ST. Paul's Church In The Desert
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
July 22, 2001
Luke 10:38-42

The Reverend Vernon L. Suter

What if you were to get hit by a MAC truck on the way to work tomorrow morning; --- or on the way home from work; --- or on the way home from church this morning? What if suddenly and unexpectedly life for you came to an end? If you were able to re-live the eight hours before that happened, would you do it differently?

If this were to happen to any one of us and we were given the opportunity to live the last eight hours over, I wonder if we might slow down a little; take time to smell the roses, as they say. Might we take a little more time to chat with a friend, pay a little more attention to the kids, or just simply relax a little?

Would we have fussed less over getting something "just right," or worried less over certain problems that we couldn't do anything about anyway. I wonder what our answer would be if we were able to ask ourselves the question, "How important were the goals and problems I spent my last hours on?"

The real question I'm getting to here is, - - the question this always leads me to is, "What are the real priorities in my life?" When I'm so involved in something that I can think of nothing else, am I missing out on something more important? Are the priorities that I seem to think are the biggies of my life really the most important? Do they qualify as something on which I'd like to spend the last eight hours of my life?

Unfortunately, my answer is all too often that the problems and priorities I spend my time on are definitely not the ones I would be doing if I were living my last day on earth. Not that what I do isn't important, but my problem is that I sometimes get so swallowed up by what I'm doing that I miss something more important going on in my life. In other words, I can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes, I even miss the fact that there is a more effective way to live and to deal with those things I am working on.

In his sermon on the mount, Jesus tells us not to be anxious about what we are going to eat, drink or wear. It isn't that we don't need these things. Jesus acknowledges that fact. But he goes on to say that we need to seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be ours as well. If we seek the kingdom of God and God's righteousness, the other things will come to us. We really don't have to obsess over them.

Paul says in his letter to the Romans, "...if God is for us, who is against us?" All through Scripture we are told of the free gift of God's grace. We are offered God's love and protection, but every once in awhile we need a reminder to slow down and enjoy the peace that comes with his gift of grace. Today's Gospel is one of those reminders.

Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem where he was going to die. He came to a village where Martha and Mary lived and went to their home for a short visit. When Jesus entered the house Martha began to scurry around preparing dinner and, I can well imagine, trying to make every thing perfect. In the meantime Mary quietly sat at Jesus' feet, listening to him teach and savoring the moment.

Now, I'm sure Martha was getting a little excited because she wanted everything just right. It most certainly added to her excitement when Martha felt she needed Mary to help her and Mary was doing nothing but sitting there listening to Jesus. I'm sure Martha's heart was in the right place, but I think she had her priorities a little mixed up.

So now, Jesus, seeing Martha's anxiety, said, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things; only one thing is needful." Jesus was telling Martha to slow down and relax, that there are more important things than having a perfect meal. Jesus wanted Martha to know that Mary had chosen the more important. She had chosen that which couldn't be taken away from her and was far more lasting than a simple meal. In another one of the Gospels, the Gospel of John, Jesus said to the people from Tiberias, "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give to you."

The implication here, as well as to Martha, is that material things perish; they are not permanent. There's no implication that we don't need them, but it seems very clear that our life in Christ comes first. Everything else follows.

Now, I'm fully aware that someone might ask how we can have peace of mind if we don't concern ourselves with where the next buck is coming from? There's no question about the fact that we must keep our business affairs in order or there won't be a pay check. But there's a deeper truth than the pay check.

In order to understand this deeper truth all we have to do is ask the question, "Why am I working so hard for that pay check?" The most common answer to that question is: "So that my family and I can live a good life," or "So that my children can go to college." However, there's another question we need to ask when we consider our answer. If the family is falling apart because the job is possessing us, what's the point in earning the money?

Fellowship with others is one of the very tangible ways we come in contact with God. Our most intimate human fellowship is with our family. We see God's love in people, but sometimes we forget it's there, and we are blocking it out because of our obsession with some thing else that seems so all fired important. We block it with our nervous search for serenity in material things. We block God's love by mixing up our priorities.

