Endings & Beginnings, Changes & Transitions: Sermon for January 15, 2006
Beginnings Are Important
Beginnings are very important things. Rogers & Hammerstein, in their great musical about the Von Trapp family, The Sound of Music, have Maria teach the children to sing the Do Re Mi song. The first line of that song is "Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...." Today we have two Biblical stories of beginnings.
The First Beginning
The first is the story of Samuel and Eli the priest, which our lectionary text has us come in on at a point other than the beginning. We enter the story in chapter 3 of the First Book of Samuel where the narrator says, in a very matter-of-fact way, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days." Beginning back in chapter 1, this book of Scripture consistently portrays a society that did not automatically expect the presence of God.
For example, when Eli first meets Hannah in chapter 1, he does not immediately recognise the intensity of her expression as prayer.
"The fact [is] that Eli assumes that Hannah has come to the shrine to drink rather than pray [which] suggests what Eli's general experience has been. On the whole, apparently, he has not been used to people coming in off the streets to fall on their knees before the Lord. He has come to expect that the shrine will be used as a shelter from the sun, a place to sleep off a good party, or a place from which his sons will run their rackets. Eli does not expect people to turn to the shrine to seek the word of the Lord." (Jane Williams, 2nd Sunday of Epiphany, Church Times)
Eli sounds like many contemporary clergy who have given up expecting people to turn to the church to seek spiritual guidance.
Unlike most of us current priests, however, Eli almost certainly inherited his priestly role, and his sons are planning to do so. They have been treating the temple at Shiloh as a family business, rather than any kind of sacred vocation. I don’t think this is the sin of our present class of ordained ministers; I certainly hope that it is not mine. But I do believe that many clergy and lay church leaders experience the same frustration, disappointment, and discouragement that characterized Eli’s ministry.
To speak in Eli’s favor, however, his training and faith rise to the surface under pressure, as do ours. It is notable that Eli, who could not see, who is the embodiment of the narrator’s observation that "visions were not widespread," is nonetheless the one who realizes it is the Lord God calling to Samuel. Frustrated, disappointed, and discouraged he may be, he is nonetheless able to perform his priestly ministry of discerning and calling attention to the Presence of God.
When he does so, the boy Samuel is able also to discern the voice of God and doing so, is told that Eli’s ministry in the house of the Lord at Shiloh is about to come to an end. Samuel does not want to relay this word to Eli, but Eli presses him to do so. And, again, as frustrated, disappointed, and discouraged he may be, Eli is nonetheless able to accept God’s judgment on his priesthood: "It is the Lord," he says, "Let him do what seems good to him."
And in this story it seems good to God to begin a new thing – the ministry of Samuel as priest and prophet in Israel.
The Second Beginning
One of America’s great modern philosophers, Yogi Berra, who once gave the very sound advice, "When you come to the fork in the road, take it." The thing about coming to a fork in your path is that at nearly every step of one’s life there are forks to be taken, decisions to be made, one direction to go or another, and every fork in the road is a new beginning. Nathanael, confronted by his friend Philip with the invitation "Come and see," was standing at such a fork in his road. He had to take it. One way lead to meeting Jesus, following the path along which he would lead, and living the life he would demand; the other, to something else.
Each of us, I assume, have been at that fork and we have all taken the branch that leads us along the path of the One who said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Many people see a polarity between that claim, the premise that there is "one way," which is, Christ, and the assertion, usually, perceived as anti-Christian, that there are "many paths" to spiritual enlightenment. A writer I recently encountered addressed this divergence saying:
"I think both these phrases are cliches that people use without asking what they really mean. What exactly is a path? What exactly is a way? Are we all thinking of the same thing when we use those words? I doubt it! Analogy: The Field of Thistles. There are many paths across the field of thistles. You can run from one side to the other. You can walk backwards around the edge while waving pink handkerchiefs in both hands. You can practice professional dance routines and look a complete fool while no-one's looking (if a fool dances in the field of thistles when no-one's there to watch, do they make a mistake?). There are many paths. But the only way across the field of thistles is to wear good shoes." (Adrian Morgan, The Spiritual Journey: "One way", "many paths", or possibly both?)
