"Real Presence" [Lenten Sermon]
Sunrise Over the Sea of Galilee
Lent 5, Year B [1]
Lessons:
Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Hebrews 5: 5-10
John 12: 20-33
Psalm 51: 1-13
The other day as I was getting a haircut I noticed that the person who cuts my hair had a new water bottle standing on a nearby counter.
Inscribed on the side of the bottle in clear, bold type were these words--"Be Here Now."
A pretty good reminder, I thought, to be present, to be really present to the reality you are in.
Be here now!
I thought about that little admonition as I have been reflecting during these Lenten days on an experience that occurred during my recent trip to the Holy Land.
It is an experience that I haven't been able to get out of my mind.
It occurred early on the morning of the first real day of our pilgrimage. We had arrived the night before at a guesthouse located next to the Sea of Galilee, this lake that figures so prominently in the Gospel stories.
We had clearly landed in "Bible country."
The Water's Edge
I heard that the sunrise over the lake could be a spectacular sight, so I got up early in the morning and found my way to the water's edge.
I perched on a rock-at some distance from a few other early risers.
It was a place near where I could see the water as it lapped against the shoreline in small wavelets.
A chorus line of water birds could be seen in the distance moving silently across the lake as the sun came up.
The sight was indeed a wonder to behold, but more than the dawn itself it was the ripple of the waves over the small stones and shells on the beach . . .
and suddenly there was awakened within me a sense that I was here, now, in a place--or certainly very near a place--where Jesus had once stood . . .
where he had gathered those first disciples, performed miraculous deeds of power, and taught with such a startling authority.
As I sat there with a heart and spirit open to the pilgrimage I was about to undertake, I was overwhelmed with what I can only describe as a sense was of undiluted presence.
I was present to God. Present to God's creation. Present to this moment. Present to the Jesus story.
Call it real presence.
Franciscan theologian Regis Duffy has observed that:
"Real presence is a rare experience for many people today . . . how easily we can work and play, live and even die with minimal demands made on us to 'be present.' Suddenly we realize that we have gone for a long time without any effort to attend to others or even be aware of ourselves." [2]
On this Sunday before we begin the journey we call Holy Week we might well ask:
What does it mean for each of us--for you and I--to be really present to life?
L'Arche
In our closest and most important human relationships, to experience the real presence of another is something that, I suspect, we all desire.
I've learned a lot over the years about this form of real presence--this presence to another--from the L'Arche movement.
L'Arche is a movement comprised of residential communities where persons with and without intellectual disabilities share life together.
There are now over 145 of these L'Arche communities around the world.
The goal of a L'Arche community is to bring people with intellectual disabilities together with those who assist them to create homes--places where they live and work together, recognizing one another's unique value and special gifts.
My first visit to a L'Arche community took place here in Portland several decades ago.
When I arrived at the community which is called L'Arche Nehalem, I was greeted warmly with a generous hug by one of the core members of the community whose intellectual disability did not diminish her immense capacity for expressing love and welcome.
And I can recall that the first thing I saw as I entered the home was a sign over the fireplace that had these words:
"How can anyone ever tell you, you are anything less than beautiful
How can anyone ever tell you, you are anything less than whole
How can anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle
How deeply you're connected to my soul."
It has been said of L’Arche communities:
"What is this "essential" of our communities? Presence: being present to people who are fragile; being present to one another."
The season of Lent is a time when we can to discover ways that we can navigate the vulnerabilities that mark our lives and the life of our world.
There is perhaps no better word to describe what is the essential to navigating vulnerability than that word, presence.
What might it mean for each of us to be really present?
To those who share life with us?
Present even to ourselves? To our deepest yearnings and hopes?
What might it mean for you together here at St. Andrew's to be a community of presence?
Where you are truly present one to one another?
To those who live in this neighborhood?
In this city?
Archbishop Romero
One of the acknowledged saints in our time is Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a Roman Catholic Archbishop and martyr of El Salvador.
He understood the meaning of real presence.
And his life is a reminder that real presence can be costly. [3]
Thirty-seven years ago this coming week--on the 24th of March--while saying Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence he was shot to death because of his faithful witness to the Gospel of Christ.
Before he was assassinated he gave a homily which was broadcast on the radio calling upon soldiers as Christians not to obey orders to murder and to torture unarmed citizens.
