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Two days ago our Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts-Schori, invited the clergy and lay leaders of the diocese to meet with her for several hours. She began by saying she wanted to have a conversation with us, and she explained that when that Latin word converso entered the English language, it meant, “to turn around” or, more colloquially, “to hang out together with”. Initially, it had nothing to do with speaking or words; it was about being together and getting to know one another. And that is what she did, by choosing to spend several hours listening to our comments and questions, without any apparent agenda of her own. (By the way, that is what the Vestry wants to do after our worship today: spend some time listening to your comments and answering your questions.) Being together and getting to know one another is one way to describe the Body of Christ: we are together because we have been baptized into one body. We are blessed by this togetherness, and invited to get to know one another. Two Sundays ago, we learned more about the elders in our community, when we celebrated the birthdays of those who are 80 and older. Last Sunday, we came to know the children in our community a little better, when we celebrated the Children’s Sabbath. In particular, we learned that children can be healing ministers; and I suspect we will not wait a whole year to invite them to share in this ministry again. Today, we are getting to know which members of St. Thomas are veterans, and when they served, and where. We are having part 3 of a conversation, in which we are getting to know one another better. The service our veterans gave to our country has preserved our way of life and our freedoms. The veterans sacrificed their own freedom for a time, facing the uncertainties of where their duty would take them, and whether they would return. Each duty assignment, in war or in peace, is equally valuable, and we are most grateful for your service to our country. And we are grateful to your families as well, who had to make sacrifices and bear uncertainties. There are two members of this parish, who are presently on active duty in war zones: Colonel Mike Luft, in Afghanistan, and Chris McVey, on the USS Rushmore, which has been stationed in the Persian Gulf. It is a sad and terrible fact of human nature, that we are so willing to use violence against one another; to claim control over the lives and property of others, and to insist with coercion, that other peoples do our bidding. Bishop Katherine said on Friday, that “insistence on being right is an idolatry”. She said, there is something in human nature, which is still primitive and tribal. We look at people different from ourselves, and cannot see the image of God in them. All we see, is another tribe, not my tribe. And so it is that we go to war; thousands of people lose their lives, and the landscape of the earth: trees, animals, roads, houses, churches, are destroyed. On two previous occasions when I have been traveling in Europe, I have visited American military cemeteries. In 1985, I visited Bellau Woods Cemetery, in the Marne Valley in France, which was the place of a fierce battle in June 1918. Two things impressed me: first, that the tour guide described the battle there as if it had happened last month, and second, the great sadness of thousands of deaths marked by rows and rows of white crosses. In 1993, I visited the 10th Mountain Division Cemetery near Florence, Italy, on behalf of my father, who served in that Division. There I was astonished to hear that significant numbers of the veterans, who served in the 10th Mountain Division, come every year to observe Memorial Day with the Italians in the area. As I was thinking about that great generation who fought in World War II, and about how few of them were willing to talk about their experiences, I received from one of our veterans, Paul Eustace, an online book called War: Words of Hope for Uncertain Times. It was put together a year after 9/11, as an antidote to fear. It contains hopeful quotations, “all of which sound a common note: our faith that though there will be war and rumors of war, God ultimately directs the course of history, and holds us in his hands”. I have chosen three of those quotations to share with you, to help make the connection between our faith, our veterans, and our Scripture readings. The first quotation is from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980: “Let us not be disheartened, One of the great challenges both for Jews and for Christians, is to make sense of the idea that God directs history. Certainly the prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures believe it was so: beginning with the rescue of Moses from the bulrushes and the exodus from slavery in Egypt, all the way to the exile in Babylon and the return from exile. Today’s reading from the prophet Haggai, is one of the few in the Bible to which we can assign a precise date: this message was given in October, 520 BC, to the exiles who had returned from Babylon to Jerusalem. The prophet asked, who can remember how the Temple looked before it was destroyed? And the answer was, only people 73 years old or older, would have had such a memory. I suspect very few people in their 70’s made it back from Babylon. Although there are 10 verses in this reading, the prophet had only two things to say: first, get to work on a new Temple, and second, God’s Spirit will be with you in this rebuilding project. So here is an example of God directing history by calling people to specific tasks, and giving them the strength to accomplish them. The importance of responding to such a call, whether it be to defend one’s country, or to rebuild what has fallen, or to create something new, is expressed in the second quotation, by George Bernard Shaw: “This is the true joy of life: being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one: being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to others, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for them whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live . . . Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” Yesterday at the consecration, Bishop Leo Frade said a similar thing in his sermon that he hoped Mary would come to the pearly gates, having been used up in her episcopate. What happens in the process of giving, is we receive back more than we have given, so that our lives are woven into the lives of others. When St. Paul writes about this, he uses the example of our bodies, how we need ears and eyes, hands and feet, each with a different task, working together, each contributing to the whole. People assume, without thinking about it, that their contribution to the greater good is the children they have created and raised. Some such idea must have been held by the Sadducees, who believed in the law in Deuteronomy, which said that if a man dies without producing a child, his brother should take the widow to be his wife, and “the firstborn shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother” (Deut 25:6). Now the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection, so they posed their question about the 7 brothers in order to ridicule Jesus. The important point for us to notice, is what Jesus said about the age to come: it is not like this physical life, with marriage, birth and death. The age to come is for those who are found worthy, because they have followed the way of Jesus, which is the way of giving, of sharing, and of service. What matters, is that the followers of Jesus have sought for, and served Christ in others. This is beautifully expressed by Oscar Romero, in the third quotation from War: Words of Hope for Uncertain Times: “The present form of the world passes away,
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