Sermon July 29th 2007
Sermon for July 29th 2007
The Revd. J. Michael Povey at St. David’s, Englewood, FL.
Genesis 18:20-31; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13
When I was with you last Sunday I preached, for the first time in more than a year. During this week I have realised that I have many sermons stored up in my mind.
So today I will be making two major points. They may in fact turn out to be two sermons, so if they do not hang together, they will most certainly hang separately!
The account of Abraham and the Lord from Genesis has the Lord highly ticked off, and Abraham at his most bold. The dialogue is in the language of the bazaar. It is the bargaining of the near eastern world. It’s the “real world” not the so-called “holy world”. Bear that in mind for a bit later, and bear it in mind as you read the stuff from then Gospel which has to do with prayer. The sense of the verbs is “ask, ask, ask”, “search, search, search”, “knock, knock, knock”. I believe that Jesus is taking us back to the language of the market place, the language of the bazaar. Prayer has to do with being a determined arguer and bargainer.
But how do we learn to pray? Mostly of course through repetition and memorisation. Those can be handy tools.
I remember learning the “times tables” by rote. I have never forgotten them. But the tool of memorisation was not as useful when I encountered a different kind of mathematics - a kind which needed inquisitiveness and intuition.
I also learned much of my early beliefs through memorisation, and especially through singing. I grew up in Christian fundamentalism, in a sect which taught children many musical choruses. We repeated these songs, many of them based on Scriptural texts, over and ever again. They are deeply ingrained. Often I wake to have one of these jingles racing through my mind, and I mutter a bit as I realise that you can take the boy out of fundamentalism, but you cannot completely take the fundamentalism out of the boy.
And we all acquire a faith, a belief system , a theology by what we memorise. For example, call it the Lord’s Prayer, or the Our Father, the constant repetition of that prayer makes it rest in a very deep place in our minds.
So often, as I have stood by the bed of a dying or comatose person, as I have begun “Our Father” - so that person has joined in.
And hymns do the same thing. We learn our faith by what we sing. In my final sermon as Rector of St. James’s, Cambridge, MA, I made the point that the people of God would most likely never remember a single one of my sermons - but they would remember the songs we sang. Let’s face it sister and brother preachers. Do we truly expect a dying person to be sustained by the three points of one of our elegantly crafted and eloquent sermons! No, most likely they’ll be recalling a song or a snippet of the Liturgy.
But here we encounter a problem in the Episcopal Church. So many of our hymns, great as they are, are very wordy. That is fine when they are matched to a memorable tune, but a combination of complicated texts and challenging tunes can be frustrating. Working through that frustration can bring great rewards, and it’s worth the effort. But I believe that we need to supplement them with the kinds of texts and tunes which we will be singing through the week.
Some congregations have attempted this with the use of what is called “praise music”. The tunes can be quite catchy - repetitive as they are, but the texts leave much to be desired. Too often they have sentiments such as “God is great and mighty, and we are nothing”. They use words such as “power” and “majesty” and “victory”; rather than words such as “friend”, “lover”, “partner”.
In other words, they posit a God who is only “way out there”, rather than a God who is here and now.
“But wait a minute”, you ask, “don’t we pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come’”. Has not Jesus taught us to pray for the kingdom: a kingdom of power, majesty and victory?”
Yes, Jesus does us to pray that way, but he also says that the kingdom of God is within you.
And that “you” is a plural. The life of the kingdom is experienced here and now in the midst of the beloved community of love, friendship and partnership.
The people of St. David’s are learning that through the song you sing each week.. “Surely the presence of God is in this place …. I see glory in each face”.
That is a song which stays with us through the week. We aspire to see glory in the faces at worship here. But just here?
For we live a real world, not two worlds. Good atheists have reasons to assert that there is no supernatural world. Fearful believers are convinced that there are two worlds - one is natural and the other supernatural.
The division between secular and sacred is artificial - one created by priests, preachers and pastors in order to give them a role as guardians and gatekeepers of the so-called sacred.
Christian faith states that there is but one world. It is the world in which Jesus was most comfortable, the world of the marketplace, the tavern and the fisherman’s wharf.
There is one world, and it is the world of glory in each face here in this place; and glory in each face in the bazaar, the marketplace.
We learn our faith by rote in our songs here, not as a retreat from the world; but in order that our intuition and inquisitiveness may be honed to encounter the love and glory of God in faces all around us.
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I kept a silence, then we did the following in place of the Creed.
Yesterday Mindy Ratner, on NPR, said that J.S. Bach wrote both sacred and secular music. That distinction would have made no sense to Bach who wrote four letters at the top of every manuscript - AMDG “to God’s Glory”.
I believe that it is all music which awakens in us the possibility of moving from memorisation to intuition.
So we shall omit the Creed this morning in favour of singing a chant from the wonderful Taize community in France. The words are printed in your bulletin. “Praise the Lord, all you people”.
The melody comes from a the late 15th Century, and it is known as “La Folia”. That melody has been used by literally scores of composers, including Corelli, Scarlatti, Geminiani and Beethoven.
“La Folia” means “mad” or “empty-headed”, and the melody originated in Portugal as a fertility dance!
And we shall sing it as a confession of faith; as something which will haunt us throughout the week; and to reject the chasm between secular and sacred in a fertility dance to the glory of God.
