They Gave Their Lives to Set Us Free

This sermon was preached at the Village at Brookwood, Burlington, N.C. on Memorial Day May 27, 2013.  The Gospel lesson is John 16:12-15, the one appointed for Year C, Trinity Sunday.

John 16:12-15

Jesus said to the disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

               Today is Memorial Day - the day we in the United States remember those who gave their lives in the service of our country.  They came from all over this great nation - the Great Plains, the heights of the Rockies, the hollows of the Appalachians, the inner city of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, the cotton fields of the Deep South, the congested highways of California, the corn fields of the Mid-West and the deserts of the Southwest.  They were rich and poor, white, black and brown, male and female, farm hand and city dweller.  In the trenches of Flanders fields, on cemetery ridge at Gettysburg, in the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta, on the mountains of Afghanistan, in the desert of Iraq, on the beaches and jungles of countless Pacific islands, on and under the waters of the South Pacific and North Atlantic, in the skies above Midway and Nazi Germany, these men and women made the ultimate sacrifice to free us from tyranny.

               Yesterday was Trinity Sunday.  Our readings are the ones appointed for that day.  Trinity Sunday and Memorial Day might seem to have little in common, but the two are connected on a deep, primal level.

We Christians believe that God is a Trinity, three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – in one being – God.  This revelation of the Trinitarian nature of God comes to us in and through the person of Jesus Christ.  In the life, death and resurrection of this Galilean, people saw much more than a humble carpenter.  They saw the Son of God; they saw the very being of God.

Jesus, like the men and women we remember today, made the ultimate sacrifice.  God the Father, out of his great love for each of us, sent his only Son into harm’s way to free us from the tyranny of sin and death and to reunite us with God.  Jesus, when he returns to the Father, out of his great love for each of us, sends the Holy Spirit to continue his work – to comfort, to strengthen, to heal and to lead us in the way of Christ.  Every Sunday, every time we celebrate the Eucharist, we observe Memorial Day, because we remember Christ’s sacrifice; and we see again this incredible Trinitarian vision of God - this incredible community of love.

               Today’s Gospel comes from Jesus’ farewell discourse.  In the farewell discourse, Jesus explains to his disciples why he must leave them.  There are two parts to this discourse.  The first part begins in chapter 14.  Jesus consoles his disciples in this part saying, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live” (14:18-19).  The second part of the farewell discourse, part of which we heard today, looks to the future.

Jesus tells his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now.”  The Greek word translated as “to bear” normally is used for carrying a physical load or burden.  The implication of this verse, according to biblical scholar Gail O’Day, is that the future will test the disciples in ways that they cannot bear to hear now.  Jesus, however, does not abandon his disciples.  He sends the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth to guide them.  The word translated as “guide” is a compound Greek word that literally means “lead in the way.”  Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to lead us in his life-giving way through the struggles and vicissitudes of our lives.

As you know, last week my father was in the hospital.  He slumped over during dinner Tuesday evening.  Bobby, the nurse on duty, found he had a 103 degree fever.  He was rushed to Alamance Regional.  We were all very concerned.  After different diagnoses ranging from pneumonia to congestive heart failure, his doctor finally said that he had had an infection of his lungs that had exacerbated an existing lung condition. 

During this anxious time, the Holy Spirit comforted, healed and led us.  Dad’s priest Courtney and the hospital chaplain both visited and prayed with him.  The excellent doctors, nurses, aides and staff of ARMC cared for him.

One of these caregivers was a young, physical therapist named Aslan.  Aslan, as you probably know, is the name of the lion in C.S. Lewis’ fantasy series The Narnia Chronicles.  Lewis said Aslan was an alternative Christ figure in the fantasy world of Narnia.  Like Christ, Aslan dies and is raised from the dead.  Aslan is a guardian, a savior, a benevolent guide to the children who visit him.

Aslan is an unusual name.  I had to look it up in the dictionary.  It is the Turkish word that means “lion.”  In the course of my life, I had never met someone named Aslan.  Intrigued, I looked online and found that not surprisingly it has never been listed among the 1000 most popular names in the US.  In the rare instances when a parent names a child Aslan, the child is a boy.

