“I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me, says the Lord.”

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

This Sunday is the beginning of “ordinary time”, the Sundays after Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. From this Sunday until the Feast of Christ the King on November 23rd, we will be reading our way through the Gospel of Luke. Then, as Advent begins and we take up the cycle of readings again, we will make our way through Matthew, and the year after that through Mark. Meanwhile, John’s Gospel is read in portions throughout every year, especially around Christmas and Easter. And we read appropriate lessons to match each Gospel reading.

Why do we do this? 

On a fundamental level, it’s because we love and honour the Holy Scriptures. We read the Bible as Episcopalians. Biblical reading is at the heart of our services, our worship, our prayer, our praises. In Anglican churches, it has been like this since the 16th century. And we inherited our reading patterns from the ancient and medieval churches. 

Day by day in Morning and Evening Prayer, week by week at the Eucharist, we open the pages of the Bible, expecting to hear from God. We seek to be shaped by God’s Word, and the only way to do that truly, to be formed fully in the likeness of Christ, is to hear the voice of Jesus in the words on every page. For he stands ready to meet us, as we heard in Isaiah 65:

I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name. I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people…”

God is ready. God is ready for us. He’s holding out his hands to us. Are we ready for him? And are we ready to find him, where he has promised to be? Or are we rebellious?

I think a lot of people are looking for guidance these days, looking for a little help. They’re looking in some strange places. I listened to a whole series of podcasts a couple months ago about the resurgence in American spirituality, and the tagline was something like “the girls are doing crystals. Astrology. and reiki, the boys are on magic mushrooms.” As I heard this, I thought….is this the 1970s? 

I remember preachers in the 2000s still railing about the New Age of the 70s and 90s. I didn’t think I’d have to become one of them. But it seems I’m forced to it. I mean…people will pull up Tiktok on their phones, discover a wellness influencer (a teenager even) who has decided to “live like a monk” for a month or not wash their skin with soap or water. And, having seen the results, which are mixed to say the least…they think, “I guess I’ll do that.” 

Naturally, as a religious professional, I feel a little like the abandoned girlfriend in that famous “distracted boyfriend” meme. 

You know, the guy is walking one way, his girlfriend is right next to him, but meanwhile he’s making faces at someone he doesn’t even know. (The meme lends itself to many situations, as some 10 years of online culture have shone us.) Maybe the meme applies here. I don’t mean me. I mean, sure, a priest can feel snubbed when everyone feels they can get online for 15 minutes or less and find an instant guru or become an instant guru, life coach, and wedding officiant – such are the powers of the Internet.

But, really, I’d like to say that God feels snubbed? I think I can say that. We are all the distracted boyfriend, while God is the abandoned girlfriend.

“All day long,” God says. “All day long I held out my hands to a rebellious people. … I said, ‘Here I am, Here I am.’”
God is speaking constantly to us, waiting patiently, ready to be found, ready to be found in Sacred Scripture. Do we take this privilege seriously? I ask myself as much as I’m asking you. 

Imagine if there were one place on earth where the voice of God could be heard: the oracle at Delphi, the Mount of Moses in Sinai…I don’t know…some random location in Antarctica. Imagine God could only be heard in the Antarctic, in some frozen cave or a few miles away from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. 

If we knew we could only hear God there, we’d go. The ships would set sail. The planes would fly. We’d be getting our bags together and loading them on sleds. People would be waiting for their turn in Cierva Cove or one of the Falklands, going to Whaler’s Bay and preparing to navigate the narrow passage in Neptune’s Bellows. Whatever it took, we’d find a way to get there. 

But the reality is: God is speaking everyday, and can be heard anywhere. Pick up the Bible. Speak to those who have come to know God through it. There are things we can do, things we can read and discuss and pray over, to ensure that we hear the divine voice. 

Yet we neglect these ordinary means of grace. Or we even plead with God, “Be not far away…save me…help me…speak to me.” And God says, “I am near; I have saved you; I am helping you; I am speaking.”

To quote one of the saints whom we discussed at the Adult Forum earlier, “The Lord is in the phrases of the Holy Scriptures.” Come and meet him every Sunday. Come and meet him by reading. Come and learn; come and listen. It will change you.
 
We have a picture of this change in our Gospel reading today. There’s a man in the country of the Gerasenes. He’s naked; he’s been living in tombs; he’s not in his right mind; he is filled with many demons. When Jesus asks, “What is your name?” He says, Legion, for many demons had entered him. This is a picture of oppressed humanity, beat down and ruined by forces beyond its strength. But Christ, our King and Liberator, Christ our Lord, Christ the Word of God come in the flesh, meets him, and he sends the demons out of him. When the man’s neighbours see him again, they are afraid; the change was that dramatic. They see him “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

 The man is freed, he is healed; he is ready to be with Christ, to follow him and proclaim him. He goes away, proclaiming how much Jesus had done for him.

