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.
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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! Alleluia. Christ is risen! This is the surprise ending to a series of tragic events in Jesus’ life. The disciples had spent three intensive years with Jesus, learning from him, because they thought he was the Messiah. They understood these years to be a preparation for the time when Jesus’ new kingdom would make King David’s monarchy pale by comparison. They would be the ones Jesus would use to establish his rule. It even looked like it was about to begin just last week, when their Lord and Master rode into Jerusalem on an ass, in fulfillment of messianic prophecy, a public declaration of his identity.
Then it all quickly came to an end. That possibility they had never allowed themselves to imagine had happened. The one they had thought to be the messiah was betrayed by one of the inner circle. Jesus had been arrested, hastily tried, found guilty, and put to death. He had been shamed, disgraced, discredited, he and his followers squelched by the powerful and efficient Roman government. There was no doubt in their minds. It was finished. Over. The task at hand was to get over their grief and put their lives back together. Then some women discovered the empty tomb, and a messenger told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. For several days thereafter, the risen Christ appeared to some 500 people. As Martin Marty put it so clearly, “The disciples did not believe in the resurrection because they believed in Jesus; they believed in Jesus because they believed in the resurrection.” And they believed in the resurrection because they had witnessed the risen Christ. We are here today because of that one event, but not because it happened once, long ago, and we are here simply remembering that. We are here because the risen Christ is with us and continually comes to us through the Sacrament, through his Word, and through one another, for he lives in us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us at our baptism. We have been reconciled to God through his death, and now we live with him in his resurrection. We as members of his body live in this new reality. So, what’s the implication of the resurrection for our daily lives? St. Paul tells us exactly: “Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, As the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive one another.” As we have been reconciled to God through Christ, so we must be agents of reconciliation to others. I’m reminded of the story of two brothers who lived on adjoining farms and who fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in 40 years of farming side-by-side, sharing machinery, trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch. Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and grew into a major difference, and finally it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence. One morning there was a knock on John’s door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter’s toolbox. “I’m looking for a few days’ work,” he said. “Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there I could help you with?” “Yes,” said the older brother. “I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That’s my neighbor. In fact, it’s my younger brother. Last week there was a meadow between us and he took his bulldozer to the river levee and now there’s a creek between us. Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I’ll do him one better. See that pile of lumber by the barn? I want you to build me a fence—an 8 foot fence—so I won’t need to see his place or his face anymore.” The carpenter said, “I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post hole digger and I’ll be able to do a job that pleases you.” The older brother had to go to town, so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then he was off for the day. The carpenter worked hard all that day measuring, sawing, nailing. About sunset, when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job. The farmer’s eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. There was no fence there at all. It was a bridge, stretching from one side of the creek to the other! A fine piece of work, handrails and all—and the neighbor, his younger brother, was coming across, his hands outstretched. “You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I’ve said and done.” The two brothers met in the middle of the bridge, taking each other’s hands. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder. “No, wait! Stay a few days. I have a lot of other projects for you,” said the older brother. “I’d love to stay on,” the carpenter said, “but I have many more bridges to build.” We can describe the death and resurrection of our Lord in many ways, and one of those ways certainly is by likening it to a bridge. Through his death on the cross the carpenter from Nazareth built a bridge between us and the Father and between us and others. His resurrection made that bridge apparent. Now that we have been reconciled to God, our purpose is to bring that reconciliation to others, and that work begins by building those bridges in our own relationships, starting with those who are closest to us. George Herbert said, “He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.” What better way for us to celebrate the presence of the risen Christ than to let his reconciling love build bridges through us? “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.”
The cross, that central symbol of our faith, is seen everywhere. Have you ever noticed how many crosses there are in this church? There’s one on top of the rood screen on the front of each of the two tabernacles on top of the tabernacle on each altar, held by the lamb of God in the middle of the reredos above the reredos above the church flag seven crosses in the columbarium just behind the rood screen as you enter the pulpit at the top of each hymn board in Lent, there is a cross in each of the stations of the cross the carillon memorial plaque the festival trumpet memorial plaque the Rededication plaque at the top on the front of every prayer book one toward the top of the organ pipes three of the stained glass windows brass Cross at the back of the nave on the table six crosses at the top of each of the light fixtures eight hassocks on the back of the very last pew, have a different kind of cross on each one. A cross leads our processions. There are crosses on many of our communion vessels and many of our linens. Many of you are wearing a cross or carrying a cross in your pocket. There are crosses all over town. Some are on churches, but most aren’t designed specifically as crosses. There’s a cross every time two roads intersect. Tile floors and ceilings have countless crosses. Paneled walls, bookshelves, telephone poles, masts of ships, and the structures holding window panes all have crosses. The cross appears in our alphabet. The cross is the symbol of our salvation. The ancient anthem proclaims, “we adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.” The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is first of all the bad news that we human beings are so alienated from God by our sin that we can do nothing on our own to reconcile ourselves to God. It’s not a matter of our being basically good people who once in a while do something wrong; it’s a matter of our being basically so self-centered that we cannot break out of that nature. Even the best of intentions are colored by the broad brush of sin with a capital S. Article 9 in the Articles of Religion, says this of sin: “Original sin…is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man…, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation.” That statement is speaking not of your worst enemies, not specifically of Adolf Hitler or of the terrorists who bomb schools, obviously evil people who did unspeakably evil deeds. No, it’s talking about you and me, “inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit.” If left to our own devices, we would be without hope. One of the collects in the prayerbook states it another way: “O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully except our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be able to tell that something is drastically wrong. If the extermination of 6 million Jews during the Second World War, the massive genocides that have taken place in our time, and many acts of terrorism don’t convince you, then look at your own relationships. The person who doesn’t have some troubling conflict is rare indeed. Families in this country are often dysfunctional. Divorce is so common that it hardly raises an eyebrow anymore. Alcoholism and drug addiction are still epidemic in this country, in which we boast that we can conquer most any obstacle. We dare not leave our homes without locking all doors because of the real possibility of our possessions being stolen. These things are all symptoms of a basic problem in humanity. We were created for joy, but something has gone drastically wrong. The Gospel is first of all bad news. We are “inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit.” But the Gospel, of course, is also and most importantly good news, for what we cannot do on our own, God has chosen to do for us. St. John tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Jesus has paid the price for our sin by his death on the cross. Through that death we are reconciled to God. “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.” It was real wood to which our Lord’s hands and feet were nailed. The thorns drew real blood. This one through whom the world was created, who himself is love, subjected himself to the cruelest form of execution out of love, not only for the people of that day, but also for all people for all time. At baptism a cross is traced on the newly baptized’s forehead, symbolizing the fact that not only is the cross a sign of what Jesus did for us, but also a sign of how we are to live our lives in sacrificial love. “We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.” “O saving victim, opening wide the gate of heaven to us below, our foes press on from every side, thine aid supply, thy strength bestow.”
