Trinity Sunday (5/25/08)                  Is 49:8-16; Ps 131; 1 Cor 4:1-5; Mt 6:24-34

Trinity Church, Niles                                           Fr. Joseph Neiman

Theme: “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Mt 6:25).

Welcome to Memorial Day weekend! “Memorial Day is a United States Federal Holiday that is observed on the last Monday of May. It was formerly known as Decoration Day. This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include those who died in any war or military action.”[1]

‘Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day. At many cemeteries, the graves of the fallen are increasingly ignored, neglected. Most people no longer remember the proper flag etiquette for the day (which traditionally called for the flag to fly at half mast from dawn til noon). While there are towns and cities that still hold Memorial Day parades, many have not held a parade in decades. Some people think the day is for honoring any and all dead, and not just those fallen in service to our country (Internet).”

For most of us, Memorial Day is the beginning of summer, a “holy day” in Michigan, if you will. It is a Sabbath day, a day to be re-created by our recreation, a family day.

All of these are worthy celebrations, but let us not forget this year the over 4000 American men and women who have been killed and the over 35,000 wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan since we invaded Iraq in 2003. Estimates also put the figure for Iraqi men, women and children as over 1.2 million! Clearly these and their families know, as Jesus said, “life is more than food and the body more than clothing.”

But do we know it? Do we truly worship God, or do we worship wealth?

We begin this weekend in the Church’s calendar what is called “Ordinary Time,” or in the old calendars, “Sundays after Pentecost.” The Gospel narratives from Matthew through the summer until late fall will emphasize what does it mean to be a faithful disciple of the risen Lord in the ordinariness of our daily lives? Week after week we will be presented with teachings or parables which stress various dimensions of faithful discipleship.

Let me say right up front, being a faithful disciple of the risen Lord is not a superficial church thing. We have to stop thinking of religion and church membership as being a nice thing to do if one is so inclined. We’ve inherited that world view from our social science oriented culture and the Enlightment. We are talking rather about “spirituality” and how the assembly of disciples, the Church, can help strengthen our individual spirituality.

Ronald Rolheiser, in a book called The Holy Longing, say this about spirituality: “Spirituality is not something on the fringes, an option for those with a particular bent. None of us has a choice. Everyone has to have a spirituality and everyone does have one, either a life-giving one or a destructive one…. Hence, spirituality is not about serenely picking or rationally choosing certain spiritual activities, like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicit spiritual quest. It is far more basic than that. What we do with that fire (deep within us), how we channel it, is our spirituality. Thus we all have a spirituality whether we want one or not, whether we are religious or not. Spirituality is more about whether or not we can sleep at night than about whether or now we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with Mother Earth or being alienated from her. Irrespective of whether or not we let ourselves be consciously shaped by any explicit religious idea, we act in ways that leave us either healthy or unhealthy, loving or bitter. What shapes our actions is our spirituality”[2]

What do you do with the fire within? What motivates you at the most basic level? Are you striving to prove something to someone, like a parent? Are you claiming to be a victim? A superior person of intellect or some other attribute? Are you serving God or wealth? The question is particularly important for us as the North American sin disease is that we are possessed by our possessions. They own us. What we will eat, what we will drink, what we will wear, where we will live, what we will drive – these are things which concern us, and for some even trouble us deeply. Matthew tells us that Jesus said: “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Mt. 6:34). We pray this in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Let me give you a simplistic example. You take you car to the dealership to have some routine work done on it. It is supposed to be finished by 3pm. You return and it is not done. You can get angry, raise a storm of protest, and even say some things you shouldn’t say, but that won’t fix the car. What is, is. Learning to accept the reality of life situations leads to internal balance. Worry and anger upset that balance and even have a physiological impact upon our wellbeing.

