Did you watch the Illinois/Michigan game yesterday? We watched it on television. It was an exciting game, but not nearly as exciting as last week’s game.
Last week Linda and I actually went to the Illini/Purdue football game. Roger and Sarah Burrus invited us. The game started at 2:30. We parked at the church and walked a couple of blocks where we got on an express bus. Like most all of the fans, we were wearing our orange Illini T-shirts. The express let us off just a block from the stadium. We got off the bus and within sight was a parade. It was the Illini Marching Band! How lucky could we get? So before walking to the stadium, we stood and waited for the band. We were probably within 5 feet of the closest band members as they walked by. The drum majors with their batons led the way, then came cheerleaders and other acrobats, and then came the band. It’s a huge band! And they made a huge sound! The flutes marched by, and then the clarinets and saxophones, lots and lots of trumpets, and then finally the tubas. I counted 25 tubas! I have to say, it was thrilling to watch that band march by as they made their grand entrance into the arena. If you didn’t know anything about football and what to expect in the stadium, just watching that band march on their way to the stadium would put your expectations into the stratosphere. This was going to be quite a show! The visiting Purdue team entered the stadium to the booing of the crowd. Then the Illini came in, and the crowd roared its appreciation. They clearly were the favorites! It was a great game! By the end of the first half, it was pretty clear that the Illini would win the game. During halftime, the marching band gave a stunning performance, after which the two teams entered again, ready for combat, but this time, things were different. Purdue quickly made up for a weak beginning and by the end of the second half the score was tied, 43 to 43. They went into overtime, the Illini scoring the first touchdown, followed by completing a field goal, making the score 50 to 43. Then Purdue got a touchdown and were poised to tie it up once again, but instead of kicking, they decided to run the field goal which would have won the game for them. But they didn’t make it and so Illinois won the game 50 to 49 and the crowd went wild. From start to finish, the game was like a huge drama of which even we in the stands were a part. The stars were the players, of course. Everyone was wearing clothes that fit their part. It had a plot. But the exciting part of the plot was that no one knew exactly how it would turn out. Have you ever thought about our corporate worship of Almighty God as a kind of drama? It really is, you know. Just like the football game, we are participants in the drama. In this drama of worship, we hear of how God has acted with his people in ages past as members of the Body of Christ read portions of scripture. We hear a rousing sermon from a priest who has been ordained by God to proclaim his Word. Sometimes we may even be moved by the scripture readings and sermon. We remember all those in need in prayer and we recall how we have failed in being faithful in the past, after which we are given absolution. Finally, we present bread and wine to be offered on the altar, and then we reenact Jesus’ sacrifice, as if we are actually at the cross as well as at the empty tomb. The climax of the drama is when we go forward to the altar ourselves and receive God into our lives anew through the Body and Blood of Christ. It’s a drama unlike any other. Everyone present is an actor—an actor, not as one playing a role but as one who acts. There is passion, humor, human failing, and human victory. I don’t know about you, but I am often moved by what happens in our worship. Just as I was really excited about the thought of going to the game a week ago, as Sunday draws near, I get excited about our getting together. Through it all, God is active, and his redemptive power is at work. From that great drama we go out and do the work of the Church—educate our children and youth in the faith, proclaim the Gospel to those who haven’t heard it, and serve those who are in need. It is the divine drama of which we are a part. It has tremendous consequences, eternal consequences, not only for us, but also for all of humanity. I give thanks for this community of faith, for what it has meant for past generations for over a hundred years, and for what it will mean for generations to come. But most of all, I give thanks for each one of you, for your faithfulness, your generosity, your passion for the work of our Lord Jesus Christ in this place and at this time. Today we’re starting the stewardship season that will end with the Ingathering of pledges on 17 November. As you think and pray about your gift to Emmanuel in 2025, think about what a great blessing we all have to be able to be here Sunday after Sunday, holy day after holy day, and whatever you decide to give, I hope it is in a spirit of thanksgiving for all of us being able to be part of this great drama of redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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After mass one Sunday, years ago, someone said to me, “Fr. Robinson, you spoke of Satan today as if he really exists. Do you really believe there is such a thing as the devil? I’ve always assumed that the devil is more of a metaphor than a reality; you know, kind of like angels.”
It’s not uncommon for someone to say something like this to me: “I don’t go to Church because I’m too much of a person of science to believe the major doctrines of the Church.” Many of you have probably heard the same thing from friends and relatives. Such things have been said about the supposed conflict between science and religion for at least a couple of hundred years, and before that it was between the supposed conflict between reason and faith. The major doctrines of the Christian faith have been basically the same since its beginning, but as we know, science changes and what was considered to be scientific truth a century ago, or even a year ago, can be overturned and completely the opposite of what science considers to be the truth today. For instance, in July 1881, President James A. Garfield was shot twice, in the arm and in the back, but neither wound was fatal. His doctors, acting on the medical science of the time, didn’t believe in the germ theory. His primary doctor, without washing his hands and certainly without having on any plastic gloves, simply reached into Garfield’s backwound and fished around until he found the bullet. Of course, the president eventually died from infection, eleven weeks later. It wasn’t long after that that medical science came to believe in the truth of the germ theory. The science changed, and medical science took a great leap forward. Furthermore, while science seeks to answer the questions what and how, it cannot answer why. That’s the realm of religion. Why is this world here? Why do I seek for ultimate meaning in my life? There have been scientists who have claimed that God doesn’t exist. They had no more proof for God’s nonexistence than we have proof for God’s existence, but that didn’t stop them from proclaiming their belief from the house tops, or better put, from the university lecture halls. One such atheist was Britain’s Antony Flew. Known by some as the world’s most renowned atheist, his writings in the latter half of the 20th century were used widely to support a scientific and philosophic view of a godless universe, supposedly based on the science of the time. Flew was a philosopher, not a scientist, but he based his atheism on the science of that time. Toward the beginning of this century, Flew reversed himself. He said that he looked back on that atheistic argument as a “historical relic” due to scientific research since 1966. Philosophers, he said, must contemplate the “argument from the order of nature to God as its Intelligent Orderer. He said this approach “becomes progressively more powerful with every advance in humankind’s knowledge of the integrated complexity” of nature. Furthermore, science has undergirded “the fine-tuning argument” for such an omnipotent intelligence: If the constants of physics were “to the very slightest degree different, then no planet capable of permitting the evolution of human life could have evolved.” Remember, this is Antony Flew, once known as the world’s most renowned atheist, who said this. Flew therefore considered it “reasonable” for followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam “to see the fine-tuning argument as providing substantial confirmation of” their belief in God – though he didn’t embrace those religions himself. Because of his change of mind, he became a strong, vocal advocate of public schools teaching the Intelligent Design theory of creation! So, persons who say they can’t believe in the teachings of Christianity because of science had better look at the science, because the science has changed, as science is wont to do! But throughout all of the changes of science, throughout all of the various periods of history, in good times and bad, in times of persecution of the faith and in times of wide acceptance, the truths of the Christian faith have remained constant, not the product of human reason or of science, but the product of that divine, omnipotent intelligence revealing himself to his people, and most fully in and through the person of Jesus Christ. Reason and science need not be in conflict with that revelation, yet that revelation transcends reason and science. Today we are celebrating the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. Angels have a prominent place in scripture and appear throughout Scripture in very important moments. An angel announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary that she would conceive and bear the Son of God. Angels announced his birth in Bethlehem to the shepherds. Angels ministered to our Lord after his temptation in the wilderness and during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. They were present at his resurrection, and in today’s Gospel Jesus foretells them ascending and descending on the Son of Man. While angels are not mentioned in the creeds, every time we celebrate the mass the Celebrant mentions that we are joining with angels and archangels in singing, "Holy, holy, holy," recalling that angels surround the throne of God in heaven and chant his praises continually. Angels are not people who have died, gone to heaven, and "gotten their wings." When we die, we remain people; we don't become angels. Angels were created by God just as people were created by God, although angels are pure spirit. Angels are probably one of those difficult things for some folks who feel that science contradicts religion, but once again, they may not be provable except through the eyes of faith, but they certainly are not disprovable either. The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels calls attention to the wonderful spiritual reality of angels in helping us and defending us on earth. This feast gives us a chance to give thanks for their ministry. Blessed Michael and All Angels watch over us this day and all of the days to come. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“What were you arguing about on the way?” Jesus and his disciples had just arrived in Capernaum after walking through Galilee. The days they spent together had been remarkable. Together, they had healed the sick and fed 5,000 and heard Peter’s astonished declaration, “You are the Christ.” But now, no one would meet Jesus’ gaze, let alone answer his question. On the road, in the moment, it had felt so good to bicker about who was the best, who was the favorite, who was the greatest. Each of the disciples, whether or not they would admit it, wanted to be the first. Think of the admiration, the inside information, the confidence that would surely come with being Jesus’ right-hand man. As the silence continued, though, the disciples began to realize that they had missed the point entirely. Who is the greatest? Most of us recognize that question or at least recognize the impulse behind it. We’ve heard it enough and maybe even participated in arguments of that kind. At home or on the playground or in the staff break room, we’ve wondered and sometimes we’ve wagered on whether or not we were the best. Mom likes me most. I deserve the promotion. No one will forget my name. It’s there in so many of our histories, that desire to be sought out, to be assured of our worth, to feel certain of our being loved — a whisper in our hearts of a better present or a brighter future that could be ours . . . if only we were great. Maybe then she would love me. Maybe then I would be happy. Maybe then I’d get respect. That voice comes to us so often when we’re afraid, when we’ve been confronted with our own frailty or lack of control. It could have been because of the failings of a parent or the death of a friend that our un-invincibility came to the forefront of our minds and stayed there like an ominous shadow. It’s natural to want to get out, to establish ourselves in such a way that we become untouchable, unable to be harmed — but such a desire can harm just as much as it can help us. There is a fine line between virtue and vice when it comes to greatness or ambition or pride. In our own way, each of us wants to excel, each of us wants to be appreciated — and for good reason: God gave us good gifts to use for his glory in communion with him and his creation. But when we forget him, when through fear or faithlessness we seek after the world’s ideal of “greatness,” we enter dangerous spiritual territory. Think of the disciples, who began arguing over who was the greatest right after they heard that Jesus would suffer and die. As St. Mark tells us, they couldn't talk about what Jesus had said. They were afraid. Afraid of losing their way, of losing their lives, of losing their friend. And so it was that the disciples retreated to the safety of their own egos and lost the sense of what God’s kingdom is all about. Like a kid at recess who declares himself king of the castle, the disciples argued about who was the greatest because they could not bear the threat of uncertainty or the need of the Other or the cost of discipleship — lest they be wounded by the love that awaits us all. That’s what fear does: It changes our perception, tempting us to believe that life is short and sorrowful, with no remedy when it comes to its end. And if that’s the case, why not grab what we can and do what we want and ignore the still, small voice that says there is so much more for us in store. Sitting down, Jesus called the twelve to him and said, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then, taking a child into his arms, Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me — and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” Our world is a complex and chaotic place, one that pushes us toward greed, toward selfishness. We all want to survive. We all want our due, and it’s so easy to make that our priority. But to do so is to miss the point, to miss the freedom, of Christ’s rule. In God’s kingdom, who is the greatest? The disciples couldn’t seem to answer that question either. They struggled to comprehend the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom. Just as we do. We are so accustomed to the machinations of power, to the dog-eat-dog world that rewards those with influence and money and acclaim. It doesn’t seem to matter how long we’ve been a Christian, that ideal, that vision is still attractive to us. It still whispers to us on our lowest days that happiness is one paycheck or purchase or accolade away. And yet, if that’s what it means to be happy, then we can never truly attain it. The greatness of the kingdom of earth is fleeting — the stock market will crash, the promotion will pass us by, the relationship won’t live up to its potential. Nothing is certain here — except the one who sits down in our midst and reminds us of what is truly great. In the Kingdom of God, it is the one who humbles himself, who serves the least, who attends to the weak, who becomes like a child who has achieved the stature God desires for his people: which is nothing less than the greatness of God’s Son, who knew the suffering that lay before him and did not turn aside but gladly and willingly accepted death that we might be saved. That is what greatness is about. That is what greatness looks like. And it is ours now, no matter our professional success or our physical stature or our age. Every time we catch ourselves pursuing the kind of power and prestige the world offers; every time we stop ourselves and reckon with the root of our desires; every time we set aside our own priorities for the sake of our Neighbor, we grow in God’s greatness. We grow in the ability to live as Jesus lives, to love as Jesus loves. And when we do so, we not only bless the world but we ourselves are blessed. For the simple exercise of virtue cleans our hearts, restores our vision, makes us more aware of the love God bears for us: love that is never-ending and always faithful, full of mercy and loving-kindness. That greatness is ours now as we follow the Crucified Messiah. Even now he is with us. As we pass through our own Galilee, as we face our own fears and wrestle with our own temptations, Christ is with us, covering us with his grace — grace the empowers us to feel the anxiety and angst life gives us and then let it go, drawing near to God like a child to her mother, eager for his mercy and comfort. And we will find it. We will always find that limitless love when we draw near to the One whose weakness is our strength, whose death is our life, whose resurrection is now our own. He will make us great, no matter what may come. AMEN. We’ve become a news-hungry people. When I was growing up, we had, of course, the newspaper and weekly news magazines. There was a morning news show, The Today Show, and the 6 o’clock news, and the late 11 o’clock news. That was pretty much it, as I remember it.
