Proper 7 C

Proper 7 C

Transcribed from a sermon given on

June 20, 2010

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Luke:26-39

Psalm 42

1 Kings 19:1-15a

Galatians

  What is it that you long for?  What do you really yearn for?  A lot of people might say they want more money, but is that what they really want?  Do they really yearn for more money?  If that’s what people really yearn for, then once they had some money they’d be satisfied, but I’ve yet to find somebody who said, “Well, as soon as I have ‘X’ amount, then I’ll be fine.”  There’s always something more.  So, what is it that someone’s yearning for when they say they want money?  Well, maybe they want security.  Maybe they want toys.  But is that what you’re really yearning for?  What is it that your heart really wants? 
  The Psalm today is so beautiful, “As a deer longs for the water brooks, so longs my heart for you, O God.”  You think of a deer out in the middle of the summer, and it’s hot, and it’s thirsty, and all it wants is some fresh, cool water – that yearning.  What is it in your heart that you really yearn for? 

  In the Gospel story today we hear of Jesus going across the Sea of Galilee leaving the Jewish area and going into an area that was Gentile, to a Roman city, one of the Decapolis. It was a place where the people were were called Hellenists or Greeks, which meant they worshiped lots of different gods, they had a pagan sensibility, not a Jewish sensibility. Jesus, numerous times, goes into areas where there are no Jewish people around

  When he gets there, he encounters someone who is described as being possessed by demons.  That was the diagnosis in that time.  It was a time period where people were very literal in how they interpreted things.  These days, we would probably diagnose this person as having schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. We know with schizophrenia people hear voices.  Often people with mental disorders hear voices, and sometimes these voices that tell them to do things that aren’t good for them. 
  So, this person was hearing voices in his head that told him to rip his clothes off, voices that told him to break his bonds, voices that drove him away from his home. In that time period, the only way they could understand such behavior was that those voices represented beings in his mind, demons that had possessed him.  He had all of these voices going on, voices that weren’t good for him, and my guess was that what he yearned for was some peace and quiet, and that’s what Jesus gave him.  He quieted those voices.  He stilled the voices so that he could listen to the truth within him, and put clothes on, and sit quietly, and rejoin society. 
  We all know what it’s like to have those voices.  If you’ve ever gone through a period of time where you’ve been depressed, you may have found that you are thinking like a broken record about something that’s concerning you.  You know - things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse.  Oh, things are terrible, and they’re gonna get worse.  And it doesn’t really matter what the particular thing is, but the mind just keeps going round and round.  Somebody may have hurt you.  You might be afraid of something, but it’s like a voice in your mind that you can’t control.  We’ve all felt that way.  Or we’ve all had experiences where we’re trying to make a decision, and it seems like there’s an argument going on inside of us, different voices talking. 
  So, we’ve had smaller experiences of the extreme experience of this person that Jesus healed. What Jesus gave him was he quieted the voices within so that he was able to receive the love and care and healing of Christ. 