This is a picture of the healing brought about by our encounter with the Word of God. The Word meets us, and we are never the same. The Word meets us, and we are freed. And we are filled with gratitude, and ready to go and proclaim how much God, how much Jesus, has done for us. 

Jesus said, “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do…”

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

Pentecost is a great feast of the Church. I can see how many of us are marking it by wearing red, dozens of little flames carried out into the world!

Pentecost is one of our Seven Principal Feasts, along with Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension Day, Trinity Sunday, and All Saints Day. Pentecost was originally a feast of the Hebrews, but for Christians it also commemorates that moment we heard about in the Acts of the Apostles -- the moment of God’s promise -- when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples in tongues of flame. They were empowered to proclaim the message of Jesus, to speak of God’s deeds of power. And through their Spirit-filled words, a new community was formed. The Church grew.  

Who were its members?

According to the Acts of the Apostles, “there were [at that time] devout Jews from every nation under heaven” who had come to Jerusalem for the festival of Pentecost. “Every nation under heaven.” This is an example of narrative license, a little hyperbole on Luke’s part. It’s a metaphor. In the first century, it was not literally possible to gather people from every nation under heaven in one place. It’s hardly possible today in a modern pilgrimage. To put it bluntly: the Kaskaskia were not there; the people of Uluru or Nunavut or Kinshasa were not there. But I think we get the picture. Many people were there, they stood in for all nations, and they heard the disciples speaking in their own languages.

That day of Pentecost was a moment of universal revelation, a reminder that God’s purposes have always encompassed all people. It was a moment of prophetic fulfillment, when that purpose was more fully realized. As Peter said, ‘This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: “in the last days, it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh…’. That day of Pentecost was a moment in which God began again, not sweeping away the old, but renewing the world and humanity from within, calling people of every nation and language, tribe and tongue to hear the divine call and be saved in Christ’s name.

There is no person who is unimportant in God’s eyes, no nation or people. God has made us all in the divine image. We are all “one blood,” and God’s salvation and community are for all. Our differences and divisions can easily work against our common life and against our common labor, as in the story of Babel: “let us scatter them, and confuse their language,” God says. We deal with some of that confusion down to the present moment.

But Pentecost, the descent of the Spirit upon the disciples, is the undoing of all that. It is a celebration of differences among people, as a cacophony of uncoordinated languages became a well-conducted symphony of praise, a thousand tongues singing the Redeemer’s praise by Christ’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

God’s salvation and community are for all. As St Paul put it in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (5:9), “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”

The world! Not this person or that, not just one group, but the world. “Jews, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Medes,” all peoples of every continent and of every time. This nation, too, this time, your family, your friends, your … annoying neighbour or colleague who makes you grind your teeth, even the people we would count as our enemies, the people we have harmed or wronged, the people we consider expendable, or treat harshly. The people who harm us. All people. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” The world.

God has reconciled the world in Christ, and he has committed to the Church “the ministry of reconciliation.” We are called today to share in Christ’s mission.

As Jesus said, “The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do…” We have a role to play. Or as our prayer book catechism puts it: What is the mission of the Church?

The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
 
That’s a big job. “To restore all people to unity.”

We probably think it is beyond us. And we are right in one sense. After all, how many of us are restored to unity with our friends or with all of our family? Most of us find it hard these days to agree. And, so often, we just don’t talk to our neighbors or family. We retreat into comfortable silos to stare at our phones and dream of people who agree with us in cities far away. Even in the Church we are hardly reconciled; how long has it been since the Episcopal Church was at peace, let alone the various churches in this nation, or throughout the world?

It would be easy to think that we cannot do anything. But we are gathered here in this church today, celebrating a moment when the Spirit of God made community, a moment God took people of many nations and languages, and made them one. I’m sure they had their differences, their rivalries. Perhaps they had incompatible visions of the future. But they were made one, by the work of God.

Can’t that happen again? Couldn’t it start happening now? And couldn’t we here at Emmanuel do things, even small things, in this community to work toward that beautiful purpose of drawing many people together? Yes. Yes. We can make a difference.

And we can do it in part by emphasizing those things that are inherent to our faith. If the Church is to take its place in God’s purposes for the world, the purposes of universal reconciliation, it will have to do so in those ways that Christ has set down. Or as Jesus put it more simply, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Think of that great commandment: Love thy neighbour as thyself.

 We could love each other, and come to know and love our neighbours. We could show that love in selfless service, blessing those who curse us, helping those in any kind of trouble, doing good, doing good together, waking up every day with this purpose in mind: to do as Christ did.