Then along came special editions like 60 Minutes and more than a decade later, CNN and around the clock news coverage. Now there are ways to find out what’s happening in the world 24 hours a day, both in our own “neck of the woods,” as well as anywhere around the world. As soon as the horrific shootings at the Apalachee High School in Georgia took place, everyone in the country knew about it. Millions watched follow up procedures by the police. As soon as the arrest of the shooter was made, we knew about it. Likewise, when the father was also charged, we knew about it immediately. We can watch the market rise and fall right as it happens. You don’t have to go to the stadium anymore to watch how the Fighting Illini are doing in any given game. True fans know how to get it on TV; and, of course, there’s always the radio. We take it for granted, but our knowledge of what’s happening in the world as it happens has never been greater than it is in our day. Obtaining knowledge of what’s happening outside of our own immediate circles hasn’t always been so easy. In the late 1700s they had newspapers, but no fast way of getting information from one place to another, and so, when John Adams negotiated terms of peace with King George III in England, it took six weeks for the results of that agreement to get back to the States. Once it got back, then the printed word could spread the news relatively quickly to urban areas. Before movable type was invented news took much longer to spread and, I suspect, the accuracy of what was reported was much harder to control. Word-of-mouth would have been the usual method for passing news, and that was the case for thousands of years in the human family. Thus, in the days when Jesus walked the earth, there was no vehicle for spreading his teachings beyond those who came to hear him. They couldn’t grab the remote control to see the itinerant rabbi casting out demons and healing the sick. Wouldn’t a photographer have had a terrific time filming five loaves and two fish feeding 5000 men, plus some women and children, with plenty left over? Many of the religious leaders didn’t like his methods. You had to be there or else hear about these things from someone who had been there, but slowly Jesus’ reputation was spreading. People were talking. So Jesus one day asks his disciples what people were saying about him. John the Baptist had been beheaded by this time, and some people thought John had returned in the person of Jesus. There was also a strong expectation that before the Messiah would come, Elijah would return. Some thought Jesus was Elijah. Or if not Elijah, then maybe Jesus was Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. The news had spread! Jesus was certainly a man sent from God, but then Jesus asks his disciples a much more personal question: “OK. People have their ideas about who I am. But what I really want to know is who you think I am. You’re the ones who have seen and heard everything. You’re the ones who have come to learn from me and who will continue my work. Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. The final question that our Lord asked his disciples is the same question he asks every person. “Who do you say that I am?” You, or your parents and godparents on your behalf, at your baptism gave the same answer as Peter gave. “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior? Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love? Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?” The answer was, “I do.” All that is to say that we believe Jesus is the Christ, God’s anointed, the Messiah, Savior and Lord. In this service alone, already we have referred to Jesus as our Lord at least eight times. It’s a pretty important belief in our Christian faith. Saying the words and living what we say, though, can be two different things. How many times in the last week have you actually thought about this one we call Christ and Lord? How many times has our Lord played a part in a decision you or I made concerning our relationships at home, or at school, or at work, or at play? Does it really mean something to you that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? How important is it to you? Or perhaps did it once mean something more to you than it does now? Or maybe it means more to you now than it ever has. It’s not enough that we once confessed Christ as Lord. That confession needs to be renewed every day. As our circumstances change, we need to reevaluate what it means to call Christ Lord in those circumstances. What does it mean to call Christ Lord in whatever business you happen to be involved right now? What does it mean to call Christ Lord as a student, or a teacher, or a parent? What does it mean to call Christ Lord when we retire, the kids have left home and we now have grandchildren, we actually have a little time, and a few more resources? When I really want to say, “I’ve been involved in the Church for years while my children were growing up. It’s time for the younger people to step up and do their part,” is that allowing Christ to be Lord of our lives? Could it be that he still has something he wants us to do to his glory? We are in the beginning of a new program year. There are many ways for each person here to be involved. I believe that to call Jesus Lord includes taking our part in the worship, study, and work of parish life. Singing in the choir, reading the scriptures and prayers at mass, carrying the cross and torches in procession, setting up the sacred vessels for mass and cleaning up afterward, handing out lunches to the needy, ushering— these are just a few of the tangible ways that we can work out our devotion to Jesus Christ as Lord right here at the church. When you become involved in a fuller way in the life of the parish, you’ll find that it helps you in following him as Lord in the daily chores of life. We live in a news-hungry society. We’re bombarded with news from all over the world. But the best news is and will always be the Good News of Jesus Christ. “Who do you say that I am?” Sermon preached by the Rev’d Fredrick A. Robinson Emmanuel Memorial Episcopal Church Champaign, Illinois 17th Sunday after Pentecost 15 September 2024 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come to save you.” Israel needed to hear those words. Early in the 8th-century BC, all of Jerusalem watched as the Assyrian army approached the city gates. Everyone knew what followed that mighty force, and had been reminded by the mouthpiece of the emperor himself, who stood at the base of Jerusalem’s walls and yelled: “Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. See, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. Shall you be delivered?” With the voice o their enemy ringing in their ears, Israel wavered. They were full of fear and did not know whom to trust: the sight of their own eyes? Or the Word of the LORD? “Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.” As the armies of Assyria gathered before Jerusalem, the entire nation of Israel fought a preemptive battle — a battle with which we’re all familiar. In whom or in what do we put our trust? That is not a question most 21st-century Americans ask. We live in a peculiar time and a peculiar place, historically speaking: Even as war has raged around us, all over the globe, for the majority of the last century, American soil has remained relatively untouched. At the same time, however, the failures of our presidents and the failures of our nation have fostered a pervasive sense of distrust and dissatisfaction that grips us. The average U.S. citizen, for example, is now less likely to believe our government or our schools or our churches are acting for our benefit — and that doesn’t even address one’s faith in God. We may not be facing the terror of imminent invasion; but that doesn’t mean there aren’t forces arrayed against us. They're just more subtle. A well-crafted image. A tantalizing lead. A quick click of the mouse. We are tempted, and in a way, we are taught to rely on ourselves, to believe the sight of our own eyes and the sound in our own ears and the slant of our own newsfeed. We don’t tend to throw ourselves on God’s mercy because we simply don’t have to; and so it is that when fear or sorrow strikes, we struggle to trust that God’s word is true. Sometimes we struggle to remember it at all. So God speaks again. “Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.” In the end, Jerusalem was not conquered by the Assyrian empire. Against all odds, the Jewish people routed the Assyrian army and returned to their city victorious. They remembered that the LORD was on their side — and that made all the difference, for they were able truly to see and truly to hear. They were able in that moment and for that day to recognize God for who he is and what he does. As the Psalmist puts so beautifully: The LORD gives justice to the oppressed and food to those who hunger. He sets the prisoner free and lifts up those who are bowed down. God is who he is and will be who he will be. God reigns forever. He does not change. God remains the same. From before time began and on past its end, God is perfect holiness. Perfect righteousness. Perfect love. At once unfathomable and inscrutable and also nearer than our very breath. Quick to bind up our wounds, always ready to deliver the one who trusts in him, God saves those who approach in faith and ask him for aid. And we know that definitively, finally because God himself wrote that good news with nail-pierced hands. “Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.” Every time we remember those words, every time we dare to trust, to exercise those spiritual muscles our society neglects, we actually encounter the LORD. We encounter the God who came to right every wrong and amend every injustice by taking the pain and the penalty, the vengeance and the violence on himself — so that we might be free. Free of the fear and the anger that can so easily control us. Free to see rightly the world around us, to respect our rulers as imperfect servants of the same master, to honor our neighbors as fellow bearers of the image of God, to offer ourselves and everything that we have and everything that we are to the the One who alone is trustworthy. The kingdom of heaven is not simply an otherworldly reality. For those whose eyes have been opened, whose lives have been touched, whose hearts have been moved: we have been given the grace to see God in his Son now. And he does not delay in pouring out his blessing, nor does he hold back his grace from those who ask. God hears the cries of his people — and acts. “Be strong, do not fear! [Your God] will come to save you.” AMEN. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“She wears her heart on her sleeve.” Not so long ago, that was a bit of a dubious compliment. People who fit that description — and this really could be men and women — were seen as wildcards, all sense and no sensibility. A good time, perhaps, but also quite likely to get themselves and their friends into trouble. Within the last decade, though, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve has become a good thing. A badge of pride: He’s authentic. She’s genuine. He really does speak his mind. Such a development is in keeping with the natural progression of our particular brand of individualism, where, in the words of one philosopher, “Everyone has a right to develop their own form of life, grounded on their own sense of what is really important or of value. People are called upon to be true to themselves and to seek their own self-fulfillment” (Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, 14). Which doesn’t sound too bad, does it? But he was writing before the Internet. And before Facebook. And before smartphones. What he and many others identified as problematic has become what we all experience now at a much higher level. The individual reigns. We hear about it. We see it. We subscribe to it. On Twitter, on TikTok, on Taylor Swift’s every album, the individual stakes her claim, bares her soul, reveals her heart. And we hit “repeat.” One must wonder, though, what that kind of “authenticity” does — to the people we admire and to us. What happens when the thoughts of the heart are given total complete command? When anger and desire drive us, and we just go along for the ride? What happens is that we all discover, sometimes in 160 characters or less, just how conflicted and chaotic and capricious a place the human heart can be. As Jesus said in our Gospel reading today, “it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” Evil does come from within, no matter how hard we try to ignore or explain away that fact. Some sickness, some malady grips us, and we are unable to break free; and in our society we don’t seem to want to break free. Even Christians, of every stripe, find plenty of justification for the vitriol we express toward our neighbors. “I’m sorry but I just have to speak my mind,” we say. “I just have to say what’s true,” or, really, “I just have to say what I think is true,” which may very well not be the case. We cannot see the heart. Only God can. And he knows what he’ll find there. God knows the terrain. He knows the shifting emotions, the racing thoughts. He’s familiar with the good and evil that lay side-by-side in each one of us. God is no stranger to the wilderness that is so often characteristic of the centre of our being. He’s been there before, and he will go there again — for God would make of our hearts a heaven, a Promised Land, where we might dwell together in peace. Think of that old Evangelical prayer: “Would you like to ask Jesus into your heart?” It’s sweet and simple and means so much more than most people realize because our heart is exactly the place Jesus longs to be. Walking with his disciples, gazing at the crowds, speaking with the religious leaders, Jesus saw that they were all harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, forever confusing the way of death with the way of life, forever trying to find a shortcut to happiness, a one-way ticket to rest, and forever failing to do so. We need help. We are lost on our own. We need someone who knows that evil comes from within and who will nevertheless not run away. We need someone who will stay with us past the bitter end, until the light of resurrection dawns in our lives, which is what the Word of God, what the Love of God, has done and will continue to do. He makes the blind to see. He sets the prisoner free. He raises the dead. Entering into our hearts, welcomed into the core of who we are, God begins his work: tending, keeping, healing the heart that ever so slowly begins to recognize him and his grace. Like a master craftsman, like a skilled surgeon, Jesus identifies what is sick within us. He reveals what is bruised and broken. He binds up our wounds and refines what is good. God transforms us from the inside out — and keeps on doing so until our heart looks like his heart and our voice sounds like his voice and our hands work like his hands. Until we become whole and holy, perfected in the splendor of our own unique personhood. We are that precious to him. God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to save it. To save us. To renew all of creation, one heartbeat at a time. And he will. He does. God is with us now, on our lips and in our hearts, speaking softly, knocking gently at the door, ready to transfigure the one who desires him. AMEN. In Inquirer’s Class, our class for people who are interested in becoming Episcopalians, we always have one class devoted to the meaning of the Holy Eucharist. Just one class isn’t a lot of time to deal with such a huge subject, but all of the subjects we cover in Inquirer’s Class are huge, so we’re only able to touch on the most important elements of whatever it is we’re talking about.
