The Promise of a Treat, The Reverend David R. Williams, Pentecost XXIV--Year A--October 30, 2005

Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

Once a year, when I hear the Collect for this particular Sunday, an image surfaces from my childhood.

I am playing in my front yard and I am not quite five years old. A few neighborhood friends are playing with me. My mother is close by.

Suddenly, one of my playmates seems distracted. He raises his head and he looks around. “It’s here,” he yells.

Then we hear the jingling music coming from somewhere around the corner. As the little white ice cream truck comes into view, we all are aflutter. “Mom, Mom, ice cream truck. Let’s go!” We race to the street curb where the truck stops. Without stumbling, we run. We run to obtain our treat – our afternoon promise.

My imagination gets carried away by yet another perspective as I hear this Collect. Picture our Holy Comforter crucifer, torchbearers and choir running without stumbling down the nave in procession – followed closely by the flags, laity and clergy.

See our Senior Warden Steve Slott running to the microphone to share the good news of the latest Vestry meeting—or Stewardship Campaign Co-Chairs Pat Puett and Buster Brown, piles of pledge cards in hand, running gracefully and without stumbling to share the joyous outcome of their weeks of effort.

The Hebrew nation is running in today’s Old Testament lesson. The Hebrew people cross two vast bodies of water on their running journey – first the Red or Reed Sea as they travel from a nation in slavery to a nation in the wilderness. There are dispiriting moments in the journey when the Hebrews feel they are stumbling, but, in retrospect, this was a nation on the run.

For years, the people of God live, wander and run in the desert, the Sinai wilderness. They discover a brand new relationship with their God upon receiving the gift of Covenant in the form of the Ten Commandments. The Hebrews are able to “run without stumbling” as they move toward a new future.

Another major sea, the Jordan River, faces the people of God as they move from the leadership of Moses to the new leadership of Joshua. Again, a sea of water rises up in a single heap and forbids the people of God leaving the shores of wilderness for the shores of a Promised Land – a land flowing with God’s resources, a land of milk and honey and everlasting nourishment.

The nation runs without stumbling to obtain the promises of God.

What symbols of our daily lives invite us to turn from what we may be doing, to awaken, and become alert to the promise of the next shore?

Our love for the telephone has grown in the past century and a half. When the phone rings, we stop what we are doing--or try to do two or three things at once as we begin a new conversation. Cell phones ensure less privacy than we knew even ten years ago. A constant flow of television commercials is a subliminal barrage of fantasy and false promise. The ice cream truck image now becomes another intrusion, not the promise of a treat.

Where do we find the promise? What beckons us to a better place?

We may choose to come to this sacred place on a Sunday morning, bringing in heart and soul our own personal desert places of wilderness and wandering. We see at a distance the adornments on the Altar, a Chalice lovingly covered with linens of the Church Season. We are surrounded by glorious stained glass, the colorful light of storytelling filling the pews and touching our hearts, each Sunday in new and surprising ways. Music from organ and choir enrich the mystery of this space as we hear harmony, dissonance, and then again harmony.

These are Holy signs in our swirling, frenetic lives. Listen. There is another side to the river, a place and promise of God beyond all that we can imagine or assume to know.

The River Jordan is a symbol here in our lives and in our church Sanctuary. During the Eucharist, we travel from pews to Altar, we move through and to the other side of the River Jordan

Jesus challenges the “church,” the “Synagogue” leaders of his day. Jesus believes the teachers in the Synagogue have complicated this necessary journey from wilderness to Promised Land. Jesus accuses the teachers of protecting narrow beliefs, restricting the people of God from access to the infinite resources of God and keeping the people of God on the shore of the wilderness.

Jesus parts the River Jordan and illuminates a path to the promise of God’s Kingdom. Jesus says that all may enter here-- not just the Priests, the Pharisees, the Scribes and those most knowledgeable and powerful.

We seek consolation and comfort. Would we recognize God’s Kingdom? A beginning might be to hold sacred the familiar treasures of our own well-worn Sanctuary: the Bible held aloft by the symbol of the Eagle; the cross standing high above the altar at the center of our vision; the face of a friend across the aisle or the stranger in a pew in front of us; the beauty of the simple anthem; the plain morsel of bread, the sweet taste of wine. The most simple and familiar may indeed be a sacred promise, holding us up as we cross wilderness and sea.

So often the world is too much with us and we lose sight of the simple gifts, the treasures of ordinary life. We stand at the shores of the Jordan. We may be more ready than we know to cross, to run and, finally, to know a new place of light and harmony.

A story is told about a former Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts by the familiar name of Phillips Brooks. He wrote the words we now sing to “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

Being a graduate of Virginia Seminary, the alma mater of Rod Reinecke and yours truly, Phillip Brooks surely was what we call a “low churchman.” As a Bishop, he seldom wore a clerical collar. He wore the clothes of the laity – coat and tie.

On one occasion Brooks was asked to attend a fundraising dinner at a church in his Diocese. True to form, he appeared in coat and tie-- dark suit, white shirt, maroon tie-- nothing to distinguish him as a Bishop of the Church.

The Rector asked whether Bishop Brooks might consider something more “Bishop-like” in order to make the impression needed for the fundraiser.

Bishop Brooks put down his brief case, reached into it, and promptly changed his tie to a black one.

Phillips Brooks, historically one of the greatest preachers of the church, once said, “Always remember the mysterious richness of human nature and the nearness of God to each one of us.”

“All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted,” Jesus says, inviting us to cross the Baptismal waters of the Jordan to a new land of promise.

Amen.