Be What You Are

SJF • Epiphany 5a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

Today our Gospel reading continues with a section of the Sermon on the Mount, and the theme with which this portion picks up relates to the theme from last week. As you recall, I spoke about the meaning of meekness as knowing how and where one stands both with God and with other people, neither blown up with pride nor groveling in false humility.

Today we continue with this idea of “being what you are.” Jesus gives two telling examples to make this point. He speaks of salt that has lost its saltiness, and a lamp hidden under a bushel basket. Neither the salt or the lamp is good for very much in these situations, for it is the saltiness of salt that gives it its purpose, and the light of a lamp that gives it its usefulness.

Here is a more modern example. This little pocket flashlight was a promotional giveaway that I picked up at some conference or other a few years ago. It no longer works, the battery is dead. But it doesn’t open — it is self-sealed in plastic — so there is no way to replace or to charge the battery. It is, as Jesus would say, good for nothing but to be thrown out — and now that I’ve dug it out of the bottom of the desk drawer to which it had found its way, that is exactly what I plan to do! I suppose I should in all charity towards the flashlight acknowledge that it has served one final purpose — as a sermon illustration! But I fear that is a bit like saying that a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

The real point is that a thing that can no longer fulfill the function for which it was designed — while it just might have some other use — is more likely taking up space and serving no purpose — it is good for nothing. This is why the image with which Jesus begins is so telling: salt that isn’t salty really isn’t good for anything — and a lamp — or a flashlight — that doesn’t shine a light is a waste of space.

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Now, of course, Jesus is using these images to provoke the people to whom he speaks — and that includes us! It is we who are the salt of the earth, and the light of the world: and if we lose our saltiness or hide our light, we are not being what we are meant to be, and equipped to be, designed to be, by God.

It is a funny thing about people — as I observed last week talking about meekness — that people often want to make themselves out to be more than they are, and they often treat others or themselves as less than they are. The hardest thing, it seems, is for us to simply be what we are!

If I can quote one of my favorite preachers, an old friend who died a few years ago, Canon Richard Norris: He observed that people will often say to themselves or others such things as, “Act your age!” or “Be a man!” He said, “No one would think of saying to a penguin, ‘Be a penguin,’ or to a cat, ‘Be a cat.’” The penguin would likely give you a strange look and just go on being a penguin; and the cat... well no one can really tell a cat anything. “And yet,” Norris continued, “Wewill say to a man, “‘Be a man!’” It appears we recognize that we human beings, unlike penguins or cats, often act as if we were not what we are.

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And of course, that comes about because we so often act as if we were less than we are. We deny our gifts, fail to share what we have, perhaps because we fear it will not be enough, or that people will think less of us if they see us as we do ourselves — not as we are, but low in our own estimation in spite of God’s powerful promise and charge. “You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!” Jesus assures us of both. Perhaps salt is not such a telling image in our time, when salt is easily available and our diets actually contain too much of it! But in the ancient world, salt was a valuable commodity with many uses, in some places worth its weight in gold. And it is good to remember that the amount rationed out to every Roman soldier gave rise to a modern word with which we are all familiar: salary.

So imagine Jesus is saying, “You are worth your weight in gold!” and perhaps you will get some sense of how valuable each of us is in his service. The point is that, like the gold talent buried in the ground instead of being invested in trade, we dare not hide our gifts or let them rest idle, but put them to use: to be what we are. You know the slogan, no doubt, “Be all that you can be!” That starts with being what you already are, accepting your gifts and putting them to work through practice. Practice: That is, as the old joke has it, how to get to Carnegie Hall!

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You all know that the verse, “Let your light so shine before others,” has long standing as anoffertory sentence, used just before the collection of the people’s offerings. That is taking the relation of salt with salary literally! And far be it from me to limit the reality that our offerings play in keeping the church functioning,
from the prosaic matters of heat and light on up to all the work of prayer and praise. We all know too well that these lights won’t shine if we don’t pay Con Ed!

But being a shining light or the salt of the earth means so much more. We are, as Jesus assures us, gifted with many capacities to be salt and light — to be what we are and rejoice in all that we can be. We each of us have many gifts that we may not be using for the service of God, the praise of God, to the glory of God. Let us not adopt a false modesty that says, “Who am I?” God knows who you are, who each of us is, and knows we are worth our weight in gold, salt of the earth and the light of the world. Let us not, as the Lord challenged us through Isaiah, engage in the wrong kind of fast, a groveling in sackcloth and ashes, and bowing our heads like a bulrush, acting as if we were less than we are. Let us rather rise up to break the yoke of injustice, to feed the hungry and set free the captive, using all we have to those ends. What a shame it would be if we did not make use of who we are to help make this world a better place, a more loving place, a more just and peaceful place.