In one such class, after I had talked about the Real Presence of Christ in the Mass, how the bread and wine actually become the Body and Blood of Christ, after class, one of the participants came up to me and said, “Fr. Fred, I really have trouble with the idea that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. I have problems with the whole idea that Jesus himself is really present in the bread and the wine.” I responded to him, “So you believe that Jesus is really absent in the bread and wine? You believe in the real absence of Christ.” He thought about that for a moment, and then he said, “Well, that’s really not what I mean either.” I said, “Well, Jesus is either really present or really absent. It’s one or the other.” The whole subject of the body and blood of Christ has a complex history, beginning with when our Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples about his body and blood. Jesus said, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.… So he who eats me will live because of me.“ “Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” St. John tells us that “after this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.” If you’ve been in church every Sunday since 28 July, you may have noticed that we’ve read through the entire 6th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, Sunday after Sunday, until we have completed the whole thing with today’s Gospel, with the exception of the final two verses, which don’t go thematically with the rest of the chapter. On 28 July, we started out with the miracle of the feeding of the 5000. John makes a point of saying that the feast of Passover was at hand, which is an important detail in understanding the rest of the chapter. You know the story. Beginning with only five barley loaves and two fish, Jesus was able to feed the crowd of 5000 men, plus the women and children who were present. Out of very little, the Lord Jesus was able to make a great feast, and at the end 12 baskets were filled with what was left over. This miracle was a sign that Jesus was the Messiah, who would save his people. The people of that day expected the Messiah to be a savior in the worldly sense of the word In other words, they expected the Messiah to free Israel from Rome and make it a great nation again. They expected the savior to be a human being, but a human being with great charisma and skill who would be even greater than the greatest king in their history, King David. We know, however, that Jesus is God incarnate and that he is the Savior of the world by saving us from our sins. He would suffer, die on the cross, and on the third day be raised. Just as a lamb was sacrificed every year at Passover to recall God saving Israel from their bondage in Egypt, Jesus would be sacrificed for our sins by the shedding of his blood on the cross. That sin that separates us from God and one another would be washed away by his blood. Earlier I said that an important detail in the feeding of the 5000 was that the Feast of Passover was at hand. Remember how God saved the firstborn of Israel from death when he killed the firstborn of Egypt? The Hebrews were to sacrifice a lamb, putting some of the blood of the lamb on the door posts and the lintels of their houses. By the blood of the lamb, God would know to pass over those homes to spare the firstborn of Israel. The firstborn of Israel were therefore saved by the blood of the lamb. Every year thereafter, on the anniversary of that first Passover, the people of Israel were to remember that salvific event, but in a very special way — not as a past event, but as an event that they would participate in anew, each year, as if they were there at that very first Passover. Passover to this day is celebrated by the Jews as if they are at that first Passover. When our Lord Jesus celebrated that first Eucharist, as he and his disciples were celebrating the Passover, Jesus gave them this particular way to remember his sacrifice, a remembrance that would be similar to the remembrance of the Passover. Every time they would eat his body and drink his blood in remembrance of his sacrifice, it would be as if they were present at his very sacrifice on the cross. Our Lord Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross never has to be repeated because every Christian in every age in every place can access that sacrifice by being present at Mass. Every time we receive his body and blood, we are present at the Cross, receiving anew the benefits of his sacrifice. That’s why we never say we take communion, but instead we say we receive communion because we are receiving these benefits from God in Christ. Every three years at this time of year, we read through this sixth chapter of John. Today is the last day and next week we’ll be into a different topic. These last five Sundays have been rich with Eucharistic teaching, which is so important because the Church is not just a place where communion is celebrated; the Church is first and foremost a Eucharistic community through which we meet the risen Christ in his body, the Church, in the word read and proclaimed, and in the Sacrament of his body and blood. 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. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
At about 4:30 in the afternoon at my house, you can feel the tension growing. Snack time has passed, but my children don’t remember that. They think I’ve never fed them. Pepper paces the kitchen floor, then opens the refrigerator and looks my way. “Can I have a cheese stick? Can I have a chocolate croissant? Can I have a popsicle?” We both know the answer to every question; but she asks anyway because Pepper is an intensely hopeful person and thinks maybe Mom will change her mind this time. Simeon just bites my leg. Day after day after day, the same routine. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner punctuated by an obscene amount of clementines (which may just be my house). Sometimes it feels like all we humans do is eat or think about eating or worry about thinking about eating — which is ironic given the number of grocery stores and restaurants in this town. Not that long ago, our ancestors would have marveled at the abundance we enjoy. Fortified breakfast cereal. Vitamin D milk. Fifty-seven brands of tomato sauce. They were one bad storm or one late frost away from disaster. A failed crop meant less food in the winter meant less calories for the sick baby meant poor bone development and so on and so forth. For us, though, storms don’t register unless they knock out the power, and frosts melt away before we look up from our screens in the morning. Very few of us worry about going hungry because most of us haven’t ever felt what that really means. Humans are curious creatures. The everyday details of our lives, the stuff we take for granted — the eating, the drinking, the getting dressed, the going to sleep — these things teach us something true about the total reality of our existence. We will always need. We will always need more. And we will always be confronted and curtailed and sometimes controlled by that dependence, no matter what we do or who we are. Try as we might, we cannot escape the fact of our own insufficiency. Nor should we — because that is precisely where God meets us. When Jesus sat down on a mountainside to the east of the Sea of Galilee, he knew exactly what the vast crowds were seeking as they followed him. They were hungry for salvation — salvation from sickness and sorrow. Almost everyone there that day had heard that if you just touched the fringe of Jesus’ robe, the shake in your fingers or the pain in your side would disappear. Instantaneously. Who wouldn’t walk a hundred miles to find that relief? But now the sun was about to set and the nearest town was miles away and dinner was on everyone’s mind. “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Jesus asked, to the consternation of his disciples. No one had that kind of money. Not even half-a-year’s wages could feed the crowd gathered there that day. Besides, the question was moot because there was simply no food to be found — except for a kid’s lunch. “And what good is five barley loaves and two fish for so many people?” they asked. A question to which Jesus did not respond, though we know his answer in effect: It is enough. And it was. It was more than enough. That evening more than 5,000 people ate their fill with plenty to spare. All because they had followed the path set down by their own neediness and formed by their own suffering and so had found God himself. Surely, as Jesus walked among the men and women and children seated on the grass, the faithful among them would have been thinking, “The eyes of all wait upon you, O LORD, and you give them their food in due season.” That is not a truth we are accustomed to contemplating or even accepting nowadays. And why would we? We don’t wait for anything. Our food appears as if by magic on grocery store shelves. Every imaginable consumer good can be delivered to our doorstep in less than two days for the low price of $14.99/month. Modernity, in the West and especially in America, has done its best to eradicate human need and eliminate the minor and major suffering that goes along with it — which is a project that certainly has its place, but one that also has its dangers. People don’t look at each other any more when they meet in the grocery store or on the street. They don’t talk. They tweet. Somewhere in the mad rush to meet every physical need and satisfy every physical desire, we lost the other, more subtle essentials. It’s almost as though in this age of super-human intelligence and super-human abundance we’ve forgotten what it really means to be human. It’s a good thing we get hungry. It is a very good thing that we get hungry, that we get tired, that we feel the pain of not having what we need or what we want because those are signposts anchored in the present, pointing us toward the one who gives all, who makes all, who made us. We are his. We are not our own. And our limitations — our creatureliness — remind us of that in no uncertain terms. Every time we go to bed. Every time we get up. Every time we skip breakfast. Every time we eat lunch, God is there. The giver of every good gift is there because he designed us to find Him in all that we do and in all that we are. God designed us to live with Him and in Him, to taste of his love at dinner, to rest in his companionship at night, to wait on his arrival every time we wait in line. The great philosophers and sages, theologians and saints of history intuited this (some knew it): we are most ourselves not when we stay at home, but when we go out. When we look beyond ourselves for help of any kind, we meet the God who is near to those who call upon him. We meet him in the dimpled apple that is both tart and sweet. We meet him in the subtle word of a friend that soothes our fears. We meet him in that stillness that is peace beyond understanding. In the reality of our neediness, we meet God, a God who will heal us. A God who will feed us. We are not so far removed from that mountainside where the Bread of Heaven gave himself for the life of the world. God can do miracles. He still does. AMEN.