There are many paths and, occasionally, as we follow the "one way" together we find ourselves at forks which we must take. Some of us will go one direction and some of us another, yet all of us will still be following the "one way." None of us is ending our journey, but we come to the end of our journeys together and the beginnings of new, separate journeys. When we do so, we trust in God that our paths will converge again somewhere up ahead and that, on the last great day, we will all arrive at the same place.
Perhaps the greatest example of the fork in the road is not one we take voluntarily, the fork we call "death." That is surely the end of our companionable journey with our beloved departed, and yet we express in our burial rituals our conviction that, at the end, we will see the deceased once again. A collect in the BCP burial office asks in part:
"Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before; through Jesus Christ our Lord." (The Book of Common Prayer 1979, page 493.)
Beginnings Are Also Endings
Every fork in the road entails both an end and a beginning. At Shiloh, the end of Eli’s ministry as priest of God in Israel meant the beginning of Samuel’s ministry as priest and prophet. At the fig tree in Bethany, Nathanael’s decision to follow Jesus as "Son of God" and "King of Israel" meant the end of an old way of life and the beginning of a new one. We have a fancy name for these ending-beginning events: we call them "transitions."
I love the poetry and majesty of the Psalms as they are translated in The Book of Common Prayer. You may have noticed, if you’ve tried to do any Bible study using the BCP that the language and even the verse numbers of the Psalms in the Prayer Book don’t seem to match what you find in the usual translations of Scripture. That’s because our BCP versions trace their lineage back to the Great Bible, a translation made under the auspices of King Henry VIII and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1539. When King James I & VI authorized the translation that came to bear his name, the new translators changed the versification and all subsequent Bible interpretations have followed their lead ... but not the editors of the Prayer Book.
What this means is that when one runs across a Psalm reference in a scholarly text and wishes to look it up in the BCP, one must compare that references in a standard translation of Scripture to the Prayer Book texts to make sure one is reading the proper verses. This can be very illuminating, and I have found that while I still prefer the poetry of the Prayer Book, there are times when the BCP versions don’t speak to me as forcefully as other translations. The final verses of our Psalm today are a case in point.
In the BCP, these verses are numbered 16 and 17 and read as follows:
How deep I find your thoughts, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand;
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
In the NRSV, however, the corresponding verses are 17 and 18:
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them – they are more than the sand;
I come to the end – I am still with you.
"I come to the end, God. I am still with you." Through every transition, no matter what else may change, we are still with God.
Handling Endings and Beginnings
In those last words of the Psalm is the key to handling endings and beginnings, transitions and changes. In there are some very real clues to dealing with the changes in our lives. The first is to not complain about change! Because we are still with God even as something comes to an end, we ought not see endings as something bad, something negative, something to criticize. They are not. Every ending, as I have just said, entails a beginning. Focus on that, look forward to all the possibilities that a wide-open, open-ended future offers. Learn from Eli: he could have complained and moaned and groaned about losing his ministry at Shiloh. He didn’t: he accepted that a change in the priesthood was part of God’s plan. "It is the Lord," he said, "Let him do what seems good to him."
Learn from Eli to accept such change and do more than that. When we present our gifts at the altar in a few minutes, we will sing, "All glory to our Lord and God for love so deep, so high, so broad." If we really feel that love in our hearts, such hearts cannot harbor complaints, only songs of gratitude.
Second, we should not blame other people for the changes in our lives. Others may be involved in the endings and beginnings we experience; they may even be instrumental in them. But, in the final analysis, every transition, every change is so multifaceted that no one individual, no one cause can be found responsible. For the ending of his priesthood, Eli might have tried to blame his unscrupulous sons, or the neglectful society around him, or Hannah for bring Samuel to the shrine, or Samuel for simply being there, but he didn’t. For the changes Jesus caused in his life, Nathanael might have blamed Philip for introducing him to Jesus, but he didn’t. Trying to assign blame is a fruitless activity.
