O Lord of all things, in the midst of things temporal,
help us to cherish and abide in the things eternal ☩ in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Amen.
It really is so good to be back. As I’ve told a few people this week, I love this church and I love my job. On Sunday, April 16, I said that these three months of sabbatical would be a gift, and they were. Thank you for your encouragement and support to take this sabbatical, and thank you for welcoming me back. From what I’ve heard and what I know to be true, the staff was amazing in keeping ministries going strong, the Vestry and Wardens provided solid leadership, your faithfulness and commitment to this parish continued, and Father Tom did an outstanding job. I am grateful for the sabbatical and I am grateful to be back.
In
today’s Gospel text from Matthew, Jesus talks about a pearl of great price, and
so as a way of easing into the sermon, I want to mention a few treasures from
the sabbatical that I pray will yield fruit in our ministry together at St.
Luke’s.
The
first is that I had a chance to deeply rest. I compare it to the difference
between a nap and a good night’s sleep. Naps can be refreshing, but we all know
how good and restoring it can be to have a Saturday morning with nothing on the
calendar and a quiet house where you can sleep in without any interruptions or
guilt. And what we know from sleep science is that we need that sort of deep,
REM sleep. That’s when our bodies do the work of recovery, it’s when our minds
are set free to dream. And that’s a part of what this sabbath time was for me –
a chance to be restored and to dream.
Between
that time to rest and the blessing of having visited 34 different cathedrals
and churches in England, Scotland, and Ireland, I also have a sharper sense of clarity
around my leadership. In some of that dreaming, and as we know from Scripture,
God often speaks to us in dreams; I was given a clearer image of what is needed
of a priest in 2023.
And
the pearl of great price that really undergirds all of the growth and rest that
I experienced on this sabbatical was that my sense of faith was deepened and
widened. Going to dozens of Morning Prayers and Eucharists, 34 Evensongs in
cathedrals, and several Sundays in a pew as a family did what it needed to. I
had several palpable experiences of the Holy Spirit. And I don’t at all mean
this in a pietistic or sentimental way, but rather in a deep and abiding way, I
got to spend a lot of time with Jesus and was fed by the riches of his grace, mercy,
peace, and love. Without question, that nearness to Jesus is something that I
needed more than I realized and is something that will forever enrich my faith
and ministry.
As
I said before I began sabbatical, I know that, unfortunately, not many people
are given time for sustained rest. But I encourage you to do what you can to spend
intentional time being in a different rhythm, one that is intended to make you
more aware of the Father’s love for you. Maybe it’s taking 2 consecutive weeks
off of work instead of just one. Maybe it’s a spiritual retreat. It could be
auditing a class at Hood. Whatever it is, I pray that we will all be given the
time, space, and resources to receive the pearls of grace and the treasure of
Jesus’ abiding love for us. If I can help with that, please let me know.
At
its core, this time of sabbatical was an opportunity to take a break from temporal
things so that I could be attuned to the things eternal. Or, as the Psalmist
says, it was a chance to lift up my eyes to the hills. Or, put in less “churchy”
language it was a chance to get away from the demands of routines, meetings,
and emails and have more time to focus on beauty, love, quietness, and prayer.
There’s a book called “The
Tyranny of the Urgent.” I haven’t read it; probably never will. But the title says
it all – the tyranny of the urgent, the tyranny of the temporal. We have cars
that need inspecting, kids that need to be transported, yards that need to be
mowed, news to be informed about, phone calls that need to be made, events that
need to be planned, groceries that need to be purchased. These things are all
important, but they are a part of the steady drumbeat of modern life that
drains our energy, monopolizes our minds, overwhelms our schedules, and
distracts us from eternity. And because of technology, we are oh so keenly
aware of it all.
The
media gives us plenty of temporal things to focus on – celebrity gossip, sports
scores, Court decisions, battle reports from Ukraine, stock market fluctuations.
And phones, computers, and now even watches have us counting not only the minutes,
but the emails, likes, shares, calories, steps, and account balances. We are overwhelmed
by temporal things.
What
does that mean? That something is temporal? It’s the beautiful language of this
week’s Collect, but it’s not really a word we use often. Temporal relates to
time, yes, but the prayer uses it as a way of saying “things that are passing
away.” The vast majority of what we do, or do not do, has no bearing on the
future of Earth’s history. Truth be told, most of what we do and do not do won’t
even matter to us in a month. And if it does, it likely won’t in a year. The
temporal is temporary.
Now,
things temporal matter and are important. If we never attend to the daily
things that make life and society possible then things will fall apart pretty
quickly. But our attention and anxiety about things temporal ought also to be temporal.