I’m a Star Trek fan. I’ve seen all of the original series several times and some of the movies. One of my goals is to watch all of the Star Trek episodes in every one of the 11 different spin-off TV series – Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, Discovery, and so on. You may remember the mission statement at the beginning of the original series: “Space – the final frontier… These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” One of my favorite episodes is actually one of the oldest. Captain Kirk has ended up somehow in a dark, empty room. He’s unconscious and injured. There is one other person in the room, who, we gradually discover, is from another world. She is in perfect condition when the captain first appears, she goes over to Kirk and begins to touch his wounds, which begin then to heal. But an even more amazing thing happens. As Kirk’s wounds disappear, the woman begins to be in pain, and then she becomes bruised herself. After Kirk is healed, then she begins to heal. As Kirk gains consciousness and strength, some unknown, unseen assailant, strikes him again, and the process begins all over. Their captors apparently are intrigued by this woman who is able literally to take on the suffering of others. In fact, not only is she able to take on that suffering, but she also appears to have a compulsion to do so. From my perspective, this episode of Star Trek is one of the most striking of all, because it’s a kind of parable or allegory. It’s a vivid portrayal of the meaning of compassion. True compassion is so much more than simply feeling sorry for someone who is hurting. Compassion is an entering into the suffering of someone else. The word compassion comes from two Latin words, cum, which is the preposition with, and passio, which means to suffer — to suffer with. Of course, compassion means even more than suffering with. It means to suffer with for the purpose of comforting and easing the pain of another person. St. Mark in today’s Gospel tells us that the disciples had returned from the mission on which Jesus had sent them. They had been on a mission of compassion, and upon hearing about all that they had done and taught, Jesus perceives that they all needed a little R and R. So he took them off to a quiet place to rest, but the crowds followed them. St. Mark tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. He saw people who were sick, people who were having marital problems, people who were having financial difficulties, people who were out of work, people who were facing difficult decisions, people in need of God’s love and forgiveness. Mark doesn’t tell us this about the crowd, but in any crowd of people, these are the kinds of things that are going on. And so, as tired as they all were, Jesus felt that he could not turn his back on them. So he taught them. Jesus had compassion on the crowds. Just as he would one day take their sins and the sins of all on himself, he took upon himself their needs, and the needs of his disciples, their suffering and pain, ignoring his own needs, that he might bring to them the word of life. That’s one way we could describe his earthly ministry, isn’t it? A ministry of compassion: the ministry of taking upon himself the suffering of humanity. The scriptures tell us that Jesus’ compassion in this instance issued in his teaching the people. What did he teach them? We’re not told specifically, but we may suppose one thing he taught them was to be compassionate themselves. This might have been the time when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan, or of the Shepherd who left 99 sheep to go after the one lost sheep, or the saying about turning the other cheek. One thing is SURE. He showed by example what true compassion is. Not only did he ignore his own needs in order to teach them, but also, when they were hungry, he fed them, giving us the miracle known as the feeding of the 5000. There’s something deep within us that urges us to reach out to those who are hurting, much like the woman in Star Trek, but much more important, just like our Lord continually reached out to those around him. Some people are trained and actually get paid to be compassionate. All of those in the healing professions come to mind. You give your clergy a living wage so that we can devote ourselves full time to a ministry of compassion. The Secret Service men who threw themselves over former President Trump when the first shot was fired last week, are trained literally to take the suffering of the person they’re protecting on themselves. They’re trained to take the bullet instead of the actual targeted person. David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher and historian, said, “There is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom, some spark of friendship for humankind, some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent.” It’s that spark of compassion that’s part of what it means to have been created in the image of God. But when we were created, it was a flame, not just a spark. Human sin directed our gaze inward, blocking that connectedness with the whole human family, blinding us to our role in the process of healing and wholeness. One way to put the purpose of the incarnation is that Jesus came in order to lead us back to being fully compassionate people. He came to fan that spark back into a flame, to give us a passion for compassion. The Church is the result of the incarnation, and by Church, I don’t mean an institution, I mean Christ living in each one of us. Like Jesus Christ, in Christ we are to be passionate about compassion. Think about your relationships at home, at work, at church, wherever you spend your time, and seek by the grace of God to be compassionate. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
King Herod heard of Jesus and his disciples, for Jesus’ name had become known; and like everyone else in Jerusalem and Galilee and all of Israel, Herod had to decide who this man was. For him, though, there was only one answer: “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.” What a change of pace we experience in our Gospel text today. Normally, we expect to hear the words of Jesus. We expect to be encouraged, convicted, or questioned by Christ himself. But this morning is different. Instead of the usual, we hear the grisly conclusion of the life of the Forerunner, St. John the Baptist. Just a short time ago, just a few pages in the course of the narrative, John wandered in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming a baptism of repentance in preparation for the advent of the Lord. “One more powerful than I am is coming after me; I am not worthy to bend down and untie the strap of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” The Kingdom of God was at hand. “Repent and be baptized, you brood of vipers!” John the Baptist was never one to mince words. It didn’t matter if you were a Pharisee or a fisherman, a Roman soldier or a king — John had something to say to you about what must change in light of the coming Messiah. And, in the case of Herod, his message was uncompromisingly personal. Herod had married his brother’s wife, which was forbidden by Jewish law in the strongest of terms — and Herod knew that, and John knew that. John told Herod the truth, so of course he threw John in prison, though for what end we don’t immediately know. Herod admired John. He liked to listen to John even as he was perplexed by him. Still, the pronouncement of the Forerunner rankled, especially with Herod’s wife, who made good use of her circumstances to accomplish her end. “Give me the head of John the baptizer on a plate,” and it was done. The Gospel of the Lord? What gospel is there in that story? What triumph? What resurrection? On the face of it, not much. Another innocent man declared guilty. Another prophet killed. Another ruler doing something terribly wrong and getting away with it. In Herod’s court, the world goes on as it always has — or so it can seem. And yet the Truth is different. If we were to flip back a few pages or cast our minds to the Gospel lesson from a few weeks ago, we would see a study in opposites. Immediately preceding the story of John’s death, we hear Jesus telling his disciples about the true nature of God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is not like this world, he says. In God’s kingdom, the poor are treasured, the sick are healed, and wrong is made right — because God’s rule is one of love, of self-sacrificial love, a love that will not tire or rest or stop loving until everyone has encountered Him. That is the kingdom Christ proclaims, the kingdom he sent his disciples to announce on his behalf. What a contrast between God’s reign and Herod’s. Side-by-side they stand, one seemingly poor and powerless, the other dominant and in demand. But to the one who knows, who has seen and heard, the rightful king and his righteous kingdom are impossible to miss. They call to the heart. They call to everyone’s heart. Even Herod liked to listen to John and his message of repentance because some part of him knew it was true. Some part of him recognized and resonated with the restorative breeze that accompanies the Spirit as he blows down the crumbling facades and crooked altars we build inside of us. Repentance can be painful; but it is the path to freedom. We know that, just like we know that we shouldn’t eat three cheeseburgers for dinner every day or check our phone in the middle of the night. But just because we know doesn’t mean we’ll always listen. We’re so often so happy in our sin that letting it go or turning around seems impossible. Like Herod, the idea of repentance may be attractive. We might catch a glimpse of the wide-open space on the other side, but then we decide to stay right where we shouldn’t be. Which is what Herod did. Herod hardened his heart. He surrounded himself with so much luxury and pleasure, that when the moment to choose repentance came, Herod felt like he had no choice at all — and the results were disastrous. “Who is this Jesus of Nazareth but the man I killed, returned from the grave to punish me?” Of course he would think that. In Herod’s world, in our world, that is precisely what happens. Bloodshed and vengeance. The nightmare of guilt and the multiplicity of sorrow that follows. But that is a story written according to an older testament; we live in the light of a New. And in that light, what do we know to be true? What did John know to be true? What did Jesus do? God came into this world not to condemn it, but to save it — to die saving it — which has been his glory all along. When we were citizens of this world, dead in our sins, enslaved to our own desires, God came down to save us. He saw how weak we were and how lost, and he said, “I will never again pass them by.” He will never again pass us by because he is right here. God is with us. Christ Jesus is with us, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, humbling himself even to the point of death on a cross that we might be saved. For God loves us, each of us. And he abides with us: no matter how often we misunderstand him or misrepresent him, no matter whether our hearts are more akin to the ascetic of the desert or the king in his court, God longs for us. He longs to pour out his blessings upon us, longs to show us his salvation, so that we might be free to enjoy him, this God who made each of us for his very own. This is the God we worship. This is the God who reigns. This is the God who holds all that is in his hand — who holds even John, even Herod, even us in his hand — and who will lose nothing of what he has made but bring everything into his Kingdom, where righteousness and peace kiss each other. Where every wrong is made right. Where we are made holy and whole through the blood of the Lamb. AMEN. Ethan Allen, leader of the Green Mountain Boys during the Revolutionary War, was with a group of fellow patriots at a Sunday service led by a stern Calvinist preacher. The preacher took as his text, “Many shall strive to enter in, but shall not be able.” In typical predestinarian fashion, the preacher observed that God’s grace was sufficient to include one person in 10, but not one in 20 would endeavor to avail himself of the offered salvation. Furthermore, not one man in 50 was really the object of God’s favor, and not one in 80…
At this point, before the preacher was able to utter another depressing divine statistic, Allen seized his hat and left the pew saying, “I’m off, boys. Anyone of you can take my chance.” I don’t blame Ethan Allen for walking out on that, but most people wouldn’t have taken that liberty. Obviously, Allen was a free thinker as well as a fighter for freedom. Last Thursday marked the 248th anniversary of the adoption by the continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence. The declaration was the work of a committee of five: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. That day on which this committee presented the Declaration of Independence must have been an intensely exciting one, for they knew that this declaration would lead the colonies to war against the most powerful nation on earth. The declaration makes it clear that this move toward revolution was based on universal principles concerning the rights of the individual and the responsibility of government: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That declaration did indeed lead to war, to the shedding of much blood, as well as countless other sacrifices, and ultimately to the establishment of this great nation.” Throughout my life, I have occasionally fantasized about one of the founding fathers, for example, George Washington, coming back to earth and seeing what he helped to set into motion. What would he think about what the United States has become? Our boundaries extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. What would Washington think about airplanes, subways, railroads, and automobiles; electric lights, hot tapwater, and indoor bathrooms; about buildings that reach as high as the clouds, microwave ovens, fast food, the Internet, cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter? After I fantasize for a while about what Washington would think about all of the wonders of our high-tech world, my imagination turns toward the more negative aspects of modern life. What would he think about the thousands of homeless people in every major city in this land, of our huge crime rate, the many lives destroyed by drug addiction, and our high rate of illiteracy in spite of the fact that education is available to every child in this country? What would he think of our current candidates for President? Washington was an Episcopalian. What would he think about the fact that there are beautiful Episcopal churches all over this country and yet we had an average Sunday attendance in 2022, the last year for which we have figures, of 372, 952 — fewer than 400,000 people in church in the Episcopal Church and dwindling every year? My fantasy always ends with Washington having very mixed feelings about our condition. How can a nation with so much wealth, so much power, and capable of doing so much good have so many overwhelmingly sad problems? And then I come back to the present, and I realize that my fantasy wasn’t about George Washington at all, but was a way of helping me to reflect on our society. We all have a tendency, I think, to be rather schizophrenic when it comes to thinking about our country. On one hand, we can get caught up in singing patriotic songs and celebrating so much that is good about this land, and on the other hand, we can look at all of the problems and become very pessimistic and despairing. Neither view taken by itself, is realistic or helpful, but put the two together and add to them God’s love for us and our love for God and his Church, and we have all that we need to do our part in dealing with the problems that face this nation. As people who love our country, and who love God, most of all, the only part of the world that we’re responsible for changing is that part in which we live. We cannot alleviate world hunger, but we can and must help to feed the hungry in this community, and we’re doing that on a daily basis with our lunch program. We haven’t been able to do away with crime, but we can and must teach our children right from wrong. We can’t alleviate the problem of literacy, but we can and must work toward making our schools the best they can be. It’s important for the Church to celebrate Independence Day. The Episcopal Church has made Independence Day a Major Feast, so that we