Not here for high and holy things
we render thanks to thee,
but for the common things of earth,
the purple pageantry
of dawning and of dying days,
the splendor of the sea,
the royal robes of autumn moors,
the golden gates of spring,
the velvet of soft summer nights,
the silver glistering
of all the million million stars,
the silent song they sing,


​One  of my personal joys during the past months has been to take the time to walk outside early in the morning and to listen to God’s creatures as they begin the day. In the spring birds of all types sang out. In the summer they were joined by the cicadas and crickets. And now it is the squirrels that make the most noise. They all have reminded me to give thanks to our creator for that particular day. Surely, these “common things of earth” which I may have overlooked in past years have made such joyful noises that have reminded me to thank God for everything. God has continued to give us much this year. Over the past weeks, I have enjoyed seeing Carlos, Elizabeth, Mary, and Mark tell how they have been affected by this year’s challenges and how they have experienced the love of God, often through Emmanuel church during this same time. Particularly I was touched by listening to Craig list the joys of the year. It would be a good spiritual exercise to list your own joys found since last November. God has given much to sustain us through these difficult months. Though, admittedly, we may have to change our focus to remember them. It is good that we have had these October weeks to think about how we have been loved by God and then to reflect on what would love do. 

They usually call it a “gotcha question” – one posed not honestly to get an answer, but manipulatively to trick the respondent into saying something that can be used against them. The Gospels have more than one example of someone going after Jesus with a gotcha question, and today has to be one of my favorites. Matthew tells us:
 
The Pharisees… plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said, asking “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
 
Whenever someone asks Jesus a gotcha question, they are the ones who end up gotcha’d. The Pharisees want to trick Jesus into siding with one position on a currently controversial tax – we’ve got one of those on the ballot in Illinois this year, so you can imagine the situation, I expect. Jesus explodes the short-sighted partisan focus, and points out that anyone who calls themselves a believer in God ought to be thinking like one. A believer ought to have a wider perspective. Give to God the things that are God’s, he says, and the questioners slink away speechless.
 
Give to God the things that are God’s. Which begs the question, what things are God’s? Now that is, as I’ve said before, kindergarten level monotheism. Jews, Christians, and Muslims at a minimum should all immediately know the answer. What things are God’s? Everything. There is nothing outside his creative rule, nothing that cannot be traced back to his generosity. You and I may be taking care of some of his property for him, as Jesus has been pointing out to us in parable after parable this fall, but God owns it. We are his and everything we have is his.
 
Despite the fact that this is kindergarten level monotheism, it’s easier to say you believe it than to act as if you believe it. Of course, that’s the case for all kinds of Christian teachings. It’s easier to say you believe in forgiveness than to forgive someone who has hurt you. It’s easier to say you believe God is all-knowing than to act like he knows better than you do. It’s easier to say you believe that all things are God’s than to treat your things as God’s.
 
Jesus talks about all those topics, but he talks about how we use our resources more than almost anything else, because he knows how deeply it damages us to live as people who don’t know how broad and great and generous the involvement of God is in absolutely everything.
 
That faith – that there isn’t anything bigger than God, that all things are God’s, that his involvement is broad and great and generous – is what has kept me going through these past several months of having to reinvent nearly everything about the way we do ministry because of the pandemic. It has not been at all easy on any of us, but Emmanuel has kept doing our ministry because of who God is and what God’s like.

We have not missed one day of sack lunches. We have as of this week been out 115 times to take people contactless home communions. Every daily office since March has been prayed just the way it would have otherwise. We’ve gathered on Zoom and YouTube and Facebook for formation and worship several times a week as well as retooling our nave for in-person Masses that got an enthusiastic thumbs up from C-U Public Health.
 
Why did we do that? Because all things are God’s and they’re God’s now, not later. In this time, not some other time. Because at Emmanuel we want to be people who know how broad and great and generous the involvement of God is in absolutely everything and every season, not people who wait for some other season or some other situation to consider what God requires. We want to give to God what is God’s all the time.
 