Blame isn’t the issue; choice is – and the choice is ours. We can choose to be the victims of change, in which case transitions will work against us. Or we can choose to be agents of change in our lives, in which case transitions will work for us. There simply is no one else to blame, nor anything to be gained by casting blame.
Let me, in this regard, draw your attention to another of today’s hymns, our dismissal hymn, in which God asks, "Whom shall I send?" and we answer, "Here I am, Lord. I will go, Lord." In that hymn we acknowledge and accept the call to a changed life which being a Christian entails. Take that hymn and that acceptance to heart.
The third clue or lesson about change is: trust God; trust Jesus. When we come to a fork in the road, when we make the choice, God will be with us. "I come to the end," wrote the Psalmist. "I am still with you."
"Follow me," said Jesus; and he promised Nathanael that he would see heaven opened, that he would see angels. He makes the same promise to each of us. He didn’t say follow me and there will never be another change in your life; he didn’t say follow me and you’ll never come to forks in the road. He said, "Follow me" and "you’ll see heaven."
Again, remember the words of that final hymn, "Here I am, Lord. I will go, Lord, if you lead me." Live those words; don’t just sing them! Like Samuel, say "Here I am, Lord." Like Nathanael, leave the comfortable shade of the fig tree and follow. Go where Jesus leads and trust in his promise!
In closing, I’d like to share with you a prayer attributed to St. Francis de Sales. It is a parting benediction –
Be at peace.
Do not look forward in fear to the changes in life.
Rather look forward to them with full hope as they arise.
God, whose very own you are,
Will deliver you from out of them.
He has kept you hitherto,
And He will lead you safely through all things.
And when you cannot stand it,
God will bury you in his arms.
Do not fear what may happen tomorrow.
The same everlasting Father who cares for you today
Will take care of you then,
And everyday.
He will either shield you from suffering,
Or give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace.
And, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.
Amen.
Beginnings are very important things. Rogers & Hammerstein, in their great musical about the Von Trapp family, The Sound of Music, have Maria teach the children to sing the Do Re Mi song. The first line of that song is "Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...." Today we have two Biblical stories of beginnings.
The First Beginning
The first is the story of Samuel and Eli the priest, which our lectionary text has us come in on at a point other than the beginning. We enter the story in chapter 3 of the First Book of Samuel where the narrator says, in a very matter-of-fact way, "The word of the Lord was rare in those days." Beginning back in chapter 1, this book of Scripture consistently portrays a society that did not automatically expect the presence of God.
For example, when Eli first meets Hannah in chapter 1, he does not immediately recognise the intensity of her expression as prayer.
"The fact [is] that Eli assumes that Hannah has come to the shrine to drink rather than pray [which] suggests what Eli's general experience has been. On the whole, apparently, he has not been used to people coming in off the streets to fall on their knees before the Lord. He has come to expect that the shrine will be used as a shelter from the sun, a place to sleep off a good party, or a place from which his sons will run their rackets. Eli does not expect people to turn to the shrine to seek the word of the Lord." (Jane Williams, 2nd Sunday of Epiphany, Church Times)
Eli sounds like many contemporary clergy who have given up expecting people to turn to the church to seek spiritual guidance.
Unlike most of us current priests, however, Eli almost certainly inherited his priestly role, and his sons are planning to do so. They have been treating the temple at Shiloh as a family business, rather than any kind of sacred vocation. I don’t think this is the sin of our present class of ordained ministers; I certainly hope that it is not mine. But I do believe that many clergy and lay church leaders experience the same frustration, disappointment, and discouragement that characterized Eli’s ministry.
To speak in Eli’s favor, however, his training and faith rise to the surface under pressure, as do ours. It is notable that Eli, who could not see, who is the embodiment of the narrator’s observation that "visions were not widespread," is nonetheless the one who realizes it is the Lord God calling to Samuel. Frustrated, disappointed, and discouraged he may be, he is nonetheless able to perform his priestly ministry of discerning and calling attention to the Presence of God.