can remember and give thanks for those who gave their lives that we might be free. It’s important to give thanks for the many blessings we enjoy as citizens of this country, and to use that thankfulness to stir within us the will to be sacrificial in serving the common good. That’s where our faith and patriotism come together, and it is that point where we are ready for our Lord to send us out, as he sent his disciples, to proclaim the Gospel. Adam Smith, whose economic and philosophic ideas helped to shape our constitution, said that “to feel much for others, and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfish, and exercise our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.” It is when we become this kind of patriot that patriotism will serve its proper end, and be altogether consistent with our calling as Christians. God bless our native land; firm may she ever stand through storm and night: when the wild tempests rave, ruler of wind and wave, do thou our country save by thy great might. For her, our prayers shall rise to God, above the skies; on him we wait; thou who art ever nigh, guarding with watchful eye, to thee aloud we cry, God save the state! Let me tell you about myself. My name is Jairus. Our family lives in Palestine. It’s a difficult time for us as a people, for we’re part of the Roman Empire, which is polytheistic, very cosmopolitan, and very immoral. I’m a religious man, in fact, I’m a leader in my synagogue, and I’ll tell you, it’s difficult for us not to give in to some of the pagan influences that are everywhere. That’s probably my most important role as a religious leader—to model what it means to hold to the faith when the culture around us is so against what we believe and how we’re to conduct ourselves morally. I take my role very seriously and as a result people look up to me. There was an itinerant preacher who was making the rounds. Many of the people of our synagogue went out to hear him teach and preach. There were amazing stories about this man, Jesus. In fact, I went out to hear him myself. He’s an amazing teacher. His parables are wonderful stories about the nature of God and man. But I have to say that more than anything he says, there’s something about him that draws a person to him. It’s hard to describe, but suffice it to say he has a great deal of charisma. And then there are the healings. He cured a leper. One moment that leper was diseased, and the next he was clean! And there are stories about his curing a man with an unclean spirit. And a huge crowd witnessed his healing of a paralytic. Amazing stories! One can’t help but recall the words of Isaiah: “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” But I have to say that there were problems about Jesus. He healed a person with a withered hand on the Sabbath, when he could have waited a day. It wasn’t an emergency. Why didn’t he honor the Sabbath? In explanation, he said things like, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” And he associated with people whose reputations weren’t stellar, to put it mildly. And he and his disciples didn’t fast at the appropriate times. That’s very difficult to understand in someone who’s supposed to be leading people to God. And so, while some were heralding him as the Messiah, most of my friends, certainly most of the religious leaders in Israel, thought he was more of a problem than a solution to our difficulties. I was keeping fairly neutral, when something happened in our family that changed everything. My beloved daughter of twelve years of age became quite ill. We called in all of the doctors, but they couldn’t do anything for her. The whole synagogue was praying for her, yet she continued to decline. In fact, one day it was almost certain that my dear daughter would die. I had to do something. I couldn’t just watch my daughter die. I knew it would be controversial, but I just had to give it a chance, so I went to Jesus and I begged him to come to our home and lay his hands on her and heal her. He had healed others; he could heal her. The tragic news came while Jesus and I were on the way to see her. My daughter died. We were too late. Jesus insisted on continuing to the house, telling me not to lose hope. When we got to the house, we saw that the mourners and musicians had already arrived; the required rites of mourning were being done. Jesus told the crowd who were gathered, “The child is not dead, but sleeping.” Everyone was dumbfounded that he would say that. He told them to leave and then he took my wife and me and Peter, James, and John to where our daughter was, and he said, “Talitha Cumi” (“Little girl, I say to you, arise.”). And she got up and walked. Jesus told us then to fix something for her to eat. He told us not to tell anybody, but I can’t help but tell you, because he can help you, too. You see, I now know that Jesus truly is the Messiah. He’s the one whom scripture foretold would come and save the world. This wonderful miracle is a sign of that salvation. I’d been skeptical before, and then just neutral about him. It was only when I was in a true crisis, when I had exhausted all other avenues for help, that I turned to him. One might think that he might’ve been a little upset that I went to him only as a last resort, but he didn’t chastise me. He welcomed me, he calmed my fear; then he gave my daughter new life. It’s now several years after my daughter was brought to life. I, Jairus, want you to know this because Jesus, who is now crucified and risen, can give you new life as well. It’s an even better life than what he gave to my daughter and he gives it to all who desire it. It’s life through him and in him and with him. It’s life right now and even death cannot conquer it. To avail yourself of it, though, you must go beyond a simple knowledge of Jesus to complete trust in his grace and love—the kind of trust I had when I finally went to Jesus to heal my daughter. He gave this life to you at your baptism, yet each day you and I must decide anew if we’ll really put our trust in him. When we come up to this altar rail to receive the body and blood of Christ, may it truly be a time of renewing our trust in Jesus and receiving him anew. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Time and time again, the men that Jesus chose to follow him, the men that Jesus commissioned as his own apostles, failed to recognize the One who stood before them. Jesus of Nazareth was so much more than simply their teacher, a wandering rabbi, the son of a carpenter. He was and is, indeed, the Son of God. Jesus spoke with authority. He interpreted Scripture as though he himself wrote it. Jesus cured the sick, freed the demon-possessed, told a paralyzed man to stand up and walk. He forgave sins. No one in the history of Israel had done such amazing things except Moses or maybe Elijah; but they were dead and gone and no one like them had been seen since. Until Jesus appeared in Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom come. “Who is this man?” Everyone was asking that question. The way he spoke, the way he acted, the look on his face when he saw someone suffering — it was almost as if Jesus had stepped out of the Scriptures themselves, but the role he was playing was God’s. Not that his disciples (or anyone else you might expect) made that connection. Caught up in their own conflicts and distracted by their own desires, Jesus’ followers missed what was right in front of them. They missed who Jesus really was even as they walked beside him along the dusty roads of Galilee and on toward the sea. Which is where the story in our Gospel text today begins. Evening had fallen, and after teaching a crowd of thousands for the whole day, and after having been forced to stand in a boat offshore because of the sheer number of people, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side.” The moon was bright, and the sea was calm. The journey should be straightforward, easy even; half of the disciples were fishermen. But almost as soon as their boat left the shallows for the deep, the wind changed. Clouds raced across the sky, and rain began to fall. The disciples knew what was coming. They knew how fierce sudden storms could be on the Sea of Galilee; but this was worse. The wind and the water had come alive, roused like some wild beast on the hunt, the kind of animal that plays with its prey before killing it. And the disciples panicked. Rushing to the stern of the boat where their master lay sleeping, the men shook Jesus awake. “Teacher,” they said, “do you not care that we are perishing?” And without saying a word, Jesus stood up, reached his hands toward the sea and said, “Be still. Be quiet.” And in an instant, it was. The sky cleared. The water calmed. All was at peace — except for the disciples who, as St. Mark tells us, were even more frightened. They “feared greatly.” “Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?” And on that note our story ends, with the disciples near-stupid with terror and exhaustion, asking themselves who this man could be. We know! The answer is clear. You’d think the disciples would get it. How could they not, when they had followed Jesus for long enough to see him cure the sick and feed the hungry and calm the storm. How could they not come to the conclusion that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, mortal and more than mortal, the Son of God not just in name or in character but in his very being. What a difference that realization would have made on the Sea of Galilee that night. If they had known, if they had believed that God himself was on board, would the disciples have been so scared? The storm would have raged. The boat would still have been swamped. But the disciples would have been safe, even while their lives were in danger. Which is where things start getting complicated, especially for us, who can smile at the irony of a story written down so many years ago; but who nevertheless can also recognize the fear and even imagine the terror those men experienced — because we’ve felt something like that and seen something like it before. It could have been a tragedy. A friend dead before their time. A career ruined in an instant. A dream crushed by one careless comment. Or it could have been the slow build of sorrow over months or years, the bad news that creeps up until suddenly we’re drowning without ever having realized we were so far from the shore. Each one of us has been and each one of us will be those disciples at some point in our lives: helpless, hopeless, ready to shout at God, ready to shake him. “Don’t you care that we are perishing? Don’t you care that I am perishing?” A statement to which Jesus did not actually respond. When his disciples woke him up, Jesus heard the fear in their voice, and he saw the desperation on their face — and he got to his feet and raised his hands to the sky and commanded the sea to calm and the wind to still. Then, turning to his disciples, he spoke to them for the first time since their voyage began: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” It’s worth noting the difference in his voice, the tense in which he speaks. Jesus commands the wind and the waves; he questions us. That distinction is important and not just because grammar is important: God commands the forces of nature to obey him. In the beginning, he commanded all that is to appear. Except for humans. For humans, God speaks differently. He invites, he questions, he dialogues. God speaks to us and wants to hear our response — because he wants us to find that same calm and that same stillness with him and through him and in him — a state of mind and a posture of heart that begins when we believe what he says and what he does is true and thus recognize him when he comes. Jesus said at the end of his earthly ministry that all power and authority had been given to him and that he would be with us always, even to the ages of ages. God is with us, behind us, before us, beneath us; above us and all around us. On the boat in the storm, in the car before work, when we laugh, when we cry, He abides – even when we miss him, even when we don’t believe he is there. God rests in this place where there never seems to be any rest that he might be ready to raise his hands and calm the turmoil within us when we ask him to do so. Tossed here and there by the waves, it takes a certain courage to leave the cabin or let go of the handrail. It takes a bravery of spirit to step away from the power of our fear and set down the easy comforts and the quick fixes and reach for the Lord, daring to take God at his word, to say, “Save me, O Christ, lest I perish.” That movement, that prayer, is in itself a victory. Because he will save us. He will deliver us. Maybe not from our circumstances, but through them. Maybe not in the ways we expect or even want but in the way we need. For all that we experience, the good and the bad, is the domain of our salvation, an opportunity to exercise our faith in the steadfast love of the LORD, a love that never fails, not even in the face of death. God is with us, offering us peace, offering us rest, even amidst the storm. AMEN. Linda and I have just returned from a wonderful cruise in northern Europe. We planned this in celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary, which really isn’t until 22 June. Anyway, we had a tremendous time. We thought of you all along the way and kept you in our prayers as I know we were in yours. It was great to get away, but it was even greater to get back and it is wonderful to see you again.
An elderly lady was well-known for her faith and for her boldness in talking about it. She would stand on her front porch and shout “PRAISE THE LORD!” Next door to her lived an atheist who would get so angry at her proclamations he would shout, “There ain’t no Lord!!” Hard times set in on the elderly lady, and she prayed for God to send her some assistance. She stood on her porch and shouted “PRAISE THE LORD. God, I need some food!! Please, Lord, send me some groceries!!” The next morning the lady went out on her porch and noticed a large bag of groceries and shouted, “PRAISE THE LORD.” The neighbor jumped from behind a bush and said, “Aha! I told you there ain’t no Lord. I bought those groceries. God didn’t.” The lady started jumping up and down and clapping her hands and said, “PRAISE THE LORD. He not only sent me groceries, but He made the devil pay for them. Praise the Lord!” That lady had faith, didn’t she? I’ve had the great blessing throughout my ministry of knowing many people who had that kind of strong faith. In my brief time here at Emmanuel Memorial, I’ve met some people who have that kind of faith. In every person who has strong Christian faith, it started out small, like a mustard seed, but with time and care it has grown large and overshadows every other element in the person’s life. All people have faith. Don’t misunderstand me, I didn’t say that all people have Christian faith, but all people have certain guiding principles that determine how they look at life and the course their lives take. We all have principles by which we live our lives, some large and some small. My Aunt Martha, may she rest in peace, grew up in the small town of Grove City, Ohio. She and my mother and their other sister and my grandparents were related probably to half the people in town. Everyone knew everyone else. She told me when I was growing up, “In a small town, don’t tell anyone anything you don’t want everyone to know.” She put faith in that small principle. We’re still pretty new here, but it seems like Champaign is a fairly small town! There are many things that become guiding principles in people’s lives. Some people’s primary guiding principle is the amassing of wealth. Others have as their primary motivation having power over others. For others, it’s respect, for others, work. For some, the most important thing is family. For the addict, it’s coming up with the next fix. For the alcoholic, the next drink. Some guiding principles are basically good things, and are compatible with Christian faith, if kept in perspective; others are not. The most important of the 10 Commandments is the first one: “I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods but me.” Jesus restated this most important guiding principle this way: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” a second guiding principle is like the first: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” These are the guiding principles for every Christian, and they’re the only way to true life. The faith revealed to us in Holy Scripture is that to put