The Reverend Donald L. Hamer
May 17, 2009
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  AMEN.

I can’t tell you what a joy it is to be back among you. . .   Now I am sure some of you are saying to yourselves, “Oh, yeah, right – he’s gone for three months and he can’t wait to get back . . .”  But I can truly tell you that during my time away, I have worshipped in at least nine different churches, and have prayed in countless others.  And throughout, Debbie and I have never stopped longing for rejoining this congregation in worship at this place.

As I have prepared for this morning, I felt I would be remiss if I did not spend at least a few moments sharing with you what I have been doing these past three months.  I want you to know in advance that I have given up all pretext of trying to integrate that story with this morning’s readings.  And so what we will have this morning is a short review of my own life these past months, and how some of my experiences lead me into one of the themes of this morning’s texts.

Well, there were, indeed, plenty of times for relaxation while I have been away, and I have enjoyed those.  While I have been physically away from Trinity for these past three months, however, I have never left spiritually or emotionally.  Along with my own personal growth, and I want to add to the growth of Debbie and me as a couple, I have spent many hours, and have met with numerous church leaders, thinking about Trinity’s future – our common future together as the Body of Christ here on Asylum Hill.  In the midst of the times of quiet, and perhaps because of it, I have done a lot of reading, a lot of reflection, a lot of travel, and a lot of reconnecting with people who have been important to me in my past and with whom, for a variety of reasons, I had fallen out of contact.  I am well aware that clergy and academics are among the few vocations in which one gets an opportunity for professional development leave.  I am immensely grateful for this opportunity, and want to publicly thank all of you, and especially Ron and Barbara, the rest of our staff, the wardens and vestry, for the planning, hard work and sacrifice that made it possible.

But professional development leave is not a vacation, and while, at the luncheon today and in the months to come, I will expand upon my experiences and some of what I have learned, I want to share with you the context in which I began this leave and the framework in which I return.

Last September, as I approached my fifth anniversary among you as your Rector, I had my first so-called “mutual ministry review” in four years, a review in which our staff and some of our lay leadership reflected on my ministry among you, measured by the criteria of the calling committee which called me 5 ½ years ago.  At the staff level and applying the criteria by which all staff are reviewed, I received feedback from the staff.  Shortly thereafter, I participated in an Episcopal CREDO conference, a week-long evaluation of one’s life and ministry with thirty or so other Episcopal clergy who, like me, were “55 and older.”  During that time we reflected on our health – the health of our bodies, our relationships, our spiritual health, and our financial health.

At the same time, in my coursework at Hartford Seminary, we have been studying models of leadership both within and outside of the congregational setting.  And then at the very beginning of my leave, I happened upon a book by the Irish poet David Whyte, entitled The Three Marriages – Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship.  While it is a long book, the basic premise is simple:  That what many of us strive for – so-called Life/Work Balance –  is a myth. He says, rather, that each of us has three marriages – the first is with ourselves; the second is with our spouse, life partner or other significant personal relationships; and the third is with our vocation.  It is only when one views one’s life as a synthesis or harmony of those three aspects of one life that one can appreciate and focus one’s life and gifts – and, by extension, one’s ministry – to the fullest.

It’s really quite Trinitarian, actually, isn’t it?  The three marriages in one life – the three in one, the one in three.  This sequence of life experiences, and all of them taken together, have given me occasion for much spiritual reflection during these months.  How can I, as a person of faith, put Jesus at the center of my life – at the center of my heart, at the center of my most intimate relationships, at the center of my vocation – to faithfully tie all of them together into a coherent whole?

During these past several months, I have had many such “aha” moments, where faith met life, and perhaps none so poignantly as during our time in the Holy Land.  Debbie and I were there from April 3 until April 20 – a period that spanned all of our Holy Week, including Palm Sunday, Western Easter (the one we celebrate at Trinity) and then Orthodox Holy Week and Easter, which this year fell one week later.  There were so many special places to see, to experience, that it is impossible to describe them all or even summarize them at one time or even in one gathering.  But I do want to focus on one recurring impression that I developed during our time in the Holy Land, and that is highlighted in today’s readings.  I am speaking of the notion of “victory.”

Debbie and I spent our first week touring the Old City of Jerusalem, which is divided into four sectarian sections – Armenian, Christian, Jewish and Muslim.  What we in America experience on a television screen as a rhetorical and military contest between two opposing factions is a fact of daily life in Jerusalem and throughout that region, experienced by real people whose daily lives and outlooks are impacted in very real ways.  I have not yet stopped to count up the number of churches, synagogues, mosques and various other shrines and holy sites that we visited.  All of them, both individually and collectively, filled us with a profound sense of awe and wonder that we were so blessed to be in these holy places.  But one afternoon, I had a startling, albeit seemingly obvious, realization:  What we were experiencing is simply the latest incarnation of what has been more than 3000 years of struggle over which of God’s people have the right to these lands that are sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike.  The area’s geographic, strategic and commercial importance alone make it a valuable and sought-after prize. Compound that with its religious significance to believers who have never learned to play well together, and you have the recipe for the political and military stalemate we have come to almost accept, sadly, as a given.  Time and again, we were standing in a church that was built on the ruins of a mosque that itself was built on top of the ruins of a synagogue.  We were at some holy sites that had been Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Christian, Muslim, and finally Christian or Jewish or, depending on where it was located, Muslim.  At some point soon I will share pictures we took that attest to this phenomenon.  Each, in their time, declared victory for themselves on behalf of God.  The Assyrians and Babylonians and Romans, in succession, destroyed the Jewish Temples and Jerusalem.  In the Christian Era, churches were built, only to be destroyed by Moslem forces, only to be rebuilt by the Crusaders, only to be destroyed and replaced by the Muslim leader Saladin.  The geopolitical events of the 19th and 20th centuries continued the millennia-long tradition of attack and overcome, and it was promoted by people of all of the Abrahamic religious traditions.

Even in our own culture, we ourselves like fighters.  We utilize the legal services that advertise they will “fight to get us what we are owed.”  We will vote for politicians who pander that “they are fighting for us.”  Indeed, our 1940 Episcopal Hymnal had an entire section devoted to “The Church Triumphant” that was chock full of forceful, even military, imagery that extolled the merits of Jesus the Conqueror.

And yet, look again at what this morning’s readings say about victory.  Whose victory is it?  Is it ours?  And what constitutes a “victory” for God?  Psalm 98 reminds us that God “has won for himself the victory; The Lord has made known his victory. . .” and again, “all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.”  But the Church, along with all faiths, has struggled with this concept over the years.  Our Scripture passages this morning teach us that God is God, and knows how to achieve victories in God’s own way, in God’s own time.  Our job is to be faithful to our God, and our faith alone will accomplish God’s work here on earth.  Jesus himself sums up God’s desire for us in this morning Gospel of John:  “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love. . . This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. . . You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Jesus Christ defined victory as overcoming the power of mortal death.  So too, victory for Christians is the overpowering of adversity with  the power God’s love, of which we are the instruments, as we come to know it and experience it in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It can start right in this place, perhaps as small as a tiny and seemingly fragile mustard seed.  But held in faith, it can burst forth as powerfully as Jesus exiting that tomb on Easter morning.  It is that power alone that the world needs now, and it is that power alone that will ultimately prevail over the forces of bloodshed.  AMEN.

© Copyright 2009 by the Reverend Donald L. Hamer