When available, the texts for the most recent sermons given at St. Paul's appear below.
August 16, 2009
11th Sunday after Pentecost (B Proper 15)
A meditation on Proverbs 9:1-6 and John 6:53-59
The Rev. Ann Benton Fraser
Wisdom has built her house, and has hewn her seven
pillars.Out of the depths she called
for order out of chaos, separated light from darkness, day from night, spoke
the world into being.The sea is hers
for she made it, and her hands have molded the dry land.[1]Evening and morning, the first day.And it was good.
She fashioned the animals, one by one and two by two, and
curled the vines of wild grapes. Wheat and barley, fig trees and pomegranates
and olive trees, she set in fertile soil, and it was good.The animals prepared, the wine mixed, the
honey sweetened.
In the evening she set a table, round and great and ready
for many guests, and decked it for a feast.
Great candles she lit, the cream-colored pillars steady and
round, the golden flames dancing and nosing the fragrant air.There are places aplenty, and the air is
redolent with the perfume of the freshest and finest foods.Tender meats and the sweetest of fruits sit
next to cheeses pithy and mild.A
golden crust is hardening on the loaves in the wood-fired oven.Strident garlic is mellowing in sauces,
while savory herbs are waltzing and tumbling.It is almost time.
She sends out her faithful servant girls to call the guests
to come, and she herself runs to cry out with them, to sing the smiling
invitation: "You that are simple, turn in here!"To those without sense she says, "Come,
eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.”
Somewhere not too far away it is possible to hear another
invitation, “Come, my beautiful friends!You who are wise and strong, come and eat of this bread.”There is another voice, another feast,
another table, another someone eager to host us and toast us, unafraid to
flatter and knowing just the words that we’d like to hear.
But it is the first invitation we accept, from She who has
called us by name.Why is it a relief
to be known as simple?Why does it
appeal when she says, you without sense?I suppose Wisdom herself, gently recognizing
and summoning us, does not know how to offend.And we are not offended, but found.Known.Accepted, just as we are,
not as we wished we were.Leaving
behind the other voice, the other promises, we turn toward Wisdom, that
original voice, that Word who called this world into being.To her feast we go.
The music that greets us is bright and jovial, and we find
our seats around the table.The air is
rich but not heavy, fragrant but not perfumed.There are round dishes on the table that we pass now, serving our
neighbors first and then ourselves. There is clear, cold water and deeply
flavorful wine.We laugh and sing and
tell stories, marveling at the joy it is to know the stranger next to us.The food keeps coming.Time is not.
Wisdom is everywhere!We admire her from across the table, watching her laugh with an old
man.Playing as a child with another
child.
How old is she, herself?We wonder.She is clearly a
mother, we somehow know, one whose womb has borne fruit and whose body has
nursed and fed her children.A mother
who has bravely, bravely, as every parent has, consented to let her own heart
go walking around outside her body.[2]A mother who has loved and lost.
Yet Wisdom is a daughter too, practiced in obedience to the
will of her parent, faithful not only in moments of plenty but in poverty and
pain.Refusing to turn stones into
bread.Unwilling to let a cup of sorrow
pass if the one who sent her wills that she drink from it.
Wisdom is also a lover.A generous and caring lover, giving fully and freely her vulnerability
to her beloved, and receiving the same in return.Tender, compassionate, knowledgeable about loving and being
loved.Wisdom is love, we sense.
Just then Wisdom commands our attention, wanting to welcome
and say a few words to the many who have gathered at her table.She took the crusty loaf of bread in her
hands—and when she did this we couldn’t help but remember the other things
those hands had held and touched: the dome of the sky, in the beginning; the
tiny seeds she had fashioned and pressed into rich humus; the hands waved to
fisherfolk at sea, inviting them to come ashore and be fishers of men; those
hands touched the clay she had spat upon and smeared over the eyes of the blind
man, who then washed and saw that it was good; the shoulder of the tax
collector who would leave his miserly practice, content to give instead of
take; the hope of the rich, young man who could not sell his possessions, and
walked away sorrowful; the hand of the woman caught in adultery, who found new
life in forgiveness.
Those were the hands, Wisdom’s hands, that took this crusty
loaf of bread and gave thanks for life and love.
Those hands took bread, said the blessing, and broke it,
saying, “Take, eat.This is my body,
which is given for you.”She offered
the cup of wine and said, “This is my blood, shed for you.”