anything else as the most important thing in life is idolatry and will ultimately lead to destruction. Money, power, fame, respect, family, drugs, alcohol – they’re all in the same category—if they become more important than the love of God. When that happens, that’s what we call sin. Wait a minute! Did I just change gears with you? I thought we were talking about faith! Don’t you have to have faith first, before you have the love of God? Isn’t faith synonymous with belief? The theologian John Macquarie, in his book The Faith of the People of God, says “faith is a total attitude toward life, and although belief is a part of this attitude, it’s essence is to be seen rather in commitment to a way of life. It may be the case that when the commitment is made, all the beliefs implied in it are not yet clear, and it’s only in following out the commitment that the beliefs come to be fully and explicitly understood.” In the Letter of James, the apostle says, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” So, when Jesus speaks about faith he’s speaking about a relationship between God and the believer. I just quoted from the Letter of James. James is an excellent example of the point I’m making. During our Lord Jesus’ earthly ministry, his own family wasn’t particularly supportive of his ministry in Nazareth. Jesus’ family actually tried to restrain him from preaching, teaching, and healing. James, his brother, isn’t mentioned, but we would assume that he was one of the family members trying to keep Jesus from doing his ministry. James obviously believed that Jesus existed as he was growing up with him, but I think it’s safe to say that he had no faith in him at that point. Even if our Lord Jesus had tried to convince his brother that he was the Creator of the universe, James would most likely have thought he was crazy or possessed! James eventually became an apostle and was the first bishop of Jerusalem. By that time, he knew that Jesus had been raised from the dead. He knew him as his Lord and God. He actually gave his life for him, for he died for his faith in the year 62. Now that’s a mustard seed growing into a large shrub story if I’ve ever heard one! So, faith, while it includes belief, is more than belief; it’s a relationship between God and the believer. Think about the most important relationships you have. What are the characteristics of those relationships? They’re loving, they have a foundation of trust, and they require nurturing through time spent with the beloved. That’s a good thing to remember always, but especially on this Father’s Day. Your being here this morning is an act of faith. You’re spending time with God, your heavenly Father. You’re nurturing your relationship with him. If perhaps you’re here for the first time and know very little about the Christian faith, this first small step is an act of faith, and could be that small mustard seed that eventually will grow into a large shrub in your life, overshadowing everything else. As fallen human beings, we all have a tendency to make something else the main thing, when we know our commitment to God should be the main thing, always and everywhere. But thanks be to God, whenever we fall and confess our failure, God forgives instantly. God grant us the grace to make our faith the main thing, as that mustard seed grows into the largest of shrubs, and our faith becomes more and more the way to life. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Adam and Eve heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” We all know this particular story. We’ve heard it before, some of us even since we were children. Though they had been commanded not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the man and woman did precisely that. The snake tempted Eve, she tempted Adam, and the rest is history — which is really where we’ve all learned this story in unforgettable and sometimes deeply personal ways. No one, not even the most optimistic among us, can look at our world — or at our own selves — and conclude that everything is fine. As G.K. Chesterton once famously said, original sin (this disease or dysfunction that got its start somewhere behind the mists of myth and legend) is the one doctrine on which everyone can agree. The evidence is simply too great to deny. One glance at the news, one moment on any social media platform, and we know (if we’re being honest) that something has gone terribly wrong. In sinful hands, the fruit of that forbidden tree really is death. Not that Adam and Eve were thinking about that when they dashed into the forest on that primordial evening. All they wanted to do was hide. To flee from their mistake, to deny their disobedience, to be exempted from responsibility — as if the absence of the criminal could reverse the crime. Adam and Eve were ashamed; and they were ashamed to be seen by the only One who could save them. You see, when the woman and the man ate the forbidden fruit, they didn’t actually gain anything. They lost something, even everything. Ever since that moment, humankind ceased to know God as he is. We stopped looking to the heavens with our arms raised in thanksgiving because we were too busy looking after ourselves, too concerned with our own self-preservation to recognize God as our creator and sustainer and friend. And so it is that Adam and Eve hid because they thought they knew what was coming, and they couldn’t bear to watch. But if they had dared — if they had stayed, if they had stepped out from among the trees, what would they have found but the God who was coming to find them. And who is also coming to find us. Because we, too, hide from God. Like our forebears, we reach for something that we should not have or does not belong to us and then recoil when the consequences unfold. “But he deserved the harsh words,” we think. Or, “I wanted the dress or the car or the phone and have a right to it — and to my opinion.” That movement rarely results in healing or hope. In fact, more often than not it results in the kind of pain or alienation that can blind us to each other and to the world and to God. Wittingly or unwittingly, we hide — and so lose ourselves. And yet God is not deterred. Nor is he dismayed. He loves us, he speaks to us, not only when we are “good,” but when we make mistakes. Maybe especially when we make mistakes. God approaches, calling us each by name, holding out a wounded hand to lead us back into the light. A light in which we are revealed just as much as God is. For God made a promise to the frightened couple that night in the garden. He told them that their own offspring, their own flesh and blood, would face the same temptation they failed to withstand; but this time, he would overcome it, even if it cost him his life. Even then the gospel is spoken. Even then the Christ is revealed. Almost from the very beginning — when creation seemed to have come to its very end — we find the Son of God and Son of Man, the One in whose image we are made, who was born, who lived and died so that we might once more dwell in the presence of God without fear or shame but in quiet confidence and contented rest. Which is where the human being was always meant to be: at one with God, at home with God, at peace with Him. Christ achieved that for us. Opened up that garden again for us. Though Jesus suffered, though he was crucified, he crushed the serpent, and gave us what we thought had been lost forever: communion with God himself. That is our eternal reality, our belief and our hope, a hope that is unseen in so many ways and yet present and possible even in the here and now. For God does not find us only to let us hide again but draws the soul who desires him ever deeper into the life of his love and the light of his kingdom. There we are reborn. There we once more grow up. There we learn as an infant does — crawling, toddling, running, falling, again and again and again, always looking to dada, to “Abba” for our every need and our every good. Until one day we learn to give him everything and to expect everything from him. Until one day we learn to surrender our will to his, to long for him with the same intensity as a watchman guarding his city gates longs for the dawn. Until one day we know him, finally, as the God of mercy, who forgives that he might be revealed to us — and so he heals us. And when that happens, the watching becomes seeing, and the longing becomes enjoying, and we enter paradise again, not as the children of Adam and Eve but as the children of God, the brothers and sisters of Christ. For now, though, we wait. We wait in this world at the time of the evening breeze for the sound of the LORD God walking our way. May we listen for him. May we long for him. May we run out to meet him when he comes. AMEN. Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And blessed be his kingdom, now and forever. Amen.
The words have changed. Only a week ago we said, “Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!” But now something else passes our lips. It’s a familiar phrase, one we say somewhere around 60% of the year; and yet to speak the Triune Name, to bless Him: what a mystery that is, and what a miracle. We may not think in those terms — because who does think about the Trinity? Even priests avoid it. We quip that Trinitarian doctrine is a matter for theologians, and then make the curate preach on this particular Sunday every year. To do so, though, to equivocate when it comes to the One in Three and Three in One, is to miss a gift. For this encounter and any encounter with the Triune God is a blessing. We say it. We bless him; and in doing so he blesses us. Which is actually incredible and maybe even a little unbelievable. God blesses us — us, who get him so wrong so much of the time. Such is the human predicament. Since time immemorial, when people began to look from their hands to the sky and wonder if anyone was up there, humankind has been calling on almost any god but the LORD. Thor, Zeus, you name it — pagan antiquity came up with some pretty sophisticated substitutions. But now, after two World Wars and the Atom Bomb and the Internet, most modern people have settled on worshiping the god of their imaginations, the deity that deals in thumbs-ups and bright smiles, a deity in which our world believes and proclaims. “God,” in this age, is the affirmative voice that resides somewhere in our subconscious, a voice that wants us to be happy and that is eager to show us the path of self-fulfillment, where the individual is the beginning and end of everything. But then life happens, as it always does. The toddler cries all day or the relationship falls apart or the beloved parent or friend or spouse forgets our name. What can we do, what can anything or anyone do when that happens? What could we buy that might alleviate the emptiness that rushes up to meet us? What could we watch that might loosen the grip of pain and fear that threatens to consume us? What could we say when there are simply no words left? Very little. Maybe nothing. When tribulation comes, there is no mortal power within us that can surmount our suffering. And there is no mortal power outside of us that can transform our suffering. On our own we are frail and fragile and helpless — but with God we are not. Which is not just something nice to say. It is the truth. We’ve all searched, desperately at times, for the cure to our sorrows or the balm for our anxieties. And, like most people, we have looked at the sky and screamed at the clouds even if we weren’t sure that anyone was listening. That is part of our nature. Each of us knows, whether by the beating of our hearts or in the movement of our souls, that Someone is listening. Someone does care. And we know his Name. Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is no figment of our imagination. He is not someone we can control or even fully comprehend. He is God of gods and Lord of lords. The saints and doctors of the Church have taught us that God is of one substance. He alone is divine, all-holy, all-powerful, unchanging. Or, to put it another way, He Is Who He Is; and no one and nothing else is like him. And yet he doesn’t exist in isolation. God speaks. He breaths. He loves. God is unity in community: Three Persons in One Being, a being that is perfectly at rest. Perfectly content. Perfectly whole. We could spend years meditating on the ways the Church has conceived to speak about the Trinity; but, perhaps this morning, all we need to remember is that the God who made everything that is is the God who redeemed everything that is is the God who sanctifies everything that is. We live and move and breathe in his reality, a kingdom marked not by selfish self-fulfillment but by selfless self-giving love. Such is the nature of the One we worship, a God who will draw us out of ourselves and into his Life, that we might be united with Him. That we might come into the presence of God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth, not as a caricature of what humankind can be but made into the very image of his Son through the working of his Spirit. Which doesn’t happen in one day. This is a journey, a pilgrimage that happens at walking-speed and according to the tempo of our own heartbeat. God will lead us away from the cramped and cracked altars we build in our hearts toward his heavenly throne. Abiding with the One who is near us, all around us, and in us, we will find God. We will encounter Him. And he will stop us in our tracks, bring us to our knees, and lift our hearts to the place where the Holy One sits and from which the Holy One came down and to which the Holy One always returns. And that’s the key: Worshiping the Holy Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is really not about understanding a doctrine. It’s not about the ability to speak with confidence of a mystery we can’t actually comprehend. Worshiping the Trinity is about surrendering ourselves to a God who is above all and through all and in all, and who nevertheless humbles himself to meet us where we are. And, mystery of mysteries, we know when he does. Every time our spirit longs for hope and healing, every time our hearts cry, “Abba, Father!” the Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are God’s children, the beloved of the Trinity. As we take hold of that faith, as we grow in him, as we grow in love, we will begin to live with the kind of peace and joy that binds the Father and the Son and the Spirit together, until we become the kind of children who are always looking for, always running toward, always begging to be held by the Beloved. Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And blessed be his kingdom, now and forever. AMEN. In the Name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