Now, I know I'm repeating myself, but I don't want to loose sight of the fact that we do indeed need the material things. However, if we have the faith that the our Lord's promise is true, we will have a much easier time of keeping our priorities straight.

Our faith in God and our communion with the Body of Christ will give us the strength and serenity necessary for success in whatever we do. Success is a by-product of serenity, not the other way around. Serenity is not the by-product of success. I think this point is made very well in a quotation from a book of daily meditations I have been reading. In part, it reads, "Faith gives you the strength to climb steadily this ladder of life. You should leave your security to God and trust Him not to let you fall. He is there to give you all the power you need to keep on climbing."

There are many ways we can get our priorities mixed up. An example from my own experiences happened when I was in seminary.

Going back to school at my age seemed to me like an almost insurmountable task. I became so pre-occupied with making good grades that success took on the definition of being the best scholar, or showing my genius; becoming an academic giant or something. Of course, that was a far cry from learning more about being a disciple of the Lord and a minister to His people.

I became an outright crab at home. I withdrew from various Christian fellowships, reasoning that I didn't have time because of my studies. Thank God that my wife and a priest friend of ours intervened. They reminded me, in very certain terms, that I had stopped doing my daily meditation; that I had quit communicating with old friends, as well as ceased various other activities that were a part of my spiritual life. Somehow, I had convinced myself that the material things, that is good grades, somehow would lead me to a more spiritual life and successful ministry.

Bonnie and this priest took me aback a bit. I suddenly started listening to someone else for a change. (Many of you who know me well can tell you that slowing down and listening is a tough one for me, even to this day. - - - - I keep working at it though.)

Anyway, back to my seminary story, I stepped back, relaxed, resumed my daily prayer and meditation, and put God back on the priority list where He belonged. My attitude improved, my agitation and frustration left me, and life became pleasant again. And - - wonder of wonders, my grades improved.

The first commandment includes the words, "You shall have no other gods before me." When a Pharisee asked Jesus what the great commandment in the law was, Jesus replied, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." Everything depends on these two commandments. Nothing depends on the grades in seminary. The grades in seminary, or anywhere else, for that matter, depend on the Lord.

Whatever Martha's intention, whether it was to impress our Lord with a big feast or to honor him with the very best she could prepare, she un-intentionally got her first priority switched from communion with God to preparing the meal. Perhaps, for just a few moments, Martha had forgotten that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

ST. Paul's Church In The Desert
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 29, 2001
Luke 11:1-13

The Reverend Vernon L. Suter

Today I'd like to talk about relationships; more particularly, parent/child relationships, or, I could just as well say, child/parent relationships. More specifically, I'm going to get into how these relationships seem to deteriorate and take on different perspectives as we grow older.

In order to get a good start on this, I'd like us all to think just a moment about when we were children. Think back as far as you can to when you were as young as your memory allows you to go. (Of course, I've noticed that the older I get the harder this kind of thing is to do, but let's do the best we can.)

Now, what I'd like you to think about, back when you were a little kid, is how much you trusted your parents. I can remember that my dad and mom, besides being the total authority in my life, knew everything. I could trust anything they told me and I could expect them to take care of me. I didn't have to worry about it. In other words, I had total trust and faith in my parents. I could count on what they said and trusted that they were the one's who would fill all my needs.

I also want to go about this another way. Those of you who are parents might want to think back about when your kids were little. Can you remember the total trust they put in your decisions and how often they expected everything from you? They expected everything from protection against something that frightened them, to answering questions about things they didn't understand. The whole point here is that we and our children trusted parents unconditionally. Even though we, as parents, as well as our parents, were not perfect, the trust was still unconditional. But then something changed.

As children grow older, they start school and begin to listen to others. They begin to get some ideas of their own, many of which help with creating doubt in their minds as to the wisdom of their parents. In addition to learning new things, much of which may be way off base from the truth our parents taught us, children also begin to learn that their parents weren't perfect, and were, indeed, wrong some of the time. Wrong or right, however, parents usually always had the best interest of the child at heart. Of course, as children grow older, the less they believe that fact.