When he does so, the boy Samuel is able also to discern the voice of God and doing so, is told that Eli’s ministry in the house of the Lord at Shiloh is about to come to an end. Samuel does not want to relay this word to Eli, but Eli presses him to do so. And, again, as frustrated, disappointed, and discouraged he may be, Eli is nonetheless able to accept God’s judgment on his priesthood: "It is the Lord," he says, "Let him do what seems good to him."
And in this story it seems good to God to begin a new thing – the ministry of Samuel as priest and prophet in Israel.
The Second Beginning
One of America’s great modern philosophers, Yogi Berra, who once gave the very sound advice, "When you come to the fork in the road, take it." The thing about coming to a fork in your path is that at nearly every step of one’s life there are forks to be taken, decisions to be made, one direction to go or another, and every fork in the road is a new beginning. Nathanael, confronted by his friend Philip with the invitation "Come and see," was standing at such a fork in his road. He had to take it. One way lead to meeting Jesus, following the path along which he would lead, and living the life he would demand; the other, to something else.
Each of us, I assume, have been at that fork and we have all taken the branch that leads us along the path of the One who said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." Many people see a polarity between that claim, the premise that there is "one way," which is, Christ, and the assertion, usually, perceived as anti-Christian, that there are "many paths" to spiritual enlightenment. A writer I recently encountered addressed this divergence saying:
"I think both these phrases are cliches that people use without asking what they really mean. What exactly is a path? What exactly is a way? Are we all thinking of the same thing when we use those words? I doubt it! Analogy: The Field of Thistles. There are many paths across the field of thistles. You can run from one side to the other. You can walk backwards around the edge while waving pink handkerchiefs in both hands. You can practice professional dance routines and look a complete fool while no-one's looking (if a fool dances in the field of thistles when no-one's there to watch, do they make a mistake?). There are many paths. But the only way across the field of thistles is to wear good shoes." (Adrian Morgan, The Spiritual Journey: "One way", "many paths", or possibly both?)
There are many paths and, occasionally, as we follow the "one way" together we find ourselves at forks which we must take. Some of us will go one direction and some of us another, yet all of us will still be following the "one way." None of us is ending our journey, but we come to the end of our journeys together and the beginnings of new, separate journeys. When we do so, we trust in God that our paths will converge again somewhere up ahead and that, on the last great day, we will all arrive at the same place.
Perhaps the greatest example of the fork in the road is not one we take voluntarily, the fork we call "death." That is surely the end of our companionable journey with our beloved departed, and yet we express in our burial rituals our conviction that, at the end, we will see the deceased once again. A collect in the BCP burial office asks in part:
"Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth, until, by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before; through Jesus Christ our Lord." (The Book of Common Prayer 1979, page 493.)
Beginnings Are Also Endings
Every fork in the road entails both an end and a beginning. At Shiloh, the end of Eli’s ministry as priest of God in Israel meant the beginning of Samuel’s ministry as priest and prophet. At the fig tree in Bethany, Nathanael’s decision to follow Jesus as "Son of God" and "King of Israel" meant the end of an old way of life and the beginning of a new one. We have a fancy name for these ending-beginning events: we call them "transitions."
I love the poetry and majesty of the Psalms as they are translated in The Book of Common Prayer. You may have noticed, if you’ve tried to do any Bible study using the BCP that the language and even the verse numbers of the Psalms in the Prayer Book don’t seem to match what you find in the usual translations of Scripture. That’s because our BCP versions trace their lineage back to the Great Bible, a translation made under the auspices of King Henry VIII and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1539. When King James I & VI authorized the translation that came to bear his name, the new translators changed the versification and all subsequent Bible interpretations have followed their lead ... but not the editors of the Prayer Book.
What this means is that when one runs across a Psalm reference in a scholarly text and wishes to look it up in the BCP, one must compare that references in a standard translation of Scripture to the Prayer Book texts to make sure one is reading the proper verses. This can be very illuminating, and I have found that while I still prefer the poetry of the Prayer Book, there are times when the BCP versions don’t speak to me as forcefully as other translations. The final verses of our Psalm today are a case in point.