I was 29 years old. Linda, our son, Michael, and I had moved to Nashotah, Wisconsin, about a month and a half earlier. I was sitting in the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin at Nashotah House. It was a Thursday night during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, during which I would be matriculated as a son of the House. Linda was sitting off to the side, and I was sitting in my assigned seat behind the rood screen, an ornately carved screen of arches at the top of which is a life-sized figure of Jesus on the cross, flanked by four statues of saints. On the other side of the screen are the choir stalls, in which were sitting the upperclassmen and the faculty, and off in the distance, at the east end, is the ornate altar, which was vested with a rich fabric of white and gold. The chapel was filled with the smoke from the incense. All of a sudden I was filled with an overwhelming sense of the presence of God, accompanied by my own sense of unworthiness to be there. I had come to Nashotah House after years of preparation. My journey to that place had been the result of a sense of my calling, my vocation. That wonderful gift of a strong sense of the presence of God was a confirmation of all that Linda and I, and our son, Michael (unknowingly), had been through to get to that point. My experience that night in the chapel was what some call a "thin" place. There’s a barrier between the things of this world and the things of the Spirit. When that barrier is diminished and the things of the Spirit break into this world, it's called a thin place. St. Thomas Aquinas called it a gate. When we experience a thin place, when we encounter a gate, we feel God's presence more keenly, and we see our purpose in life more clearly. It’s an experience of an entirely different dimension of reality, a fourth dimension, if you will. As intense as it was, it wasn’t new to me, for it was simply a deeper experience of something I felt and still feel at every celebration of the Holy Eucharist. “O saving victim, opening wide the gate of heaven to us below.” When Jesus gave the Holy Eucharist to his disciples, and through them, to the whole Church, for all time, he intended to provide the Church with a perpetual thin place. The sacrifice that he was about to make on the cross would happen only once. How would he keep that sacrifice from becoming just a distant memory of an historical event? He did it by providing the Church, all those made members of his Body through baptism, with the Sacrament by which, whenever it was celebrated, it would be a participation in that original sacrifice. It would be a way by which the barriers of time, place, and physicality would be overcome. Thus, even though in the Upper Room at that first Eucharist his sacrifice had not even yet occurred, his disciples were participating in that sacrifice that was to come. The barriers of past, present, and future were overcome. Heaven was joined to earth and earth to heaven. Jesus created a thin place, a gate, for all time. Our Lord Jesus used the context of the Passover to celebrate that first Eucharist. Jews to this day celebrate the Passover as if they’re at the original Passover, when the Jews were delivered from the old life of slavery to the new life of freedom. Every Passover is far more than a mere commemoration of something that happened in the past, but rather is a bringing to the present of that past saving event. The language Jesus ordinarily spoke was Aramaic. In writing the accounts of the Gospel, the evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke translated Jesus’ Aramaic word for remembrance with the Greek word anamnesis. Anamnesis is a word for which there’s no English equivalent. Its meaning is basically the same as the meaning around which the Passover is celebrated. It means to bring to the very present a past event. "Do this for the anamnesis of me." Thus, our Lord Jesus, in instituting the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, gave his Church the way in which we could access the original event of his suffering, death, and resurrection. It’s the way in which we participate in a thin place whenever we gather for Mass, the way in which we pass through the gate to that fourth dimension in which heaven is joined to earth and earth to heaven. Tonight, we celebrate the institution of the Mass. We speak of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Sacrament, the risen Jesus present with us in the people gathered, in the Word read and proclaimed, in the Celebrant, and in his Body and Blood. Yet, every time we gather for the Holy Eucharist, not only is our risen Lord Jesus really present with us, but also we become present with him at the Last Supper, in his suffering, and in his death. We speak of his sacrifice as a once for all sacrifice. It never needs to be repeated. Part of why it never needs to be repeated is that we participate in that original sacrifice over and over again by being present at Mass. Jesus gave us the Sacrament to provide that thin place where heaven meets earth and earth heaven. It happened to be at a celebration of the Holy Eucharist when I had that deeply “thin” moment in seminary some 42 years ago. I’m thankful for that experience, but I’m even more thankful that our Lord has provided the way for us continually to reach those “thin moments” every time we celebrate the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. “O saving victim, opening wide the gate of heaven to us below, our foes press on from every side, thine aid supply, thy strength bestow. All praise and thanks to thee ascend for evermore, blest One in Three; O grant us life that shall not end in our true native land with thee.” In about a half hour's time we have shouted "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," hailing Jesus as our King as he enters the Holy City of Jerusalem. We have recalled Jesus' arrest and his mockery of a trial. And within that same half hour we have joined the crowd in shouting, "Crucify him!" We have recalled his condemnation by Pilate, his sentence of death, his scourging, his crucifixion, and his death. In other words, we have recalled the doing in of the best man who ever walked the face of the earth or whoever will walk the face of the earth, by the most religious people of the time, by a government that prided itself on its system of laws and justice. We have recalled human beings, even the most exemplary of human beings, at their very worst.