There have been some discouraging things about this year, but I want to tell you one encouraging thing. We’ve sent out 2021 pledge cards, and, you know, please return yours soon. But as part of that naturally we look at giving for the current year, and of course some people are impacted by COVID such that they can’t do what they hoped. But what blows me away is in October to read down the column of the spreadsheet that lists the percentage fulfilled so far of the giving goals all of you set.
 
In that column, say, if someone pledged $4000 and gave $4000, it says 100%, right? So I look down that column and of course some people couldn’t do what they hoped. But what blows me away this year is to see in October a smattering of percentages like 112%, 245%, 150%, 650%. Ordinary folks, who gradually over these past months have kept doing more than they planned because they know how important Emmanuel’s mission and ministry are, and how broad and great and generous the involvement of God is in what we do for the sake of Love.
 
Give to God the things that are God’s. It’s kindergarten level monotheism, but do we live it out? I honestly think that in this area of the spiritual life, there is no more effective first step in learning how to do what you say you believe than to mindfully decide how much money you plan to give away, and offer that plan to God, who already owns all of it. Do that in prayer, do that in Love, do that with the God who already owns everything you have, and you’ll see.

 “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”
 
This verse in Paul’s letter to the Philippians is loved by many people. It is a favorite to read over and over. In hearing the entire passage today I am seeing it in new ways. I especially identify with the opening words. “My brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for…”  As this pandemic year continues, I expect you also can understand Paul’s sentiment. We long to see each other and to be physically together and yet we are not there yet. So how can we do this is, how can we always rejoice?

Of course, this year 2020 has brought some times of happiness, the births of new babies, being able to see family and friends even from afar, finding those rolls of toilet paper, getting an economic boost just at the right time, eating favorite foods, learning to use zoom, and so on. There have been happy times even though these are overshadowed by many more times of grief and unhappiness.
​
As we look at this particular scripture I think it might be helpful to make a distinction between happiness and joy. For my purposes today I will define happiness as something that happens to us or for us. While similar, joy is a deeper grounding, a state of being, a place of calm and peace which is always available to us. Joy comes from knowing to whom we belong. While happiness is external brought about by things outside of us, joy is internal. And yes, 2020 has brought much unhappiness and yet the joy found “in the Lord” is unchanged.

 [Christ Jesus], though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
 
The most important word in this beautiful poem from Philippians 2 is probably not what we think it is. This elegant text, perhaps from an early hymn, lays out for us first the glory and deity of the divine Christ, co-equal, co-eternal with his Father, then how he emptied all that out in becoming human and suffering death on a Cross, and finally his subsequent exaltation as Lord  above heaven and earth so that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow.
 
What might be the most important word in this profound passage of the New Testament? Perhaps one of the verbs, describing the great actions God took in becoming human? Emptied, being born, humbled, exalted? Or one of the nouns? God, death, cross, heaven, Lord, glory?
 
All those words are significant, of course -- but I would like to suggest that the real most important word in Philippians 2 might be “Therefore.”
 
[Christ Jesus], though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
 
Therefore. In Christianity, God’s greatest act is to become one of us, to empty out his prerogatives in Christ and meet humanity at our lowest point, to experience vulnerability, pain, and death. Because he did that, the text says, Jesus can be God for everyone. Because he did that, his name is above every name. Because he did that, therefore, he is our God. Jesus is Lord not because he has power, but because he gave it up. Not because he is full, but because he was empty. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.
 
We are in a time of bitter division in our country, as well as of challenges to our personal emotional health and our own ability to cope. We are concerned about our republic and about our planet. We have lost over 200,000 lives to the virus in the US alone. Not to mention all the personal agonies of one kind or another some of us have passed through this year.
 
In this time, we need Philippians 2. We need to turn to a God who has come into the middle of all this pain, who has entered the human condition and stood with us, uniting himself to us. Not a deity who stands aloof and impassive above it. Not a spiritual force it’s up to us to use to use to fix the world or fix ourselves. We need a God who doesn’t just appeal to our hopes and dreams, but who also understands our anger and despair. This is the God who dies on the Cross for us and rises again.
 
The Anglican theologian and preacher John Stott wrote, “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?”
 
