This is an exciting day as we anticipate baptizing Calvin Moe! As Calvin grows up, I hope
he’ll be very acquainted with this church building. There’s a whole lot more to the Christian life
than this building, but there is so much about our faith in this very room.

When you have opportunity, you should take some time to look at our stained glass windows.
They tell the story of the earthly life of our Lord Jesus: The Annunciation, the Nativity, the
Epiphany, the boy Jesus in the Temple, his Baptism, the Wedding at Cana, the Transfiguration,
his Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, his crucifixion, the resurrection, the Ascension, and
over the altar, the Presentation.

There is one window, however, that’s the key to all of them: the resurrection window. If it
weren’t for the resurrection, we wouldn’t remember any of the other things. In fact, if it weren’t
for the resurrection, there would be no Church. It’s the greatest miracle of all. It’s the reason we
worship on Sunday, for every Sunday is a little Easter, a little Day of Resurrection.

And the Altar, the central focus of the entire church building, is a symbol of the resurrection.
At the Altar, at every mass, we remember all of salvation history, in an abbreviated form. The
culmination of that salvation history is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for the salvation of the
world and on the third day rising from the dead. That sacrifice is re-presented as the bread and
wine are consecrated to become the Body and Blood of Christ. Each communicant receives the
benefits of the sacrifice of Jesus by receiving the Body and Blood of the risen Lord.

How important is it for us to do that? Jesus says it’s a matter of life and death. He doesn’t say
it exactly that way. He just says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his
blood, you have no life in you.”

What does Jesus mean by life? Obviously, there’re millions of people who are breathing,
functioning human beings who have no part in Jesus, many of whom would describe themselves
as leading very fulfilled lives. The society in which we live takes little notice of Jesus, and in
many places he’s openly ridiculed. On the other hand, there are people in the Church, who
receive his Body and Blood regularly, for whom life holds little meaning, and who would even
describe themselves as basically unhappy. Do they have the life Jesus is talking about simply
because they consume his Body and Blood in the Eucharist?

Normally, I’d preach about the Real Presence on this Sunday when given this particular text
for the Gospel, for Episcopalians believe all sorts of things when it comes to the Real Presence of
Christ in the Sacrament, all the way from a very high view, that what we’re receiving is the Body
and Blood of Christ (that’s what we teach in this parish), to a very low view, that Christ is truly
absent in the Sacrament, an unfortunate and unsupportable view, given the teachings of Holy
Scripture and the tradition of the Church Catholic from earliest times.

Yet the concept of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament shouldn’t be seen as an
isolated reality. The risen Christ is present in his Church not only in the Sacrament, but also in
the Word read and proclaimed, and in his people, the Body of Christ. The Sacrament is essential
to the Church, but also essential are these other elements. For one to have the life Jesus is
talking about requires all of these elements.

It isn’t unusual for a person who isn’t active in the Church to say something like this: “I don’t
attend church, but I try to live a Christian life.” What that person doesn’t realize is that you can’t
live a Christian life alone. It’s a contradiction in terms to say, “I’m not a part of the Church, but
I try to live a Christian life.” To be a Christian is to be a part of the Eucharistic community that’s
the Church, as far as that person is able. Of course, when one is sick or shut-in, he or she cannot
be present with the Church in worship, and the Sacrament is brought to that person.

Our life in Christ begins with baptism, when we’re initiated into the Eucharistic community.
That community requires a certain unity of belief, summarized in the Apostles’ Creed. It
requires worshipping with the community of faith every Sunday, receiving the Body and Blood
of Christ in the Sacrament, hearing the Word of God read and proclaimed, and being in
community with other members of Christ’s Body. As St. Luke tells us in The Acts of the
Apostles, “They continued in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and
in the prayers.”

It requires living a morally upright life, following the commandments of God, and when we
fail to live accordingly, which we all do, to confess our failures, seek the forgiveness of God and
his Church, and return again to following Christ.

