|
“Do
Not Be Afraid”
Address
to the 184th Diocese of
Maine
Convention
The Rt. Rev. Chilton Knudsen
Friday, October 24, 2003
Bangor
Civic Center
It was a beautiful summer afternoon, and I was in
Haiti
.
I was up on the hills all around Port au Prince where you can
see the water, the city, the barren hillsides, over forested as the
mahogany crop has been again and again exploited in that land. The sun
was shining brightly. Even
the dirty, broken, poor city of
Port
au Prince
looked beautiful in the afternoon glow.
Here and there you could see light reflected and sparkling off
the water and off the occasional tile roof and even off the shabby
lean-tos where most of the people of
Haiti
make their
home. I was up at the
place where the Sisters of St. Margaret have their mountaintop
retreat. The Sisters of
St. Margaret heroically serve from their Anglican religious community
like Mother Theresa served
Calcutta
.
And Port au Prince is a lot like
Calcutta
.
But in the afternoon sun from the vantage point of the
mountaintop, it looked beautiful.
The messiness, the poverty, the despair, the hunger, the haze
from charcoal fires that sticks in your throat because that’s all
the fuel they have for cooking. . .
all of it faded. It
was glorious as the sun struck water and mountain.
I
turned to Larry Estey who accompanied me, and to his great credit,
lived with me during our time in
Haiti
. . .
Thank you, Larry, wherever you are.
I turned to Larry and I said, “Oh, I wish I had a camera.”
And Larry, for his sensitivity, looked at me blankly. There was
nothing in what I was experiencing that could ever be captured by a
camera. Ever.
But it’s normal to want to seize a moment of ecstasy, a
moment of glory. And to
say, “Can’t I capture
this moment? Can’t I
keep it? Can’t I hold it
and make it last forever? Do
I have to go back down to that messiness, that despair, that
brokenness of humanity that is the glory and the tragedy of
Haiti
?”
Let’s
do some Bible study about the text you just heard in the Gospel, the
transfiguration of Jesus. Now
for some good old-fashioned Bible study. This
story fits right after Peter’s triumphant moment in the town of
Caesarea
,
Philippi
.
Peter is asked “Who do people say that I am?” by his Lord.
And he gets it right! Then
the Lord tells Peter that the keys to the kingdom are his and upon the
rock of Peter, Christ will build his church.
And Peter continues to beam in the glory of the Lord’s
affirmation. Then Jesus
decides to disclose to Peter the real nature of his mission and the
solemnity of his destiny. He
says to Peter, “The Son of Man will be given up.
He will be killed, and on the third day he will rise.”
And all of a sudden, Peter gets it wrong and says “God
forbid, not to you, Lord!” And
Peter instantly gets a divine rebuke.
“Get you from me Peter,” says Jesus, “for you are
listening to human concerns and not to God’s concerns.”
So Peter got it wrong.
Six
days later they go up the mountain, Peter, James, John and Jesus and
standing there Jesus is suddenly radiant.
This is a picture of ecstasy.
It is ecstasy. It
is glory. It is a moment
of incredible and powerful revelation that Jesus is Lord and Savior,
Son of God and Son of Man, the one who will offer himself for our
salvation and in whose offering glory will be unfolded.
Glory that comes down to you and me.
Glory that belongs to the ages.
And Peter, in his impetuous, clumsy way says, in effect,
“Gosh, I wish I had a camera.”
“I wish I had a camera,” he says.
“Why don’t I build us some little dwellings here. How about
one for Elijah, one for Moses, and one for Jesus.”
Peter, who spent his life as a fisherman has suddenly turned to
home building on the top of a mountain where there probably isn’t a
single piece of 2 by 4. But
there he is and, in that lovable moment, Peter, who gets that he gets
it wrong as much as he gets it right. Just like us, just like we do.
Peter can hardly get the words out before a divine interruption
happens. God breaks in on
him mid-sentence. Read
what it says there on the bottom of page six.
“While he was still speaking. . .”
He barely could get the whole thing out . . . “A bright cloud
overshadows all of them and a voice speaks and says, ‘This is my son
the beloved. With him I am well pleased.