We worship Jesus, Philippians 2 tells us, precisely because he gave up his immunity to pain. Out of pure love, he united the human vulnerability he took on to the human vulnerability you and I can’t help having. He came to where we are and embraced us, and – therefore – held in that embrace we are lifted back up along with him into the very being of God.
 

 If people know anything about Jonah, it’s that he was swallowed by a whale. Although the Bible actually says a big fish. The book of Jonah is only four chapters long, but there’s a lot more to it than the whale.  It’s great: lots of action, and completely hilarious. Our reading this week gave just the ending, but it’s worth reading the whole story, and I hope you will.
 
Jonah is a prophet, and as prophets do, Jonah gets an assignment from God: go and warn the city of Nineveh that they are in trouble. Well, Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, a very powerful nation, known for its war crimes and brutality, a major enemy. Like any patriot, Jonah hates those lousy Ninevites, and besides, they’ll probably string him up the second he walks through the gates. So Jonah has a brainstorm: he’ll run away from God’s assignment. Sure, that sounds like a good idea. So he hops on a ship to Tarshish, which is basically as far as you can go in the opposite direction. It was as if Jonah showed up at the dock and said “Gimme a ticket for wherever is furthest from Nineveh.”
 
 But at sea, there is a storm. Jonah confesses that he is running from God and the sailors freak out: “what did you do that for? Are you nuts?” And he says: “look, I’m ruined. Just throw me overboard.” And when they do lo! the sea calms down – as, we might expect, rebellious Jonah sinks to his well-deserved doom.
 
But the Bible doesn’t say what we expect. It says instead, God didn’t let him drown. God sent a huge fish, and it swallowed him whole.  I certainly expect Jonah wasn’t in very good shape when he got vomited up three days later, but still this fish saved him from death, and Jonah prays a psalm of gratitude for God’s mercy.
 
And then, we might expect, God says to him, “You’re finished! I’m never trusting you again!” But the Bible doesn’t say what we expect. It says that God gives Jonah a second chance to be obedient and blessed. He speaks to Jonah again: go and warn the city of Nineveh that they are in trouble. 

So off Jonah goes, but you can tell he still doesn’t like it. The city is of a size that it would have taken about three days to walk across it; well, all Jonah does is come partway in and say one sentence. “In forty days, Nineveh will be overthrown.” Boy, that’s really going to be helpful to the Ninevites, isn’t it? Don’t put yourself out, Jonah. But God is on the case, so nevertheless the Ninevites get it. In response to this lackluster message, they demonstrate one of the greatest examples of group regret that we find in the Bible. The mayor proclaims a fast. They remove their fancy clothes, they sob in grief, and most important, they change their behavior.
 
And this was the moment where our reading started today: “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.” God sends Jonah to warn the Ninevites that the road they are on leads to disaster, but all along God was really just hoping for them to repent.
 
And what does Jonah think of this?  He is furious. First off, these guys deserved to be punished; they are an evil regime.  Second, Jonah looks like an idiot – he said they’d be destroyed and now they won’t.
The Ninevites got it, but Jonah sure didn’t.  I mean, listen to the words he speaks in rage: “I knew that you were a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love!” And Jonah does not see this as a good character point. So, we might expect, because Jonah’s so judgmental, God smites him! But the Bible doesn’t say what we expect. No, God just asks gently, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
 
Jonah ignores this overture of love, and sets up camp a little ways away to watch what happens. And the narrative pictures God arranging a comical little object lesson. He has a shade tree grow overnight at Jonah’s camp, to keep his poor judgmental prophet cool. Jonah likes the tree. Thanks, God! The next day God has a parasite attack the tree, and it withers, and poor Jonah gets a sunburn.
 
And what does he do?  Becomes furious again. God asks once more , “Is it right for you to be angry?” And what does Jonah say? “You bet it is! You killed my tree!” Jonah is outraged that his personal plant is hurt, but he feels nothing for a whole city of perishing human beings made in God’s image.

So does God finally show him who’s boss? No, all he does is ask a question: “You care, Jonah, about this little tree? Shouldn’t I care about Nineveh, these people who are lost, these people I made, even if you don’t like them? Are you angry because I love other people besides you? Should I not be concerned about this great city?” And that question is the last line of the book.
 