   We all know those voices.  They’re very familiar.  Father’s Day may even bring up some of those voices, after all. How many of us walk around and have our father on one shoulder and our mother on the other. Sometimes they’re whispering, “Good job, great.  I’m glad to see you doing so well.”  And other times they go, “I can’t believe you did that.” 
  We carry within us lots of different voices, which brings us to the Old Testament reading where Elijah is in the cave waiting for God.  Now, let me give you a little background of how he came to this situation. There was a conflict within Israel between worshiping Yahweh, the one God, or worshipping the other gods like Baal and other idols.  When you read the Old Testament this conflict goes on for centuries where one side gets stronger and than the other. At this point the king had married a worshipper of Baal, Jezebel, and Baal was taking ascendancy. Worshippers of these various “gods” would make idols.  They would make a cow or some other idol, and then they would go and worship it and thought that that temple and that idol represented God.  Other times they would worship on a hill because they thought that was how to connect with God – or a pillar or a tree. 
  So there was this conflict, and Elijah was speaking up and the representing Yahweh. They to have a big contest.  This was the Superbowl of contests between prophets, and you probably remember it from Sunday School or reading the Bible.  It’s quite a story.  Elijah challenged the prophets and priests of Baal to a competition, and they got two bulls to offer to their god, and one bull was cut in half and put on wood to be offered to Baal. Then Elijah said go offer that to Baal but don’t light the fire; let Baal do it.  If he’s god, if Baal is so powerful, let god take the offering.  So, the followers and priests of Baal spent all day chanting and singing and praying and dancing around this sacrifice that just sat there, and nothing happened.  Then Elijah took the other bull and put it on some wood, and he told them to pour some water over it to make it extra hard. Then Elijah prayed to Yahweh, to the one tru God, and Yahweh sent down fire to burn the offering and consumed it. 
  So the people of Israel realized that Yahweh is a real God who can really do something, and they grabbed all the priests and prophets of Baal and gathered them together. Now this is the part of the story that’s really hard for us to read because Elijah had them all killed.  Well, of course, Jezebel didn’t like that, so Jezebel – this is where the reading comes in – says, well, I’m gonna kill Elijah for doing that. Elijah is scared, and he runs off into the wilderness. He is there waiting for God. At one point he gets the sense that God is coming.  And so he waits, and then there is this huge storm, this windstorm like a hurricane.  Things are being blown over.  It’s very dramatic, and the scripture says, “But God was not in the wind.”  And then there was an earthquake, and the whole world trembled, “but God was not in the earthquake.”
  Now the worshippers of idols would have considered these as omens that represented god, but not for Elijah. God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake.  And even when the fire came, Elijah knew that God was not in the fire.  Elijah knew that God was not just in dramatic things.  “And then” – and in this translation, the New Revised Standard Version translation - it says, “And then came the sound of sheer silence.”  I love that alliteration, “the sound of sheer silence.”  You may have heard it in the King James Version as “a still, small voice,” or, “a quiet whisper.”  But I really like this “sound of sheer silence.”  God is in the silence.  God is in the silence. 
  Think about it. If you have a friend, and you go out to coffee, and at coffee they talk nonstop.  They don’t even breathe.  They just keep talking, and they tell you about their children, and they tell you about their grandchildren, and then they tell you about the movie they’ve seen, and then they talk about politics, but they never listen to you because they’re too busy talking about themselves, and you’d really love to tell them something that you think might be helpful for them to hear, but they’re just talking on and on, and they don’t even have time to drink the coffee because they have so much to say, and by the time your coffee is over you’re exhausted listening to them, but you haven’t said a single word.  It’s not much of a friendship, is it? 
  But that’s what our relationship with God is often like.  When we sit with God how much time do we spend chattering, and how much time do we spend really listening to God?  God speaks to us in that still, small voice.  God is known to us in those moments of sheer silence.  If you’ve ever tried to quiet your mind, if you’ve ever tried to sit still, you’ll notice, like when we have a brief moment of silence before the service, the first thing you’ll notice is all the sounds outside. You’ll hear the sound – the buzzing of the lights, and the sound of the birds and cars going by, and then you’ll start noticing your body, and how it doesn’t like the pews ‘cause they’re, kind of, uncomfortable, and then you maybe have an itch here or there, and then you’ll start thinking, and you’ll notice all the voices in your mind.  One goes, “Oh, gosh.  How long are we gonna have to sit in silence?  When is this gonna be over?  “Gee,” you know, “after church we need to stop at the grocery store.  Now, what did I need?  I needed” – And then it’s, “Well, what am I gonna make for dinner, or I have this to-do list.  It’s Father’s Day.  Hopefully I won’t have to actually do it today.”  And, you know, you have this whole chatter that goes on, all those voices. 

  How can we hear the whisper of God through all those voices?  God is speaking to us always with love and care and support and wisdom, but the noise sometimes keeps us from hearing.  God is not out there in the idols.  God is in the sheer silence, in the still, small voice, and the gift of healing we can receive from Christ is that peace that passes understanding, that peace that quiets the worry, that quiets the concern, that quiets all those voices and gives us a chance to just be with God because as the deer longs for the water brooks, our souls long for the living God. 

Sermon Proper 6 C

It took a mistake, a minor car accident, for me to know the truth of my father's love. It takes our willingness to be vulnerable, to acknowledge our weakness, to know the truth of God's love.