Our part in the liturgy serves to remind us that we are part of the same broken humanity that crucified our Lord. And we have done it all in this magnificent church; we have done it with great ceremony and dignity, with some of the most strikingly beautiful vestments that the parish possesses. To the uninitiated, all of this might seem strange, certainly puzzling, and something that people would do well simply to forget. These things are recalled in a spirit of sober recollection, yet undergirded with a quiet joy and thankfulness. For the story that has been recalled, a story of human treachery, greed, and betrayal, against a completely innocent man, is the story of our redemption. Our joy is a muted joy, for the story is not yet fully told, the resurrection not having yet occurred. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is good news, the Good News of the reconciling of God and humanity, but it is first of all bad news. God, the Father, the Creator of this vast universe, desires to have a relationship with us, who are made in his image. He created us to live in communion with him and with one another, yet we choose again and again to be our own god, to put ourselves in the center of our own little universes, expecting all those around us and even God to worship at our altar. This is the history of humanity. This was the situation in the days when Jesus walked the earth. And it still is the situation in our own day, whether we're talking about senseless wars or terrorist attacks in various places around the world, or mass shootings in our own country, or problems in the office and at home. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is that all of these things stem from the same root—we human beings wanting to be in control—of others and of God. This is our disobedience, and our disobedience has caused a rupture in our relationship with our Creator. God still wants to be in relationship with us, and through our Lord Jesus Christ he has mended that relationship. The good news is that, through Jesus' death on the cross, Jesus has paid the price for our sin and also has given us an example of godly life. The story of the life, suffering, and death of Jesus Christ is the story of the pure, unbounded love of God for us. May we live this day and all our days in the knowledge of that love, seeking, by God's grace, to live that sacrificial love in our lives. The phone rings. A friend from work is on the line. She’s been going through a hard time, and all she wants is for someone to listen. So there you are, however you do these things, walking around your house or standing stock still in your kitchen, listening for your friend’s astonishing insight or dark secret — and then the signal cuts out. A beat goes by. And another. And then the voice of your friend abruptly returns. Maybe she’s laughing. Maybe she’s crying. Who knows why? Your ability to pay attention has practically disappeared as the internal monologue begins to roll: Do you admit that you have no idea what she’s talking about? Do you ask her to repeat whatever it was that she had said? The thought of doing so is excruciating — maybe only to me — because you wanted to listen. You picked up the phone for a reason; but you were unable at the critical moment to do so. And now! Now you’re miles away, wondering whether or not to embarrass yourself and your friend by confessing to the whole thing. But by that point the conversation is over, and you hope that whatever you missed doesn’t come back to bite you.
Communication can be hard. Maybe it always is! But then there are those moments when the message gets lost entirely. It could be the connection. It could be our forgetfulness. It could be our self-centeredness. Sound familiar? We’ve all had those experiences, when we were told to pick up peas for dinner and got pears instead or when we thought our spouse was angry when in fact they were only exhausted or when the kids’ bickering erupted into a tantrum because we were too busy looking at our phones to intervene. The subtle art of communication — of all that’s involved with discerning what’s true and acting in accord with Reality — is a skill that we as 21st-century Americans aren’t particularly good at. Though we are far from the only people to struggle. In fact, we are in good company. Although some would call it bad. The Corinthian Christians weren’t exactly paragons of moral virtue. Empowered by the Holy Spirit and impressed with themselves, this congregation, which had been planted by St. Paul in one of the most diverse and depraved cities in the Roman Empire, was beginning to fall apart. Parishioners sued each other — in pagan courts, no less — after cheating on each other’s business deals. On top of that, an established member decided it was okay to sleep with his stepmother. And on top of that, the congregation had split up into various factions, each with their own preferred leader and their own preferred teachings and their own kind of preferential treatment. Even the people outside of the church who knew nothing about Christianity knew that what the Corinthian Christians were doing had very little in common with Truth or Virtue of any kind. These folks were behaving like the worst sort of pagans while also claiming Christ. Things were bad. So bad that nearly 250 miles away in Ephesus, St. Paul hears about it — and writes. His voice full of concern and pain, St. Paul warns his spiritual children, “You think you are wise, but you are infants” — and behaving like them, too. Somewhere along the line, the Christians in Corinth had missed or mislaid the message. They had lost the signal; and they were now in danger of dropping the call. The echoes of their past and the sound of their present were drowning out the heartbeat that was what brought them to life in the first place. “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” That Word is no less incredible, no less “foolish” now than it was then. We are, after all, living in a world that looks more and more like an ancient port city, complete with a dizzying array of goods and ideas as well as a seedy and sordid underbelly just a few blocks away. You can see it if you look. You can hear it if you listen. The same kinds of idols, the same false gospels are there, are here — we encounter them every day. If you want to be happy, get rich. If you want to be respected, find power. If you want to be remembered — we’ve moved beyond constructing beautiful tombs. Now we just buy the latest cell phone or invest in virtual reality or dabble in AI because to do otherwise risks obsolescence, a premature metaphorical death in a world that’s moving so fast the human soul can’t keep up. And we are told this is good. But the fact is, it’s not. The life we are called to live is not one measured by our salary or our followers or our fame. It is one that begins and ends in the message of the Cross, where a love stronger than death died, so that even his enemies might have life. This may sound like foolishness. It may look like failure; but it is actually freedom. It is actually power, God’s power, God’s grace to make every moment — the good and the bad — a moment with him and a foretaste of paradise. For God, our God was so zealous for his temple that he came down, he entered into our midst, was wounded for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities that we might no longer be pulled apart by the perceived needs and changing fashions of this world, but united with the one who can teach us a better way. And that instruction, that message, that Word could, as the Apostle John said, fill many books and still have more to say because the message of the cross is Jesus Christ, the God who became man so that he might take up our cross