“Should I not be concerned about this great city?” The book ends with a question. It’s written that way to force us to ask ourselves for an answer. To ask why we keep being tempted to focus only on what benefits people we like or who look like us. “Should I not be concerned about this great city?” Who or what is your Nineveh? Who can you not stand the idea of God loving every bit as much as he loves us? Who would you likely avoid the invitation to talk to and listen to? Who is your Nineveh, and will you allow God to be concerned about them?

According to the Youtube videos that somehow evade my ad-blocker and the various news articles I reluctantly read, there is one thing on which all political parties and candidates agree: these are dark and dangerous times, and we need a strong leader to deliver us. 

The power of this marketing strategy is obvious. We’ve lived through months of pandemic. We’ve watched as protestors fill our streets. And we are currently holding our breath as first wildfires and now hurricanes rip through small towns and large, leaving destruction and grief in their wake. It doesn’t matter if you belong to the political Left or Right: We all know that these are indeed times of deeper darkness than many of us have ever experienced. 

Which is why we want our political champions to be models of strength, of purpose, of promise—because we can’t tolerate the thought of 2021 being a 2020, part two. Our hopes are built on nothing less . . . than the victory of one of two men. Or so they want us to believe.

More than ever before, the presidential nominees want us to see them as our Savior. They want us to believe that they are our only hope. But that is a false assertion, regardless of how poignant it is at this point in time. Because we already have a Savior, a man who, if he was to be represented by a full marketing team and millions of dollars worth of TV commercials would be so exactly the opposite of a strong candidate that no one in their right mind would vote for him—because his entire platform is based on what the world can never understand. 

Jesus is our Lord, but he is a Lord unlike any other.

Just moments after Peter identified Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things . . . and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” And Peter, alarmed at the turn the conversation had taken, grabbed Jesus by the shoulders and said, “this shall never happen to you,” which prompted Jesus’ gut-wrenching reply: “Get behind me, Satan. . . . For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

Confused silence greeted his words. Our Messiah was planning to do what? The disciples’ hopes had only just been confirmed. Jesus was the promised one, the Savior of Israel who would bring injustice to an end and re-establish communion with God, not to mention crushing the armies of Rome and freeing the Jewish people from foreign tyranny forever. That he should die was most certainly not on the agenda. And if Jesus thought they would let go of that hope, that they could really trust a leader who was walking toward his death . . .  It wasn’t even an option. He must be mistaken.
Thousands of years later, we thumb through our Bibles and can feel awfully tempted to judge these men for their sheer obtuseness. But Peter’s reaction and the disciples’ failure to understand Jesus’ words shouldn’t surprise us—because we, like them, are so often blinded by what we can see.

The photographs, the news reels, the catastrophic projections, the memories crowd our minds and make the world—in all its fallenness—more apparent and more apparently powerful than the God who has saved us. At times like these, we want power, not sacrifice. Dominance, not submission. We want a leader like Peter and his fellow disciples wanted: a man who will strike down our enemies and accomplish our goals. 

But what we have is a crucified Messiah. What we have is a God who has chosen—on his own terms—to dwell with us. He doesn’t look polished or important. In fact, his hands are cracked and his robe frayed. He is an unassuming Jewish man who grew up the son of a working-class family; who wandered through deserts and country towns, feeding the hungry and healing the sick, urging those he helped not to tell anyone what he had done. He is a Messiah who will speak with Gentile women, who will bring tax collectors and prostitutes into his fold, who will continue to love and lead his disciples even knowing that they will abandon him in the end. 

He is the Messiah we need as we walk through life in a world that is fallen. He is the one who will get down in the dirt with us when we trip, the one who will hold us up when we have no strength to stand. He is the life, the true life that we crave, the only life that can lead us into eternal glory—because he lives with us. 

Jesus’ call to us today is to follow him, a crucified Messiah, a man who will guide us through the lowest of lows and carry us into the highest of highs. “Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. We will not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock we stand, all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.” AMEN.