This past week I met with Stuart Hoke for spiritual direction.  Stuart has been a priest for 40 years.  He has a Doctorate of Theology in Ascetical Theology.  Ascetical Theology simply means the study and practice of becoming more like Christ.  Stuart asks those who see him for spiritual direction simple but thought provoking questions.  Where is God working in your life?  What consolations or disconsolations have happened to you?  What songs, television shows or books spoke to you?  What coincidences or signs have you received of God’s presence?  These questions help people look beyond the surface of their lives to a deeper reality.  They help us have eyes to see and ears to hear, as Jesus said (Mat. 13:16).

Dad had about as much chance of having a physical therapist named Aslan as he did of winning the $600 million Powerball.  Aslan did much more than provide physical therapy; she was a sign of Christ’s care, a sign of the Spirit’s comforting, guiding hand in a confusing, anxious time.

This Memorial Day, we remember those Americans who gave their lives to free us from tyranny, and we remember Jesus, who gave his life to free us from sin and death, who opened the way for us to God the Father and who sent the Holy Spirit to comfort, to strengthen and to guide us in his way.

A Listening Heart

This sermon was preached as part of St. Michael’s yearlong “It’s Your Call” campaign on 1 Kings 3:5-15 at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Raleigh, N.C. on October 26, 2012.  You can also listen to the sermon by clicking on this link:
http://kiwi6.com/file/s622fz40o7

               Every now and then I have dream that I signed up for classes but never attended them.  In my dream, the semester is nearing an end and I am panicking.  I always wake up from these dreams tense.  I tell Cindy that I had an “anxiety” dream.  Today we normally view dreams psychologically.  They represent something bubbling up from our subconscious, something that is going on in our lives with our family or work.  In the ancient world, though people thought God spoke through dreams.  In today’s lesson from 1 Kings, God asks Solomon what God should give the King.  Solomon doesn’t ask to hit the $300 million power ball, which I would have, instead he asks for a “listening heart.”  Solomon asks for the gift that actually is essential for all of God’s people.  Only if we have listening hearts, only if we listen to God can we live into God’s dream for our lives.

The New Revised Standard Version and many other English translations of this passage translate Solomon’s request for a “listening heart” as an “understanding mind.”  The Hebrew, however, literally says a “listening heart.”  The Hebrews thought the heart was the seat of the intellect, which is undoubtedly part of the reason for the NRSV’s translation, but, for the Hebrews, the heart was also the seat of the emotions, impulses, concern and much more.  The heart for the Hebrews had both faculties of the intellect and the emotion that we attribute separately to the mind and the heart.

Solomon asked that God would give him a “listening” heart.  Solomon knew that it was important to be open, to be attentive.  He wanted to be a good ruler of his people.

Solomon knew that a good leader must be a good listener.  A leader who fails to listen will soon lose touch with her or his people.  Listening is essential not only for leaders but for any relationship personal or professional.  My wife and I love our family doctor, who I recently saw for my sinusitis, in large part because she is an excellent listener.  Despite the pressures of modern medicine to see more and more patients each day, she takes as much time as is needed to listen to us and to develop a treatment plan with us.  Listening is also essential in our relationship with God.

All too often we are more ready to talk to God than to listen to God.  We tell God what we want without asking and listening for God’s will, God’s dream for our lives.  To live into God’s dream for our lives, to live into God’s call, requires us first of all to listen to God.

This year we are focused on discerning and living into God’s call.  Every calling comes from God.  This summer I did a lot of reading about call.  I didn’t know much about it before.  Often books and articles on this subject, I learned, focus on the individual.  Your spiritual gifts, your talents, and your passions are the means to discerning your call in life.  It is true our spiritual gifts, talents and passions are important in discerning our call.  Nonetheless, we begin discerning our call not with ourselves, but with God, because God is the one who gives us our call in our very being when God creates us.  Our spiritual gifts, talents, and passions are all God given.  We begin discerning our call, our purpose at any point in our lives, by first listening to God.

Indeed, I think at the heart of the entire life of faith is listening to God.  Listening to God is essential because it is only in listening that we can know that our lives are in alignment with God.   It is only in listening to God that we can know whether we are obeying God’s will.  The root of the English word “obey” comes from the Latin word which means “to hear.”  We cannot obey God; we cannot hear our call; we cannot live into God’s dream for our lives unless we first listen to God.