It requires sharing our faith with others, to bring others to Christ through his Church. It
requires serving those in need, starting with those in our very midst. And it requires striving for
justice and peace among all people.

If this seems familiar, it should. It’s the Baptismal Covenant, which we’re all going to
reaffirm in a few moments. To have the life Jesus is talking about is to do all of these things, not

out of obligation, but out of love for God. When that happens, we have life, and we have it
abundantly. Of course, we are obligated to do these things, but the goal is to move beyond
obligation to doing them for the love of God.

This may sound to some to be a little legalistic, as if to say if you do certain things, then God
will reward you with certain blessings. In other words, some may think that what I’m saying
implies a kind of works righteousness, that our salvation depends on what we do and not on what
God does. My answer to that is that it all starts with God’s action on our behalf through Jesus
Christ. But God does require a response from us, and the requirement is nothing less than
everything we are.

I’m reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words in Cost of Discipleship concerning grace. He
has a wonderful chapter entitled Costly Grace, but he starts by talking about cheap grace.
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness
without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without
confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship,
grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate……Costly grace is the
gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which
a person must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it
calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a person his life, and it is grace
because it gives a person the only true life.”

To eat the flesh of the Son of man and to drink his blood includes partaking of his Body and
Blood at mass, but it means consuming Christ fully and being consumed by him. As the
Eucharistic prayer from Rite I states it, “that he may live in us and we in him.” That’s the reality
into which Calvin will be baptized this morning and it is the faith that will give him life.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.


We all learn at a certain point in our lives that it is dangerous to give ourselves wholly to anything or anyone. Maybe it was the first blush of unrequited love that broke our adolescent heart; or maybe it was the failure of a parent to care for us when and in the way that we needed them. Whatever the case, we have all learned this hard lesson — sometimes in a moment — from the school of life: Love hurts. 


There are some of us, though, that took that lesson more literally than others. Much has been said about people born between 1985 and 2010. Millennials and Gen Z are statistically the most depressed and least connected out of every demographic. Regardless of the fact that we have instant access to one another’s thoughts and feelings because of texting and TikTok, we are significantly less likely to have close friendships, to get married, to want children — for many and complex reasons, I’m sure; though one common explanation is this: We’ve seen too much go wrong. In our homes, in our schools, in our churches, in our nation, we have witnessed and sometimes experienced the cost not only of love’s absence but of love run amok — so many of us have opted out altogether.


But it’s worth saying that the besetting sin of one generation is indicative of the sins of all the rest. What we see in full-color and high-definition in today’s young people is there in each one of us, hidden, perhaps, but present every time we allow the softness of our hearts to harden into cynicism. 


We all do it. The casual dismissal of a person because of their political views; the justification of anger or violence when it serves our purposes or protects our interests; the inability to maintain a conversation or even to listen to someone without glancing at our phone. These behaviors all come from the same place: a response to pain or to a perceived threat where we choose to preserve our own ego rather than risk the self-diminishment we fear will come when we open ourselves to someone or something else. The logic is easy to follow. Totally understandable. But you don’t need to be a priest or a prophet to notice the consequences of such an attitude.


The next few years, maybe even the next few months, will be pivotal, both for us collectively and individually. We will all be challenged to ask and answer whether or not we will we succumb to the spirit of the age. Will we fall back on our own defenses? Will we let our hearts be hardened by cynicism or disgust? Or will we follow a different path entirely? Will we dare to keep moving forward, open and honest and maybe sometimes afraid — but still filled with faith? 


The way is there, stretching out before us. Although it’s narrow, the road is crowded. Angels and archangels, apostles, martyrs, saints living and dead are all walking toward, all looking for the One who promised to be with us always. He is with us; and so is someone else. 


Like mother, like child. Like child, like mother. The Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary stands at the head of us all. Greater than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, chief of the saints, Mary is honored not simply because of her role in the story of salvation but also because of her unassailable faithfulness and her unquestioning love for the God she bore as Son. 