We will need many things to sustain such work. We will need to remain united around the hearing of God’s Word and around the memory of our living Lord, Jesus. For when we look to him and to his teaching, we will find the way.

We will need to pray and celebrate the sacraments. It is tempting – even for Anglicans! – to think that this does not matter.

But when we come together in this place to share the bread and drink the wine, when we receive here the Body and Blood of the Lord, it really does make a difference. The sacrament changes our hearts, it renews our minds; it draws us closer to Christ. And praying really does make a difference.

The unity of Pentecost is a gift coming down from heaven. It is the Spirit of God recreating the earth, and doing what we cannot do alone. It is the mystery of the ages; it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Such a gift. Let us pray fervently for it, in the words of the song:
​
Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and lighten with celestial fire.
Thou the anointing Spirit, who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart.        
Thy blessed unction from above is comfort, life, and fire of love.
Enable with perpetual light the dullness of our blinded sight.

Amen and Amen. 

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
I would like to talk to you this morning about the prayers of Jesus. I don’t mean the prayers he uttered on earth, though I will make reference to a few of those. I mean the prayers he is praying now -- in heaven -- for us.
 
Let us state the basics first. We do not confess a Savior who is dead. Yes, Jesus died on the cross. Yes, he was buried. Yes, he descended into hell, to the place of dead spirits. But, as we have been confessing now in our prayers, in our liturgy, through our readings, in our hymns, and in the renewed life we seek to live: the Lord rose from the dead on the third day, never to die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all. The live he now lives, he lives to God. Forever and ever we may say: Alleluia, Christ is risen!

To quote a hymn: “Jesus lives! Thy terrors now can, O death, no more appall us.”  We might once have feared the grave, but no more. Jesus lives!

But what is our Lord doing with his “one wild and precious life”? Surely he’s living in some kind of eternal summer day. But with apologies to a good poem by Mary Oliver called “Praying,” I don’t think he is simply being “idle and blessed.” No, he is living an indestructible life. And while he may be seated on a throne, he is busy, he is working. Most of all, he is at prayer.

We try to remember this every Easter as we read the Acts of the Apostles. That book, written by St Luke the evangelist, reminds us that his Gospel was only an account of all the things Jesus “began to do and teach.”
 
The Acts of the Apostles is an account of his ongoing activity, as he works increasingly in the lives of his disciples, in the early communities of faith, guiding them by the Spirit. And so we may read every story with him in mind.

In our reading this morning, who was working? We heard that Paul and Silas were walking through Philippi, facing a few annoyances, as well as enduring capture and arrest, false charges, beatings, and imprisonment. We also heard that they freed a girl from her enslavement and exploitation. She was no longer dominated by wicked men or an evil spirit. And why? Paul spoke to the spirit in the name of Jesus. We heard that Paul and Silas, when imprisoned, were freed and they prayed and sang hymns.

Suddenly, there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened.
 
Who destroyed that prison? Who broke the yokes of the prisoners? Indeed, who brought the jailer to faith? These are actions of the ascended Christ: free, liberating, inspiring.
         
Jesus lives. And Jesus prays. He prays for us. We are not left comfortless by his departure. He lives! He prays! He sent his angel to John “with a testimony for the churches.” He pronounces a blessing upon all those who believe in him; he grants them access this day to the tree of life, to the water of life. He speaks now: “Let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.”
         
Jesus lives. He has entered into the true temple in heaven, “now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”
         
Jesus prays. Even while he was on earth, he prayed for you. John 17:20 tell us:
Jesus prayed for his disciples, and then he said: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word…”
 
We are all here today because of that prayer. If we believe, our faith has come through those first disciples, through the testimony of their word, written in the Scriptures and proclaimed by the Church, and our faith has been inspired spiritually by that singular, powerful prayer that Christ uttered on the night he was betrayed: “I ask not only on behalf of these,” he said “but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word…”

Christ prayed for you on earth. He prays for you now in heaven.

That is a comforting thought. Think about how you feel when a friend says, “I’ll pray for you.” Or, if you’ve ever been sick, truly sick, in the hospital or housebound, fearing for your life, there is something so good about being held in prayer by others. I remember a friend once sending me a message when I was ill, and it was one line: “You have been remembered at the altar of the Holy Cross in Dallas.”

Prayers like that are so precious. And they are the prayers of ordinary people like you and me, ordinary people united in the Spirit by faith and baptism, united by hope, united by love. And how wonderful it is to know that Christ prays.