and carry it through the wilderness, into the Temple, and beyond the grave — that we might be healed and made whole not by escaping the world or by escaping our selves but by following the one who lived as no one has ever lived before. His was the perfectly obedient, perfectly trusting, perfectly restful life lived in the presence of the One who is Love. What joy life could be if we took him at his Word, if we learned to listen past the noise of the world around us, to find that still small voice in the center of our heart that tells us what is True, that reminds us of the sound that has gone out into all the lands, and the message that rings even to the ends of the world: Someone loves us, and he is not far from us. Indeed, he draws near, he comes close, that he might speak and we might hear. And he never stops doing so. God never stops calling us. Not even when we are at our worst. Not even when we’re at our most ignorant. Not even when we’re distracted. Think of the cross and the message it proclaims: God will not leave us, not even though we kill him. This is the Word that is found at the heart of things, at the heart of everything. The Word that will not rest until all is united through Him with God. And that is happening now, as each of us beseech God to give us the grace to hear with his ears and to see with his eyes and to touch with his hands this glorious world, these glorious gifts that he has given us, that we might enter ever more deeply into his love, seeking him out and finding him in every moment of every day, learning to believe that he is leading us on into glory, no matter what we may encounter. That is the message we hear in every word of Scripture, the Word we taste in the Bread and the Wine, the Reality in which we live and move and breathe. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." Take hold of it and live. AMEN. A Jewish father wanted his son to get the best education possible, but Jacob had just flunked out of the eighth grade. Desperate, his father approached the Rector of the Episcopal Church, who agreed to give Jacob a chance in their parochial school.
At the end of the first six weeks, Jacob brought home his report card with an A in every subject. “What happened, son?” the father asked in delighted amazement. “Well, papa, “Jacob explained, “they begin every day with a service in the chapel, and right over the choir is a statue of a poor Jewish boy nailed to a cross, and there’s a smaller statue of the same thing in every classroom. These people mean business! Sometimes our religious art isn’t interpreted correctly… The disciple Peter doesn’t quite understand the meaning of the cross either, but thank God for Peter! He is such a source of hope for you and me, and not in the way that we might expect. Peter—the leader of the disciples, the rock upon which Jesus would build his Church, the chief of the apostles, the one to whom the keys to the kingdom of heaven were given, St. Peter—this Peter is such a source of hope for you and me. I am so thankful that Peter didn’t get everything right the first time, or the second time, or the third time! He didn’t make just little mistakes; he made gigantic mistakes! In one breath, Jesus would praise Peter for his great faith, and in the next he would chastise him for his lack of faith. Jesus wasn’t being inconsistent; Peter was inconsistent. Even we, who struggle with our inconsistencies and doubts, can look at Peter and marvel: “How can you be so thick-headed, so weak at times? When will you get the point, get with the program?” But that’s the aspect of Peter’s personality that should give us all hope. For Jesus was patient with Peter; he stuck with him until he did get it right. He sticks with us until we get it right. He chooses imperfect people to carry out his work. And so there’s hope for you and me. They’re near the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. He’s taught them much of what he wants to teach them. They’ve witnessed incredible miracles. So one day Jesus asks the disciples who people say that he is. After hearing their responses, he asks, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter responds, “You are the Christ.” St. Matthew tells us that Jesus praises Peter, calls him blessed, because God has revealed this to him, and then tells him that he is a rock and that he will build his Church on that rock. Then, in the portion of the Gospel according to St. Mark that we heard today, Jesus goes on to prepare the disciples for the purpose of the coming of the Messiah. He tells them that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the leaders of Judaism and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Peter doesn’t get the point. St. Mark tells us that he rebuked Jesus. And then Jesus says to Peter, the rock on which he would build his Church, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” Jesus goes on to say, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Peter was able to say the words of faith, to call Jesus the Christ, the Messiah. What he wasn’t able to do was accept the consequences of that statement of faith. Jesus wants us to praise him not only with our lips, but in our lives. The words of our Lord are no more palatable in our day than in Peter’s day. We live in an extremely hedonistic society. The culture tells us to indulge ourselves, not deny ourselves. I call this Burger King theology: “Have it your way.” If something gives you pleasure, have it your way, do it. If it isn’t pleasurable, then don’t do it, or stop doing it. If you really want something, why wait? Have it your way; charge it. If life is not making you happy, if you’re too sick to enjoy yourself, then end it. If it feels good, do it, and do it only if it feels good. In a nutshell, that is the philosophy of our culture, from the greatest of us, to the least of us It isn’t coincidental that our culture is also plagued by alcohol and drug addiction, violent crime, child abuse, spouse abuse, and a host of other afflictions. Living life with the self as the center ultimately is not only self-destructive, but also is destructive to those around us. Hedonism, living life according to the pleasure principle, is attractive on the surface, but it’s false because its end is destruction—destruction of marriage and family, of morality, of self-respect, of life itself. It simply is false. Our Lord’s response to Peter shows us another way. “If any would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” In saying we should deny ourselves, Jesus isn’t talking about giving up something that we like once in awhile. He is talking about conversion—taking ourselves out of the center of the picture and putting God in the center. That takes effort, because it doesn’t come naturally. Hedonism is what comes naturally, but remember, hedonism is a false path. Putting God in the center means taking the time to pray about decisions we have to make and asking the question, “What would God have me to do?” To take up our cross is to share in Christ’s work of saving the world. It follows naturally from self-denial, as we seek to make Christ known through our willingness to forgive, through standing up for what is right when such a stand is unpopular, through suffering patiently when under attack. In denying ourselves and taking up our cross, we will be following Christ, for we will be living not according to our plan, but according to God’s plan. There are certain religious songs that I learned as a child. I can’t remember exactly when I learned them I learned them, or even in what context. Perhaps Sunday School was the place, or Vacation Bible School. I don’t believe I ever saw them written down. You just picked them up from listening to others around you singing them.