Mary, more than anyone else in the world, knows that deep love can cause deep grief; and yet she always said “yes.” She always loved more. She always believed that God will make good of every evil in the end. 


Mary believed that with her whole heart, mind, soul, and strength not because she is different than us; but because she allowed the love of God to fill her so completely that it was heaven simply to be with him in everything — which did come with pain. The words of the Prophet Simeon were never far from her mind: “A sword will pierce your own heart, also.”  


Tradition tells us that Mary lived for a time as a child in the Temple; she would have heard just what was foretold of God’s Messiah, the Christ: He would suffer. He would die. He would be rejected by all those who once had welcomed him as king. Mary knew what was coming; and she soon experienced it. King Herod and his soldiers. Losing Jesus in Jerusalem. Losing Jesus to his ministry. Hearing her son speak before thousands of people. Sensing the plots of his enemies. 


Mary had no control over any of it. No choice in the matter. Her freely chosen act of love in bearing Jesus Christ came with much she did not choose, much she did not want. Still, she loved him. She loved her Son and her God with such compassion and tenderness that she kept saying, “let it be to me according to your will” even when that meant watching, helpless, as he was nailed to the cross. 


That was its own death for her. But she never ran away. She never looked away. Her resolve never failed. Mary would remain with Jesus in life and in death — which is why she and the other myrrh-bearing women went to the tomb on Easter morning, only to find that Jesus was not there. He had risen and was going on ahead of them to Galilee. Going on ahead of them to heaven, where Mary dwells with him now, never to be parted. 


That happy ending could not have happened if Mary hadn’t dared to risk the unknown of total surrender to God’s will. And that surrender could not have happened without the love that, burning in her heart, made her the vessel, the ark, the Mother of God Incarnate. 


And so it is that we look to her as our example and our hope. She knows what it means to suffer, to be sinned against in ways we could never anticipate and for which we could never fully prepare. Mary knows. She’s lived it; and she nevertheless remained holy, alight, illumined with love for God. She prays that we might be so filled with that love that we might say “yes” to God’s will and so find ourselves on the same journey that she has taken — which is the only way to find what we all really want.


Peace. Safety. Comfort and contentment. These things can never be secured out of a state of fear. We can never truly be happy, never truly flourish if we’re constantly retreating into the confines of our personal space. Love and life are found on the outside, in the open, on the road where we meet Christ in our friends and in our enemies and as we walk with our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in the faith. That is where we become who we are. That is where we become who we are meant to be. 


Love hurts. It’s true. But perhaps that pain is simply the beginning of the Spirit’s labor in our lives, wherein we will all give birth to Christ. And if that is our life, if that is the Christian life, who better to teach us than God’s mother, who loved and lost and learned just as we all do and persevered regardless. She abides now in glory, beside her beloved Son; and she prays that we might make it there, too. AMEN.

​

     A new Abbott arrived at a monastery and the monks’ first introduction to him was at Morning Prayer.  The first words they heard from him were chanted, “Good morning.”  So the monks chanted back, “Good morning.”

     The next day, once again they gathered for Morning Prayer, and the Abbott sang, “Good Morning,” and they all chanted back, “Good Morning.”  This went on all week, then on Friday morning, after he greeted them with, Good Morning,“ and all of the monks chanted back, “Good morning,“ one monk way in the back of the chapel sang, “Good evening.”

     There was an awful, tense, silence.  Finally, the Abbott broke the silence by chanting, “Someone chanted evening.“

     When your new Rector arrives, I recommend singing only the expected responses!


“Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.” 

     In every parish with which I’ve been associated, those parishes have been filled with hard-working people, “movers and shakers,” people who have lots of “irons in the fire.“  I’ve moved primarily in church circles for so long that I don’t know if I can generalize to the extent that I can say all people are like this, but many of the people I know are busy people, people who do know what work is about.  But what kind of work is it?  Does that work have a clear direction and goal?  Is that work for that which ultimately has meaning or not?