Take this truth home with you. Don’t leave it at the door as you say good-bye and go back to whatever dramas await you out there. We are not left without comfort or help. We have an advocate in heaven, Jesus Christ the righteous.
Let us hold this truth in our hearts. As the old hymn says:
  
Jesus, hail! Enthroned in glory,
there forever to abide;
All the heavenly hosts adore thee,
seated at the Father’s side.
There for sinners, thou art pleading,
There thou dost our place prepare,
Ever for us interceding,
Till in glory we appear.

“Jesus led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, he blessed them.”

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

Happy Ascension Day! Happy Feast! Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, Alleluia.

I have often found that today’s feast provides a moment of confusion for Episcopalians. What are we celebrating today? Is today’s feast about a man shooting into the sky like a rocket ship – as NT Wright once put it sarcastically? Or is it a superfluous feast, one we could do without? I once had a theologian in Cambridge tell me that there was little difference between the Resurrection and the Ascension, and so he didn’t really see the point of the day’s observances. He told me this after the Ascension Mass was over, and I kept thinking, If there was no point, why did you come to church today?
 
Sometimes our patterns of life say something our minds cannot. As ever, one of the blessings of the Anglican tradition is that the liturgy of our church speaks eloquently; our prayers and our traditions speak eloquently, and they can tell you more than the typical theologian, however educated he or she may be.

Hymn 215 said almost everything already. I could go sit down. See, the Conqueror mounts in triumph. The hymn reminds us that this is a feast of royal investiture, a feast of evident victory, a feast of acclamation, as Christ ascends as conqueror of death, and all the angels praise Jesus as their heavenly king.

Words from verse 2 remind us who and what we praise: "He who on the cross did suffer, / He who from the grave arose, / He has vanquished sin and Satan; / He by death has spoiled his foes."
  
And, then, from verse 3: "Thou hast raised our human nature/  on the clouds to God’s right hand. / There we sit in heavenly places, / there with thee in glory stand.
 
What do we celebrate in this feast? Not just the union of God and humanity, which we celebrate at Christmas. Not just our confidence in sins forgiven, granted on the cross on Good Friday. Not just the transformation of our nature, and the beginning of the renewal of the earth – death being swallowed up in victory. That is something to celebrate, but we have been doing so for six weeks of Easter and a seventh lies ahead. We celebrate more tonight: we celebrate the exaltation of our human nature with Jesus. He is placed at the right hand of God; we are there with him. He has begun his universal reign; we reign with him. He has been glorified by the Father; we are glorified with him.
 
We know that in Jesus our true life and our true identity are made manifest, and so we are to fix our eyes upon him always, knowing that we receive from him power and blessing. He is the source of our hope. And in him, enthroned above, we inherit all the spiritual treasures of heaven. Set your mind on things that are above.

We inherit every blessing in Christ. This truth is dramatized in our Gospel reading. Jesus opens the minds of his disciples to understand the Scriptures. He commands them to wait for the promise of the Father: that is, the Holy Spirit he is sending. And as he leads them out to Bethany, he blesses them, and that is their final image of Christ.

Think of it, his hands lifted in blessing as he ascends. It should be our image, too. When we turn to God in prayer, we should see this image in our minds. When we ask for God’s blessing, we should see him, already there, his hands raised in benediction, his heart full of kindness and love.

We inherit every blessing in him. We are also “clothed with power from on high.” What a mysterious phrase. What kind of power are we receiving? What are these new clothes?

We might approach this question in several ways. This power is, first of all, brought to us by the Holy Spirit of God, that Spirit that fills the earth, that gives life and breath and wisdom. It is the Spirit that inspired the prophets. It is the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. The Letter to the Ephesians has this prayer in Paul’s mouth: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power."

And he goes on: "God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places…"

God’s power, which raised Jesus and exalted him, is at work in you. That is the kind of power we are receiving, with which we are clothed in Christ…an immeasurable power, the very power of God -- in you. The power that made worlds, the power of resurrection.

What is that power for? What do we do with hit? Well, it is not for ourselves. We don’t get the power of God in order to make kingdoms for ourselves, or even tiny little fiefdoms. We don’t get the power of God to wield it over others, to be little tyrants, to do whatever we want. That’s not the power of God; that’s not what Christ did.

We receive the power of God, that we may witness to Jesus. Our reading from Acts brought this home. The disciples ask Jesus: “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?”
 
He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

It is not given to you to know everything God is doing. But you have been given the power to testify to Jesus, to represent him to others, to tell his story, to live his life. You have been given the power of resurrection: you may live a renewed life, a life of repentance and faith, always shaking off the dead things of the past that you may receive the fresh things of the future. You have the power of God in you, which has made worlds: the future is open. Things may change -- for the better -- to the glory of God.

Heaven stands open and the Son of Man lifts his hands in blessing over you. What lies ahead that cannot be achieved? Only seek him. Fix your eyes upon Jesus. Seek those things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.