Then we come to the teen years. - - - - (Now, I hope you teenagers listening to me today don't get too upset before I get to the end of this sermon. Just remember, I'm talking about your parents when they were teenagers too.) - - - - With that said, back to the teen years. I think almost everyone in the world would agree that when we were teenagers, at one time or another, we thought we knew it all. I have a little refrigerator magnet that someone gave me that has a message on it that says, "Hire a teenager while they still know everything."

The long and short of all this is that as teenagers, we begin to lose that trust, that blind trust, that we used to have in our parents. We have discovered that they don't know everything and we let what we think we know overpower what our parents really do know. We start doing things our way and throw trust of our parents to the wind.

Now that I've had a little fun with this progression of growth in parent/child and child/parent relationships, let's move on and consider this same sort of dynamic with our personal child/parent relationship with God.

Oh!- - Before we do that, there is one important point I left out. That point is whenever a parent says, "no" to a child, it is always because the parent believes they know best what is good for the child. I don't know too many parents that say no to their kids because they simply want to aggravate them. I suppose that can happen, but for the most part, the parent is always thinking of the best interest of the child.

Now, back to our relationship with God. If we follow the pattern I've just described in the daily relationships between parents and children, do we not have something similar going on with God?

Many of you know that I'm what is fondly called a late vocation priest. That means I didn't decide to become a priest until late in my 40's and started attending seminary when I was about 48 years old. What many of you don't know is that I'm also a late in life Christian. I was not baptized until I was 35 years old. My parents had what they perceived to be some bad experiences with organized religion, so going to church was not a thing in our household. The only exposure I had to Jesus Christ was that my grandmother would get off the streetcar on her way home from church every Sunday and bring the Sunday School papers to our house and read them to my brother and me. - - - - (For those of you who don't know what a streetcar is, ask someone about 20 years older than you are.) - - - -.

At any rate, for reasons too long to explain today, I was baptized into the Episcopal Church at age 35. At age 35, I was a brand new Christian. I was filled with the joy of a child, trusting unconditionally in the love of God and believing that he would lead me in the direction that was best for me. - - (He has done just that, by the way, but not without some argument from me.) - - .

It wasn't too long after my life as a baby Christian and then a small Christian child, that I became a rebellious teenager. I would pray for things that I wanted, but my prayers weren't always answered the way I wanted them to be answered. I would then think that God must not know what he's talking about. Why didn't I get what I prayed for?

I went through a period of thinking that living the Christian life was a liability. There seemed to be things I wanted that I couldn't have unless I just eased up a bit on this Christianity stuff. I began, more and more, to live by my will, not what I thought God's will might be. As a matter of fact, I stopped even trying to figure out God's will and just went for my will. I knew better than anyone what was best for me, so what was wrong with that? In the AA Big book there is a statement that described me perfectly at that time. It described people like me as "self will run riot."

Thankfully, for the most part, I got past all that, but what has all this got to do with the disciple's request in today's Gospel that the Lord teach him how to pray? Well, going deeper into our Lord's answer, I think it has to do with that which blocks our prayer in the first place, as well as that which keeps us from noticing the fact that God always answers our prayer. Simply put, Jesus answer of how to pray is to pray in simple terms. Tell God what you want. The problem is that we don't see the answer if it isn't what we are looking for. I was, and still am, until I catch myself, always planning the result of what I'm praying for instead of leaving that result to God. God will answer my prayer. God will deal with the situation I'm praying about. However, I need to be attentive in looking for that answer, because it will be what God deems best for me, not what I think is best, especially when I'm in the mode of "self-will run riot."

I'd like to remind you of Jesus statement at the end of today's Gospel: "So I say to you, ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened."

Even though we don't always see it clearly, I think if we use the blind faith of a child instead of the sophisticated knowledge of an adult, we will accept Jesus' statement as fact. God will answer our prayer with what is best for us, which is not always what we think the answer should be.

To go back to the analogy of the parent/child for a moment, Jesus says, "Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion?" The implied answer is obvious. I doubt there ever was a parent who would give his or her child a snake when the child asked for a fish. However, would a parent give the requested fish to the child if the fish was bad for the child, say because of allergies or something? Of course not. Would the child be disappointed? Absolutely. Would the child understand? Probably not.