We still beat ourselves up over a mistake we made years ago. I know you do,
because I do it too. Yes, of course, there is a time and place for analysis,
but not obsession. We put too much energy into things temporal – appearances, assets,
and things we cannot change.
The
result of this over-focusing on temporal things is that we are left with
neither the time nor the energy to focus on the things eternal, which are the
things that will not fade away. Things like love, relationships, mercy,
generosity, service. As the prophet Isaiah puts it, “the grass withers and the
flower fades.” Or as Jesus says, “ If God so clothes the grass of the field,
which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will
he clothe you.” Our problem is that we give eternal significance to temporal
things, which is another way of saying that we are idolaters, because God alone
is eternal.
This
means that the things of God are how we participate in eternity. St. Paul
writes that “love never ends.” Jesus, speaking about the importance of
forgiveness, says that what we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, meaning
that mercy is everlasting. When Jesus says that “whoever gives a cup of water
to one in need will never lose their reward,” he is telling us that generosity never
runs out. When a woman anoints Jesus’ feet before his death, he says of her, “Wherever
the good news is proclaimed, what she has done will be told of her,” reminding
us that serving others is eternal. St. Mary’s song, the Magnificat,
reminds us that when our souls magnify the Lord it is a blessing for all
generations, meaning that worship puts us in harmony with eternity.
These are the things
eternal: love, mercy, generosity, service, and praise. Those are the treasures
in the field, the pearls of great price, the yeast that raises the leaven of
our lives. When Jesus speaks about the “kingdom of heaven” he is not speaking
about the afterlife. The “kingdom of heaven,” is a way of saying “the world as
God intends it” or “a world ruled only by the love of God.” The kingdom of
heaven comes on earth as it is in heaven when we abide in these eternal things.
When we are able to let
the things temporal be just that, temporal, we are able to participate more
fully in those things eternal and encounter that peace which passes all
understanding that has been given to us. As we read in Philippians, “Beloved,
whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure,
whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and
if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” You might
spend some time thinking about what you think about.
If spending more time and
energy on the things eternal instead of obsessing about temporal things sounds
like something you want and need to do, and you are not given the tremendous
gift of a three-month sabbatical, how do you do that? I’ll leave you with two suggestions.
One of the most important
and worthy of memorization passages in all of Scripture is the crescendo of
chapter 8 of Romans that was read this morning. “For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things
to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The
reason why St. Paul could focus on things eternal in the midst of so many
temporal challenges is that he is so utterly and completely convinced that the
eternal love of the Father was given and shown to us in Jesus Christ. When we
are convinced of God’s love for us, a lot of those things eternal become not
only possible but natural. What are you convinced of? Give yourself the time
and space, maybe even a retreat, to think about that.
The second bit of
guidance that I can offer is to consider the short parable of the treasure
hidden in a field. If you stumbled upon a treasure in that day there were no
safe deposit boxes in which to store it, no insurance policies to protect it,
no fireproof safes to keep it. You had to hide it. And, in order to have a
rightful claim to that treasure, you had to own the land on which it was
hidden. Imagine having to buy acres of land just to get the small hole in the
ground where the treasure is. But that’s how it works.
It reminds me of a bride
who once chose this as the Gospel passage at her wedding – when asked why she
chose this one, she said of her soon-to-be husband, “He might be a whole lot of
field, but there’s a treasure there too.” In other words, it’s a package deal.
The things that the Church has lifted up for generations really are a treasure
map. Prayer takes us to the treasure of peace. Forgiveness frees us to receive
the gift of reconciliation. Generosity allows us to participate in the joy of
God’s abundant grace. The Sacraments are sure and certain encounters with the risen
and living Jesus. Reading Scripture draws us into the promises of God. Being in
beloved community reminds us of the love that makes all things well. You don’t
have to try to find the eternal by yourself. There are saints who have gone
before to show us the way and there are saints around us so that we can walk
the journey together.
Buying a field though
takes the discipline of saving up, it takes the investment of one’s resources, and
sometimes it means taking on more than you really want. Sometimes being in
community is difficult because it means that we have to deal with other people –
people we might disagree with, people we might not have much in common with, people
we might find annoying. But it’s a package deal. The treasure comes with a
field. So if you don’t like the field, or think it’s full of too many weeds and
pests; remember, that it’s where the treasure is. The things eternal are so
often found in community, and so the more we participate in the life of the Church,
the more we are aligning ourselves with things eternal.
Holy Spirit, help us to
let temporal things remain temporal, and so draw our hearts to you, so guide
our minds, so fill our imaginations that we might be convinced of your eternal
love. Amen.
