Here she anoints his feet with the rarest of perfumes. Pure nard is refined from a rare and expensive root of a spikenard pant found only at 3000-5000 meters of altitude in the Himalayas of Nepal. 

Imagine the cost of that stuff at the time Mary used it to anoint Jesus’ feet. No wonder Judas challenged Mary’s right to do what she was doing. Perfumes of nard, having the scent of lavender in many cases, were used only for highly important rituals at the Temple in Jerusalem and for similar rituals to honor the gods in Rome.  Here Mary uses a whole pound this perfume to recognize Jesus as being none other than the Christ of God not with words, but with every extravagant wiping of her hair on the feet of Jesus. The disciples were horrified!

Conversely Jesus recognizes her as his disciple. “Leave her alone!” Jesus insists. “You will always have the poor with you”. Do we not still have the poor with us? Can we not do something about poverty still? Can we not do more than cut budgets to make their lives more miserable? Why can’t we at least be sure that every citizen of this nation has a decent job, so they can provide for their families? Even the Bishops of Rome have spoken up about that as have our own Bishops. The voices of these bishops have been largely ignored.

The Gospel goes to the heart of the matter when it notes that Judas really didn’t care about the poor. The idea of betrayal was already sneaking into his heart of hearts. But for Jesus this woman’s love meant a great deal. She along with the other women would be there for his suffering, his death, and the preparation his body for burial. And where were the disciples then? Long since terrified, running away from the prospect that they too could end up like Jesus if they hung around waiting to see what happened. Jesus stood by Mary because he knew that Mary would stand by Jesus. 

Much like the Episcopal church has stood up for women and their place at the altar of God. Now even our Presiding Bishop is not only a woman but a scientist and a pilot. A real renaissance woman! We’ve come a long way, baby from the day that Mary anointed the feet of Jesus with her hair.

Even if the current Bishop of Rome does not recognize her or other women as disciples worthy of ordination, Jesus exalts her to a place of honor in his heart and in the heart of God by allowing her to say what Peter had already said; “You are the Christ of God!” Only she says it with those anointing.

“God is about to do a new thing”; a great many new things. Watch what God does here at St. Gabriel’s. But more to the point what will we be doing to bring God’s new things to pass? At every level of our lives, what will we be doing? Just yesterday, I showed the Bishop what we’ve been doing here with our Membership Drive. My excitement was palpable and he could see it. I asked him; “Is there anything else I can do for the church while there is life still left in me?” 

Can I do anything for the poor? How I wish I could snap my fingers and put all my fellow country men and women to work. When I sat in the luxury and comfort of a commuter rail train last week on the way to the Flower Show I saw for myself row after row of blighted housing in Philadelphia. I thought of the young people there dying on crime and drugs. I thought of the young people in rural West Virginia dying on crime and drugs. They are dying of boredom with no work to do. 

Can we not do something for the poor? Is the best we can come up with is budget cuts that hurt the young and the elderly? Can we not do something about gun violence? For the life of me, I cannot understand why there isn’t an outcry of outrage. 

Alas, the seaside beckons. The tides come and go. And the dog likes the treats I spoil him with. It is St. Patrick’s Day. It is a day for corned beef and cabbage and lots of boiled vegetables. It is a day for music and dancing. A slice of Irish soda bread and a wee bit of the Guinness to wash it all down will leave you smiling from ear to ear and with a twinkle in the eye.

Watch out! God is about to do something new! So as my namesake puts it in today’s second lesson, so too I say it; “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”