It is clear now that Wisdom has answered for us the
invitation of that other voice. The
voice that would flatter and seduce and serve ashes for bread and poison for
wine.Wisdom, our mother, our sister,
our lover, Wisdom has set her own
life, her self, her love between us and the enemy of creation.She has suffered for us, knowing that the
power of love would defeat the power of lies that the other voice peddled.Wisdom gave herself, her body, flesh and
blood, that we might live.Feast on me, she says to us, be fed with love and become love.
Those who eat my flesh
and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them…and I will raise them up on the
last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.
This feast I have
created is good and life-giving, and I give it to you for your pleasure and
enjoyment.
Take care of it, and take
care of one another.Enjoy the fruits
of this creation, but know that the true bread is my flesh, which I have given
for you.The one who eats this bread,
my flesh, will live forever.
Wisdom calls; the table is set, the bread has been
given.We have been called by name to
eat of this bread, and have life with God here and hereafter. Taste and see
that the Lord is good!
There were police barricades at all the corners of the
intersection, and caution tape around the front entry of the tall apartment
building.Emergency equipment,
including a fire truck with ladder was in place, ready.There were little clusters of bystanders and
first responders standing around, relieved, apparently debriefing what had just
happened, or what might have.
We were walking home, only a couple of blocks from our NYC
apartment when we encountered this scene.Our best guess was that someone had just been talked out of jumping from
one of the windows high up in the apartment building that towered overhead. I
noticed a policeman at the corner had been talking to a woman and pointing at
the building, apparently explaining to her what was going on.I’m
going to ask, I said to Andrew, and I strolled up to him.In my best conversation-starting approach I
invited him to tell me the story too, saying, Excuse me, Officer, is everything alright here?
He barely turned his head.Yep.And he turned back around.I was too taken aback to follow up with another question, so I just
turned and walked away.
He wasn’t being rude, he was just answering my
question.I had asked if everything
were okay.It was.But that’s not what I really wanted to know.I didn’t ask the question that I really
wanted the answer to.
Andrew and I laughed all the way home at how effectively my
indirect inquiry had been shut down.
The best-played manners of mousy women and gentle men do
often go awry. I wonder what other of our favorite Southern sayings or
expressions keep us from truthful exchange.
In the Letter to the Ephesians this morning, we hear Paul,
or a disciple writing in Paul’s style, encourage his hearers to put away
falsehood and speak the truth to one another.The first half of the letter focuses on teaching that the church is a
new community in which both Jews and gentiles form a new community of God’s
blessing, and the second half teaches how the church might go about living into
that unity.Paul teaches Christ as the
model and means for a community to live in love with one another, and in so
doing bring the loving, powerful presence of God to bear on the world around
them.
In the portion we hear today, we are urged toward truth and
encouraged not to leave room for evil to grow by letting the sun go down on our
anger.But the don’t be angry bit gets
heard louder, and in our confusion we walk away thinking that being a good
Christian means being a good doormat, meek and mild and muddy from the boots
that have tramped across our pride and dignity.Or we are content to believe that as long as we’re not telling
out-and-out lies, then what we say and do counts as truth.
I’ve thought about some other forms of indirect discourse
that are right at home in our conversation, but that often swap truth for
truthiness, and at worst might tangle up gospel and gossip.Maybe some of these are familiar to you:
If you can’t say
anything nice, don’t say anything at all.Perhaps the single most crippling phrase for a young person trying to
grow a backbone. I suppose this saying came about to help little boys and girls
remember not to gossip, and learn to refrain from saying whatever popped into
our heads, no matter how unkind.And
that is a helpful skill to develop.But
where this takes us away from the kind of Christian community Paul is writing
about is when we let it keep us from speaking up for what we need or speaking
out against injustice.We worry that
we’ll be perceived as uncooperative or not nice. But, “nice” and “true” are two
different values, aren’t they?Jesus
did not call himself the Way, the Nice Guy, and the Life.Jesus identified with and as the
Truth.Certainly the temple leaders did
not think of Jesus as nice, as he went about turning over tables and
proclaiming himself as the Bread of Life.But they did recognize a glimse of the Truth, and killed him for it.