Rolheiser again: “What shapes our actions is basically what shapes our desire. Desire is what makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds and bodies – and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship with God, others and the cosmic world”[3]

Fr. Henri Nouwen says of desire: “People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world. They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and (others) who have less than they, or nothing at all.[4]

Thomas Merton has a wonderful statement about developing our spirituality, about moving toward that inner peace and harmony which is where our true spirituality is headed: He says: Every moment and every event of (every one’s)  life on earth plants something in (their) soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of (people). Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because (people) are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love.”[5]

I saw a wonderful sign in front of the Reformed Church the other day. It said: “Worry is the darkroom in which we develop negative thoughts.” As Jesus said, Matthew tells us, “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” (Mt 6:27)

The millions of people displaced in Burma by the cyclone, the millions of persons in China devastated by the massive earthquake, and the hundreds killed in Iraq, and those whose lives have been damaged b the tornadoes – they know that “today’s trouble is enough for today” as Jesus taught. They also know they depend upon God’s action through the generous aid of the peoples of the nations and the direct assistance of others during this time of distress and grieving. What is for them, is disaster. What is for us in these events, is a call to respond. We respond to Burma and China with donations through charities, like Episcopal Relief and Development, which works with the agencies directly on location. We respond to the suffering in Iraq by working for peace, either directly through the political process, or at a minimum, by our prayers for their families, particularly on this Memorial Day weekend.

“More than a few Christians might be surprised to learn that the call to be involved in creating justice for the poor is just as essential and nonnegotiable within the spiritual life as is Jesus’ command to pray and keep our private lives in order,” Rolheiser writes. “Jesus’ teaching on this is very strong, consistent throughout the Gospels, and leaves no room for equivocation.” In the New Testament, “one out of every ten lines deals directly with the physically poor and the call from God for us to respond to them. In the Gospel of Luke, that becomes every sixth line, and in the Epistle of James, that commission is there in one form or other every fifth line.”[6]    

I am confident those suffering in these countries hit by natural disasters, and those suffering from the wounds of war, directly or grieving in their families, can easily feel abandoned by God. Isaiah says for his people in the first reading this morning, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me” (Is 49:14). And then we hear this wonderful feminine analogy for God’s compassion: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? (Is 49:15). We are all children of God, who looks after the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and who has created us in the divine image, as we heard last week, to bring God’s compassionate love to others and to the earth itself.

In the creation account we heard last week, the emphasis was on God’s word creating life: “God said, it was so, and it was good.”. As it says in the Book of Deuteronomy, “Man does not live on bread alone but on every work that comes from the mouth of God” (Dt    ). God’s Word creates life. Our words create, or destroy life as well.

This morning a spacecraft names Phoenix landed on Mars, hopefully upright and intact. Scientists are looking to see if there is water on Mars, and therefore the potential of life, now or in the past. We have already landed five spacecraft on Mars since July of 1976. This is one of the remarkable achievements we have created using the talents we have been given as men and women created in the image and likeness of God. We can not only reshape the earth, we can touch the stars. The Phoenix craft was launched because some said, “Do it!”

Hunger and poverty can be removed here on earth. Scientists have created new seeds and harvesting approaches. Do we want to remove hunger and poverty? That is the question. We need to say, “Do it!” Engineers know how to build tornado and hurricane proof buildings, and dikes that could withhold rising water from storms. Do we want to build these? We need to say, “Do it.!”

The answer, of course, is that such efforts are not economically feasible. They don’t make money. They don’t serve wealth. But do they serve God and God’s intent for our wellbeing? The answer is clearly “Yes.” You and I need to say in the political realm, “Do it!”

For your homework this week (I give homework and let the good Lord do the testing), I ask you to call to mind those who have died in war and in the recent natural disasters. Give a donation to Episcopal Relief and Development or another charity that is helping the suffering around the world, and in our own land. Place a flower on the graves of your loved ones, if that is your Memorial Day custom, and take along an extra flower and find the grave of a veteran and place it there. Then in your recreation, celebrate God’s gracious love and blessings which we enjoy in this land and think, as you are being recreated, do I serve God or wealth? What is the source of my spirituality? Am I at peace with God, others, myself, and with the things in my life? What can I do to make God’s creation a better place for all humanity?

“It is required that stewards that they be found trustworthy,” Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1 Cor 4:2). What we do with the wealth we control tells us if we are indeed faithful disciples of the risen Lord, trustworthy stewards, or servants of the peoples of this land who worship wealth.

God bless you and keep  you this day and always, and remember the good Lord loves you more that you can ask for or even imagine. Do you believe it?