“Kum bay yah, my Lord” is one of them. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” is another. Yet another is, “I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.” You and I made that decision when we were baptized, or it was made for us by our parents and godparents. If they made the decision for us, they promised that they would rear us in such a way that we would indeed make that decision for ourselves when we got old enough to know. And when the decision was made that we would follow Jesus, either by us or by our parents and godparents, we were baptized. “Fredrick, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” were the words said as I was baptized. In that act, I was given the gift of the forgiveness of sins, made a participant in the death and resurrection of Christ, given the gift of the Holy Spirit, and made a full member of the Church, the Body of Christ. After a person is baptized, the priest takes the oil of chrism, that has a sweet aroma of balsam in it, and with his thumb makes the sign of the cross on the person’s forehead. As the sign of the cross is made, these words are said, “( N ), you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Though the oil gets washed off eventually, the cross remains. You belong to Christ, you’re a marked person, and the sign is the cross. From then on, whether you’re in church, or at the office, or at school, or at home, or on vacation, you’re still marked, because you belong to Christ. You can’t see that cross with your eyes, but it’s there, more permanent than a tattoo, and God sees it. From your baptism on, whether you’re giving out lunches to the needy, or serving on Sacred Spaces, or ushering, or engaging in a bit of gossip, or cheating on your income tax, you’re still marked. Whether you’re a faithful Christian or an unfaithful Christian, you’re still marked. For the purpose of your life has been forever altered. You belong to Christ, and now you are called not to live for yourself, but “for him who died for you and rose again.” Ash Wednesday, and really the whole season of Lent, is a time to acknowledge that we fall far short of the mark, not only as individuals, but also as a people. We’re called to live sacrificially loving lives, but too much of the time we live to please ourselves. We’re called to live in such a way that Jesus Christ is evident in our words and deeds, but all too often his image in us is obscured or even invisible. And so we come here today to seek forgiveness for past unfaithfulness, to acknowledge that we have not lived wholly as “marked” people, and to seek God’s grace in living more nearly according to the cross that marks us. In the same place where we were sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever, there will be placed a cross of ashes, clearly visible to all, reminding us and all who see us, of who we are and Whose we are. Today, by our presence here, by our decision to have a cross of ashes on our foreheads, and by coming forward to receive the Body and Blood of Christ at the altar, we are saying, “I have decided to follow Jesus; no turning back, no turning back.” We’re worshipping here on Super Bowl Sunday. We normally think about worship as being a part of our routine. It's something we do as part of our spiritual lives or something we do as a family together.
But I'd like for you to look at it from a broader point of view. We use a form of worship that Anglicans all over the world use, which means there’s probably no time in a 24 hour period, on a Sunday, when Mass is not being celebrated in an Anglican church. Furthermore, the Mass is the principal form of worship not only for Anglicans, but also for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and other branches of Christendom. But wait, there's more! Not only is that the case today, but also it has been the case for 2000 years—from the very beginning of the Church. Our Lord Jesus set it up that way. He made it possible for us to be in communion with him for all time, for whenever we celebrate the Mass, not only is Jesus present, but also through the Sacrament he enters our lives anew. I’d like to leave you with that thought for a moment, and ask you to imagine everyone who is in heaven—angels, archangels, cherubim, seraphim, apostles, martyrs, all the saints, and all departed who have entered into heaven are there. Everyone there is worshiping the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When we participate in the Mass, we’re experiencing something of heaven. After we come to the end of the Mass on Sunday, our experience of that aspect of Heaven has come to an end for the time being until, once again, we gather together for Mass. God created us, alone of all his creation as far as we know, to have the ability to have one foot on earth and the other in heaven. God has given us the ability to see beyond ourselves and to contemplate the eternal; and even to be in contact with our Creator. We have far more ability to do that than we use, because of our self-centeredness. The more self-centered we are, the harder it is not only to see those around us, but also to be in communion with God, for to be in communion with God the self can't be in the center; only God can be in the center. Jesus came to this earth in order to reunite us with God. We access that relationship through our Lord Jesus Christ through prayer, meditation, and especially through the Mass. And when we celebrate Mass we’re celebrating not just with those in our parish, but also with those in every place who are doing the same thing. We’re doing it with all who are in heaven, the whole heavenly host. We draw attention to this reality at every Mass as the Celebrant says, " Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify the glorious Name; evermore praising thee and saying , ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts: Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, O lord most high.'" We can say that we are praising God with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven because that’s what angels and archangels and all the company of heaven do. They worship the Creator of heaven and earth. Whenever we experience the presence of God, you might say we have one foot on earth and one foot in heaven. When speaking of the Mass, we might call it a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. Others have called it a "thin place," where the barrier between earth and heaven becomes very thin. The disciples had been with Jesus for three years, seeing him in all kinds of situations, experiencing his miracles, hearing his teachings. They knew he was unique, and they probably had the idea that he was the Messiah. The Hebrews, however, did not believe that the Messiah would be divine; they believed he would be a ruler in the line of King David and with the charisms of a divinely-chosen and directed ruler. When Peter, James, and John went with Jesus up on a mountain to pray, they experienced a very thin place indeed. They saw Jesus along with the two greatest figures of the Jewish faith, Moses and Elijah. Jesus was transfigured; his clothes dazzling white and his appearance radiant. In other words, they saw Jesus revealed as God. What do we do when we're given such a gift, whether we're speaking of being with Jesus in the Mass, or some other "thin" place? When Jesus and the three disciples left the mountain, St. Mark doesn’t tell us this, but St. Luke tells us they were immediately confronted with a child who was possessed, and Jesus healed the child. Why are we given glimpses of heaven? Two reasons: to lift us beyond ourselves to the presence of God and to give us strength to serve God, just as Jesus was led to serve. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Our story today begins in the middle of the action, with the Word of the LORD coming to Jonah a second time. “Get up,” He says, “go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” Though that last verb really should be in the past tense. Because God had already commanded Jonah to go. He just hadn’t done it. Many, if not most of us here, know this story. We know what God told Jonah. We know what Jonah didn’t do. We know how things worked out in the end. The story is practically old hat. Flannel boards and coloring sheets. And yet we hear it again today, we are given it anew now, and we dare to believe that it is a Word from the Lord and that He has something to say. What will he say to you? When God first spoke to Jonah and said “Go to Nineveh,” it was the worst day of his life. Jonah hated Nineveh. He loathed it. The thought of bringing the Word of the LORD there was reprehensible. Disgusting. What could God possibly want with the Ninevites? Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, the sworn enemies of Israel, and the most powerful, most murderously evil empire the ancient world had ever seen. They were ruthless. Cruel — and proud of it. There was a lot to hate about Nineveh and the Empire they represented. But Jonah took it a step further. Whereas most people might shudder and curse when the Assyrians came up in conversation, they more or less quickly moved on. But Jonah enjoyed that rush of anger. He cultivated it. And who could blame him? Who would dissuade him? It’s always been socially acceptable to hate someone or something that is textbook deplorable. Jonah cherished his hatred — which made the command of the Lord impossible for him to obey. Hearing what God wanted him to do, Jonah ran in the opposite direction. “I shall flee from the Lord’s presence,” he declares and goes as far away from Nineveh as he can possibly get. He arrives at the sea, hops on the first boat he finds, and sets sail. We can almost imagine him spitting over his shoulder before settling down in the hull of the ship for a nap, thinking, Those Ninevites can die in their sins. They deserve whatever they’re going to get. He falls asleep. Hours pass. The waters are calm — until dark clouds gather on the horizon. Thunder rumbles. Lightning flashes. The waves grow higher. Everyone (except for Jonah, who is still sleeping) is terrified. The sailors fish out their idols, they pray to their gods, they beseech whatever deity comes to mind, asking them to intervene. But nothing works. The captain of the vessel wakes Jonah up. He asks him if he knows what is going on. If there’s anything he can do to stop what the sailors believe to be their imminent demise. “Cast me overboard,” Jonah says. And eventually the sailors do. As Jonah sinks into the depths, it looks — tragically, ironically — that he’s finally come to a place where the Word of the Lord can’t reach him — though once more, He does. God sends a great fish to swallow up his recalcitrant prophet; and after three days in its belly, the fish spews him right back to where he started. “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.’” And Jonah obeys, though he begrudges every step of the way. And we know that because we’re told that Nineveh is vast, three days’ travel from end-to-end; but Jonah doesn’t even reach the middle of the city before delivering God’s message — in five Hebrew words, no less — “Come 40 days,” he cries, “Nineveh will be overturned.” Job done, Jonah turned to go — only to find that the Ninevites had listened. Everyone, from the King to the cab drivers to the cows bowed the knee and bewailed their sins. “Have mercy on us, LORD, have mercy,” they cry. And he does. He does. You’d think this would be the moment that Jonah forgives the Ninevites and embraces them. There were once his enemies. Now, they were his brethren! But he doesn’t. Instead, Jonah storms out of the gates, hikes up a mountain, and sits down, glaring at the repentant city. If looks could kill. They do — though not in the way we expect. Our story concludes with a final tableaux: God causes a plant to grow up to shade Jonah; and then God ordains a worm to kill it. Sweaty and sunburnt, Jonah loses his temper. “Kill me now,” he begs. “It is better for me to die than to live.” To which God responds: “Jonah, Jonah, Jonah. Why are you this way? You are concerned over something so small, a vine you didn’t plant or tend. Should I not be concerned about Nineveh? Should I not be concerned about the thousands of people who live there? Don’t you understand who I am?” But the story ends with that exchange. Jonah doesn’t give a reply. Which means we are meant to supply it. And we can — because we all know Jonah, just like we all know the Ninevites. They’re easy to find, easy, even to understand. They live in our hearts. All it takes is a moment of honest self-reflection, a look inside that reveals the truth: We’ve all had knee-jerk reactions that pop out and hurt someone we love from time to time. And we’ve all been hurt and then cherished our resentment to the point of thinking that maybe God should skip his mercy this time around. Does that sound familiar? It does to me. That’s the beauty and the genius and the humor of this story. It shows us in no uncertain terms that we are all repulsive pagans. We are all reluctant prophets. We are all sinners in the hands of a merciful God — a God who was out to save not just the Ninevites, but also Jonah. He would not be satisfied with anything less. And he is not satisfied with anything less. God does not want any part of his creation or any person in it to be overturned by Sin or destroyed by the hatred and the fear and the selfishness that run rampant in this fallen world. To allow that to happen would be against God’s nature, a death-sentence for the universe he has made. And so it is that just as God spoke to a people who were not his people and just as he rescued his prophet from the depths of the sea, so too, does He pursue us, to save us, not fleeing his enemies, but casting himself into the sea for our sake, so that the storms of this world and the storms in our hearts might be calmed with the power of his grace. Such is his boundless love, love that does not wait or hold back until we’re “good enough” or until we “get wise” or until we respond to his commands with perfect humility. He comes now: Once, twice, three, four times, on and on, again and again, saying, “Follow me, and I will make you who you are meant to be.” That is our hope, our promise, our present reality. The Kingdom of God is nearer than we think. It’s on our lips and in our hearts. And the King says, “Turn away from your wickedness and live.” For true life, everlasting life, begins when we take him at his word and let His Word be the last. AMEN. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
