Sermon: Oil and Anointing for End of Year

Sermon Preached on June 17, 2018

Proper 6B RCL

The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse

Academy for Vocational Leadership

Colombiere Retreat and Conference Center

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer

Amen

Wow. The final HE for our year together.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes[1]
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles
In laughter, in strife

In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in the life

How about love?
…Measure in love
----

And we have loved a lot this year. So thank you.

And today is the last day.

Does that mean you are done? you stop learning?  you have arrived? 

Of course not.

Does that mean you might be sad for this experience ending?

Sure.

So you can relate to Samuel’s grief.  For,

Today was the last day for Saul, the very King that Samuel had anointed.

Samuel must have felt like it was the last day ever.

“Samuel grieved over Saul.

And the Lord was sorry

that he had made Saul king over Israel.”

You know the story:  The Israelites rejected God as their king.

They wanted a king in flesh and blood that sat on a real throne.

They demanded a king and God listened,

appointing priest Samuel to anoint Saul as the king. 

In that anointing, Samuel poured a vial of oil over his head. 

And their life in ministry together began;

they were bound together into God’s story. 

But you know what happened.

Along the way, Saul rebelled. 

By sparing the Amalekite’s cattle

and offering it as a sacrifice,

Saul’s version of sacrifice

became more important to him

than obedience to God. 

So, God rejected him as king over Israel.

And Samuel mourned. The Lord was sorry. (pause)

Only twice throughout the bible

does God seem to regret anything. This was very unusual.

You know the first time, in Genesis,

the matter of the, ahem, little rainstorm and subsequent flood.

Then, here, we read The Lord was sorry. 

God regrets having anointed Saul –

 The one who had promised to keep covenant but did not.

What strikes me today is the nature of missed expectations.

Saul did not live up to The Lord’s expectations.

Samuel grieved the loss, the seeming end of his (Samuel’s) purpose.

I wonder if we, too, grieve over “Saul.”

·        We expected answers that AVFL didn’t have:

o   like the meaning of life or why the pit of an avocado is so large.

·        We expected our parish discernment committees

o   to recognize our untapped gifts. 

·        We expected sooner ordinations,

o   or quicker responses of COM interviews,  

·        We grieve the friendship expectations we will have to re-make

o   as we become ordained pastoral leaders and that changes relationships.

·        Broader, we ache for a Benedictine hospitality

o   to be extended to families at the border who seek refuge.

·        We grieve the way that

o   people who are perceived as “other” are invisible,

§  or worse, targeted with phobia.

·        We mourn the loss of civility in public conversation

o   and now recognize a lack of Benedictine humility

o   in much of our governmental leadership.

What expectations do you have for others, now at the end of this year?

We grieve over “Saul.”

pause

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

What about love? Oh, right, LOVE! And grace!

The good news in today’s text? 

This text demonstrates so well,

God knew the story was not over.

There was a lot of Love to be spread around! 

The Lord was not done looking for a new king yet.

The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will your mourn for Saul,

since I have rejected him as king over Israel?

Fill your horn with oil and be on your way’. 1 Samuel 16:1 

Fill your horn with oil!

This time, it’s not a little vial, but an entire HORN of oil. 

“I want the guy to be drenched in oil – make it stick!”

you can imagine The Lord remarking.

“Don’t spend any more precious time mourning the past when I have moved on.”

God had a new king for Samuel to anoint. 

God could not do God’s work

as long as Samuel was stuck in disappointments and missed expectations. 

Because you know, there was a shepherd boy

waiting in the fields

for Samuel to relinquish “what had been”

so he could be part of “what was to be.”

King David was part of Samuel’s future

but he couldn’t have gotten there while still mourning Saul.

On that day

the Lord told Samuel, go to Jesse and – don’t worry,

I’ll tell you what you shall do

and you shall anoint for me the one that I name.

I’ll tell you what you shall do….pause

Today’s good news? The Lord is asking you to become new. 

Fill your horn with oil!

This time, it’s not a little vial, but an entire HORN of oil. 

“I want the YOU to be drenched in oil,”

you can almost imagine The Lord remarking. 

Yes, it’s the end of the year,

the end of these relationships,

the end of the AVFL community as we know it.

