May 29, 2011

The Feast of St. Dunstan and the Seventh Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Rob Fisher
St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

Texts: Ecclesiasticus 44:1-7; Psalm 57:6-11; Ephesians 5:15-20;
Matthew 24:42-47

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

You may have heard this already, but apparently the world was supposed to end last weekend.

You may have also noticed that my plan was to be on Maui for all eternity.

It didn’t work.

Or perhaps this here is paradise, right now, and we are living into it together

***

The ultimate story of Christianity as it is often misinterpreted is a story of escaping the world, and finding paradise, or heaven, or the Kingdom of God someplace else.

But the story that Jesus tells is less a story of escape from the world that God created, but rather a story of bringing fulfillment to this world so that it would be what it was meant to be.  His is a story of light dispelling the world’s shadows and healing coming to fill the world’s brokenness.

We are not called to get our parachutes and escape.

Rather, the call that Jesus gives is a call to wake up, to open our eyes and our ears to the presence of God among us, to put our focus off of ourselves and onto others, and to become bearers of God’s love to the world.

We cannot contain God’s love, but we can bear it into the world.

And when we do, we bring Kingdom of God one step closer.

***
And that brings us to Dunstan.

was indeed a saint, and we honor him, like we honor many of the saints, by giving him a special day.  We call it his feast day.  (This year we broke the rules a little and moved his day to today, but it is really May 19th every year.)

Dunstan was a brilliant mind, a gifted artist and craftsman, a great leader of people, and a devout monk.

Dunstan achieved many things in his life, but what makes him a saint is that his life always pointed toward God.

He lived just over a thousand years ago.  He became the abbot—the head person—of Glastonbury Abbey, and a spiritual leader to royalty, and he quickly rose up the ranks to become the Archbishop of Canterbury.  He was a reformer who did much to restore the church in England during his day.

He is the patron saint of silversmiths, and was for many years the patron saint of England.

Someone who knew him left us this picture of what Dunstan was like:

And so the whole of…England was filled with his holy doctrine, and it shone before God like the sun and the moon….At the celebration of the Mass, he [intoned] with such integrity of devotion and of mind that he seemed to talk with the lord Himself face to face….He used always to lift up his eyes and his hands to heaven, and his spirit never relaxed from prayer.

Regarding the life of the saints, it is easy to fall into hero worship, but I believe that is a mistake.  Actual saints were and are human beings.

Saints are not necessarily better people.

Rather, they are people who are better informed.

They are blessed with a gift for closeness to God.

Their eyes and their ears are so full of an intimate awareness of God that they can’t shut it off, and they live always in response to that awareness.

So that their lives become totally illuminated with the light of God.

I love the words of today’s psalm, which to me epitomize the life of a saint:

I will confess you among the peoples, O LORD;

I will sing praise to you among the nations.

For your loving-kindness is greater than the heavens,
And your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

***

The Church has always had a conflicted view of the world.  On one hand, God created all things.  And when God created all things, what did he call the things that he made?  He proclaimed them good!

On the other hand, especially in the writing of Saint Paul, there is a clear line drawn between that which is of this world, and that which is spiritual.

Today, in the reading from his letter to the Ephesians, we hear him say:

“Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Do not get drunk with wine…but be filled with the Spirit…giving thanks to God…at all times and for everything[!]”

Yes, the world was created by God, and it was created to be good, but its has not yet been fulfilled.

The way of the world is different from the way of God.
Henri Nouwen writes about this.  He sees that for us to strive for our ultimate fulfillment in the things of the world, we are looking in the wrong place.  He writes:

“As long as I keep running about asking: ‘Do you love me? Do you really love me?’ I give all power to the voices of the world and put myself in bondage because the world is filled with ‘ifs.’

“The world says: ‘Yes, I love you if you are good-looking, intelligent, and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, a good job, and good connections. I love you if you produce much, sell much, and buy much.’ There are endless ‘ifs’ hidden in the world’s love. These ‘ifs’ enslave me, since it is impossible to respond adequately to all of them.

“The world’s love is and always will be conditional. As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain ‘hooked’ to the world—trying, failing, and trying again. It is a world that fosters addictions because what it offers cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart.”

Of course, only God’s love can do that.

And when we look elsewhere for fulfillment we will never be fully satisfied.

***

The Spiritual person that each of us is called to be is one who will take a cue from the saints and will become awake to God.  As the psalmist says: Awake my soul!

It is not about being in our out of paradise.  It is about being bearers of paradise.

That is the secret.

That is the fulfillment that God has set for us.

That is the true Kingdom of God.

—Amen.