Michael Hurricane, Michael Angel, & Hope (sermon 18 November 2018)
This is never off-the-cuff, you know, we clergy write these things down, starting inside our heads early in the week, slowly but eventually progressing to the sheaf of papers we bring into the pulpit.
By my bishop’s loving choice for me, I went to Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where I acquired a Lutheran’s devotion to 16th century reformer Martin Luther, including Luther’s dedication to preaching. Luther said, “I hate a long sermon.” Luther advised, “You climb up into the pulpit, open your mouth, and then stop and get down.” Luther was said to spend all day Saturday writing, condensing, polishing his Sunday sermons, Saturday being hell for his wife and children, whom Luther despotically required they be still and silent, quiet as mice while he studied and prayed and thought and wrote.
When I was a parish priest I started my sermon every Sunday afternoon a week early, read the Scripture for the following Sunday, and through the week eighteen to twenty hours in reading, research, thought, meditation and composition; handwriting (those were days before computers and the internet), and working my sermon to where it was twelve minutes or less and I was not ashamed to climb up into the pulpit with it.
In those days I had an enormous library, and subscribed to three or four so-called “pulpit helps” publications by well-known preachers and scholars, plus books with lectionary-related artwork to clip and paste into my Sunday bulletins. Nowadays all that is on the web, you go online and find what you want.
One of the online resources we use is "The Text This Week." Besides all the Revised Common Lectionary readings for different churches, Roman Catholic, United Methodist, Episcopal, United Church of Christ, American Baptist, Presbyterian and a host of others, "The Text This Week" has sample sermons and sermon illustrations, even suitable pulpit jokes in good taste (in The Episcopal Church, good taste outranks Godliness); and every week a different bit of art that’s related in some way to the Sunday readings or to current events, or to the church season, offered to be used as a free bulletin cover.
I was surprised that the artwork for today is the enormous sculpture of the Archangel Michael victorious over the devil, that Linda and I have seen, on the outside front wall of Saint Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry, England.
Calling on their history, the people of Coventry Cathedral cast themselves as “a place to find Hope, and to share Hope.”
Michael the Archangel, a place to find Hope: Michael Angel standing victorious over Satan (two figures from the book of Revelation), lends such irony to our time in the devastating ruins of Michael Hurricane that it signifies for me, and let it be for you if you need it as I do, a symbol of the Hope we must find and share in what otherwise will, if we let it after the satanic attack of Michael Hurricane, descend into disillusionment, discouragement, hopelessness and despair.
Driving around our city, my beautiful hometown where I was born and grew up and that I love above all places on earth, driving around town from bridge to bridge these days and seeing the destruction reduces me to raging tears of unfocused fury. But I must not let evil despair conquer me. We cannot let hopelessness overwhelm us and give satan the victory. The church offers this morning, from Coventry Cathedral, a symbol of the hope that Christians in a desolated place nearly three generations ago brought out of the most evil age of recorded human history.
If you do not know Coventry history, know it now. On the night of November 14, 1940, the city of Coventry was devastated by a continual ten hour bombing raid in which wave after wave of German warplanes dropped some 500 tonnes of high explosives, including parachute air-mines, incendiary petroleum mines, and 36,000 incendiary bombs to create a firestorm. Ten hours: it would have been like three Hurricane Michaels coming ashore, making landfall three times in continual succession. Hit by several incendiary bombs, St. Michael’s Cathedral burned with the city. The decision to rebuild the cathedral was made the morning after its destruction, with rebuilding not to be an act of defiance, but a sign of Hope for the future. Consecrated in 1962, the cathedral complex of old ruins and new construction signifies Coventry’s experience of satanic evil conquered by Hope.
In our own desolation here on the Florida Gulf Coast - - only Love and Forgiveness and Determination can give us Victory over satan, where the enemy of despair is Hope. I think I’m willing to hang in there, and I invite you also to commit to Hope, even again and again and again.
So, Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith. where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
+++++++++++++++
Sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, 18 Nov 2018, Proper 28 B; 6th Sunday after Michael Hurricane. The Rev Tom Weller.
By my bishop’s loving choice for me, I went to Lutheran Theological Seminary, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where I acquired a Lutheran’s devotion to 16th century reformer Martin Luther, including Luther’s dedication to preaching. Luther said, “I hate a long sermon.” Luther advised, “You climb up into the pulpit, open your mouth, and then stop and get down.” Luther was said to spend all day Saturday writing, condensing, polishing his Sunday sermons, Saturday being hell for his wife and children, whom Luther despotically required they be still and silent, quiet as mice while he studied and prayed and thought and wrote.
When I was a parish priest I started my sermon every Sunday afternoon a week early, read the Scripture for the following Sunday, and through the week eighteen to twenty hours in reading, research, thought, meditation and composition; handwriting (those were days before computers and the internet), and working my sermon to where it was twelve minutes or less and I was not ashamed to climb up into the pulpit with it.
In those days I had an enormous library, and subscribed to three or four so-called “pulpit helps” publications by well-known preachers and scholars, plus books with lectionary-related artwork to clip and paste into my Sunday bulletins. Nowadays all that is on the web, you go online and find what you want.
One of the online resources we use is "The Text This Week." Besides all the Revised Common Lectionary readings for different churches, Roman Catholic, United Methodist, Episcopal, United Church of Christ, American Baptist, Presbyterian and a host of others, "The Text This Week" has sample sermons and sermon illustrations, even suitable pulpit jokes in good taste (in The Episcopal Church, good taste outranks Godliness); and every week a different bit of art that’s related in some way to the Sunday readings or to current events, or to the church season, offered to be used as a free bulletin cover.
I was surprised that the artwork for today is the enormous sculpture of the Archangel Michael victorious over the devil, that Linda and I have seen, on the outside front wall of Saint Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry, England.
Calling on their history, the people of Coventry Cathedral cast themselves as “a place to find Hope, and to share Hope.”
Michael the Archangel, a place to find Hope: Michael Angel standing victorious over Satan (two figures from the book of Revelation), lends such irony to our time in the devastating ruins of Michael Hurricane that it signifies for me, and let it be for you if you need it as I do, a symbol of the Hope we must find and share in what otherwise will, if we let it after the satanic attack of Michael Hurricane, descend into disillusionment, discouragement, hopelessness and despair.
Driving around our city, my beautiful hometown where I was born and grew up and that I love above all places on earth, driving around town from bridge to bridge these days and seeing the destruction reduces me to raging tears of unfocused fury. But I must not let evil despair conquer me. We cannot let hopelessness overwhelm us and give satan the victory. The church offers this morning, from Coventry Cathedral, a symbol of the hope that Christians in a desolated place nearly three generations ago brought out of the most evil age of recorded human history.
If you do not know Coventry history, know it now. On the night of November 14, 1940, the city of Coventry was devastated by a continual ten hour bombing raid in which wave after wave of German warplanes dropped some 500 tonnes of high explosives, including parachute air-mines, incendiary petroleum mines, and 36,000 incendiary bombs to create a firestorm. Ten hours: it would have been like three Hurricane Michaels coming ashore, making landfall three times in continual succession. Hit by several incendiary bombs, St. Michael’s Cathedral burned with the city. The decision to rebuild the cathedral was made the morning after its destruction, with rebuilding not to be an act of defiance, but a sign of Hope for the future. Consecrated in 1962, the cathedral complex of old ruins and new construction signifies Coventry’s experience of satanic evil conquered by Hope.
In our own desolation here on the Florida Gulf Coast - - only Love and Forgiveness and Determination can give us Victory over satan, where the enemy of despair is Hope. I think I’m willing to hang in there, and I invite you also to commit to Hope, even again and again and again.
So, Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith. where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
+++++++++++++++
Sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, 18 Nov 2018, Proper 28 B; 6th Sunday after Michael Hurricane. The Rev Tom Weller.