AND God anoints you in this ending, so that you can anoint others. 

Your mission through these texts

to co-create the world in a fresh way.

You go and fill your horn with oil. 

God will tell you what you shall do with God’s love and light and blessing.

God chose you, at this time, to go

and anoint God’s people in

Grayling, Otter Lake, Lapeer,

Gladwin, Mt. Clemens, Lansing,

Belleville, Novi, Chelsea,

Lake Orion, Saugatuck, Grand Rapids,

Grand Haven, Kalamazoo, Sturgis and Marshall.. go and anoint!

Guide them in community work.

Guide them to provide radical hospitality.

Guide them to honor their precious style of worship.

Guide them to break the mold and do something new.

God chose you, your unique gifts, your special perspective,

for a new church,for a new society, to make God’s dream come true.

God values your unique set of ears

that will hear when God says,

“rise and anoint that one, chose that one to continue my dream.”

One of the best lessons a mentor taught me was this:

Church will nearly always fall short of expectations. 

People will disappoint you.

No rector will meet your expectations.

You will work for some goofballs. 

You will have to do menial work.

You will be surprised by grace.

You will be embarrassed.

And you will SHINE!!

Today’s good news?

God has not stopped looking – there is no last place. 

Not until the day of Resurrection where all things are made new –

For today God pours out God’s love and oil on you. 

Out of the ending of our program year,

new beginnings can come forth.

“Because you are in Christ and there is a new creation –

see, everything has passed away – see, everything has become new!”

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes[2]
How do you measure a year in the life

Of a woman or a man?

In truths that she learned
Or in times that he cried
In bridges he burned
Or the way that she died

It's time now to sing out
Tho' the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends

Fill your horn with oil and be on your way’

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[1] Seasons of Love, Song by Donny Osmond, Lyrics cited at https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Rent-3/Seasons-of-Love on June 14, 2018

[2] Seasons of Love, Song by Donny Osmond, Lyrics cited at https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Rent-3/Seasons-of-Love on June 14, 2018

Sermon: God's One Thing

A Sermon preached in 

Christ Church, Grosse Pointe, Michigan
by The Reverend Vicki Hesse, Associate

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, 

RCL Proper 12, Year A
30 July 2017

Listen here.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts

be always acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

In the 1991 movie City Slickers the cowboy Curly gives city slicker Mitch some life advice. They are riding horses along the prairie to move the herd from here to there.  In this scene, Curly says to Mitch, “Do you know what the secret of life is? [holds up one finger] This.” Mitch replies, “Your finger?” Curly scans the horizon, ignoring Mitch, and then explains, “One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean [nothin’].” (expletive deleted)

Mitch thinks for just a moment and replies, “But, what is the "one thing?" As they ramble along, the hot sun shines on Curly’s face and with a raised eyebrow, Curly replies, “That's what you have to find out.” For Mitch, whose was about to turn 40 his One Thing was buried deep in his heart.  His work was to sort out his One Thing in the midst of complicated life.

Of all the “things” for which Solomon could have asked (in today’s first reading), when God showed up… of all the riches, or long life, or victory over his enemies, the One Thing Solomon wanted was an understanding mind. Solomon’s motivation to understand, however, was not as simple as this appears. This little bit of text from our lectionary compilers does not tell the whole story.

See, Solomon was a complicated character and scripture more complicated than it appears. The text prior to today’s reading offers background.  The first verses describe Solomon as having married the daughter of Pharaoh. What does that imply? Well, one commentator explained, that, “political exigencies are one thing, but it is hard to justify kinship ties with Egypt the great oppressor of Israel.”[1] Further, this marriage violated the Israelite covenant to “not have relations with foreign people.” Subsequent verses describe Solomon as faithful and devoted, loving the Lord and walking in the statutes of his father David,[2] but worshipping by sacrificing and offering incense at high places.[3] Those “high places” were almost always strongly condemned when mentioned in the OT. 

Yes, Solomon was a complicated character. And, the original Hebrew of this conversation between Solomon and God unveils the complications, too. 