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A wise old man, Rabbi Zusya, used to say, “When I come before the throne of the Holy One, Blessed be He, He will not say to me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ or ‘Why were you not Elijah?’ He will say to me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” We are the salt of the earth, the seasoning that preserves it and gives it flavor. We are the light of the world, called to be lights to each other and to those who live in the darkness of fear and ignorance. Let us be who we are, sisters and brothers, and put our gifts to work for God and God’s kingdom, making the most of all the skills and talents with which we are equipped by the grace of God, through the Spirit of God and to the glory of God. In whose name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we commit ourselves in service.+

Speak for your servant is listening

SJF • 2 Epiphany B 2009 • Tobias Haller BSG
Samuel said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.” +

Many of you who are parents know just how hard it is sometimes to call children. Whether you’re calling them to dinnertime, to bed, or to get up and get ready for school, seldom does a single call suffice. The first call, it appears, simply conveys information, rather like the chime of a clock which one can note or ignore without the fear of consequences.

The second call is a bit more intense, perhaps raising in the one called a dim awareness that they may indeed be the one being spoken to — a bit like a phone ringing in the distance, that you can’t be quite sure is yours, or might perhaps be in the next apartment. Or you might wonder, “Is that my ringtone?” Surely I’m not the only person to use, “Who let the dogs out. Woof. Woof.”

But all of us here are familiar, either as the source or the object, of the particular tone of voice that develops on the third attempt to call a child. Not the finest coloratura soprano has the flexibility that suddenly infuses a parent’s voice on that third yell up the stairs, or down the street, or across the hall. That third call to dinner, or to bed, or to get up for school, conveys far more than simple scheduling information. It leaves no doubt as to who is being called, and who is doing the calling. Oh my yes; it carries all the intensity of a warning siren, the strength of a foghorn, the urgency of a fire alarm, and the authority of a police whistle. Speaking of telephone ringtones, perhaps the most effective I ever heard, went off in my office, coming from the side coat-pocket of a young man who was there as a potential bridegroom, for marriage counseling. He and his bride-to-be were sitting there quietly, as I was seriously explaining to them the commitments and responsibilities of matrimony, when suddenly, from his coat pocket, a voice emerged, saying, “Will you answer the phone! Will you just answer the damn phone! Answer the phone!!” Well, whether you are the one issuing that call, or the one receiving it, you know that somebody means business!

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In our reading from the Old Testament today, we heard the story of the Lord’s call to the boy Samuel. Now, notice that unlike most children, Samuel responds immediately to the very first call, and to the second and the third calls, even though he doesn’t understand precisely who is calling him. It is not the child who is ignoring God’s voice, it is the old man, the priest Eli.

Why is that? Why, of all people, can’t the Lord’s priest hear the Lord’s voice? The Scripture tells us, after all, that Eli was blind, not deaf. And yet it takes him three times to perceive that it is the Lord who has been calling the boy Samuel. Only on that third urgent call does the message, delivered through a child, sink in.

Why is it that God chose to speak to the child in the first place, rather than to the old man? Well, God answers that question. He tells young Samuel that he is going to do something that will open up everyone’s ears, and make them tingle to boot! The reason he has spoken to the child Samuel instead of to the priest Eli is simple: Eli has allowed corruption and blasphemy to profane the house of God. He has done nothing to stop his wicked sons from stealing the sacrifices for their own use, and as punishment God will wipe out Eli’s house off the face of the earth. Is it any wonder that God chose to speak to an innocent child rather than a corrupted elder?

No doubt God had tried to get through to Eli, and to his sons Hophni and Phinehas, but finally even God seems to have given up: for “The word of the Lord was rare in those days.” After the third and the fourth and the fifth and the hundredth time yelling upstairs, or down the street, or across the hall, does even God get tired?

No, God doesn’t grow weary; but rather turns his voice in another direction, to speak to those with ears to hear. With the appearance of Samuel, God renews the call, renews the effort to get through, to get the message across. Imagine God’s joy in finally being heard, the joy in hearing that child say, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

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We all of us here are God’s servants, called and commissioned by God to service, in many different ways And God has spoken to us many times over the years, both as a congregation and as individuals.

This church (or the wooden one that preceded it) will have been here for one hundred fifty-six years this July, and the word of God has been heard here often. Nor has it been rare in our day. The servants of God have heard that word, some of them perhaps more clearly than others; some of them getting the message on the first call, some on the second, others not until that insistent third; some of them have answered the call more readily than others when they heard it than others. A very few perhaps over the years have even decided the call was for someone else, letting the phone ring and ring, paying no attention, and drifting off to spend their Sundays with the newspaper or on the golf course or at the mall, or in bed.

But thanks be to God that Saint James Church has survived a few Eli’s and even an occasional Hophni or Phinehas. Thanks be to God for the folk who are loyal, listening and obedient to God’s voice, loyal and obedient Samuels.