     One of my favorite characters in literature is Sherlock Holmes, and if there’s one characteristic that impresses me most about Sherlock Holmes, it is his determination in solving a mystery.

     In one story, Holmes has a serious illness. He lay dying on his bed for three days. He’d not had anything to eat or drink.  He charged his landlady, Mrs. Hudson, not to call a doctor, not even Dr. Watson.  But on that third day, it was obvious to Mrs. Hudson that Sherlock Holmes was not long for this world.  So she told him that with or without his consent, she was going to call in a doctor.  Holmes weakly responded that if she was going to call a doctor, at least she should call Dr. Watson.

     When Watson arrived, he found that Holmes had diagnosed his own disease and that it was a rare eastern disease that only one man in London knew anything about. He told Watson to go to this man and beg him to come and help him.  Watson did as he was told, making sure he followed Holmes’s instructions not to get near him, so as not to catch the deadly disease, and fetched the expert.

     After hearing how ill Holmes was, the expert, Mr. Culverton Smith, went to see him without hesitation.  When he saw Holmes’s condition, he refused to treat him, however, for he confessed to Holmes that it was he who had arranged for him to catch the disease by sending him a box which, when opened, would prick the opener’s finger and inject the virus into the bloodstream.

     Of course, this confession was exactly what Holmes wanted to hear.  His act of illness now could end, and with Watson, who had been hiding behind the bed, having heard the confession, Smith could be convicted of a similar murder to which he had also confessed.

     The amazing aspect of this case was Holmes‘s willingness to go without food or water for three days in order to be convincing in his act and thus catch the culprit.  Over and over again in the stories of Sherlock Holmes it’s apparent that Holmes has only one aim in life, and that is to solve mysteries.  Any sacrifice is worth making to achieve this one goal.

     It’s this single-mindedness of Sherlock Holmes that is so like the single-mindedness that is required of us in the Christian life, in working for the food that does not perish. We Christians have one goal, and that goal is to follow Christ in all that we think, say, and do.  That’s what it means to call him Lord.  That’s what we have pledged to do by virtue of our baptism.

     Some might think that to be so single-minded about religion is to be fanatic, and no one wants to be labeled fanatic!  But to be single-minded about life is really not that foreign to our nature.  I’d venture to say that most all of us tend toward single-mindedness of one type or another.  It’s called living by a life principle, although we very rarely articulate the principle by which we live.

     Some live with happiness as their life principle.  Some live with familial well-being as their life principle, or their career, or making money, or amassing possessions, or having the respect of others, and the list goes on. But we all tend to live according to a life principle, and we tend to be single-minded in our pursuit of the goal. Unhappily, just because we’re here worshiping today doesn’t mean that working for the food which is imperishable is our life principle.  It may mean that some of the aspects of Christian faith fit in well with our life principle. It’s good for family life; it makes us feel good; it’s good for business, gives us a certain degree of honor, recognition, or power.

     The one thing that most all life principles have in common, however, is that they tend to be self-serving.  When Jesus calls us to work for the food which is imperishable, he’s calling us to accept a life principle that goes against our fallen nature, he’s calling us to a life like the life of our Lord, a life that takes us to the cross.  So he’s calling us toward accepting a principle that is in conflict with the one by which we naturally live, whatever that may be.  Some of what we call hypocrisy is, therefore, inevitable in the Christian life, for the Christian takes on a life principle that’s in conflict with the one by which he or she would naturally live.  St. Paul said, “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

     For us to live with Christ as our life principle doesn’t mean that we have to sell our possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and then go live in a monastery.  It means devoting all of our activities, in thought, word, and deed to the glory of God, and seeking to do all things in accordance with God’s will.  We want to strive, by the grace of God, to be able to say along with St. Paul, “For me to live is Christ.”  May God grant us the grace to work for this food that is imperishable, that endures to eternal life.