God helps those who
help themselves.It’s not in the
Bible, it’s Ben Franklin, I think.But
this is the complete opposite of grace, and the opposite of truth.Actually, God helps those who can’t help themselves, who are mired in
the messes we make from being nice and cooperative and forgetting to speak the
truth to power, or to our neighbors.Paul reminds the Ephesians, and us, of the gift of the Holy Spirit we
receive in baptism: The seal of the Holy Spirit is not a gold star, given to
those who have somehow earned God’s favor.No, it is an outward sign, part of the sacrament of God’s grace and
mercy upon those who in baptism die to sin to enter a new life with
Christ.The truth is this: God helps
the helpless, we who can’t help ourselves.
And then of course, there’s the phrase “bless his heart,” that coupon in the economy of Southern
linguistics that is said to redeem any zippy comment the speaker cares to make,
no matter how unkind.It doesn’t matter
what you say, the thinking goes, as long as you follow it with that
phrase.“He’s an awful excuse for a
human being, bless his heart.It’s sad,
but it’s true.”Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for
building up, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.We can almost hear the temple leaders
tossing this one around about Jesus: Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph and Mary’s
son?And he thinks he’s the Bread from
Heaven, bless his heart.Boy doesn’t
know what he’s talking about.And just
like that, truth gets wrapped in a smarmy blessing and tossed aside.
Saying what we mean, meaning what we say, sifting out the
sometimes distorted difference between gossip and the gospel is right in front
of us, not only this morning, but in our everyday conversation.How are we to be faithful to the truth?To the truth in ourselves—neighbors—God in
the world?
Say what you mean to God in prayer, not what you think you
should.This will lead to truth and
wisdom, helping you speak the truth in love to your neighbor. Putting away falsehood—praying not
what we think we “should” feel, but what we do feel—honesty in prayer leads to
God’s truth, exercises our capacity to live in truth and love with our
neighbors.
Sometimes truth hurts, but truth/judgment, when given in the
context of love (not high-fructose platitudes) opens the door to a deeper, more
loving and life-giving relationship.We
as baptized Christians have been marked with a seal, sealed by the Holy Spirit
in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever, for redemption.You may remember the story of Cain, who
killed his brother Abel; when God saw what he had done, he marked his forehead
with a seal and sentenced him to wander, a nomad.But he was not marked as a sinner, branded as someone who would
be forever an outcast; he was marked with God’s own seal for protection,
redemption, as he roamed in exile.
Truth may lead to judgment, but judgment is a gateway to
mercy.It is not manners but
mindfulness of God’s truth and power that we are called to, for the sake of
God’s Kingdom.
Jesus, the Bread of Life, feed us with the truth of your
love.
(c)2009 Ann Benton Fraser
August 2, 2009
9th Sunday after Pentecost, B Proper 13
Exodus 16:2-4,9-15; John 6:24-35
The Rev. Ann Benton Fraser
Do you have things in your life that won’t stay done?At my house it’s laundry or dishes, maybe
for you it’s cutting the grass or paying the bills.The dog won’t stay walked or fed.A floor swept once is not a floor clean forever.
I remember demanding answers to questions like these as a
child:Why do I have to make up my bed
if I’m just going to sleep in it tonight?Isn’t it pointless to bathe today if I’m just going to have to do it
again tomorrow?It’s frustrating to
finish a task that won’t stay finished.People can be that way that too.
Relationships end, or at least change and cease to be what
they once were, but even after a friendship fades or a romance hits the skids,
memories stick around and come up from time to time—less often as time
passes.But lessons learned or wisdom
gained become part of us, shaping the way we enter or manage the other
relationships in our lives.It’s hard
to be finished with anything—laundry, love… But I understand the appeal.
I think the prospect of winning the lottery carries the same
charm.Sure there are plenty of
extraordinary things we could think of to do with a huge sum of money that landed
in our laps, but isn’t part of the appeal the security we could shore up?We’d pay off the house and know that we’d be
insulated from any rockiness ahead in our career.Money in the bank would mean that kids or grandkids could go to
college no matter how the stock market lurched and shook.Oh, to be finished worrying.Finished saving.Finished with debt.
And so it makes sense to me that when Jesus tells the crowd
following him that God’s bread from heaven gives life to the world they say, Sir, give us this bread always.Their minds are on the manna that kept their
ancestors alive in the wilderness, but even more so on the hearty meal of bread
and fish Jesus has just fed them.They
were among those 5000 Jesus just fed by the sea, and they know this is no
joke.If you are who you say you are, if you are greater than Moses, Give us
this bread always, they say, and let
us be finished with our hunger.Give us
a guarantee, a fixed arrangement of satisfied bellies and worries at bay, and
we will believe you.We will be
finished doubting, finished worrying.