What do you want to be when you grow up? I don’t remember the exact age I was when I first heard that question — and as far as I know my daughter hasn’t heard it yet. (Though she might after service.) What do you want to be when you grow up? A firefighter. A ballerina. A nuclear physicist. That was mine — turns out I’m bad at math. You could hear almost any answer to that question. Except for one. “I don’t want to. I want to remain a child.” No one says that. We’re all trained from the earliest age to think ahead, to plan for the future, to make it our goal to become independent, self-sufficient, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of our modern world. That’s what life is all about: growing up, getting a job, buying a house — or at least a couch. To say otherwise is a non-starter, a cop-out, a fantasy. After all, Peter Pan doesn’t look so good when the dishwasher breaks or the rent comes due. And yet there’s a certain wistfulness about that desire — to remain a child or, really, to remain childlike — that dances through each of our hearts from time to time. We catch ourselves thinking, Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just sit like my one-year-old son does and gaze out the window, cooing with delight, content with nothing more than a cool stone floor and a wooden spoon. Wouldn’t it be nice to be still in such a way, to be quiet, to be unaware of all the trials and tragedies that are going on in the world? Too bad life isn’t like that, we think, and then shake our heads and sigh and turn back to what a friend of mine recently described as “the daily grind.” That doesn’t sound so good, does it? Life these days can feel like that though, like we are pressed between bad news and bad news. Tumultuous times are upon us, and the months ahead don’t look like they’re going to be much different. Which begs the question: How will we meet them? Like a child. When the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli, the word of the LORD was rare. It was the time of the Judges — a period in Israel’s history marked by some serious growing pains. The Israelites had come up out of the desert from 40 years of wandering. They had entered the Promised Land. And yet the promised rest did not come; not because God couldn’t give it to them, but because the Israelites didn’t want it. Looking around at their neighbors, the Israelites began mimicking them. They worshiped pagan gods. They followed foreign ideals. To quote a phrase that is repeated many times in the OT book describing this period: “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Everyone did what was right in their own eyes, so you can imagine what society was like. The rich oppressed the poor, the poor stole to survive, and the enemies of the people of God sounded their trumpets and sharpened their swords for battle. And yet, even amidst the darkness, the lamp of God had not gone out, and the bright lights of righteous men and women and girls and boys continued to burn. We meet one of those people today, asleep beside the Ark of the Covenant. He is a child, and he does not yet know the LORD. Still, the LORD speaks to him. “Samuel, Samuel!” he says. And the boy thinks his master is calling. Samuel gets up and runs to his side. “Here I am, for you called me,” Samuel says. But Eli sends him back to bed. The same exchange happens again. And again. Three times the LORD speaks. Three times Samuel runs to his master. Until Eli finally understands. “The LORD is calling you,” he says. “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” Samuel does just that. He lays down. He closes his eyes. He waits. And just as his breathing slows and his mind begins to drift, the Word of the Lord appears and stands beside him, calling his name. And Samuel says: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” For all Eli’s faults — which were many — there is great wisdom in the counsel he gave. What other statement could convey the disposition one must adopt in the presence of Almighty God? “Speak, for your servant is listening.” There are no demands in those words, no preconceived notions of who or what God is or can be. There is just openness and trust and humility. Whatever message the LORD bears, whatever word he has to say, the servant listens, ready to do whatever his master commands. In our world of constant noise and incessant stimulation, how often do we find ourselves in such a posture? How often do we pause and look around and listen for the Word of the Lord? How often do we slow down long enough to behold the glory that is all around us? We don’t — though that’s not for lack of trying or because we don’t want to. Now more than ever before we are engaged with forces that are designed to diminish our ability to behold, to gaze, to listen. We are presented with an image of happiness, one that is beautiful and tantalizing but ultimately empty, unable to touch the hunger at the center of our being. It can’t be said enough that there is a God-shaped hole in each of our lives, a restlessness in our hearts that will continue unsatisfied until we realize that only the One God of Israel, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, can fill it. Can fill us. And he will. He does. Think of the stories we’ve heard today, of the stories we’ve heard at so many other times — of Moses and Samuel and Jonah and St. Peter and St. Paul: God’s presence and power doesn’t rely on us. God works. God speaks. God acts, even when our eyesight is dim and our hearing is poor and our hearts are hard. That behavior that doesn’t even surprise him. As the psalmist said, “Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether. You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me." How wonderful! And it is. For what does he conclude after that admission? David says: I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. What a miracle! God knows us, knows the fears that keep us up at night, the petty insults we let slide, the secret lusts we all cherish. He knows us, and still he loves us. Each one of us is fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. Each one of us is fearfully and wonderfully made and learning to be like Him. This is what God is doing, guiding us, guarding us, so that we might grow into the full stature he intends for us. Only God knows what each of us will be when we grow up: His child. This is a gift and a grace that human words will forever fail to describe, though we can and should keep trying. Each one of us is known by God and loved by God, and we will come to know God and love God in our own way, learning to walk with him much like a child does — with a lot of falling down and crying and then getting back up. This is the work of our life, the growing up we have to do, traveling the way everlasting with the One who has promised to dwell with us, who chose us and called us, even when we were asleep in the Temple or sitting under the fig tree. Even when we did not yet know the Lord. He is with us, never tiring of our frailty but rejoicing, rejoicing every time we take a step on our own. In every moment and every day, may we continue to take those steps, looking again and again for God, our benevolent Father, who would teach us how to walk and how to speak and how to act so that his glory might shine and his lamp might burn in our lives and in the world AMEN. Let me tell you about a young couple. He’s in his mid-twenties; she’s around the same age. He’s from an upper-class family, accustomed to everything money can buy (which he believes is about everything), reared with conservative values, Harvard-educated, and now a lawyer in a prestigious firm. His name is Greg.