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We can continue to be like Samuel in various capacities. We can continue to be like Samuel in his eagerness, responding to the first call even before properly understanding who it is calling him. We can be like Samuel in his perseverance, responding to the second, and to the third call with equal and unfailing fervor, even when someone literally says — Go back to sleep! We can be like Samuel in his patience and attentiveness going back that last time, after we’ve been told to go back and lie down, and placing ourselves at God’s disposal, saying, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

But we can do more. This first part was just picking up the receiver, pressing the “answer call” button. The truly awesome task after hearing God’s voice, is doing what God asks. And in this, we can be like Samuel in his commitment and honesty, carrying out God’s command to bear what he must have known would be a heavy and sad message for old Eli, who had been a father to him.

Samuel’s eagerness and perseverance, his patience and attentiveness, and his commitment and honesty, are a model for us as a church. Like Samuel we can seek the Lord with eagerness and perseverance; like Samuel we can wait upon God with patience and attentiveness, and like Samuel we can do as God asks of us with commitment and honesty.

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It sometimes takes a Samuel to hear and then bear the voice of God to others in a tone that they can hear. It takes the eagerness and perseverance, the patience and attentiveness, and the commitment and honesty of a Samuel to reach out to those who can not hear the good news of hope for the future because they are so caught up in the sins of the past or the confusion of the present.

Sometimes it will take the voice of a Samuel, a young prophet filled with patience, peace, and charity, a prophet who is not afraid to challenge those who are set in their ways, and may even think they’ve got God on their side, even though they haven’t really heard his voice for a long, long time. Martin Luther King was such a prophet. He confronted systems as corrupt as the temple was under Eli and his blasphemous sons. But Martin confronted those evils of a land that considered itself a democracy, and yet was so unfair; a land corrupted by self-conceit that we were better than anyone else. Martin Luther King confronted those evils, those misperceptions, those sources of pride, with the witness of a Samuel, the clear and persistent, but nonviolent and loving witness of one who seeks the well-being even of those who hold him in contempt; who, in short, followed our Lord’s command to love even those who hurt him.

We may not be called to be Samuels in the dramatic way Martin Luther King was. But to respond to the call from our Lord will mean setting aside some things that may have preoccupied us. Not that they are unimportant, but that they may not be what God wants us to be spending our time on just now. God may have other plans for us, if we will pause for a moment to hear his voice.

If we earnestly seek to hear God’s voice, things that seem so terribly important will come into perspective. We will see greater things than these, these things that have so occupied us. We will see new visions, new possibilities, new opportunities for mission and ministry that we were too busy to notice before. If, like Samuel, we seek the Lord with eagerness and perseverance, wait upon him with patience and attentiveness, and follow through on his commandments with commitment and honesty, he who is faithful will not forsake us. We will hear God’s words of promise; we will see great things. Truly, truly, I say to you, if we follow God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, with eagerness and perseverance, with patience and attentiveness, with commitment and honesty, if we, seeking, trust, we shall, trusting, find: not only shall we hear, but we shall see; we will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, who is our Savior, even Jesus Christ our Lord.+

Minding Our Business

Saint James Fordham • Proper 28c • Tobias Haller BSG
For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work…+

How often have you been asked questions like this: What sort of business are you in? What kind of work do you do? This is often one of the first things to come up when you meet a new person. In fact, in some times and cultures, what you do for a living was and is so connected with your identity that it becomes your name. Any us who bear names like Baker, Smith, Collier, Sawyer, Cooper, Taylor, Joiner, Miller, Porter and so on, can tell what one of our ancestors did for a living. My own ancestors, on my mother’s side, bore the name of Clark — so I know that somebody in my ancestry was a minister! Even today, though we don’t have names like Sidney Salesman, Sondra Surgeon or Clarence Computer Technician, work is — for many of us — such a part of our day-to-day experience that it can almost become our identity. We can lose ourselves in our work; we can “get married to our jobs,” and end up neglecting our real family. We can become so attached to our jobs that when retirement comes we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

Work, work, work… Hasn’t it always been that way? Looks like it! Those who study human prehistory see work as so much a part of human identity that they consider the discovery of tools — rocks shaped into hammers or knives or spearheads — as the marker that separates the subhuman from the human. As far as they are concerned, the earliest humans aren’t those who may have thought great thoughts, told wonderful stories, or sung songs deep into the night, but the ones who picked up stones to grind seeds or club animals.

You probably remember the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. When the ape-man uses a bone to club a pig to death, he steps across the anthropological line in the sand and becomes a human being. Work, then, is deeply connected with human life, with the basic biological fact that food must be gathered and prepared, the young cared for, the old and sick helped: human society depends on work.