The one thing that stays finished, that is both beginning
and end, is the love of God and bread for the world that is Jesus Christ.Jesus, who died once for all, has triumphed
over evil and proclaimed the victory and reign of love that is God’s
kingdom.Once and for all time, all
people, all creation, Jesus has in dying and rising again declared that through
him, life and love are eternal.
But that is a bit abstract, is it not?In the here and now, this physical life, how
are we to comprehend something final and finished?Already and not yet?
That’s where daily bread is helpful.We want God, our relationship with God, to
have something to do with real, down-to-earth life, and inviting God into
something we do every day, several times a day, has an amazing impact.Consider for a moment what it’s like to pass
up daily bread on purpose.I’m not
talking about those who don’t have a choice about their hunger.Fasting is one of those spiritual
disciplines that seems kind of arcane and specialized, like something monks or
prophets do, or used to do way back when.Fasting isn’t something to do all the time, or for everyone—some people
have medical particularities or biological rhythms that mean fasting is not a
good idea.But the church sets aside
certain days—Ash Wednesday and Good Friday—as days of fasting, and sometimes
there are other days when it is appropriate.Here’s the draw: our bodies, created in God’s image, remind us of how we
rely on God for our daily bread, our very breath.When our tummies rumble or our energy sinks, we might know in
every cell how weak we are, and that it is not our competence but God’s grace
and goodness that keeps us alive.I
have never made it through a day of fasting without having to take a nap...that
weakness doesn’t mean we’re bad at fasting, but that our bodies are ready to
tell us how truly we need our daily bread…A growling stomach can be a prayer
for the daily bread of God’s purposeful, powerful grace.
…as many who have struggled with addiction know, it is day
by day.One day at a time.Just as Jesus taught us, we are to pray,
Give us this day our daily bread.It
will be enough.God’s grace is
sufficient for this day.
Our eternal life with God, our salvation, is not some fixed
moment in time—but one that keeps unfolding.God’s grace is certainly durable, certainly final and perfected and
finished, but in ways that we do not fully comprehend, at least not on this
side of the kingdom.To comprehend God
is to apprehend God, to catch him in a jar and be finished seeking.Once we’ve got a handle on God, we find
ourselves with a God who can be handled, picked up and put away neatly where he
belongs.And suddenly we don’t have a
God at all anymore, but a souvenir or knick-knack, on the shelf out of the
way.That’s not the kind of God we’ve
gathered here today to worship, not the God we call to in sadness or anger.
No, the God we’ve gathered to seek and praise today is the
God who has called us by name, the God who in fact has gathered us.God whose mercies are new each morning,
whose peace passes all understanding, who gives himself as the bread that feeds
our souls and bodies.This is
God-with-us, the great and holy lover who calls us into being and calls us into
relationship with him and with our neighbors, with all of creation.
There were many discoveries and observations that helped me
to discern that God might be calling me to serve with you here at St. Paul’s
and in this community.Among those were
the realization that this is a body of Christians that knows something of
prayer and of hope: that came to me in reading and praying the prayer for St.
Paul’s, in which there is a clear desire to continue to grow in God’s grace
deeper and deeper into the life to which we’re called.I also rejoiced at the extent to which you
all have embraced your fellowship and care for one another, particularly during
a long search for a priest.A dedicated
team of pastoral care ministers.Commitment to include the infirm and home-bound in the Eucharistic feast
by sharing the gifts of bread and wine and companionship.Supper clubs and shrimp boils, and a bold
commitment to dedicate a generous portion of the church budget and energy to
serving and providing for those in need.
Jesus has been unfathomably generous to us and for us.In a few minutes, when we prepare the table
for communion, we too will offer ourselves in thanks-giving response to God’s
self-giving grace.We see that
expressed explicitly in our liturgy as members of the congregation come forward
each week to present bread and wine to be offered for our sacred meal
together.This very real symbol joins
the presentation of our weekly offering of a portion of our income; the fruits
of our life and labors are shared and sacrificed as we join and say yes to
God’s great mission of reconciling the world to Christ.Today we must be fed.Today we are in need of God’s strengthening
grace.
Give us this day our daily bread.Not so we might be finished, but that today also we may
begin.
