SECOND SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
Prayer of the Day: God of compassion, you have opened the way for us and brought us to yourself. Pour your love into our hearts, that, overflowing with joy, we may freely share the blessings of your realm and faithfully proclaim the good news of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
“So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. The people all answered as one: ‘Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do.’ Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord.” Exodus 19:7-8.
We know that the people of Israel kept this promise only imperfectly-as do all of us who make big promises. No doubt the people were sincere. I have no doubt that Saint Peter was sincere when he told Jesus that he was ready to go to prison or even death with him. I have no doubt that every couple joined in marriage are perfectly sincere when they promise to “join with [one another] and share in all that is to come.” But for one reason or another, we often end up breaking the promises we make.
There are many reasons promises get broken. Sometimes it is a matter of overestimating one’s own degree of courage, strength or ability. Sometimes circumstances over which one has no control make keeping a promise impossible. Sometimes the conditions under which the promise was made change such that keeping the promise under those changed conditions would be hurtful, unethical or unjust. Sometimes a promise is made recklessly and without due consideration for the consequences that might follow to third parties. Better to renege on such a promise than follow through and cause injury or harm to unsuspecting and uninvolved persons.
Sometimes people make promises they know they cannot keep. Yours truly promised his children when they were small that he and their mother would always protect and keep them safe. Of course, I knew that I was not being entirely truthful. As much as I would have liked to think otherwise, I knew there were many things from which I was powerless to protect my children, even when they were small and always at home. Yet I continued to give them the assurance of my protection because I believed then and continue to believe that children need and deserve to feel safe, secure and free from danger. I figured that, should the unthinkable happen, should one of my children be traumatized in some way despite my best protective efforts, I would simply have to cross that bridge when, God forbid, I came to it. You might call this promise an act of faith. I knew I might not be able to keep it, but trusted nonetheless that God would be present either to do what I was unable to do or help me pick up the pieces of a shattered promise I failed keep.
This last Sunday our congregation confirmed its one confirmand, a remarkably mature and articulate thirteen-year-old whose moving statement of faith left us in awe. During the rite of confirmation, the confirmand is asked to affirm her baptismal vow “to trust God, proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.” That promise is every bit as weighty as the Israelites’ commitment to fulfill all the commandments delivered to them by Moses. It is also a promise the church manages to keep about as well as Israel was able to keep the commandments. For that reason, the response to the inquiry is: “I do, and I ask God to help me.” We know all too well that the promises we make are too big for us to keep on our own. We know that we have no idea what keeping our baptismal vow will require of us, whether we will have the courage and stamina to remain faithful in times of trial or how we will manage to go on in the face of failure, tragedy and trauma. In all those circumstances, however, we cling to the promise that God will be there for us.
I think perhaps that is what I meant when I promised to protect my children. I might not be able to keep them from getting hurt, getting their hearts broken or making bad decisions. But I can be there for them. I can love them. Love takes shape in different ways under different circumstances. Sometimes love is tender, supportive and gentle. Sometimes love must be tough. Sometimes love intervenes to change a dangerous life trajectory. Sometimes love must take a step back and let events take their course. Always love forgives. Always love leaves the door open. Always love persists.
God’s promise is that God will never stop loving the world God made and the people for whom God bled and died. God’s love is sometimes like being in “God’s bosom safely gathered.” It sometimes takes the shape of judgment and rebuke. But whether in grace or judgment, God is always there “for” us-never against. God will always be there to forgive and help us put back together the broken pieces of our failed promises. Unlike our promises, God’s are unbreakable. As our Psalm for Sunday reminds us,
“For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures for ever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.” Psalm 100:5.
So we are bold to affirm again and again the promises made in our baptismal vows. We continue to make promises to one another. After all, our human communities are held together by promises and our confident hope in their fulfilment. Beyond that, all creation is held together by the God whose faithfulness to God’s promises never fails.
Here is a poem about faithfulness by Emma Lazarus.
Rosh-Hashanah, 5643
Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies.—
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.
Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
Profusely to requite.
Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?
For never yet, since on the holy height,
The Temple’s marble walls of white and green
Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world’s light
Went out in darkness,—never was the year
Greater with portent and with promise seen,
Than this eve now and here.
Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent
Hath been enlarged unto earth’s farthest rim.
To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went,
Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave,
For freedom to proclaim and worship Him,
Mighty to slay and save.
High above flood and fire ye held the scroll,
Out of the depths ye published still the Word.
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul:
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths,
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord,
Or died a thousand deaths.
In two divided streams the exiles part,
One rolling homeward to its ancient source,
One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart.
By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled,
Each separate soul contains the nation’s force,
And both embrace the world.
Kindle the silver candle’s seven rays,
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers,
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours
For Truth and Law and Love.
Source: Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (c. Broadview Press 2002)
Emma Lazarus (1849-1887) is most famous for the words inscribed on the Statute of Liberty from her poem, The New Colossus:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Lazarus was one of the first successful and publically recognized Jewish American authors. She was born in New York City to a wealthy family. She began writing and translating poetry as a teenager and was publishing translations of German poems by the 1860s. Lazarus was moved by the fierce persecution of her people in Russia, a frequent topic of her writings, as well as their struggles to assimilate into American culture. You can sample more of Emma Lazarus’ poetry and read more about her at the Poetry Foundation website.
Peter's Outer Cape Portico 