Jesus goes on to imply the imperfection of human parents and makes the point of the Gospel and the point of this sermon. He says, "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" God is perfect and can make no wrong decisions. It is only in our experience as Christians, our growing to be teenagers in Christianity, that we begin to question. The questions and self-will seem to then continue to increase and we reach the point I reached long past my Christian teenage years. I reached the point of "self-will run riot."

I'd like to close with another one of my meditations. I read this one just the other day:

The inward peace that comes from trust in God truly passes all understanding. That peace, no one can take from you. No person has the power to disturb that inner peace. But you must be careful not to let in the world's worries and distractions. You must try not to give entrance to fears and despondency. You must refuse to open the door to the distractions that disturb your inward peace. Make it a point to allow nothing today to disturb your inner peace, your heart-calm.

The Church Of St. Paul In The Desert
Palm Springs, California
The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, 8/12/01
Hebrews 11:1-3 (4-7) 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

The Reverend Vernon L. Suter

The first line in today's reading from Hebrews says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." The last line in today's Gospel is, "You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." So, . . . the theme here seems simple. Have faith and be ready.

I said it seems simple! Actually, it is simple! The problem is that a simple formula is just that; a simple formula. However, simple formulas are often not all that easy to follow. They are great to talk about, but hard to live.

Faith and readiness. That's what our readings are about today. Let me share a couple stories about faith, which may begin to make my point:

The first is a Zen story about a Buddhist monk who was being chased by a saber tooth tiger. He was running from this tiger as fast as his legs could carry him. Suddenly, he had no place to run. He had come to a steep cliff with nowhere to go but down. With the tiger in hot pursuit, the monk is frantically trying to figure out what he was going to do next. Suddenly, he spotted a vine hanging over the edge of the cliff. He quickly shimmied down the vine, out of reach of the tiger. He got down about fifteen feet and looked up, and sure enough, there was the tiger, patiently waiting for him to climb back up. Then the monk looked down to what he'd hoped to be a safe destination. Low and behold, there was another tiger, patiently waiting for him to descend to the end of the vine and become the tiger's evening meal.

The monk looked up again and the fist tiger was still there. He then glanced back down, and sure enough, the other tiger hadn't budged either. What a dilemma. In pondering his dilemma, the monk looked at the vine he was hanging on to and saw a beautiful, huge, red, strawberry growing on the vine. He looked up again. - - The tiger was still there. He looked down again. - - The other tiger was still there. Then is when the most amazing thing happened. The monk calmly reached over, plucked the strawberry from the vine, and ate it, enjoying every bite. Faced with the fact that all his obvious options led to sudden death, the monk decided to live for the moment. He ate and savored the flavor of the strawberry. - - - -

My second story is similar to the first one. This one is also about a fellow who was being chased by a tiger. He, just like the monk, found a vine and shimmied down the edge of a cliff, leaving the tiger sitting at the top of the vine on the edge of the cliff; - - patiently waiting for the man to come back up. The tiger had settled in for the duration.

Now the difference in this story and the monks story is that there was no tiger at the bottom. However, in this story, the man had reached the end of the vine and the drop to the ground was a very long way. As with the monk, the man looked up and down, examining his options, both of which seemed hopeless. Then, suddenly, the man looked a little further up, beyond the waiting tiger, toward the heavens. He said, "God. If you are up there please save me. Please tell me what to do." Low and behold, a booming voice came from out of nowhere and said, "Let go. I will save you." The man, not sure he was hearing right, replied, "What did you say?" The voice once again said, "Let go. I will save you." The man took one more look down at how far away the ground was, and then looked back up to the heavens and shouted, "Is there anyone else up there I can talk to?" - - - -

Our lessons today are full of God's promises. These promises can be capsulized into the message I've already mentioned: Have faith and be ready. The simple formula I was talking about is that if we live by faith, we will be ready. There is nothing to do to be ready but to have faith. The real fact is that it's even simpler than that. Faith is a free gift from God by virtue of his grace. It is something we can't earn. He simply gives it to us. So, - - - the long and short of it is that I could bring this sermon to an end right now by simply saying, "If you trust in Jesus everything will be just fine. Amen." And the fact is, that is the long and short of it.