What is most remarkable about Archbishop Romero is that his life had quite unremarkable beginnings.
One of eight children, he eventually went on to study theology, pursuing ordination and the priesthood.
Eventually he was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, but all the while leading a fairly unremarkable life.
It was when he witnessed how the poor were suffering and the human rights abuses that were being inflicted upon them by the government and the right-wing militia, he spoke out.
As someone was later to say about him that "when he was where life had led him and where God had called him, he stood in compassion with the suffering."
Real presence means allowing ourselves to embrace a place of vulnerability not as either a victim or an observer but as a call from God, a call that will ultimately take us beyond ourselves into the suffering world.
Real presence means that we have become fully present to life and we have opened ourselves to the divine spirit that seeks to transform us and all of creation.
Real presence means that we have entered fully into the Jesus story.
Our Lenten Journey
Over these past several weeks in Lent we have been present to key moments in the life of Jesus.
We have been present at the baptism and the temptation in the wilderness.
We have watched as the tables of the money changers were overturned and the people selling cattle, sheep and doves driven out of the temple.
We have listened as Jesus engages Nicodemus, a seeker, in a conversation about a God who loves the world in a lavish and self-giving way.
Today we have been present as some God-fearing Greeks--who can be seen to stand for all the people of the world--approach Philip and ask, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus!" [4]
We too want to come into his presence.
And like those who came to Philip, we too would see Jesus . . .
. . to discover in Jesus a guide who can draw us into the deeper significance of our own lives.
So if we listen in to the Gospel for today, what message might we hear from Jesus?
As Philip went to Andrew and then together went to Jesus, they heard him utter these words:
"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit." [5]
With this short statement John the Evangelist gives us a glimpse into the meaning of Jesus' own life and a preview of what is to transpire in a few short days.
We are offered a window into "the life-giving power of Jesus' death." [6]
But there is more that Jesus has to say:
"Those who love their life, will lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." [7]
This passage might seem to call into question all that we might wish to say about self worth . . . and self esteem.
But Oscar Romero, understood the truth of these difficult words of Jesus. His commentary on the Gospel text includes these words:
"Those who in the Biblical phrase, would save their lives-that is, those who want to get along, who don't want commitments, who don't want to get into problems, who want to stay of a situation that demands the involvement of all of us-they will lose their lives.
What a terrible thing, to have lived quite comfortably, with no suffering, not getting involved in problems, quite tranquil, quite settled, with good connections . . . lacking nothing, having everything.
To what good?
They will lose their lives.
But those who will uproot themselves and . . .go with the poor in their suffering, and become incarnated and feel as their own the pain and abuse-they will secure their lives because my [God] will reward them." [8]
You see, it is through committing ourselves to being present to others that we are finally able to navigate our own vulnerability and to discover the deep meaning of our own lives.
We have all known those who by some measure--large or small--gave of themselves . . to us . . .
who shared their very life by being present to us.
These are the ones who embody the Gospel words to cast forth their lives like grains of wheat which fall to the earth to come to life again in the lives of others.
Real presence is an offering.
This is what the L’Arche communities understand in the offering of presence and community to those who would otherwise be isolated and rejected by the world.
This is what Oscar Romero--this ordinary man who became prophet and martyr--embodied in the offering of his life for the suffering of his people
"What does not pass away is love." He once said,
"In the evening of life you will be judged on love." [9]
The offering of presence is always a love offering.
Because of Love
As we receive from this table the bread and the wine made holy we are entering into a love offering which becomes a real presence for us: the presence of the living Christ.
Offered to draw us more fully into that life of loving presence we have been called to live.
So "Be Here Now."
In these final days before Holy Week--where we will soon walk the way our Lord has walked
. . . . the journey ahead of us is a journey into love:
Committing ourselves to be a presence to others . . . we do what we do for love.
We give up our life . . . because of love.
And we gain our life again . . . because of love.
___________________________
Endnotes
[1] This sermon was given at St. Andrew Episcopal Church in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday, March 18, 2018.
[2] Regis A. Duffy, OFM. Real Presence: Worship, Sacraments and Commitment. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1982), p. 83.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_Romero
[4] John 12:21b
[5] John 12:24
[6] Homily Service, March 1994, Vol. 26, No. 12, p. 36.
[7] John 12:25
[8] From Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love cited in Homily Service, pp. 30-31.
[9] Homily Service, p.32.