In the BCP, these verses are numbered 16 and 17 and read as follows:
How deep I find your thoughts, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I were to count them,
they would be more in number than the sand;
to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.
In the NRSV, however, the corresponding verses are 17 and 18:
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them – they are more than the sand;
I come to the end – I am still with you.
"I come to the end, God. I am still with you." Through every transition, no matter what else may change, we are still with God.
Handling Endings and Beginnings
In those last words of the Psalm is the key to handling endings and beginnings, transitions and changes. In there are some very real clues to dealing with the changes in our lives. The first is to not complain about change! Because we are still with God even as something comes to an end, we ought not see endings as something bad, something negative, something to criticize. They are not. Every ending, as I have just said, entails a beginning. Focus on that, look forward to all the possibilities that a wide-open, open-ended future offers. Learn from Eli: he could have complained and moaned and groaned about losing his ministry at Shiloh. He didn’t: he accepted that a change in the priesthood was part of God’s plan. "It is the Lord," he said, "Let him do what seems good to him."
Learn from Eli to accept such change and do more than that. When we present our gifts at the altar in a few minutes, we will sing, "All glory to our Lord and God for love so deep, so high, so broad." If we really feel that love in our hearts, such hearts cannot harbor complaints, only songs of gratitude.
Second, we should not blame other people for the changes in our lives. Others may be involved in the endings and beginnings we experience; they may even be instrumental in them. But, in the final analysis, every transition, every change is so multifaceted that no one individual, no one cause can be found responsible. For the ending of his priesthood, Eli might have tried to blame his unscrupulous sons, or the neglectful society around him, or Hannah for bring Samuel to the shrine, or Samuel for simply being there, but he didn’t. For the changes Jesus caused in his life, Nathanael might have blamed Philip for introducing him to Jesus, but he didn’t. Trying to assign blame is a fruitless activity.
Blame isn’t the issue; choice is – and the choice is ours. We can choose to be the victims of change, in which case transitions will work against us. Or we can choose to be agents of change in our lives, in which case transitions will work for us. There simply is no one else to blame, nor anything to be gained by casting blame.
Let me, in this regard, draw your attention to another of today’s hymns, our dismissal hymn, in which God asks, "Whom shall I send?" and we answer, "Here I am, Lord. I will go, Lord." In that hymn we acknowledge and accept the call to a changed life which being a Christian entails. Take that hymn and that acceptance to heart.
The third clue or lesson about change is: trust God; trust Jesus. When we come to a fork in the road, when we make the choice, God will be with us. "I come to the end," wrote the Psalmist. "I am still with you."
"Follow me," said Jesus; and he promised Nathanael that he would see heaven opened, that he would see angels. He makes the same promise to each of us. He didn’t say follow me and there will never be another change in your life; he didn’t say follow me and you’ll never come to forks in the road. He said, "Follow me" and "you’ll see heaven."
Again, remember the words of that final hymn, "Here I am, Lord. I will go, Lord, if you lead me." Live those words; don’t just sing them! Like Samuel, say "Here I am, Lord." Like Nathanael, leave the comfortable shade of the fig tree and follow. Go where Jesus leads and trust in his promise!
In closing, I’d like to share with you a prayer attributed to St. Francis de Sales. It is a parting benediction –
Be at peace.
Do not look forward in fear to the changes in life.
Rather look forward to them with full hope as they arise.
God, whose very own you are,
Will deliver you from out of them.
He has kept you hitherto,
And He will lead you safely through all things.
And when you cannot stand it,
God will bury you in his arms.
Do not fear what may happen tomorrow.
The same everlasting Father who cares for you today
Will take care of you then,
And everyday.
He will either shield you from suffering,
Or give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace.
And, put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations.
Amen.
posted by Father Eric | 5:21 PM
1 Comments:
I like this one. A lot of good stuff.
Post a Comment
<< Home