Listen to him.’”
Friends,
in our Bible study we are meant to do what Bible study always asks of
us. . . dig deeply into
the scripture, to read portions of scripture in light of other texts
that we have studied. We
are meant to read this story alongside the story of Jesus’ baptism,
where there was another voice that came down and revealed to the
listeners and to Jesus himself who Jesus was, who he’s called to be
and what his mission is. In
the baptism of Jesus. Notice
the divine word is “You are my beloved son.”
It’s Jesus being addressed by God in the intimacy of that
moment. His baptism as he emerges from the water, the
Jordan River
splashing
down around him. “You
are my beloved, in you am I well pleased.”
Here the words of God are addressed not to Jesus, but to the
listeners. To Peter, James
and John and to us. The
divine word from the cloud is a word to us, a word of God to us now
and always. He says,
“This is my son. Hear
him, listen to him.” Peter,
James and John fall on the ground, and they are overcome by fear.
Hear him, listen to him. Jesus
then does what Jesus always does, what Jesus can’t help doing, what
Scripture tells us Jesus will do over and over again, what Jesus is
doing now for each one of us, for the church, for the world for which
he gave his life. Jesus
touches them. He touches
them, and he reassures them and says, “Get up and do not be
afraid.” Go back down
now off the mountain to that messiness.
Go back down to the confusion, the distractions, the large and
the small worries and the stresses.
Do not be afraid. Do
not be afraid Diocese of Maine. In
our comings and goings, in our controversies and discussions, in our
settlednesses and in our confidence, do not be afraid.
You have seen the Lord. You
have seen the glory. You
have beheld Christ. You
know who he is and are knowing more and more fully who he is as Lord
and Savior, as the glorious one, the light of the world.
“Do
not be afraid” has taken root among us in this last year.
You made a bold gesture. You
voted to raise three million dollars for our ministry together.
And although we are aware, tenderly and compassionately aware,
that this fall has been a tough stewardship year for many of you and
out of tenderness are not pressing the campaign forward at this time
but waiting for the right moment.
You’ll hear more later. It’s
still a bold venture. I’m
saving 10 minutes of my sermon. You
think it’s long now. If
I had ten more minutes we’d be watching the video.
But we’ll save the video for a later time.
You were bold and unafraid.
The campaign will happen. The
ministry priorities will be fulfilled, and we will do so in a
pastorally sensitive way that allows and makes accommodation for the
fact that some of us are in a time of financial anxiety greater than
we would have anticipated.
Do
not be afraid Diocese of Maine. Keep
building. This year St.
Columba’s, Boothbay, and St. Nicholas’,
Scarborough
, have broken
ground for new buildings. They
will build. Their
buildings are taking shape. Their
communities await the ministry of those buildings and when I put a
shovel in the ground in both of those places earlier this year, I did
so on your behalf, all of you. Do
not be afraid Diocese of Maine. We
have a new mission. We
have the renaming and the replanting of St. Elizabeth’s, our urban
mission in Portland now meeting at the St. Lawrence Center on Munjoy
Hill, a beautiful joint venture between the Diocese of Maine and the
people of St. Alban’s, Cape Elizabeth.
We thank you for the boldness of your venture, for the planting
and the replanting of the ministry now known as Grace Church.
Do not be afraid Diocese of Maine.
The people of St. Peter’s,
Rockland
, have built an addition to their building precisely
so that their community ministry, their feeding program to the poor
and the homeless, had the room it needed.
Not to mention a decent kitchen.
St. Peter’s, that last one was awful!
I don’t know how you ever fed anybody from it, but you did!
Congregations
have been unafraid and have made bold decisions about calling new
clergy including, we are happy to report, another Canadian priest,
Merv Lanctot, welcomed warmly in
Lisbon
.
You may applaud if you wish.
People of St. Matthew’s,
Lisbon
, you were
unafraid. You knew your
Lord was with you and you went into the longest interim I have ever
known. And you have
emerged faithful, strong and you know who your Lord is and you are
radiant. Mt. Desert
Island. . . the congregations there are entering into new and bold
decisions about shared ministry, for their youth, for community
outreach, and for all sorts of other things.