God speaks to us in many ways.  We hear God’s voice through the scriptures.  We hear God’s voice, as it says in the Acts of the Apostles, in “the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  We hear God’s voice in hymns and, occasionally, in sermons.  We can hear God in a still small voice while walking in the woods, or holding a newborn, through a kind word from a stranger, or in a news story about a disaster that calls us to action. 

While God speaks to us individually in many ways, in the Christian tradition listening to God is something we always do together.  It is the work of the Body of Christ, the work of our fellowship.  When I was discerning whether I was called to the priesthood, I talked to many people at St. Andrew’s, Haw River, my home church, to people at Grace Episcopal Church, Elizabeth, New Jersey, where I was a volunteer in mission, and friends and spiritual advisors.  I then entered into the discernment process and talked with Bishop Estill and the Commission on Ministry.  A call to ordination is always discerned within the context of the church.

The same is true for other calls in the church.  We discern our different calls within in the body of Christ, because our calls are all in one way or another for the building up of the body of Christ, as Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians.  We also listen for God’s voice with other Christians to make sure that it is God’s voice that we are hearing and not some other voice.  Spiritual directors, clergy, small groups, Bible studies, or sage spiritual friends are all excellent sounding boards.  Each of us though with Solomon must seek a “listening heart.”

With a listening heart, we can live into God’s dream to walk in the way of justice, righteousness, and peace.  We can live into God’s dream for a creation renewed by the love of God that we see in Jesus Christ.

With a listening heart, we can use our God given gifts, talents and passions to proclaim the love of God to our family, friends, and neighbors.

With a listening heart, we can find the richness of God’s dream for our lives, a richness that goes beyond our wildest imaginings.  Solomon asked only for a listening heart, but God gave him a wise and discerning heart and riches and honor all his life.  The life of faith is not always filled with earthly riches and honor, but it is always filled with the incomparable riches of the kingdom of God.

"Speak Lord, for Your Servant is Listening." Click on the link below to hear this sermon preached on 1 Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51. The sermon was preached without manuscript or notes on January 15, 2012 for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B at St. Michael's, Raleigh. http://kiwi6.com/file/4dj8509p9g

"Eternity Dips Into Time" Click on the link below for my sermon on John 6:51-58. It was preached without manuscript or notes on August 19, 2012,12th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15, Year B. http://kiwi6.com/file/2wa0dtmo2v

Let Go to Live Fully

Here's the link to a sermon preached without notes or manuscript on February 20, 2012 at St. Michael's, Raleigh on 2 Kings 2:1-2 and Mark 9:2-9 for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany:

http://kiwi6.com/file/4dj8509p9g

Sermon preached at Bill Faellaci’s funeral on March 22, 2013 at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Raleigh NC. 

As I thought about the last few weeks that I had the privilege to spend with Bill and his life as a whole I thought of the story of Moses and the burning bush.  According to the book of Exodus, Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro.  He led the flock beyond the wilderness to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God.  The text says that an angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the fire.  When he turned to look at this bush that was blazing but not consumed, the voice of God said from the bush, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5 NRSV).  There is an important distinction here.  An angel or messenger, what the word angel means, appears in the flame but it is God who speaks from the flame.  I think this was true of Bill Faellaci.  He was an angel, a messenger of the Lord whose loving, quiet spirit incarnated the voice of God.

Bill was a generous man.  When Bill and Pat would visit Pat’s daughter Kathryn and her son Ian, Bill would always give Kathryn money to cover the cost of the food.  One time he forgot.  Remembering as they were leaving, he stopped the car in the street and walked over to Kathryn who was pulling out of the driveway to take Ian to school.  When she opened the window, he simply handed her the money, turned and went back to his car.  Ian asked why Grandpa had done this.  Kathryn replied, “Because he’s a generous and loving man.”  Ian answered, “Perhaps he wants you to buy me toys.”