Laudate Dominum,
Laudate Dominum,
Omnes, Gentes,
Alleluia
The Revd. J. Michael Povey at St. David’s, Englewood, FL.
Genesis 18:20-31; Psalm 138; Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13
When I was with you last Sunday I preached, for the first time in more than a year. During this week I have realised that I have many sermons stored up in my mind.
So today I will be making two major points. They may in fact turn out to be two sermons, so if they do not hang together, they will most certainly hang separately!
The account of Abraham and the Lord from Genesis has the Lord highly ticked off, and Abraham at his most bold. The dialogue is in the language of the bazaar. It is the bargaining of the near eastern world. It’s the “real world” not the so-called “holy world”. Bear that in mind for a bit later, and bear it in mind as you read the stuff from then Gospel which has to do with prayer. The sense of the verbs is “ask, ask, ask”, “search, search, search”, “knock, knock, knock”. I believe that Jesus is taking us back to the language of the market place, the language of the bazaar. Prayer has to do with being a determined arguer and bargainer.
But how do we learn to pray? Mostly of course through repetition and memorisation. Those can be handy tools.
I remember learning the “times tables” by rote. I have never forgotten them. But the tool of memorisation was not as useful when I encountered a different kind of mathematics - a kind which needed inquisitiveness and intuition.
I also learned much of my early beliefs through memorisation, and especially through singing. I grew up in Christian fundamentalism, in a sect which taught children many musical choruses. We repeated these songs, many of them based on Scriptural texts, over and ever again. They are deeply ingrained. Often I wake to have one of these jingles racing through my mind, and I mutter a bit as I realise that you can take the boy out of fundamentalism, but you cannot completely take the fundamentalism out of the boy.
And we all acquire a faith, a belief system , a theology by what we memorise. For example, call it the Lord’s Prayer, or the Our Father, the constant repetition of that prayer makes it rest in a very deep place in our minds.
So often, as I have stood by the bed of a dying or comatose person, as I have begun “Our Father” - so that person has joined in.
And hymns do the same thing. We learn our faith by what we sing. In my final sermon as Rector of St. James’s, Cambridge, MA, I made the point that the people of God would most likely never remember a single one of my sermons - but they would remember the songs we sang. Let’s face it sister and brother preachers. Do we truly expect a dying person to be sustained by the three points of one of our elegantly crafted and eloquent sermons! No, most likely they’ll be recalling a song or a snippet of the Liturgy.
But here we encounter a problem in the Episcopal Church. So many of our hymns, great as they are, are very wordy. That is fine when they are matched to a memorable tune, but a combination of complicated texts and challenging tunes can be frustrating. Working through that frustration can bring great rewards, and it’s worth the effort. But I believe that we need to supplement them with the kinds of texts and tunes which we will be singing through the week.
Some congregations have attempted this with the use of what is called “praise music”. The tunes can be quite catchy - repetitive as they are, but the texts leave much to be desired. Too often they have sentiments such as “God is great and mighty, and we are nothing”. They use words such as “power” and “majesty” and “victory”; rather than words such as “friend”, “lover”, “partner”.
In other words, they posit a God who is only “way out there”, rather than a God who is here and now.
“But wait a minute”, you ask, “don’t we pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come’”. Has not Jesus taught us to pray for the kingdom: a kingdom of power, majesty and victory?”
Yes, Jesus does us to pray that way, but he also says that the kingdom of God is within you.
And that “you” is a plural. The life of the kingdom is experienced here and now in the midst of the beloved community of love, friendship and partnership.
The people of St. David’s are learning that through the song you sing each week.. “Surely the presence of God is in this place …. I see glory in each face”.
That is a song which stays with us through the week. We aspire to see glory in the faces at worship here. But just here?
For we live a real world, not two worlds. Good atheists have reasons to assert that there is no supernatural world. Fearful believers are convinced that there are two worlds - one is natural and the other supernatural.
The division between secular and sacred is artificial - one created by priests, preachers and pastors in order to give them a role as guardians and gatekeepers of the so-called sacred.
Christian faith states that there is but one world. It is the world in which Jesus was most comfortable, the world of the marketplace, the tavern and the fisherman’s wharf.
There is one world, and it is the world of glory in each face here in this place; and glory in each face in the bazaar, the marketplace.
We learn our faith by rote in our songs here, not as a retreat from the world; but in order that our intuition and inquisitiveness may be honed to encounter the love and glory of God in faces all around us.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I kept a silence, then we did the following in place of the Creed.
Yesterday Mindy Ratner, on NPR, said that J.S. Bach wrote both sacred and secular music. That distinction would have made no sense to Bach who wrote four letters at the top of every manuscript - AMDG “to God’s Glory”.
I believe that it is all music which awakens in us the possibility of moving from memorisation to intuition.
So we shall omit the Creed this morning in favour of singing a chant from the wonderful Taize community in France. The words are printed in your bulletin. “Praise the Lord, all you people”.
The melody comes from a the late 15th Century, and it is known as “La Folia”. That melody has been used by literally scores of composers, including Corelli, Scarlatti, Geminiani and Beethoven.
“La Folia” means “mad” or “empty-headed”, and the melody originated in Portugal as a fertility dance!
And we shall sing it as a confession of faith; as something which will haunt us throughout the week; and to reject the chasm between secular and sacred in a fertility dance to the glory of God.
Laudate Dominum,
Laudate Dominum,
Omnes, Gentes,
Alleluia