The big problem that makes all this so difficult is that along with his promises, God gave us the ability to think. To be able to think and rationalize is a great gift, but it is also a great burden. It's a burden because we take this wonderful mind of ours and spend a lot of time trying to figure out what we want to have happen tomorrow or the next day; how we want our future to be. Now, so far as it goes, that's really not a bad thing to do. We have to plan or nothing will ever happen. If we didn't think and plan ahead, we wouldn't have any of the conveniences and luxuries we have today. We would still be living in the same conditions of the first human beings on earth. The problem is that we want to go beyond the planning. We want to see what the results will be before they happen. We want to be sure that whatever it is we want will be exactly as we planned it. Sometimes we fail to act at all on something simply because we can't be sure of the outcome. The important point is that we forget that God is in charge of the results.

Remember what our first line in Hebrews was? "... faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."? If I have faith that God is good and will lead me in the right direction, I can go out into my daily work and enjoy it, no matter what the day holds or how full my schedule is. Faith gives me the ability to rejoice in the day, or in the moment as the monk did, even though it looks like the next day or moment will be a rough one. I can rejoice in each day whether it rains or shines, whether I have to face problems or not, or whether things fell apart yesterday or not. If I have faith in God's promises for my future, I can always enjoy the day and moment in which I'm living.

I'd like to take a moment here to point out that faith has a very real, everyday payoff. A faithful existence is, indeed, a rewarding existence. The greatest reward for a faithful existence is that we are free of worry and anxiety. If I have faith, I won't worry. How many hours, days, and weeks; even months and years, has been wasted worrying about something that probably won't happen anyway? Do you realize that without faith, we have to control everything? Actually, without faith, in a sense, we have to control the whole universe. With faith, however, we can concentrate on the moment, because we are leaving everything else to God.

We are created to live one day at a time. We see evidence of God's intention that we live one day at a time in Scripture. When God sent manna from heaven to feed the Israelites, he admonished the Israelites to collect only enough manna to take care of them for one day. They were not to hoard the manna or store it up for tomorrow. God warned them that if they collected more than a one day supply of manna, it would rot and they couldn't eat it anyway. It would be wasted. - - - -

All this leads me to some questions I think we need to ask ourselves, the answers to which will help us with our faith.

First, What can we do about yesterday? Is there one thing that we can do to change what happened yesterday, - - the day before that, - - or last year?

The second question we need to ask ourselves is what can we do about tomorrow? What can we do about next week - - or next year?

The answer, of course, is that we can't do a thing about that which is already past, of course, except learn from it. As far as tomorrow is concerned, we can plan for it but we can't predict or control the results of our planning. With these answers to those questions, it becomes obvious that we might just as well have faith, since we can't do anything about it anyway.

I think God's intention is for faith to be that easy. The payoff for faith for us today, in the moment, is serenity. The payoff for lack of faith is worry and anxiety. These are emotions that are always the result of thoughts about something that has already happened or something that hasn't happened yet, - - and actually, may not happen. Simply put, worry and anxiety are the results of thinking about things over which we have no control, primarily, yesterday and tomorrow. This kind of thinking always robs us of our present. We're not able to live today in peace and happiness when we are exercising our brains with what I like to call pasting and futuring. When we are living in this kind of chaos, we are definitely not ready for Jesus.

Remember in Luke's Gospel for today Jesus said, "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.", and then he concluded with, "You . . . must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." For me, being ready is to be free of worry and anxiety. Being ready is to be living every moment God gave us to the fullest. I believe that's what he intended us to do with ourselves, or he wouldn't have given us the ability to think. - - - -

I'd like to close with Reinhold Neibuhr's Serenity Prayer. Now, I'm sure many of you are familiar with this prayer, but I'm not sure how many are aware that there is more to this prayer than is commonly used or quoted, so I'm going to close with the complete Serenity Prayer, as Reinhold Neibuhr originally wrote it. I think this prayer says it all.

Let us pray.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference; living one day at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace; taking, as he did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that he will make all things right if I surrender to his will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with him forever in the next."