The
Lilly Foundation Grant that we’ve been blessed to receive prompts us
to new and bold ministry developing ministry in Washington County,
including the beautiful new yoked ministry in eastern Washington
County. David Sivret and
people of Eastport and
Calais
, it will be
my joy to celebrate your new ministry with you next Saturday.
And all of us, especially those of us who know the history of
that eastern part of
Washington
County
can give
thanks for boldness, for the “do not be afraid” of those two
congregations. And we also
know that, and I with pleasure announce, that Nancy Moore has been
named the second Lilly coordinator and joins Linton Studdiford in that
work of ministry development and congregational enrichment where some
of our smallest, and dare I say, toughest, feistiest, most fruitful
and hardworking congregations are looking boldly at the future.
And
when they looked up, there on top of the mountain after the words of
Jesus had reassured them. . . he had comforted them, he had touched
them, then it happened to them. Look
at the last line in this text, it happened to them as it must happen
to us. They saw no one but
Jesus only. Jesus alone
standing there, Jesus himself. The
invitation of this moment is for us to see nothing but Jesus. No one.
Nothing else. The
loveliness of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus, the grace and radiance
of Jesus draws our eyes and holds our gaze.
Oh, yes, we must be looking at all manner of other things.
We must go down the mountain, but for every one of us may there
be in our spiritual practices, in our congregation’s life, and in
our diocesan ministry moments when there is nothing and no one but
Jesus. Jesus, whom we see
in his glory. Jesus alone.
And when we see Jesus, we see Jesus seeing us.
We see Jesus looking upon us, looking at us with eyes of truth,
with a heart of compassion, with a mixture on his face of joy and
pride and tender nurturing concern.
We see him alone seeing us.
I want to invite us all in this season of the church and our
life together to fall in love with Jesus.
In love with his beauty, his radiance, his compassion, his
wisdom, his healing, his power, his grace that enables us to do far
beyond anything we could ask or imagine.
Let us see Jesus alone. At
least in moments and let us fall in love again.
Let us grow to love this One who draws our gaze and captures
our hearts.
The
late and wonderful
St. Augustine
centuries
ago fell in love with Jesus in the middle of politically and
personally tumultuous times. He
fell in love with Jesus and at that moment recognized that Jesus had
been with him all along. At
that moment he celebrated the touch of Jesus and this forbear in our
faith, whom I love and commend to your reading any time, in the tenth
chapter of his Confessions
wrote as follows:
Late have I
loved you, O beauty ever ancient, ever new. Late have I loved you. You
were within me always but I was outside myself and it was there
outside myself that I searched for you. In my selfishness I plunged
into all the things which you created. You were with me, O Jesus, but
I was not with you. All things in my life kept me from you, yet if
they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called,
you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.
I am
listening to you. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my
blindness. You breathed your fragrance upon me.
I drew in breath and now O Jesus I pant for you. I have tasted
you, you have become my food and now I hunger and thirst for more. You
touched me, and I burned for your peace.
You
touched me and I burned for your peace.
To fall in love again with Jesus, to make it our work to listen
to him, to hear his reassurance, to surrender to him our fear, to
allow him to touch us even when we have been foolishly looking for a
camera. . . to allow him to speak to us even when voices all around us
and within us thud against our ears . . . to let him be radiant for
us, to be the only thing that we see in moments of incredible
radiance, glory, truth, revelation.
We
cannot stay in this ecstasy. We
need to go down in the valley where it’s messy, where there’s lots
of work to be done, where skinny children live in lean-to shacks (or
the domestic equivalent of that spread all through our state.)
Let us pause to bask in the glory of Jesus.
Not to run from it, not to fear or manage it, but to be caught
up and swept into it so that we know who we are listening to, so that
we know whose touch is the life-giving and liberating touch, so that
we know over and over again that we need not be afraid and so that we,
from time to time, in glorious moments will see Jesus only.
Amen.
back
to the Bishop's Office
back
to the Diocesan Convention home page
|