First, do you see (in that first line?) how The Lord appeared to Solomon, and God said?  Two names being used. Here, The Lord and God. See, the English use of The Lord is usually from the Hebrew Yahweh, from the four letters YHWH. Yahweh is the only proper name for God in Hebrew, arising from the pronunciation of YH-WH, the sound of breathing. (yah…breathing in, weh…breathing out. That’s a great spiritual practice on which to meditate - another sermon for another time). This name means something like, “immediacy, a presence,” or “God is with us.”[4]

The English use of God, in this case, is from the Hebrew Elohim, the subject of the Bible’s first sentence, the Creator God. Elohim means God in the highest and widest sense, with the fullness of divine power and expansiveness of the heavenly host. This name means God beyond our imagination BIG.

Now, see how Solomon addresses God, “O Lord my God”? That double name emphasizes the majesty of Elohim found in the immediacy of Yahweh. That double name is commonly known in the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, The Lord is One” and emphasizes the paradoxical intimacy and immensity of the Divine.

So, when Solomon addresses God with his desire, he says something like: You, who are so close to me as my breath and so pervasive and expansive I can’t comprehend, You are the only one to whom I can ask, from my depth, for an understanding mind. 

But wait! There’s more!  For Solomon asks for understanding with the Hebrew word “shama,” meaning discerning: to hear, to listen to, to obey.  And Solomon asks for a mind with the Hebrew word “leb” meaning the heart: the feelings, the will and the intellect.

Our complicated Solomon is asking from this paradoxical God for a listening heart.

It’s complicated and it’s simple. Can you relate?  People are always a mix of complex motives and it is dangerous to romanticize anyone.  All lives have back stories, and all language used to describe them is insufficient because our feelings cloud the seemingly simple view of our lives.

Maybe our grief surrounding the death of our best friend is fraught with the time we were angry at her for something that we never got to resolve while she was alive. 

Maybe our trust in a friend is frayed because he did not reply to our call for help when we really needed him. 

Maybe our compassion for the woman begging for food is deepened because she looks like our sister who suffers with mental illness.

We, too, are complicated characters with mixed motives. What is our One Thing? Aren’t we, too, asking, from that same paradoxical God for a listening heart? It’s complicated and it’s simple. We wonder with listening hearts: Why am I struggling financially? Why did my friend get cancer?  Why did that transgender teenager take their own life? Why is that person so snarky at me because of the color of my skin or because of the gender of my lover? That One Thing for each of us, is different. 

So on that day, to Solomon, who had prayed and walked in the statutes of his father David throughout his complicated, young adult life … to Solomon God appeared. God appeared. Who was this God? This was the God who came to Solomon despite his complicated failures and frailties.  This was the God who wanted to listen with God’s heart to him.

Last week I heard about the nearly-completed development of Nasa’s most powerful telescope ever.  The James Webb Space Telescope, (to be launched in October of 2018)will study, with infrared and other new technologies, every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang to the evolution of our own Solar System. This telescope is so powerful that it will be able to look at stars before they were born.  Before they were born!  That means exploring the whole of creation and the dynamic processes of stardust.

In November last year, NASA invited creative artists from around the country to visit the telescope, with its gold-coated mirror. Twenty-five selected artists brought art supplies to listen with the ear of their heart and create in front of the telescope, housed inside its massive cleanroom behind a viewing window. The artists used watercolor, 3D printed sculpture, silk screening, acrylics, comics, woodwork, metalwork, fiber art, ink, kite-making, tattooing and other media.

Their One Thing? To create in front of the observation of creation.  To listen with their heart. To consider with awe, up close, the expansiveness of our universe.

See, this desire to understand, this desire to be known, is not only what we, humanity, seek, it is also the desire of the God who seeks us, the God who appears to us every moment. This is the God who initiates contact with us, despite our complicated lives and frailties. This is the God who makes the first move and keeps yearning to know us, to discern our hearts.This is the God of Love who meets us with a powerful, mysterious yearning and an intimacy so near as the breath passing over our lips.

This is the God whose “one thing” is to Love and be loved.                                            Amen

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[1] Brent Strawn commentary on 1 Kings found here.

[2] Verse 3a

[3] Verse 3b

[4] Names of God research found here on July 25, 2017