# Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost November 25, 2024 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) *By the Rev. Alanna C. Sullivan* *Associate Minister and Director of Administration* *The Memorial Church of Harvard University* *(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Nov. 24, 2024)* Will you pray with me? May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts and minds be acceptable in your sight, oh God, our rock and redeemer. Amen. Sometimes, it is just harder to pay attention, like when in the morning, I'm rousing my two kids out of bed, getting everyone dressed, making breakfast, and packing lunches. As we leave the house I go through my mental checklist, shoes, check. Jackets, check. Gloves, check. And usually I'm missing one thing and then I have to go back into the house to retrieve it. One morning this week, after I filled my six-year-old son's backpack and had checked it off my list, Henry kept going back to his backpack, unzipping it, and pulling out what I had placed inside. At first, I asked him politely, "Henry, can you please pack your bag? We have to leave in a couple minutes." Second time, "Henry, please pack your bag." Third time, "Henry, your bag." I must admit I was getting frustrated at this point, so I took a deep breath and I asked, "Henry, why is it that you keep unpacking your bag?" "Mom, Ben brought his pet frog to class; they are so cool. Did you know that frogs have been on earth for more than 200 million years, and they can see really well in the dark? And did you know their tongues are one-third of their body length? I want to show you a picture I drew of Ben's frog's tongue." He then fished out a paper from the bottom of his bag with a frog drawn in one teeny tiny corner and a tongue that it took up the rest of the page. He really wanted me to admire the frog's tongue. He wanted me to pause. He wanted me to pay attention, which I did for a moment. And then we piled into the car with Henry reciting more cool frog facts all the way to school. That experience reminded me of a well-known haiku written by Japanese poet Bashō, an old silent pond, "Into the pond a frog jumps. Splash. Silence again." Its subject matter could not be more mundane, its language more common place. Bashō does not provide any commentary on this happenstance. He just writes what he observes. I first learned about Bashō when Stephanie Paulsell invited the Memorial Church staff to read his book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. It's about his pilgrimage through Japan in the 17th century. Writer Frederick Buechner observes with this haiku, "Bashō simply invites our attention to know more and know less than just this. The old pond in its watery stillness, the kerplunk of the frog. The gradual return of the stillness. In effect, he's putting a frame around the moment, and that is the nature and purpose of frames. The frame doesn't change the moment, but it changes our way of perceiving it. It makes us take notice, and that is what Bashō invites above all else." Buechner goes on, "Literature, painting, music, the most basic lesson that all art teaches us is to stop, look, listen to life on this planet, including our very own lives. As a vastly richer, deeper, more mysterious business than most of the time it ever occurs to us to suspect. As we bumble along from day to day on automatic pilot. That is the power of art. It causes one, to pay attention to what we usually miss or overlook. Bracketing a scene, heightens our senses, we more fully and more deeply drink in what stands before us. Setting parentheses around an ordinary moment helps us to see that it is, in fact, truly extraordinary." –– Embed [Harvard Memorial Church](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church "Harvard Memorial Church") · [The Rev. Alanna C. Sullivan. - Nov. 24, 2024 | Palm Sunday Sermon](https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church/the-rev-alanna-c-sullivan-novvenber-24-2024-palm-sunday-sermon "The Rev. Alanna C. Sullivan. - Nov. 24, 2024 | Palm Sunday Sermon") –– How Bashō frames a moment with his writing reminds me of how Stephanie has pastored to this community. Stephanie, there are so many things we could say about the imprint that you have left upon, our communal and worship life. Your poetic writing, stirring sermons, your graciousness, generosity of spirit, your thank you notes. A thread of Stephanie's ministry has been to borrow a phrase from Howard Thurman: the unhurried attention that she has paid to us. Stephanie has a particular gift of paying attention to those around her and calling forth those gifts that she observes in them; she makes us all better people. It's hard to overstate the power of paying an unhurried attention to one another. And paying attention is not merely an act of devotion, paying attention can be a call to action. Last week, I attended a tour at the MFA, organized by Abby McElroy, our multi-faith engagement fellow, and led by Dr. Nadirah Mansour, the inaugural assistant curator of Islamic Art for the Museum. At one point during the tour, Dr. Mansour invited participants to pair off. She gave each of us a note card with a number on one side, and she asked us not to flip over the note card. The number was a gallery number. We were told to find the gallery and then flip over the card. My partner and I were brought to the Contemporary Art Wing, and there we found an exhibit called Tender Loving Care. We flipped our note card over and there were two questions, what brings you joy and what brings you pain? The first piece that drew me in was a painting of a living room, a rug surrounded by couches and a TV took up most of the scene. There was a pile of books and papers in the middle of the rug. Two people were having a close conversation in one corner. Someone was looking under a couch; someone was looking through books on a bookshelf. Someone was recording the scene on a video camera. It reminded me of the beloved chaotic Thanksgiving meals I have with my extended family. Intimate conversations on the periphery, mess of the grandchildren in the middle of the room. Someone losing their glasses in the flurry of activity. Someone documenting every moment. Someone trying to escape the commotion by hibernating in a book. The painting felt warm, cozy, familiar. I went on to peruse the rest of the exhibit and later returned to this piece to learn its title. The painting was Repetitious Insecurity by Maryam Safajoo. Intrigued, I went on to read the painting's description. Come to find out this was a depiction of a house raid by government agents in Iran, a common occurrence for members of the Baháʼí Faith in that country. These raids often end in violence, in imprisonment, and sometimes execution. Safajoo communicates with family members and Iran via WhatsApp to verify every detail she paints. They are a record of their lived experience. She's careful that her paintings are accurate portrayals of what they have endured, while also being careful that her paintings won't cause further harm to her subjects. Safajoo's own family members have been imprisoned. So the act of illustrating this persecution is both deeply personal and political. In our oversaturated world where our attention is being diverted in a million different directions, we are distracted from seeing what we really need to see, what God calls us to see. It can be an act of defiance and love to stop, take a breath, breathe more closely, maintain eye contact, put a frame around moments. And sometimes our seeing is hindered by our preconceptions. We assume that we know what we are seeing before we truly see. In our gospel lesson Pilate looks at Jesus and asks somewhat incredulously, "Are you the king of the Judeans?" After all, Pilate has seen Kings before and they never looked like this. He was used to seeing Kings wield conventional symbols and means of power. They ruled from a position of dominance. So who is this untutored Judean dressed like a common person without any symbols of earthly power? He certainly doesn't look like a king. Pilate and the crowds who call for Jesus's death are victims of their own assumptions. And Jesus responds with a simple declaration, "My kingdom is not from this world." But the people who put who opposed Jesus, as well as many who followed him, we're not ready to see him. To truly see him. Finding God in surprising places sometimes comes unbidden, like a flash out of the blue, whether we are paying attention or not. More often, however, it requires slowing down, putting aside our assumptions, being attentive, paying attention can itself seem like a mundane thing, but it can be a holy act. Philosopher Simone Weil put it this way, "Attention to its highest degree is the same as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolute unmixed attention is prayer." Thanks be to God. ### **Full Service Video** See also:- [ Sunday Service ](/archive/sunday-service) - [ Sermon ](/archive/sermons) - [ Alanna C. Sullivan ](/sermon-topics/alanna-copenhaver) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)