They didn’t believe him at first. He was leaving them, that much they grasped; but Jesus talked about it as though his departure would be a good thing. And how could it be? When you love a person, you want them to be near, to never go far. And yet he had — and more than once. Jesus was betrayed, arrested, led to his death. He died a criminal. Almost every one of his disciples abandoned him. Until the news of his resurrection brought them back, three days later, shaking to the upper room. “Peace be with you,” Jesus said. He talked with them. Walked among them. Ate with them. But not for long. Forty days after his resurrection, Jesus met with his disciples on a mountain outside of Jerusalem and told them that he was going back to the Father. “I will send you the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,” he said. And then he was gone. Looking at the sky, the disciples marveled and wept and surely remembered the words Jesus spoke in our Gospel text today: “I tell you the truth; it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.” What could those words have meant to the disciples when they first heard them? And what did those words mean to them as they peered into the clouds? “It is to your advantage that I leave. I will go and send you someone else.” The mystery of God’s will was still a mystery, even as the day of Pentecost dawned. The disciples had waited. And wondered. And prayed. They knew that something was coming; but nothing else was clear. All they could do was abide in that place of expectation, painful as it was, and believe that the promise Jesus gave them would be fulfilled. And it was. In the space of a moment — in the space of a breath — the early morning clamor of the City of Peace was swallowed up in the roar of gale-force winds. Fire appeared and burned over the disciples’ heads; and the Holy Spirit himself filled the room. And not just that. For the breath of God filled the disciples, too. It was almost like breathing for the first time. The fear was gone. The sorrow was gone. The confusion was gone. Divine life had been poured out without hesitation or limitation on the men and women gathered there that day, and the experience was nothing less than re-creation. We see it happen. We hear it happen. Think of Peter, the disciple who got so much right when he wasn’t getting it so utterly wrong. Peter stood up and, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, told the crowds gathered before him that these were the days of which the prophets had spoken and that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, sent by God himself to save the world. And the crowd believed him. They heard the Truth in his voice. And that was transformative. Thousands of people began to worship Jesus that day. Thousands of people were baptized. Thousands of people received the Holy Spirit. The presence of God was palpable. The lame walked and the mute spoke; but more wondrously and more miraculously, the rich became poor, and the poor became rich. Everyone had everything in common. And Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female sat down together to eat. That is Pentecost. This is Pentecost: the rebirth of the world as it was meant to be. We know from Holy Scripture that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters at the very beginning of creation, holding everything that is in the knowledge and love of God. On the Day of Pentecost, that same story was retold. For in his descent, the Spirit takes what Christ has done and makes it our own. He takes the love and the faithfulness and the obedience Jesus showed to the Father and places the power to do the same in our own hearts. He fills us with the grace that makes us what we were always meant to be: We are no longer strangers but God’s friends, no longer enemies but beloved brothers and sisters to each other and to all of creation. That miracle isn’t just something that happened on a single day so long ago. We live in Pentecost. We move in Pentecost. The Spirit of God has come, and he fills all things and sanctifies all things. He is God, invisible almighty and eternal; and yet we can see him, know him, feel his presence in the lifting of our hearts and the glow of our countenance and the impulse to reach out in love to someone, to anyone purely because they are a fellow creation of the Lord our God. We know that the Holy Spirit is among us because no one else could cause that love to blossom and grow. No one but God himself could beget such holiness and wholeness that is the same sign and the same miracle that took place so long ago. We may not speak in the tongues of every nation, but moved by the Spirit and transformed by the Spirit and filled by the Spirit, we can and do speak in the language every human heart knows and longs to hear: which is love. One look at the news, one honest glimpse at ourselves, and we know without a doubt that the entirety of creation groans as if in labor pains, awaiting the coming of a God who makes right what is wrong and heals what is broken. We long for the day when wars will cease and suffering will end. We long for that day; and it is coming, not only in the future, when Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, but now and every day in our hearts. We have the Spirit, the power of God himself to change and to grow into the likeness of his Son; and we have the honor to do so with him, to hope, to actively passionately hope that God might take us as we are and make us into who he wants us to be. And he will. He does. He starts with that desire. He starts with frightened disciples and makes them into saints. He starts with hostile crowds and makes them into his Church. For the Spirit helps us in our weakness. He prays for us with sighs too deep for words that when the time comes we will act as one with the Lord of Love, whom he brings near, never to depart. This is our life, our life in the Triune God. What will come of that will surprise and amaze us, for we breathe with the very Breath of God. Let us go forth rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. Alleluia, alleluia! AMEN. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We are given the same story twice tonight. Does that ever happen? In our first lesson, from the Acts of the Apostles, and our second, from the Gospel according to Luke, we see Jesus ascend into heaven, leaving his disciples behind. But at the beginning of Acts, the disciples don’t look quite as good as they do at the end of Luke. And though both were written by St. Paul’s companion, it is in Acts that we find the disciples as we might expect them to be. Nervous and prone to missing the point. Jesus has just spent 40 days with them, convincing them that he’s alive and still the same person, teaching them about the kingdom of God, and now telling them to stay in Jerusalem and await the coming of the Holy Spirit. We can almost see the disciples nodding their heads as Jesus speaks. They were listening intently; but they weren’t hearing what they wanted to hear. “Is it now, Lord,” they asked, “that you are going to restore Israel?” Jesus’ disciples were still hung up on an old problem, still unable to let go of their old hopes, still thinking in old terms. Surely, Jesus was Messiah — for Israel alone. Which misses the point entirely. And Jesus wouldn’t allow his disciples to remain in that mindset. He doesn’t even answer their question. “You won’t know what the Father is planning,” he says. “It’s not for you to know. But know this: you will receive power from the Holy Spirit to be my witnesses not only to Jerusalem but to Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth.” And then he was gone, lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. How long the disciples would have stood staring at the sky we don’t know because two angels appeared and knocked them out of their revery. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? He will come in the same way you saw him go.” Caught in the tension between their hopes for a renewed Israel and a chastised Rome and the sudden and final departure of their beloved teacher, Jesus’ disciples didn’t know where to look. Everything they thought they knew, everything they had expected, had changed — too quickly for comfort. And now they were losing the one, the only one it seemed, who knew what was going on. The transition wasn’t easy. Or flattering. Which is why this account is so important — because it shows us us. We are just like the disciples, asking the wrong questions and then looking in the wrong places for the answers. And understandably so. It has been nearly 75 years since the world has seen such political, economic, and social upheaval. Practically everything is unsure and unstable. Like the disciples did so long ago, we want to know what will happen. We want to know what God is up to. We don’t want to wait for the future to unfold of its own accord. To do so is to experience the kind of existential discomfort modern Americans cannot stand; which is why we get stuck staring at the sky or, more likely, at our phones, slowly calcifying while the present slips past us. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand staring at the sky?” Why do you stand staring at the sky when the Lord of Life has made you free to live not just any life, but eternal life. Now. When his disciples asked Jesus about the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, he firmly, gently corrected them, and then he left. Before the disciples were ready. Before the disciples could wrap their heads around the mission they had just been given. Before they could even say goodbye. God would not wait and does not wait for when his creatures are ready to receive the gifts he longs to give us. He doesn’t wait for us to finally learn the right lesson or to find the right words. God pours out his love for us now, for everything that we are — and for everything that we can be. God knew his disciples. He knows us. He knows each and every person in the light of eternity, and he will bring us there, not by picking us up and carrying us like some impatient parent, but by walking with us and working on us until the day comes when we are transformed, and the human being and God desire the same thing. God has given us a speaking part in the story of our salvation. He wants us to grow into our own. He wants us to get up and walk. Which is why the story of the Ascension is so important. It shows us we can because it’s been done before. By living a human life, by dying a human death, Jesus redeemed everything that is, renewed everything that is — and carried it all with him to Heaven. For the first time, humankind entered those heavenly courts; and not for the last because our Great High Priest dwells there and would have us dwell with him. He has prepared a place for us, a home for which he prepares us in every moment of our every day. Because the Christian life is not one of stasis, not one of even staring at the heavens, holy as that may sound. The Christian life is one of learning to act together with God and move toward Him and with Him and in Him, while also moving forward, loving God and our neighbor with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength; which is a posture that takes some practice but always bears good fruit. As we learn to turn away from the things of this world — from the need to know the signs and portents, from the desire to control those events, from the longing for safety and security that keeps us from stepping out in faith — as we learn to turn away from those things and turn toward God, we will learn to love the world aright. We will learn to see with heavenly eyes. We will learn that God fills all things and knows all things and loves all things. And that is something worth looking for. Just like Jesus’ disciples, we can’t know what is coming this year or next year or in 10 years. What we can know and be certain of is that Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God and Son of Man, is seated at the right hand of the Father and there is nowhere he is not. He will come again, just as he went so long ago; and when he does return to judge the living and the dead, he will find a sanctified people, filled with joy, blessing God and worshiping him in his temple. AMEN. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
About 2,024 years ago — give or take a few — when Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, there were no bells. There were no champagne receptions. There were no glad shouts of “Alleluia!” Instead, there was a lot of confusion and fear and running around because no one believed what the myrrh-bearing women said they saw at the tomb in the garden. The news that Mary and Salome and Mary Magdalene brought — “He is not there!” — was simply too incomprehensible to be true. Only three days had passed since Jesus’ friends and followers had seen him gasp his last excruciating breath, nailed to a cross. It’s not surprising that they would not or could not wake up to what this news meant. And yet Jesus was there regardless — standing among them, alive and seemingly well, save for the nail-marks in his hands and feet and the wound in his side. His voice, the same. His smile, too. Jesus opened wide his arms with words of welcome; and then he ate breakfast. Nothing was the same after Jesus rose again. As each day passed, the disciples — Mary Magdalene, Thomas, Peter — had to come to grips with how much they hadn’t known or understood about this man they loved. They had to reckon with the earth-breaking, grave-shattering, veil-rending revelation that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus was who he said he was. He is who he says he is; and that will never cease to surprise and amaze us — and turn our lives upside down. Because it’s easy, all too easy, for us to have the same experience as the disciples. We hear the Word Christ speaks and promptly forget it or immediately misunderstand it. No matter that we’re educated denizens of the 21st-century — humankind doesn’t change; and just like Thomas, we need Jesus to remind us that he is still flesh and blood and God — divine and human, our Lord and our God. And just like Peter, we need Jesus to remind us that he can forgive even the deepest of betrayals and then send the sinner out to become a saint. And just like the Jewish leaders and the Roman consuls as well as thousands of Christians throughout the years, we need Jesus to remind us that his reign is one not of coercion or rigidity or violence but one of love and mercy. That is what Eastertide is about. Jesus is among us, teaching us to live in light of who God revealed him to be by raising him from the dead. And what do we learn today but the oldest lesson of them all? God is love; and he commands us to love one another. “As the Father has loved me,” Jesus said, “so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” Even just on the surface, these words sound very nice. God is love. We can get behind that; we can print it on a t-shirt or stick it on our car. But to stop there is to surrender our understanding of Love to the 21st-century’s two dimensions, where love is more often the product of algorithms or the domain of advertisers or the half-guilty sense of familial obligation that descends upon us at Christmastime than it is anything to do with God. Given a moment to reflect, though, we can usually recognize that; and given another moment to reflect, we can actually recognize God’s love when we see it. Because it’s distinctive. It’s striking. It’s not normal to pour oneself out as an offering of love for someone else — including one’s enemies. But that is what God does, has done, and will do. For God so loved that world that he sent his only Son to save it. And that love truly, truly I say to you, changes everything. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived and died as a human being; in his life, the Word rewrote what was possible for humans to accomplish; in his death, the Lamb broke the bonds of fear and pain that so often underly the sins committed against us and the sins committed by us; and in his resurrection, God opened up the way of eternal life to us now. This is Easter. Christ is in our midst, teaching us and reminding us and revealing to us who he is, that we might ready to follow him when he comes our way. And he does — and you are already following him. You may not realize it because we haven’t been taught to look for the Lord of Love in every moment of every day; but every time, every time you choose to control even justified anger and turn the other cheek, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you give up an hour or a weekend to listen to a friend cry or to help a grieving family at their son’s funeral, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you pause to behold the beauty of creation, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you strive to see someone as a person rather than a caricature, you are abiding in God’s love. Every time you do your work with your whole heart and mind and soul and strength, you are abiding in God’s love. Every instance of this love that pulls us outside of ourselves is a moment we step into the reality of our existence: God’s love holds us, holds everything in life simply because he loves us and wants us to exist not just now but for all of eternity. Did you know that? Did you know how much God loves you? The creator and redeemer and sustainer of the world; the all-holy life-giving Trinity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit loves you, not as a child would, not as a lover, but as a God who knows you, who sees you — not as you might appear to your boss or your coworkers, not even as you might appear to your closest friends or family; but as you are. Your beauty and your ugliness, your light and your darkness, your fears and secrets and sins and hopes and dreams. All of it. He sees you for who you are and says, “My love.” Nothing is impossible after that because nothing is impossible for God. We live in the light of his love. We walk in the morning of his resurrection. This is his Word. This is his command: Abide in his love. He has said these things to you so that his joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. AMEN. Forrest Gump dies and goes to heaven. He’s at the Pearly Gates, met by St Peter himself. St Peter says, "Well Forrest, it's good to see you. Before you come in, I’d like you to answer three questions.