Yet who doesn’t have a love/hate relationship with work. I doubt if there is anyone here so fortunate always to love every moment of their work. Many of us, even those who enjoy their jobs most of the time, will find there are moments — or hours — of tedium, distress, or fatigue. And most people in this busy world of ours work in drudgery and hardship from the beginning of each day to its dreary, bone-tired end.

Most simply put, work is not play. As Sir James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, once said, “Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” Peter Pan, you may recall, was the boy who refused to grow up. He wanted to remain in the world of childhood where all the work is done for you; and the biological necessities of food, clothing and shelter are all provided by someone else.

There is more than a bit of this attitude running through our religious history. Most of our biblical texts come from a time when almost all work was drudgery. The story of Adam and Eve paints a picture of humankind in paradise created at first to do at most a little gardening, living off the abundant fruit of the trees. When they fell from grace, they took up work, the sweaty-browed tilling of the soil to earn their bread, and work was a part of the curse occasioned by their sin. So our work has long been seen as a part of that inherited guilt. Many in the Jewish and Christian traditions have understood freedom from work as a sign of God’s grace restored — and looked forward to that “Land of Rest.” +++ This is just what happened in the community to whom Paul wrote the letter we heard today. The Thessalonians, quick to grab the good news that the Lord was about to come, got carried away by it, and some of them began to act as if the world was literally about to end, giving up working for a living, and sponging off the church as they waited for the coming of the Lord.

A few went even further, claiming that the day of the Lord had already come! In their overenthusiastic conversion to Christianity, they’d gotten the wrong end of the stick. +++ Not that the stick wasn’t there to be grabbed! Paul himself, in his First Letter to the Thessalonians, sowed the seeds of this misunderstanding by emphasizing “that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” and warning them all to “keep awake.” And unfortunately the urgency of his tone had the effect of convincing some of them that it meant they should close up shop and wait for the rapture!

So when Paul wrote his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, (in part to deal with the problems created by his First Letter) he used language much more like what we heard in today’s Gospel. Hold on! The end is not yet, and a whole lot of stuff is going to happen before the end comes; so back to work, people! +++ The same message holds today. We are a bit less frantic about the end of the world now than folks were just before the year 2000. I’m not the only one here, I trust, who stocked up on bottled water and extra batteries! Well, I think I’ve still got some of that vintage water in the kitchen cupboard — Chateau Hudson 1999!

But some people went whole hog — they really believed that not only might there be a few problems with utilities caused by the Y2K bug, but that the actual end of the world was nigh. They sold homes, gave up jobs, and traveled out into the middle of nowhere to wait for the Lord to appear in the clouds to come and fetch them. They were, to say the least, disappointed.

People have been led astray for centuries by some mistaken prophet or other, announcing that the Day of the Lord is near. Some still are led astray, even after all the failed promises. But we have received different instructions, instructions from our Lord, and Saint Paul. Jesus tells us to be like servants doing their jobs when the master comes home. Listen to today’s gospel with that in mind. “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!,’ and ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”... “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”

You see, when you read the text this way, Jesus is not saying these are signs of the end, but signs of the present! The world is a dangerous place and full of many terrible things, but the coming of the Lord will be unmistakable and swift and most importantly, without a sign and without a warning! What Jesus said is the Gospel truth: the world has seen countless false prophets arise; we have seen many nations rise against many others, seen terrible famines and plagues. We’ve even seen a comet fly through the heavens and smash into the planet Jupiter,
leaving a hole in it five times as big as the whole earth! And yet the end is not yet.

No, the Son of God will return without warning. Now, when someone says something is going to happen without warning, what should you do? What do the Scouts say? Be prepared! So Jesus tells us to be always ready, to be about God the Father’s business, as he was himself from his childhood on: doing the work God gives us to do and witnessing to God’s love and patience. As Saint Paul says, we are to work, and not to be weary in doing what is right. And “right” does not just mean morally right, but right in the sense of appropriate. When we find the right work, or when we work with a right attitude, an element of joy can enter it — true, there may be a good bit of drudgery, but if we can find the core happiness in being occupied, devoting even our secular work to God as we realize that our work is for the good of society — then our work can bring us joy, and be a gift to God’s glory. This lies at the heart of the stewardship of our talents: the work we dedicate and then do to God’s glory.

The great English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was also a Jesuit — you know, the folks who run that little University down Fordham Road! The Jesuit motto is: To the Greater Glory of God. Everything — everything — is done with that in mind. Hopkins put it this way: “It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God glory... He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.”

Let us, then, sisters and brothers, so pitch our work to God’s glory — minding our business with the mind of Christ. Let us each of us do the work that we have been given to do, whatever it is, to the glory of God, finding in each act, however humble, some way to serve. Let us open our eyes and hearts and minds to see that work is a means to a greater good, and be found at work when the master comes. Let us mind our business by setting our minds and hearts upon it. Let us work each day as if God were our only boss, never wearying in doing what is right, serving each other to his honor and glory.+