Proper 6 C

Transcribed from a sermon given on

June 16, 2013

By the Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Arroyo Grande, CA

On this Father’s Day I thought I would tell a story about my father that I think illustrates the point of the Gospel and the reading from Paul today.

My father was not a very expressive man. He was raised in a conservative German household where men did not express their feelings and so he was not the sort of man to give lots of hugs, or to say “I love you,” or to express himself that way. As a child growing up I always wanted to feel his love. So I was a very good child. I was one of those children who tried to earn the love of my parents. I tried not to get into trouble. I studied hard at school. I did my chores. I was all of those things trying to earn my parents love, but always feeling a little bit empty.

Then something happened when I was in high school. I had recently learned to drive. It think I was about 16 ½. One summer day a friend and I wanted to go to the park and play our guitars, so my father let us take the Buick convertible that they had - his car. On the way to the park, it was a hot summer day so we had the top down, we stopped at a frozen custard stand. We got our frozen custards and got back in the car and sat and talked as we ate them. And yes I finished eating the frozen custard before I tried to drive the car. I was a good girl. I wasn’t going to drive with something in my hand. At least back then. So then I went to pull out from the parking place. As I pulled out you, know how you turn the car as you pull out, and I turned it a little bit too much and sure enough there was this horrible scrapping sound as it went down the car next to me. I pulled back straight again and of course there was a man sitting in that car eating his frozen custard. He was furious. He looked at my friend and I. Now this was my hippie stage, I didn’t look terribly hippy, but my friend was totally hippy with long hair and flowing dress and all of that. And we had our guitars in the back seat. He had decided who we were and what we were very quickly. And he was angry. How could we do that to him? Meanwhile I was kind of scared, you know. So I said to him, “I’ll have to call my father.” I didn’t know what else to do. So I went inside, they didn’t have cell phones then of course, and I went in and called my father. And went back to the car. And he was like, “I’m glad you are calling your father cause your father’s going to take care of you.” It was all that sort of energy going on.

So my father pulled up. I want you to get an image of this. Think of this man who is waiting for my father to come and tell me off. My father pulls up in my grandfather’s 58 Chevy because I had his car. Now if you remember the 58 Chevys they were like driving a tank. They were huge. Now my father was a business executive. He was the sort of man who on Saturday afternoon wore a sports jacket and a nice shirt. He never was poorly clothed. He always looked dignified. And he was a large man, slightly overweight but in good shape. So he got out of the car with total dignity, as if he were at a business meeting, and he calmly walked up and gently put his hand on my back. Nothing demonstrative, but a positive acknowledge of me. Then he walked over to the gentleman in the other care and said, “Hello, my name is Ralph Hart.” And shook his hand and said, “I see my daughter scratched your car. I am very sorry about that. Here is my card. Just go get it fixed and contact me and there will be no problem in taking care of whatever the costs are.” And the man was there flabbergasted. He was totally out classed. He did not get the response from my father that he expected. Instead I got a response from my father that I never could have dreamed of, and that was that I really felt loved. Here I had made a mistake, I had had an accident, I had done something wrong, and he was right there supporting me.

That was the time when I really knew that my father loved me. Because you see while I was trying to be good and earn his love I got presents at Christmas and on my birthday and he treated me well, but it was an exchange. Now this was something that was graciously given. When I became vulnerable. You see as long as we are trying to earn love, we can’t really receive love, because love is not an exchange. Love is not I’ll do this for you and then you do that for me. Love is something that is freely given.

That is why Paul in this letter to the Galatians is so adamant about not trying to go back to following the Law in our relationship with God. The Galatians lived in a town where Paul had set up a church and gotten it going and then, as was his way, once it was effectively going he would go and move on to another town and do missionary work there. Well evidently some Christians that he called Judaizers had come to Galatia and said said to the people there that they had to follow all the law of the Jews. You have to be circumcised. You have to follow the rules about food. You have to follow the Law if you are going to be a Christian. And Paul was adamant, adamant, that that is not the way it should work because our relationship with God is not like our relationship with Santa Claus. Now if you think about it with Santa Claus, we are told that if we are good we’ll get good things, and if we are bad we will get coal. And we better watch out and follow all the rules or we’ll be in trouble. Now Santa Clause is wonderful, and we can appreciate what we get from Santa Clause. But we can’t really say that we love Santa Claus. Because we’ve earned what we get from Santa Claus. We’ve done what we needed to do. So if we try to follow the Law with God and we say if I follow all of these rules, then I’ll be right with God, we are trying to tell God what to do. We are telling God, “I followed all the rules, now you give me what I want.” That’s not love. That’s not a real relationship.