1) What days in the week begin with the letter T? That is an easy one. That’s 2. That'd be Today and Tomorrow." "Forrest that's not what I was thinking... but I’ll give you credit for that answer. How many seconds in a year?" "Now that’s harder!" says Forrest, "but I guess the only answer could be twelve." St Peter says, "Twelve? Forrest, how could you come up with twelve seconds in a year?" "There's gotta be twelve," he said, "January 2nd, February 2nd, March second." "Hold it," interrupts St Peter, "I see where you are going with this, and I'll have to give you credit for that one too. Lets go on with the last and final question. Can you tell me God's first name?" "Sure," Forrest replied, "It's Andy." "OK, I can understand how you came up with your answers to the first two questions, but just how in the world did you come up with the name of Andy?" "That was the easiest one of all," Forrest replied. "ANDY WALKS WITH ME, ANDY TALKS WITH ME, ANDY TELLS ME I AM HIS OWN." St Peter opens the Pearly Gates and says, "Come on in, Forrest!” That third question is an interesting one. You might think that if a culture has a lot of different names for God that it must be serious about religion. We certainly have a lot of different names for God in the English language: First of all, there is the name God. What are some others? Higher power. Divinity. Deity. Heavenly Father. The Almighty. The Immortal One. Lord. Savior. Creator. Redeemer. The Hebrews, those who gave us the Old Testament, had many names for God. The most basic was El (Powerful). Elohim (Fullness of Deity). El Shaddai (the One of the Mountains), El Elyon (Exalted One), El Olam (the Everlasting One), El Bethel (the God revealed in the shrine Bethel), El Roi (God who sees me), El Berith (God of the Covenant). Adonai (Lord). Parenthetically, El was a part of a good many human names and still is today. Israel (One who struggles with God). Elijah (Jehovah is my God). Daniel (God is my Judge), Michael (he who is like God). Gabriel (God is my strength). Ariel (Lion of God). Eliana (My God has answered). Bethel (House of God). But let’s get back to the names for God. With all of the various designations for God in Old Testament times, none of those that I’ve mentioned is a personal name for God. It’s like, if I met you for the first time and you asked my name, and I say, “Well, I’m a person, I’m a human being. I’m a husband, father, and grandfather. I’m a Champaignite, I’m in an Illini. I’m a Buckeye. I’m a priest.” But I haven’t given you my name. And in not giving you my name, I have withheld a very important part of who I am. You remember that God appeared to Moses in the burning bush that was not consumed. God told Moses that he had chosen him to deliver the Hebrew people from their bondage in Egypt and return them to the promised land, to Israel. Moses was shaken up by that revelation, and wanted to make sure he got all of the details. Among them, he asked God, “Who am I to tell them told me this? What’s your name?“ God said, “Tell them ‘I am who I am sent you.’” And what does his name sound like? It is spelled YHWH. There are no vowels in his name because there are no vowels in the Hebrew alphabet. Because there are no vowels, we don’t know exactly what his name sounds like. In all of the scriptures there are no vowels, but we know what the words sound like because of oral tradition. “Well, then, what’s the problem?” you ask. The problem, is that these words were spoken by God in the 13th century BC, they were written down sometime thereafter, but in the fifth century BC — that’s some 2500 years ago — it became a commonly accepted belief that God‘s name was too holy to say aloud. So in the text, when a reader came to God‘s name, wherever it was found in scripture, the reader would substitute one of the other names for God, Elohim or El Shaddai or Adonai for example, and so it continues to this very day. The consonants are YHWH. Many of our Bible English translations recognize the sacredness of God‘s name so they don’t even put it in print. They substitute the word LORD for God‘s name. If you come to the word Lord in your English Bible and it’s spelled in the normal way, then it’s just a translation of the word Lord. But if you come to the word LORD in your English translation and it’s in all capital letters, you have stumbled upon a part of the text that was not translated literally but the word Lord was substituted for the holy name of God. Look at the psalm from this morning. See that the word LORD when it appears is all in capital letters. That means in the Hebrew text it was the word YHWH. Well, I may have taken you into the weeds for a while, but I do have a reason for that. When we get to today’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus says, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” This is one of seven such statements by Jesus. “I am the bread of life…, I am the light of the world…, I am the Gate…, I am the resurrection and the life…, I am the good Shepherd…, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and I am the vine. In each of these statements, Jesus is saying, I am God, for he uses God‘s name first of all, and then he gives something of the essence of who he is along with that. So my first point in telling you all of this is that this among other aspects of Jesus’s teaching reveal that Jesus is God and that he told his disciples that in various ways and at various times. Some people say, “Well, I can believe that Jesus was a great man and a great teacher, but I can’t go so far as to say, I believe that he is God.“ This is what CS Lewis says about someone who says that: “You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” In saying, “I am the true vine,” Jesus was saying if you want to have life, you have to be connected to the source of life. All of the other connections which seem so important pale in comparison—family, friends, nation, even humanity—our connections are meaningless without the one connection that is true life itself: our relationship with Jesus, who is God. Do you want to have meeting in your life? Strengthen your relationship with Jesus, who is the true vine. We are in my favorite season of the year, Easter, the season of resurrection. This season lasts 50 days, beginning with Easter day and ending on the fiftieth day, Pentecost. Each Sunday during this season the Gospel focuses of a different aspect of the resurrection. The first Sunday, Easter Day, we heard about the empty tomb.
One such Easter Day a young priest used the tomb of Jesus to drive home a point about contemporary burial practices. He said, “People waste many thousands of dollars on ornate coffins, fancy mausoleums, and monuments to their dead bodies.” The young priest continued, “Jesus was so unconcerned by death that he had to use a borrowed tomb.” From the back of the church a voice said, “Father, he only needed it for three days.” That’s the message of the account of the empty tomb. Jesus only needed it for three days. After that, the tomb was empty, and no matter how hard skeptics try to explain away and demythologize the resurrection, they find it very difficult to explain away the significance of the empty tomb. The Second Sunday of Easter, last Sunday, we heard the account of the risen Christ appearing to the disciples in a room where the doors were locked. In this incident we gain some insight into the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body. They could see him. He could be touched. He could breathe on them. They could even see the print of the nails and the pierce in his side. It was his body all right, but he could appear and disappear at will. St. John the Evangelist also makes clear that the doubter among the disciples would settle for nothing less than physical evidence in coming to belief in the resurrection. Thus, on the first two Sundays of Easter, we hear about two classic pieces of evidence for the resurrection. Today, the Third Sunday of Easter, we hear once again another argument for the truth of the resurrection. St. Luke tells us about that same experience that the disciples had in the locked room where Jesus stood among them. Like John, Luke reports a Jesus who has been physically raised from the dead. But he doesn’t leave his story at that. He points out that the risen Jesus tells his disciples how his resurrection had been foretold in Scripture and was a fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. An empty tomb, hundreds of witnesses, and fulfillment of Scripture—these accounts and arguments are set forth for the Church’s hearing year after year during Easter. Make no mistake about it—our faith rests on the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. There have been skeptics from the beginning, even in the Church. St. Thomas was the first, although when he did see the risen Christ he made one of the greatest statements of faith ever made. In response to seeing Jesus he exclaimed, “My Lord and my God.” Read the 15th chapter of the First Letter of Paul to the Church at Corinth to find out about Christians in that church who did not believe in the resurrection. In our own day, especially at this time of year, the media take great delight in Christians who doubt the resurrection of our Lord. Articles appear in magazines and newspapers about biblical scholars and even clergy who state a lack of belief in the resurrection. Such skepticism has always existed and will continue to exist until the end of time, I suspect. I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus because that clearly is the witness of Scripture. That is the witness of the Church through the ages. I believe in the resurrection because I don’t think those first disciples would have been on fire for the proclamation of the Gospel after Jesus’ death except for the resurrection. The crucifixion was a defeat of all of their hopes in Jesus. It was only after the risen Jesus’ appearance that they knew he had not been defeated. They believed it so strongly that they were willing to suffer and die for him. I don’t believe they would have been willing to do so for a metaphor. But most of all, I believe in the resurrection because I know the resurrected Christ in my own life, and in the lives of others. We have not had the experience of the physical presence of the risen Christ with us. Since the coming of the Holy Spirit, we have had his spiritual Presence. Yet that presence is the most powerful, truest reality in this life. In other words, I experience the presence of the risen Christ as I live in community with the members of his Body. People living according to their faith in a culture that is faithless; integrity in the midst of hypocrisy; charity in a society that is self-serving; people leading Christ-centered lives when it would be much easier, and more natural, and more generally accepted to lead self-centered lives—these things are what ring true, and bear witness to the reality of the resurrection in our own day. May God grant each of us the grace to live as we believe and truly to witness to the reality of the resurrection in our lives each day. Alleluia! Christ is risen!
While Jesus predicted it and fully expected that he would rise on the third day, he was the only one who anticipated it. Everyone else thought that the crucifixion was a horrible end to what had looked like a promising future. Then Sunday came and Mary Magdalene discovered that the tomb was no longer sealed with a stone. She went and told Peter and presumably John. They went to the tomb to investigate, found it empty, and the linens with which his body had been wrapped, but no body. John tells us that when he saw these things he believed that Jesus had risen from the dead. They returned, but Mary Magdalene stayed and the risen Christ came to her outside the tomb. It is the experience of the risen Christ that transformed the disciples from timid, fearful, defeated followers of a fallen hero, into fully convinced, highly motivated, and enthusiastic proclaimers of the Gospel of their risen Lord. It was no pious legend that brought that transformation about, no metaphor that they proclaimed and ultimately for which they were willing to suffer and die. One of my favorite films is Hunger Games. It gave rise to a series and the fifth just came out last November. My favorite will always be the first one. The setting is in the future in North America. The current countries of North America have long since ceased to exist, and there is a new realm, called Panem. In this realm the have-nots exist to serve the haves. There had been a revolution, but it failed, and every year, in order to assure such a revolution wouldn’t happen again, each of the 12 districts of the have-nots have to send two of its teenagers to a tournament where the 24 young people fight to their deaths until only one winner survives. Each of the twelve districts, each year, draws the names of the boy and girl who will be sent to the tournament. Hunger Games is about one such tournament. In District 12 the name of a twelve year old girl, Primrose, was drawn. Her older sister named Catniss, loved her very much and was always protective of her. When they called out Primrose’s name, Prim was stunned, but began to walk to the platform, everyone knowing that the little girl was walking to her death. All of a sudden, Catniss shouted out that she would be a substitute for her beloved sister, and go in her place. Such sacrificial love was unheard of. The story unfolds from there as Catniss is taken to the place of the tournament, where she assumes she’ll very likely be killed. In the film there is no indication that Christianity is a part of the North American culture any longer. Hedonism is the only motivating force among the haves, and survival the only motivator among the have-nots. Catniss’s selfless act was, therefore, all the more surprising. As people watch the Games, they want Catniss to win because they’re drawn to her because of her act of love. It’s not a Christian film, and yet Catniss reflects the love of God as she substitutes herself for her sister, being willing to die in her place. That’s what Jesus did for us. God created us to reflect his love, and yet all too often we act not out of love, but for our own selfish ends. The result is discord in our personal lives, in our families, in our communities, and ultimately throughout the world. To love is to choose life in its fullness. To live with self at the center is to choose a path of destruction, ultimately ending in death. Holy Scripture tells us that the wages of sin is death. There is only one human being who ever lived who chose always the path of love, and yet for him that choice didn’t look like it led to life, but to his death. His message and way of life threatened the religious establishment. The Roman government saw him as an insurrectionist. The people who flocked to hear him preach and see his miracles deserted him. His closest friends, fearing for their own lives, left him to fend for himself, one of them even denying any association with him, another actually betraying him. It is the worst of stories in human history of injustice done to a totally innocent victim. His death was the cruelest form of capital punishment ever devised. It was designed to keep a person alive as long as possible, with the maximum amount of pain. A person who was crucified could live for a few days, and yet Jesus died in only a few hours. That was partly due to the scourging he received, which itself could have killed a weaker man. But it was also surely due to a broken heart. What we recall today is the triumph of God’s love over the worst that humanity can do. God himself, through his Son Jesus Christ, offers himself as a substitute for the death that we have brought upon ourselves through our sin. The resurrection is the sign of that triumph. In that first film, we’re not told if Catniss’s selfless act has a lasting effect in her community in the way people act in the future, if perhaps instead of living only to survive they learn the value of sacrificial love, but one gets the impression that it will have a lasting effect. Jesus’ death on the cross has an everlasting effect on everyone who believes in his Name and is baptized, thereby being reconciled with God and made heirs of everlasting life. His death on the cross also becomes an example for all time to come, of the way we are to live, as we give ourselves sacrificially to others in love. That’s the purpose of the Church our Lord founded. We’re the bearers of the message that Jesus died for our sins, that he’s alive, and that God the Father “has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” We, the Church, are also the community brought into being in order to live this new way of life. We’re to show the world that living a sacrificially loving life, with Christ in the center, in our homes, our communities, and throughout the world is the only way to true life. We sometimes forget our calling, and sin is still a reality in our lives, but the risen Christ is with us, and the Church witnesses to this new way of life in myriad ways, to the glory of God the Father. It’s that sacrificial love that truly ends in life and peace. And it’s that sacrificial love that we celebrate today and every Easter, and every day of our lives. Alleluia! Christ is risen! |
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