She’s from a vastly different background. Her parents, while they have a long-time relationship, never married. They made a conscious effort never to do anything simply because their parents did it or because it was a convention of society. They never saw a tradition that they didn’t break and they never heard a new-age idea they didn't embrace. They were your original flower children, and she was thoroughly immersed in their value system. Her name is Dharma. Dharma and Greg are married. Their life together is a constant meeting and clashing of value systems. Both sets of parents are thoroughly involved in their children's lives, which further complicates the picture. It’s the stuff of which situation comedies are made. In fact, it was a situation comedy 20 years ago or so entitled "Dharma and Greg." In one episode they’ve adopted a baby and everybody’s making plans. Greg feels the baby should be baptized — in the church in which he had been baptized. Dharma, open to all ideas, said, "Fine, where's the church?" Greg said he didn't know street names, but he could drive to it. So they drove around and around, but couldn’t find the church. Dharma suggested that perhaps she could drive and Greg could get in the back seat, since he would have been sitting in the back seat of his parents' car the last time he went to church, which it turns out was when he was around seven years old. They never found the church. Later, in discussing the situation with Greg's parents, his mother said, "Oh yes. That was the Presbyterian Church." His father corrected her, "No, dear, the Episcopal Church." They did end up having the baby baptized. They also had him circumcised by a rabbi and blessed by an Indian shaman. Then they had a reception in which Dharma was heard to say, "We want our son to be brought up knowing all religions and ideas so he can choose for himself." The rabbi said to the priest, "That's going to be one mixed up kid!" Dharma and Greg represent a large number of people today. The Church isn’t a "given" entity in people's lives. And those who have church backgrounds often were so poorly indoctrinated in the faith that it’s easy to move to an entirely different religion without being bothered by the difficulty of changing to a completely different belief system. Greg had been baptized. Is he a Christian? Yes. The seed of baptism has been planted. He’s a member of the Body of Christ, and marked as Christ's own forever. I believe it was St. Augustine who said that the marks of baptism are distinguishable even in hell. But if we mean by Christian, "Is he leading a Christian life?' the answer’s no, for to be able to be a part of a worshiping body of believers, and to be able to receive the Sacrament, yet to choose not to do so, is to choose not to lead a Christian life. Worship isn’t the only response called for in the Christian life, but it’s essential. Another problem in Greg's Christian understanding is in his and Dharma's decision to allow their son to choose what he’ll believe. Christian parents, when they present a child for baptism, vow to do the opposite. They vow to nurture that seed that’s planted in baptism, so that as the child matures, she’ll be thoroughly indoctrinated in the Christian faith and life. She may choose not to be faithful, but it shouldn’t be because the parents were "hands off” regarding religion. We must do everything in our power to stay healthy members of the Body of Christ. We do that by being in as close communion as possible with our Lord Jesus and by following his example. The purpose of his life and the way he lived his earthly life can be seen in his baptism. When Jesus went to the river Jordan to be baptized by John, John asked the question that many today ask. Why was one who was perfect baptized? When John protested, saying that Jesus should baptize him, Jesus responded, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Jesus was beginning his ministry. That ministry was to suffer and die for the sins of the whole world. He begins his ministry by identifying with us so completely as to submit to baptism for the repentance of sin. Then, in going down into the water his death was prefigured and coming out of the water so was his resurrection. The seed of baptism has been planted within most of us here today. Like Jesus at his baptism, we’ve been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our whole being has been changed, for we’re members of Christ's Body, enabled to meet the challenges and possibilities of life with the strength of Christ. The old nature is still a part of us, for we still tend to be self-centered, and so we must continually strive, by the grace of God, to die to self that Christ might have full reign in our lives. It’s never been easy to live a Christian life. Now, more than at any other time in the history of our nation, Christianity is at odds with the culture, as Dharma and Greg illustrate beautifully. And so it’s all the more important for us to immerse ourselves in the things of faith, that we may know God's will to the best of our ability and have the strength and courage to do his will. How do we immerse ourselves in the things of faith? Our Baptismal Covenant is the place to start.
By the grace of God, as we, day after day, do the things of faith, we will reflect more clearly the presence of God in our lives. Yes, our society is increasingly non-Christian, as Dharma and Greg illustrate, but that makes our calling all the more important. |
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