With my father I could feel and experience his love only when I made a mistake. Only when I was able to experience his compassion and his forgiveness. I didn’t even need to ask for forgiveness, it was just there, and given to me. And so when we stop trying to follow the law, but instead become vulnerable before God, when we acknowledge our weakness, when we acknowledge the mistakes that we have made and we feel God’s appreciation for us as who we are, when we know that we are still in relationship with God in spite of all we’ve done, only then can we know God’s love.

That’s really true in all our relationships. We can have a friendship with someone where we are always showing our good side. You know when you first meet somebody and you try to never show any weakness or any mistakes, and you never talk about what you have done wrong, you can have a friendship that way, but it doesn’t go deeper. It doesn’t go deep into a real love relationship until you become vulnerable in front of each other. Until you are able to take your weaknesses and mistakes to that other person, until you are able to say you are sorry, until you are able to tell them what you’ve done in your life that you wish you hadn’t and when you are able to be vulnerable and ask for their help. Only then does the relationship deepen to one of love.

That’s what we are invited to do with God, to take to God our weakness, our sinfulness if you want, the mistakes we’ve made, the things that we are kind of embarrassed about, that which Is not what we would like to be, but is true about who we are. And when we can take that to God and know that we are forgiven and that we are appreciated for who we are and that we indeed are loved just as we are, then like, the woman who went to Jesus, we respond with love for God. For she somehow, through Jesus, had known God’s forgiveness and her love overflowed. All she wanted to do was to express that love by wiping his feet with her hair and anointing his feet.

So what we are called to do is not just to follow the law, but rather to open ourselves and be vulnerable to God and let ourselves know just how much we are loved by God.

Memorial Day Thoughts - Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Memorial Day Thoughts

May 30, 2016

  This year Easter came very early and therefore the season of the Sundays after Pentecost has begun earlier than usual. Since the readings, or propers, for these Sundays are  based on the date I do not have any copies of previous sermons that occurred this early in Year C and cannot share with you a sermon for next Sunday.

  I would, however, like to share with you today some thoughts about Memorial Day and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In preparing for my sermon yesterday, which was based on the healing of the Centurion's slave (Luke 7:1-10), I was exploring material that I could use concerning Memorial Day. I came upon Lincoln's Gettysburg address, which I had not read in quite a long time. I was struck by how incredibly relevant it is to us today, especially with our current political situation. 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

  First of all I am struck by the fact that Lincoln, the first Republican president, begins his most famous speech by stating clearly that our country was not only conceived in Liberty but was dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  How far we are from fulfilling that dream, from actually living out the reality of that proposition. With those strong and unequivocal words Lincoln leaves no room for prejudice, no room for denying rights to anyone for any reason. He saw an America that at its founding was dedicated to equality. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 

He saw the Civil war as a test to see if a nation based on those ideals could survive. He was fighting to move the country he loved and served toward achieving those ideals.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

In reading online about the origin of Memorial Day I came upon the report of how after the Civil war ended thousands of newly free ex-slaves went to a horse track in Charleston South Carolina where Union prisoners of war had been held. Many soldiers had died there and were buried in unmarked graves. They went, cleaned up the area, put up a memorial and decorated the graves with flowers as a way of acknowledging those who had sacrificed their lives for other people's freedom.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

He finished his speech with stirring words of encouragement for all of us to be dedicated to the unfinished work which the soldiers buried in Gettysburg had died for. 

It is just as relevant a call to us today on this Memorial Day. There is still so much unfinished work to do to achieve the ideals of this nation and to see that government for the people shall not perish.