Bill’s generosity was seen in his calling in life – teaching.  He taught in the class room and on Navy ships for more than 40 years.  He told his students that if they ever had a question about their homework first to ask their parents, then their classmates, and, if they still couldn’t solve it, to call him.  One of Bill’s few regrets was that he didn’t go when some of his former students who were at a bar home from college called after midnight saying they had a math problem.  Bill tutored many students outside of the classroom.

Julie Brown wrote about her daughter Hollis’s experience with Bill’s tutoring.  “Hollis was very shy with Bill at first.” She wrote, “She started out meeting once a week, then twice.  Eventually when she started driving herself, she started calling him and setting up appointments on her own, in between his tennis games.  Many times when I would take her over there, I would wait on her in their living room while they worked at the kitchen table.  They would argue over problems, bickering like two school kids over who was right or which way to approach a problem.  They were very funny together.  If you heard them, you would never know that there was seventy something year age difference between them.  Pat and I laughed so often over the relationship.  They were both very stubborn and tried to get their points across, sometimes it got heated and sometimes with laughter, regardless of how it was done, she learned a lot.  But most importantly she gained confidence that she could think through the problems and come up with the answers on her own.  Bill gave her the confidence that she needed in math and he gave her his friendship.  She never thought of him as an old curmudgeon, but as a friend.”

“I loved Bill Faellaci for always taking the time to help my children.  You see, he never got paid for this service; he would not take any payment.  He did it for the love of math.   Over the years, he has helped hundreds of students; understand what they didn’t think that they could understand.”

Bill liked to say that he was lighting candles.  I think this is all the more impressive because Bill’s father told him he would never amount to anything.  If you define a life by the difference that you make to others, Bill’s life was an incredible success. 

While Bill was a well-educated mathematics teacher, holding a Master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the secret of his success, I believe, was his caring spirit.  Bill loved his students, his family and his friends.  He stayed in touch with many for years.  When Bill could no longer play tennis during the last year of his life, he still got together once a month for breakfast with his tennis buddies, passing around a bottle of brandy under the table while the police sat at the next table.  Bill’s memoir of his life is punctuated with the phrase “Good times.”  He had many good times with his family and friends.  He loved life and lived it to the fullest.  He told his children to work hard and to play hard every day.

Bill had his faults like the rest of us.  He had a temper among other things. But to his credit, he grew over the years.  When he married Pat, they agreed that he didn’t have to learn choral music and she didn’t have to learn to play tennis.  They had a loving, close relationship, a relationship built on respect for one another, a relationship where each kept his or her own identity.  His last words to Pat were “I love you.  Shut up.”

Bill was not a religious man in the second half of his life.  After his divorce from Mildred, Bill stopped attending church.  He had been very active teaching Sunday School and serving on church committees.  He liked sermons that made him think.  Bill didn’t attend any longer because, he wrote in his memoirs, Mildred and her new husband attended their church.  Nonetheless, Bill, I believe, was always a man of faith.  He still participated in his children’s Sunday School and he supported Pat’s participation at St. Michael’s.  He had a good time at choir parties.  Who wouldn’t have a good time at choir parties?  I always felt welcomed by him when I talked to him at a party or visited him in the hospital.

Yesterday I attended a retreat with the other Episcopal clergy from the diocese.  Bishops Sauls, our key note speaker, talked in his meditations about Matthew 25.  He said that in this chapter the righteous persons are not religious and that the unrighteous are religious.   The righteous are the ones who fed the hungry and clothed the naked and visited the prisoners.

Bill was a righteous man.  He taught people who lacked self-confidence to believe in themselves, to appreciate the gifts and abilities God had given to each of them.  Ultimately, I think, Bill challenged his students to hope for a better life and a better world.

At every funeral we light this large candle called the paschal candle.  It symbolizes the hope of the resurrection, because it is also lit during the Easter season to symbolize the resurrection of Christ.  We light it at baptisms, too, symbolic of a person’s dying and being raised to new life in Christ.  Our deacon Meta lights a small candle from this flame, gives it to the newly baptized person or the person’s godparents, and says, “Be the light of Christ for the world.”  This flame encompasses the whole of a person’s life.

In the flame of Bill’s life – his generous, compassionate spirit - we can hear the voice of God.  This flame can never be put out because ultimately this flame burns in and through the love which is the God that we see in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.