Paul tells us today in his letter to the Romans chapter 12 that we are to “present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship.” I’d like us to think a little bit about the word sacrifice, both how it’s normally used, and how differently Paul uses it.
 
A sacrifice is, in common language, something you give up. When you sacrifice something, it is lost to you. We are experiencing sacrifices in all kinds of ways right now because of the pandemic. We have lost getting to go to ball games. We have had to give up coming together to see a friend get married with lots of loved ones. In this season, each of us is sacrificing, giving up things, for the common good all the time.
 
In the same way, in religious contexts, a sacrifice is usually something you give up or even destroy. Once it’s sacrificed, you’ve lost it. Various world religions past and present have structured their lives around sacrifice, the giving up of animals or things in order to please or appease God. This can be something like burning a container of clarified butter, leaving a fruit or vegetable at an altar, killing a goat or cow, or in some ancient cults even human sacrifice.
 
Whatever it looks like, when you sacrifice something, it’s given up, dead, gone. You give it to the deity you believe in, and therefore you don’t have it anymore. It’s a sort of exchange, by which your loss of an animal or a valued possession then merits forgiveness or favor or help from your deity.
 
That’s what sacrifice means in most contexts. But that’s not at all what Paul says today. In this passage from Romans 12, Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” So in this kind of sacrifice, you don’t lose what is sacrificed. It is still living. In fact, it becomes better, according to Paul: you become better. You become transformed by a renewed mind, more able to discern the will of God, more equipped with gifts to serve the world.
 
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Why do we Christians get to sacrifice ourselves but still keep ourselves? Why is sacrifice in Christianity so different than sacrifice in other religious traditions? Why a living sacrifice all day long, and not a dead one at a special ritual? Well, because of the previous 11 chapters of Romans.
 
You see, for us, the one true sacrifice has already been made. On the Cross Christ offered himself up for our sake. God offered God to God – by definition there can be no greater gift, no more powerful sacrifice, and in that one action any need for further sacrifices was swept away. Human efforts to do something else to satisfy God become laughably redundant.

The whole point of the previous 11 chapters of Romans, of the Mass itself, really of the Christian way of being, is that the sacrifice has been made already, and now our lives, if we say yes, our living is swept up into it. What Christ did on the cross is already ours. What he did as he rose from the tomb is already ours. Every time we come to Mass we are reconnected with that sacrifice, ingesting it, being filled once again with the unique and irreplaceable power of God offering God to God, in case we’ve lost track.
 
That sacrifice has already made us holy and acceptable. There is nothing supplemental that we could add to it, as if there were some further deity out there who needs appeasement or is still keeping a running list of our sins. As Christians we have the opportunity to live in the freedom that was released into the universe when God offered God to God, the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. To live in that, and let its finality and enoughness live in you.
 
You will have many temptations not to live that way, not to acknowledge the sacrifice that has already been made on your behalf.  Many of us forget, day to day, that there is nobody out there to please or appease because God offering God to God has already accomplished our enoughness. We act as if the full and final sacrifice hasn’t been made. But it has. So I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

“There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea. There’s a kindness in his justice which is more than liberty… For the love of God is broader than the measure of our mind and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind.” (1982 Hymnal #469)

This familiar hymn expresses what we have seen and learned about Jesus and his love.

And then we read today’s gospel story. 

Jesus’ attitude in this gospel is at the least, unexpected, and perhaps we might even say, shocking. Not that Jesus’ comments aren’t often shocking, at least to the establishment of his time. But his attitude today is not directed to the religious authorities but rather to a distraught Canaanite woman seeking help and healing for her child. His compassion is lacking in this encounter which is what makes it seem out of character to us. And we wonder why. Is Jesus just having a bad day or is there another explanation?
​
The Canaanites were ancient foes of the Israelites. Canaan was the grandson of Noah so the conflict went back to the days of Genesis. And since the time of Abraham, God had promised the Israelites the land of milk and honey—the land, the property, of the Canaanites. There were well-fought battles over this area. The animosity and lack of respect between these two peoples was long standing. By the time Jesus was on earth this was entrenched in both groups and at best they avoided each other. At other times they hurled insults at each other and called the other names, such as dog.